Dullsters

I noticed water backing up into my sink when my dishwasher drains. Oh no, I thought. A partial blockage. I used some Liquid Plumr.

I set up Adguard Home to resolve DNS queries for my home network, but AT&T router doesn’t allow setting DNS server so I had to also use the DHCP server. Still have it using plain DNS because I didn’t want to set up certificates, but might still later even if it’s just proxying DoT/DoH.

Made a poster for a school club with a certain design.

I shared it with a coworker and she found it funny too. It’s !thelittlethings@lemmy.cafe, like finding human-recognizable acronyms in serial numbers for something that isn’t peanut butter and jelly.

Sometimes I accidentally microwave my food for one second.

As I was approaching a staircase, I realized that the distance to the stairs meant I should start with my left foot. I realized it felt really wrong to start going down the stairs with my off foot. Most excitement I’ve had today.

It doesn’t say so on the branding, but but the barcode reader goes both ways and it will pop open a locker for you to use. Nice for avoiding lines or getting a receipt after hours.

Louder bird sounds than I have ever heard before, though that could just be a factor of my own proximity to the bush and how many birds were congregated at the bush. I stopped and put my glasses on to look, but by then most had flown away.

Woke up to pee and smelled it and now I’m too excited for the morning to go back to sleep.

Kind of funny that it was stapled despite there being no need for one.

Everybody else wanted to crush it, so I jumped up to rescue it (I don’t believe in the senseless killing of creatures that are just minding their own business). Let it crawl on a bit of tissue and took it to the exit to remove it from the premises.

Came back from running errands this morning to a wet basement and no hot water. Turns out those two things were related. Hot water heater gave up the ghost and sprung a leak. I did notice it sounded extra gurgle-y after I got out of the shower this morning.

I was wondering why the Kill-A-Watt wattmeter that I normally leave things in the room plugged into was beeping. Turned out that having an electric kettle and a space heater both on on a circuit were enough to drive the power usage over the 1800W that a normal US household circuit can provide, and that apparently the thing beeps in that case. It let me flip off the kettle before the circuit breaker flipped, which was nice.

Thought that was funny.

With the age verification for discord talks, I decided to resurrect an old phpbb2 board I had set up in the 00s for a MUD I played. But the php on my host is too new of a version, so I set up phpbb3.

They were a mess. They look much better now.

Just saw a massive rat in the back garden. Might not fit in the box! Anyway, be gone ye blighter!

I had to deal with old paper documents that have information for something that needs to be completed for one of my workplace’s customers today. I saw that customer’s name written in a very different font and color than the way it’s written on the customer’s official branding—it basically looked like word art, like someone just doodling with the customer name as inspiration. Not sure if the customer made that, or someone at my workplace did, and it is from too long ago to ask anyone today, but it was nice to see. Job-having adults still being human and doodling in the margins like we did in school.

Got them at Costco 2 months ago. So far I’ve eaten 6 cans. I’ve found a couple stems, but it’s okay overall (thanks Del Monte).

Same company that played Metallica’s Enter Sandman when I called, from this post.

Had to call up a company and their hold music was Metallica’s Enter Sandman. I liked that. Got all the way to the final chorus before I got to the person I needed to talk to. What I find pretty interesting is that the wait time was briefly interrupted by someone picking up, but when they put me back on hold the music picked up where it left off instead of starting from the beginning.

To make it easier for the haulers, I sort my flattened cardboard boxes by size, and then insert the smaller ones within the larger ones, rotated 90 degrees. That way, they can grab larger bundles at once.

We use heavy-duty staples for documents with many pages, where normal staples will not go all the way through because of how many pages there are. It seems I might be the first person doing something that requires removing those staples. Very difficult with normal staple removers. So we bought a heavy-duty staple remover and it’s very useful! Very helpful.

Yesterday I took a shower. I thought I’d try a tip I read about brushing conditioner through my hair with a hairbrush during the shower. I meant to put a reasonable amount of conditioner in the brush, but accidentally put way too much. (Nearing the end of the bottle, at the point where just squeezing produces nothing unless I had the bottle upside down. So I’d been leaving the bottle upside down so I could get conditioner out, and forgot how fast it would come out in this instance.) I brushed anyways, figuring my hair would look all greasy when it dried from way too much product.

Every so often, I think about how much electric power my house consumes at all hours, even when it’s the dead of night and nothing is really being used. So this morning, I went out and flipped each breaker off, one by one slowly, while watching the instantaneous kilowatt reading on the electric meter and taking observations.

