I cannot wrap my brain around Kamala Harris losing to a convicted felon who ran a perfunctory, half-assed campaign. Unfathomable.
Author: Seth Anderson
Just another Gen-Xer still posting on a blog
Xerox 8570 ColorQube and planned Obsolescence
Printers suck, we all know this. Still, irks me that my Xerox 8570 ColorQube is refusing to print because of an error (93,598
), which seems to be a faulty magenta sensor (or something else related), and I cannot repair it, nor find service to fix it. I’m relatively handy with electronic repairs if I have good instructions and proper tools, I like to think I could figure this out. I bet the part is not expensive, if I could find one.
Many hours later, still no joy.
Skipping Voicemail Message One Star Pound
Since I had to search this recently, I’m posting it to helpfully trigger my memory. Maybe…
To be as evil as possible, the carriers do not promote or tell you about the existence of this keystroke. Furthermore, the key to press is different with each company:
* for Verizon
1 for Sprint
# for AT&T
# for T-Mobile
Every time you dial a number, you’d have to know which carrier that person uses. Which is, of course, impossible.
And you can’t just press *-1-# in a row, hoping to cover all bases—because if you press the wrong keystroke for the wrong carrier, you wind up boxed into that system’s voicemail menus.
…
STEP ONE. Press 1. If it’s Sprint, you get the beep, and you’re done. If you hear an error recording, go on:
STEP TWO. Press *. If it’s Verizon, you get the beep. If not:
STEP THREE: Push #. You get the beep for T-Mobile or Cingular.
You have to pause after each one, and you have to keep listening. But it’s one small way to fight back. Remember: One Star Pound.
via David Pogue when he used to write for the NYT.
I wonder if Sprint and T-Mobile merged their voicemail systems yet? These instructions were written in 2009, if I remember I’ll update for modern carriers in 2024.
My photo “Don’t Know How Much Longer I Can Wait” was added to Flickr Explore
I believe for the first time since Flickr parent SmugMug tweaked the algorithm, a photo of mine made it into Explore December 30th, 2023.
I took this photo December 28th, 2023, and developed it in my digital darkroom the next evening.
Photo Gear
- Nikon D7000
- 35.0 mm f/1.8
- ƒ/2.8
- 1/50 (the slowest shutter speed I can reliably use without a tripod)
- ISO 400
Location: At the intersection of Lincoln, Halsted and Fullerton, in Lincoln Park, Chicago. I chauffeured to a local physical therapist1, and while waiting the hour for the appointment to be over, I walked around the area. It started raining pretty hard, and I was nervous that my camera might get wet but kept on walking, headphones on, listening to music, including to the Bob Dylan outtakes/alternate takes from the Time Out Of Mind Recordings. By the time I took this photo, I was pretty well soaked, but continued on for another mile or so. In my car, I had a raincoat, and a plastic protective sleeve for my camera, however was too lazy to trudge back to properly gird myself against the elements. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At least I got a few good shots of the amazing city light during a rain storm out of it…
Darkroom (digital): Won’t bore you with every detail of what I did in Photoshop, but I do remember I used a graduated neutral density filter (in emulation) to balance the light, and Alien Skin’s Fuji Reala film (in emulation).
Footnotes:- torn rotator cuff, yikes [↩]
Voter Turnout Is Essential To Re-Defeating Trump
Trump lost in 2020 by more than 7 million votes1 and hasn’t made much inroads into reducing that margin. Or even attempting to! Especially since the Republican agenda is very unpopular with a majority of eligible voters. Continuing to strip abortion rights is at the top of their list, but there are many other abominations in the GOP plan for America.
America is also one of those democracies that has been so stable that a plurality of eligible voters don’t bother to vote. Why bother when the country continues to plod along no matter what?
But I believe strongly the 2024 election is different, and thus participating in the voting process is more important for everyone. The oft repeated cliché, “If we want to keep our democracy…” has been chanted frequently enough, the key to keeping the violent, vulgar idiot Trump and his fascist bullies out of public office is voter turnout.
President Joe Biden has accomplished more than I expected, his administration should continue.
Footnotes:- he lost the popular vote in 2016 too [↩]
HMS Black Joke Seems Like A Hollywood Film Waiting To Be Written
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I read about this historic ship today, built in Baltimore in the 1820s, used to transport slaves to Bahia, Brazil for a few years before the British Navy captured it. It was a fast, small and fierce ship, so they kept it in service as a slaver catcher.
From 1828 until it was decommissioned in 1832, HMS Black Joke freed thousands of slaves by capturing the boats transporting them.
When the Royal Navy ordered that Black Joke be burned, Peter Leonard, surgeon of HMS Dryad, wrote that she was the ship “which has done more towards putting an end to the vile traffic in slaves than all the ships of the station put together.”
Doesn’t this sound like the plot of a good movie? Maybe starring Idris Elba? Or someone like him in any case. In the Hollywood version, Elba is a slave, but freed, joins the crew, and rises through the ranks, yadda yadda. Who should the captain be? Russell Crowe already did a film based on the Master And Commander books, but maybe he’d make another navy epic? Maybe someone younger, like Robert Pattinson?
