Darkoshi

Well, no wonder I've always found this laptop keyboard so hard to type on. It's not that the Insert key is in a different position on the top row than I'm used to. The top row doesn't even *have* an Insert key. It is only present on the zero key at the bottom of the number keypad.

Surely I must have noticed this before (to paste, I end up pressing Ctrl-V instead of Shift-Ins), and yet it feels like a brand new discovery.

In contrast to this one, my work laptop is relatively easy to type on.
The work laptop keys are much easier to read, a thick white text on a black background.
This laptop's keys have thin black text on a grey/silver background, along with light blue alternate text. I always think if I peer hard enough, that light blue text will say "Insert" somewhere but it doesn't.

Random thought:
Why are all the brownie and blondie recipes I find online only enough for a little 8x8 inch pan?

That only makes 9 reasonably-sized pieces, which can be gone in no time at all. Even quicker, if you share them with anyone else. (And could you imagine living with a family of multiple sweets-enjoying people? Goodness gracious!) I want enough batter to fill up the 9x13 inch pan, and while it's not hard to double the recipe....

WHO are all these people who think it is fine to go through all the trouble of finding the ingredients, measuring, mixing, pouring, baking, cooling, cutting, etc., AND washing all the dishes, to only get 9 little pieces of goodness out of it, of which surely you will eat at least 2 before they even finish cooling off?

..

This is an interesting recipe:

7-Ingredient Peanut Butter Chickpea Blondies [Vegan, Gluten-Free, Refined Sugar-Free]

I'd wanted a sweet treat I could share with my mom today.

I was constrained to certain recipes due to being out of my usual egg-replacer.
I didn't have enough maple syrup, so I used mostly brown rice syrup instead.
I used tahini instead of peanut butter, since I have a lot of tahini.
I omitted the strawberries.
I don't have a food processor (maybe I should finally get one), so I used my blender instead, and it turns out that my blender leaks, so maybe I need a new blender too.

One reason I chose this recipe is that it uses buckwheat flour, which I have! I got it when I was eating gluten-free several years ago, and still haven't used it up.

After mixing all the ingredients up, the batter was not very sweet, so I added 3 left-over packets of sugar and some old coconut creamer powder I'm trying to use up. And then I baked it.

It didn't turn out like I had hoped. (I'd been thinking of blondies I had made when I was a kid. Sweet, butterscotch flavor.) It tasted... healthy! (With the main ingredients being chickpeas and tahini, why wouldn't it be healthy?) But after eating two pieces, I wanted more. I continued thinking about them, after going to bed. Today, I'm considering making another batch before heading over to my mom's. I could try the peanut butter in it this time, and could put more sugar in it maybe, and some vanilla.

I also want to try this recipe, as I have chickpea flour too, and using it sounds a lot easier than pureeing a can of chickpeas:
Chickpea Flour Brownies

But it's probably too late for any of that now. Sigh.

An old post of mine got three linkspam comments today. The comments were posted by a Ukranian IP #, and include the URL of "Custom Software Development Company RexSoft".

Per Norton SafeWeb and Google, the site doesn't have unsafe content.

Per the Wayback Machine, the site has existed since at least 2017.

Per the web site itself, the company has locations in the USA, the UK, and Kyiv, Ukraine.

It seems the entity that left the comments was unclear how to make their URL get posted as an HREF link on my journal, as the 2nd and 3rd comments, posted several minutes after the first, had only the URL. So I'd guess it was a person posting the comments, not a bot.

It seems an odd time, during a war, for someone in Ukraine to post linkspam. That's why I checked if the site might have malicious content.

It also occurred to me that maybe Russia, not that Rexsoft company, could be behind the linkspam. As this page says, "not only are Google getting better at devaluing spammy links, the repercussions from Google can be devastating if caught."

Linkspam like that could hurt the company rather then help it; maybe Russia wants that. It seems an implausible action, but who knows. I will delete or screen the comments eventually.

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Random thought from yesterday, regarding how some of the Russian soldiers were told Ukrainians would welcome them, and were surprised by the resistance:
Maybe Russian (and other national) intelligence agencies have a hard time gauging the sentiment of people due to all of their own (and other) disinformation campaigns that they've been waging. Maybe they can't easily tell which and how many social media posts are by their own disinformation agents versus the actual population.

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Another random thought from yesterday:
Take your kid to work day must be very boring for kids whose parents work from home.

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Out of curiosity, I looked into that Rexsoft linkspam some more.

There have been several recent and similar linkspam posts and comments on other sites. These were all posted with a user name of "ann2022":
forums.tarot.com
kboards.com
vivecraft.org
ragezone
cracked.io

Four of those same pages also have linkspam for another site, develux.com. That is a company with locations listed in Kyiv, Ukraine; Malta; and Kissimmee, Florida.

Here's another page with posts from last year that link to both sites:
caclubindia

So it seems there may be a relationship between those 2 companies, or in the people posting the spam for them.