I have gone from an rsync-based backup system to a borg-based one. I now have a Raspberry Pi-based server that will live on my LAN in another building, and I have a pair of HDDs I’ll use locally. I’ll plug one in for a week, and then swap to the other, that way I’ve got backups in cold storage should some uncouth jabronie write a ransomware virus for Linux.

I’ve made tomorrow’s meals today, but I’ve never made Monday’s meals Wednesday. I figure doing them all in one shot while I have the energy will make me less sapped of energy later on (or able to spend my remaining energy elsewhere), and look forward to seeing how it goes in the next few days when meals are no longer a cooking endeavor after work or a decision, but just selecting the thing labeled with the right day of the week and following a few instructions I left for myself.

I know I’m late to the party, but I’ve finally achieved something quite satisfying: a house with only USB-C cables. Phone, tablet, laptop, headphones, earbuds, power bank, etc. Even my kitchen scale has joined the revolution. No more hunting for the right cable, no more “Wait, does this one fit the headphones or the tablet?” Just one cable to rule them all. The transition period is finally over!

I have heard train conductors make (non-prerecorded, live) announcements before, but it never sounded as clear as what I’m hearing today! I guess the current conductor either has experience with making announcements over PA systems or talking into mics, or the PA system is just better in this train. Wonder which. Either way, it’s a pleasure to hear.

I updated the closet under my stairs again today.

Nothing to report.

An Asian market store (mostly Chinese foods) opened near me this month and I’ve seized the opportunity to make hotpot-inspired soups. Mostly throwing garlic, mixed dried/canned/frozen vegetables, tofu and noodles into boiling water in sequence, then swirling on some sesame oil and chili oil.

I made what passes in my house for french onion soup (I follow Alton Brown’s recipe, replace the apple cider with another can of canned beef consomme) and it produces more than a human should eat in a sitting.

It’s 6am. I woke up because my CPAP stopped. It’s going to be a long day.

TL;DR: I switched the leads inside my Kensington Orbit Fusion to better fit how I use it without needing software solutions.

35000 power-on hours. SMART still reports it as OK.

Kids liked it. Moms liked it. Gave some candy along with it. Nobody gonna remember the fun sized snickers guy but they will remember the potato house.

It was not designed to be fixed. This required breaking more than one glue joint. But I did it. Amazing how much of my face was packed into all those tiny parts. It had little springs in it. “fun.”

Couldn’t figure out how to get a specific ticket I wanted digitally, so I bought a physical one feeling I had no other option. I figured out how to buy the ticket I wanted digitally and now I have a digital train ticket. I will no longer need to dig through my purse for a train ticket and hold it in my hand for awhile while trying to do something else on the train, I just flash my phone (already on) at the conductor quickly. I am glad I got this done.

I like target shooting and generally that isn’t dull for me. But this was the indoor range and earlier this year I was introduced to an outdoor range with steel targets. Being inside shooting paper just isn’t the same. Unfortunately the outside place is 1.5 hours away; indoor is literally about 7 minutes.

I just thought 5 5s in a row was neat.

I have not seen the leaf changes because it’s so dark going to and coming home from work, but taking a walk in daylight showed me that the green leaves have indeed gone yellow for fall.

Now it was not on because my tires were low, I have an aftermarket monitor that shows my actual tire pressure. It was on because my spare was stolen out of the bed of my pickup last year, and the light was to let me know one of my TPM were not connected. I picked up a new spare off Craigslist list shortly after mine went missing, but I never got it connected to my trucks monitor, but this morning the light that normally flashes for a minute then goes solid… never came on.

I went to the doctor. He looked down my throat and said it’s a little red before giving me ibuprofen. Didn’t even take my temperature 😒. But I guess there’s not much to do but wait.

The door key at the girlfriend’s house was not interested in entering the lock let alone turning. Went to Home Depot, picked up a small overpriced tube of graphite and lubed them up. Works like a brand new lock now.

Years ago, I installed a 2 meter radio in my truck, I stuck it where the ash tray goes. Well, this meant that to plug in an antenna you had to take the dashboard apart, so I ripped the radio out.

Now I can’t find the connectors.

I went to microwave a microwavable burger, and it tells you to nuke it for awhile, leave it still for a little while, then nuke it for a little while longer. While I was leaving it for the little while, the sumbish beeped at me like “Hey trouser simian, don’t forget your processed bullshit.”

It smells.

I found a very old small transistor radio when cleaning out my garage today. I put in some new batteries, turned it on, and put on shelf while I kept cleaning garage.

I assumed allergies since that’s the usual culprit, then dehydration, then eye strain, and tried to deal with each of them in turn without success. And then while I’m feeling frustrated with my temple feeling like it’s getting squeezed in a vice, I glanced at the weather and noticed the humidity was below 30% outside. That’ll do it!