I’ll add it to my notebook of “Film Treatments I Really Should Write”, along with all the others…
Annual Daylight Savings Kvetch
Today is the day we are allowed to lament the collective stupidity and inaction regarding Daylight Savings, right? I think at this stage of civilization, we could collectively choose a time and stay there all year, without moving it around on a whim. Sometimes in a year, based upon where you live, and the season, it will be dark when you get up, sometimes it won’t. Some parts of the year you’ll end your work day in darkness, some parts not. But your internal clock won’t be scrambling to adjust to the new time twice a year.
When I’m dictator of the world…
Weather Overload
Sometimes I think the weather forecasters get bored, and just want to publish something, no matter if it really is important.
To whit:
Cook County Weather Alert:
Dense Fog Advisory issued November 5 at 12:33AM CDT until November 5 at 10:00AM CST by NWS Chicago IL
* WHAT…Visibility one quarter mile or less in dense fog.
Yeah, ok…
Shrinkflation Strikes Again
The bottle on the right held 120 sublingual B complex lozenges, bottle on the right that I just purchased holds 60…
Source Naturals basically doubled the price in something like 3 years. I don’t take B vitamins every day, only a few times a month, so a bottle lasts for a while.
The Weight Of The World’s Woes Rested Heavily Upon His Brow
A Hipstamatic photograph of a solitary leaf that fell on my car’s sunroof during last night’s rain.
Lowy Lens and BlacKeys B+W Film
As far as the sentiment, you can probably guess as to its meaning without me being explicit. Right?
Turning my blog into a Fediverse server
I’m adding this as a weekend project for myself.
Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse writes:
If you have a WordPress blog, you can turn it into a Fediverse server, which means people will be able to follow the blog and comment on it from Mastodon etc.
This is now possible for all kinds of WordPress blogs, including free blogs on wordpress.com, paid blogs on wordpress.com and blogs hosted elsewhere that are powered by WordPress software. The method you use to activate Fediverse compatibility depends on the type of blog you have, but they all work using the same technology.
(click here to continue reading WordPress: Turning your blog into a Fediverse server | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse.)
So far, I’ve installed the ActivityPub plugin1 and attempted configuration. I’m not quite sure it is alive yet, but I have to stop for a few hours anyway to attend to other tasks. I’ll check back in and figure out what the final steps will be…
Footnotes:Trouble Logging Into UT Alumni Email hosted by Google
Great, I am having trouble logging in to my UT Alumni Google email1 . That’s the problem with “free” email I guess, if you need tech support, you might as well be asking a brick wall for advice about differential equations.
Nothing has changed on my side, and at least as of now, I can still receive/send email using my Mac’s mail program, but I cannot log in to Gmail via my browser (on multiple Macs). I receive an error message after I enter my password that reads:
Google couldn’t verify this account belongs to you.
Try again later or use Account Recovery for help.
If you still can’t sign in to your account, contact your organization’s admin for help. Your admin may need to temporarily update login challenge settings.
I sent an email to help@utexas.edu requesting assistance, but I am skeptical as always.
And I guess my alumnus status means that the email isn’t free, it was underwritten by all my years paying tuition.
Footnotes:- my name followed by @Utexas.edu [↩]
Keep My Real Life Shining
Cloud Gate, aka The Bean, a favorite subject of tourists and photographers.
(click to embiggen)
- Nikon D80
- Lens 18.0-135.0 mm f/3.5-5.6
- ƒ/8.0
- 28.0 mm
- 1/250
- 100 ISO
I took this photo February 4th, 2007, and processed it in my digital darkroom in July, 2023. I remember it being a very cold day, and that my iPod battery died from being too cold, and then so did my Nikon D80 battery. Still took a bunch of photos before this happened though.
Short Posts
I really should be less reluctant to write short posts. In the golden age of blogging, I’d think nothing of typing a sentence or two and publishing, these days I ruminate endlessly, and then publish nothing.
I am happy with Mastodon as a replacement for XTwitter aka Xitter, btw. I guess that is my current stand-in for pithy posts.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Unnamed Yet Delicious Rum Based Cocktail
I wish I could source this cocktail, find it mentioned somewhere in one of my many bartending books, or on a recipe site. On the social media site, Mastodon, I follow the hashtag, cocktails, and about 2-3 months ago, someone posted this recipe. I’ve since made1 several, they are just so damn deliciously refreshing!
- Lime – half a freshly sliced lime, juice squeezed
- Orange Bitters – 2 dashes of bitters – I haven’t decided whether Fee Brothers West Indian Orange Bitters or Angostura Orange bitters is best. I grab whichever I see first.
- Rum – Dark rum, such as Plantation Rum – 2 oz
- Pineapple juice – 1 oz – I suggest RW Knudsen Family’s organic Just Pineapple.
Mix ingredients over ice, and either serve in a coupe glass, as shown above, or on the rocks, which is what I usually do.
The worst part about this cocktail is after you’ve had one, you’ll want another right away. Might as well use the other half of your lime, right?
So what should the name of this cocktail be? Or do you know what it is called?
- and consumed joyfully!! [↩]