The Kissimmee, Florida address is referenced on other pages as "Devellux Inc".
The same address and Devellux name is used on this site: essayservice.com.
Amusingly, they have a page that discusses their "Honor Code". Given all the things that (as I would expect) go against their listed honor code, I wonder if there are any situations for which someone could honorably use an essay writing service for?

Rexsoftinc's NYC address (347 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1009) is referenced on other pages as N-IX USA INC, and Hoshovsky Law Firm ("Mr. Hoshovsky has practiced law in Ukraine...".

This xing.com page says that "Alexander Volt" is a vice president of rexsoft.
This Alexander Volt fellow is also listed as working at IntellectSoft. IntellectSoft is a company with locations listed as in the US, the UK, Norway, and (you guessed it) Kyiv, Ukraine.

when you hear a noise
and look out the window
to see 3 military helicopters flying by
not to have to worry
about the imminent possibility
of missiles and destruction

not to have thuggish soldiers in the streets
ordering you out of your houses
rifling through your belongings
taking people away
to unknown destinations, unknown fates

random thought: The people who pretend they're pretending aren't pretending.

My eye is back to looking nearly normal again. It took a bit under 2 weeks for the blood to clear up.

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Sometimes at 1am, you just have to make a pot of noodles.

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Some people are driven to go snorkeling in the frigid antarctic ocean, to take photos of vicious predators.

Some people are driven to spend 3 hours trying to get a single line of a SQL script to work right. And to spend yet another hour or two trying to get that Bluetooth adapter to work.

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Chia seeds really turn gelatinous when soaked in liquid! Chocolate soymilk + chia seeds = an almost effortless dessert. (Forestfen gave me a bag of chia seeds as a gift.)

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9th of March. And I haven't had time since my xmas vacation, to get back to my cassette -> mp3 conversion project.

I've been wanting to go back and watch all the prior seasons of Doc Martin. Maybe. So far, I've watched the movie that introduced his character, and 1 of the 2 movies that were prequels to the series. That's it. During the same time period, Qiao has watched about 5 or 6 whole seasons of Star Trek:Deep Space Nine.

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This brain-teaser intrigued me: "You are standing at a train station when a train goes by at 60 mph. At the back of the train there's a person who throws a baseball at 60mph out the back of the train. What does the ball do and how fast does it travel?"

The answer was "it drops to the ground, barely moving at all." That's sort of what I was guessing, though it was hard to visualize.

So if the person instead throws the ball at a lesser speed, then the ball falls towards the train, even though it is thrown in the other direction. At least, it would appear that way from the stationary observer's perspective.

And if you were wanting to toss the ball from the train to the person standing in the station, you'd have to throw it straight out from the side of the train, before you were even with the person, as the ball would continue moving in the train's travel direction even as it moves out away from the train.

brrr! hah. mmmmm. yeppy yeppy yeppy. so.
this liquid bandage stuff is so wonderful. works so much better than the adhesive strip type. and smells nice like chewing gum. oil of cloves.

i am miserable! and happy. except not really. but both. always. yeah, that's what i am. fine and dandy. sad and depressed. mediocre. it's friday! oh so wonderful yep. i will buy bread tomorrow! unless i don't.

hmmm. that's interesting. the active ingredient is 1%. and the first inactive ingredient listed is 6.7%. So what makes up the other 90% of this stuff then? It's something horrible I bet. If I knew what it was, I probably wouldn't want to use it anymore...

it's okay. i can dance naked in the streets. or on my lj page. no-one's looking. dance - dance - hippity hee haw. yep. ka-pow!

the heater's wonderful too. it's so nice not to be out in the cold without... oh darn, it turned off already. but no wankin farthies, it'll come on again. yep. brrr!!!

oh, boo-hoo. boo-hoo. sniffle snaffle. wah wah wah.

lah dah dee i'm stupid stoopid haha hah ha. argh.

lah dee dah.

i'm not alone. it's ok. the whole universe exists in my head. the whole terrible thing. Boom! Ka-pow. Swoosh. it's expanding! and expanding...! Whoa... it's coming back... crikey! Let's get outta here. The whole thing's collapsing back upon us!!! Yee hawww!!! ZWoosh. Ppiff. *~ .

oh. heh. maybe i'll get my kicks jumping out the window. that's a good one. yeppers. surely i can think meself good things to put on my interests list too. surely i got some more. ooh, i know... hmmm.

my hands are cold. someone, say something! i'll thank ye ferret. ohh.... the squashed bodies in the streets....

everytime i hear something about Guantanamo mentioned, it bothers me.
and how do you like that episode of Jag? So they want to portray conscientious objectors as sneaky liers and imply that it'd be good to have military patrolling our streets. yeah. sheesh. What'd I expect from a tv show. oh, but mr. garibaldi was on it! sheez i'm doofuslike.

ooh. you don't want to read me. i'm stoofus like. take me off yer lists and... err. green onions were the culprits?

isn't it annoying having to keep looking at the street when you're driving along and the sky's so pretty?