This morning I shut down and deleted the virtual server which was running the Matrix server I set up for family chats. (Think “Discord, but not run by a corporate entity.”) Nobody was using it, and if I hadn’t directly pinged the last two family members besides myself who had even looked at it I bet they wouldn’t have noticed for a while.
I had the perfect domain name for it and everything. Now I just need to come up with another project to attach that name to… much the same as with several other domains that I’m absolutely not relinquishing which I want to do things with in the future.
I’m better at building things than I am at building things people actually like, apparently.
It’s been a whole lot of years since I last owned a dining table.
I should explain.
When I moved out of the house, all those years ago, I moved into a townhouse with someone who already had a dining table, so I didn’t need to buy one. Then, when Vyx and I moved into the apartment nearly nine years ago, there wasn’t enough room to justify the wasted space when there was a perfectly functional “bar counter” setup that we could just sit a couple of barstools in front of. Which is what we did!
And then we moved. After nearly a year in this house, which has a similar “bar counter” but without the convenient overhang to make barstool sitting practical, it was time to procure a solution.
I went on a long, long train ride to SE Portland and back last week to visit Dad, who’s in the hospital on account of… well, I’m not entirely sure what got him there but “just plain getting old” is what it boils down to. He may or may not remember that I was there, that’s how out-of-it he was, but I made the trip and did my best. And yes, I kept my Flo Mask on the entire time.
We’re not a close-knit family, but that doesn’t make it any less gut-wrenching to realize that we’re also all just plain getting older. It’s the way of things, I suppose.
Can I just take a moment to gripe about the general entropy of human existence? Oh right, this is my website, I’m free to do as I please. Good.
When I got the diagnosis, among the things I immediately lost from the acceptable treats list was orange juice and that saddened me. What I “gained” consisted mostly of “more things to keep track of” in the form of daily pills that are supposed to help keep me aboveground for a while longer.
We worked out a way to keep hot cocoa in my life, and that worked for a while… until recently, when I think my body has decided that it doesn’t like something about the process. For most of this month I’ve been getting more and more ooky and uncomfortable. (I’ll spare the details, but you might be able to guess.) I’m still trying to work out if it’s the milk powder part or the chocolate part… and it’s not looking good for the latter. I went several days without cocoa or my ChocZero snacks, and started feeling better. So I’ve had one (1) cup of cocoa this week (Tuesday morning) and only one serving of ChocZero squares per day after… and the ookiness is back.
More science is required at this point. I am not hopeful for a happy result.
Y’all, if I lose the ability to enjoy chocolate at all? My gloomy life’s gonna get twice as gloomy. Where’s the fun of being a person who has to eat food to stay alive if none of the foods are allowed to be enjoyable? Breads and potatoes and rice to a bare minimum. No fruit juices. And now possibly no chocolates?
It’s phone refresh time for everyone on my Ting plan. Spud’s phone just up and bricked itself after several years of stalwart service, so I got his replacement sent out and that seems to have gone well. And then I started thinking, hmm, it has been a while since my Pixel 4a (5G) fell out of regular updates support. And Vyx’s phone has been giving her fits for a while.
So… new phones for everyone! She’s got a Pixel 8a due to arrive soon, and my Pixel 8 arrived today. I can’t really say if I like it better than the 4a (5G) or not yet, but the only annoying thing about it so far is that I can’t find a way to get rid of the “AI Wallpaper” app it comes with. Yuck. I got Signal, Duo, Discord, MediaMonkey, and Medisafe installed and settings/music/etc migrated with no particular difficulty, and my Jabra 65t earbuds are paired & tested.
I originally wanted to get a face-on shot so there’d be a partial reflection of the old phone in this picture of the new phone… but the autofocus kept locking onto the reflection. So you get a 3/4 angle view instead.
In spite of my advancing age (and the decreasing visual acuity which comes with that) I’m happy that this is a slightly smaller phone. Fits in the pocket easier, doesn’t feel quite so bulky to grasp. And with the font sizing features I can make the phone more-or-less usable by my “old person eyes” even before I’ve got my readers on. Helpful, that.
All things being equal I’m going to miss the 4a, it was quite the workhorse, but eventually it will give up the ghost and now I’m freshened up for the future. Yay?
We live in a proper house now, and with that change came some extra floor space for furniture. I decided last week that what my room needs is a “proper” display shelf. Cue some puttering around on Ikea’s website and a chunk of money gone from my bank account, and… well:
Unexpected benefit of the design: It doesn’t block the switched power outlet so I can use the light switch by the door to turn on a lamp sitting atop the new cabinet. Sweet!
As usual, Ikea does such a smart job providing visual instructions that even an easily confused duck like myself can follow along with relative ease. At one point I needed Vyx to help get the side glass panels into place (absolutely a two-person job, the instructions said so) but even that didn’t take very long. Mind you I also needed her to make sense of the instruction for getting the metal top piece into place. It’s a good thing she’s so smart or I’d still be at the build an hour or so later.
I thought I was being clever by not hauling the entire shipping box up the stairs before starting the build, and it wasn’t actually a bad idea to take each piece up as needed… but I absolutely did not save myself the workload by piecing it out. I still had to shift almost exactly the same amount of mass (minus the cardboard, which weighs little) plus I had to climb and descend the stairs that many more times.
In other words: Owie. My back hates me right now.
Worth it, though?
From top to bottom and left to right: Foam pickaxe reading “Remember Tunnel 17” from the Digger comic, Tolo brand rubber ducky, plush Teto from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, plush Kafka “Creation” (a cat-cake… thing) from Honkai Star Rail, Lizard Doggo from Satisfactory, Quaggan from Guild Wars 2, and Ryo-ohki from Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki.
