Very much not
I’m very much having a bad technology day. I spent a couple of hours troubleshooting my Outlook at work. It received files okay but couldn’t send them. No idea what the problem was, but eventually I clicked “repair” and it fixed it.
My printer sat around with its thumb up its ass every time I tried to print something.
Sat down to launch my browser, Brave asked if I would do an update, did an update and now it won’t open. I’ve found a half dozen people reporting the same – if it was a total bad update it should be thousands. I’ve tried the suggested fixes to no avail. The one thing everyone says will work will wipe out all my passwords, etc., so I ain’t doing that. I guess I’ll wait until Brave updates the update.
Lucky Slimjet remembered my login credentials.
Hey ho – at least Albert is still with us. He’s walking crooked, so I’m working on the assumption he has wry neck. A symptom, not a disease, it may indicate vitamin deficiency. I’m plying him with nutritious treats.
July 25, 2024 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 10
Don’t let the door hit you
I’m sitting here, minding my own business, gossiping on the internet, when this pops up. I don’t remember this happening when they retired any other Operating System.
No more Tuesday Windows updates? Threaten me with a good time, why don’t you?
I know, I know…security fixes. But this computer is 10 years old as I type and the gummy keyboard is starting to drive me crazy. The idea I’ll still be pecking away on it in October of 2025 is a stretch.
Have a good weekend, y’all!
June 28, 2024 — 6:35 pm
Comments: 4
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours
I’m coming to the conclusion I need to replace my phone. It’s about five years old and I use the heck out of it, so it’s developing quirks and screen scars.
My last three have been Motorola (but not the ones in the picture – I stole the pic from Cnet. Please no bully). And I’ve liked them well enough, but there’s an awful lot of phones on deep sale at the moment.
Uncle B’s is a Xiaomi – famous for its good camera. Camera is important to me – I take pictures for work and this place. But maybe not enough to put up with Xiaomi’s eccentric version of Android.
Some really good deals on Google’s Pixel 7a at the moment, no doubt because it’s been replaced by the Pixel 8a. Everyone raved about it when it came out.
I know, I know…Google. But if you think about it, it’s either that or some flavor of the CCP. So, like, who is eviller or looser with your data?
Love your phone or hate it? Tell me about it.
June 20, 2024 — 7:31 pm
Comments: 17
Saved!
Our landline rang this afternoon – a rare thing these days – and just as Uncle B answered it, our phone line died. Phone, internet, all of it. A spooky crackly sound came out of the receiver and that’s it.
We know who called. It was a living person, not a dead pet or anything.
A brief conversation with our supplier later, and they’re sending an engineer in the morning. It’s just us, so something physical probably happened to our line. It’s been hella windy lately.
No internet for the evening? That’s unpossible! Have you tried turning your phone into a hotspot? Turns out it’s super easy. You just poke that button in the picture.
The first time I did, it I had to set up a name and password (name: weaselfone password: mustelid. Help yourself). It’s painless and almost quicker than our router. I recommend it in a pinch.
But of course, it’s burning data, so I won’t linger.
April 17, 2024 — 7:37 pm
Comments: 4
Yes, I believe they would
Have you switched (I won’t say upgraded) to Windows 11 yet? I’ve got two machines running it at work and I can’t see much difference.
The Notepad has multiple tabs now and doesn’t automatically close the file when you close the program. There’s that. I use Notepad a lot, so I noticed it right away.
But the main thing is they moved the Windows key – the one you click to open programs – from the left corner to the middle left. Doesn’t sound like much, does it?
But they didn’t leave the left corner empty. Oh, no. There they put a news aggregator. So however many times a day you go to open a program and poke that corner by force of habit, you get a faceful of Microsoft-approved headlines.
I learned pretty fast not to do that. Mainstream news! Brrrr.
Do I think Microsoft would make a whole ‘nother operating system just to try and steer everyone’s news consumption? Yes I do.
By the way, Windows 11 updates on exactly the same schedule as all my Windows 10 machines. I bet there aren’t many differences under the hood.
April 15, 2024 — 7:12 pm
Comments: 9
Stop making me learn stuff, dammit!
Still struggling with VR technology. Specifically, UEVR – a mod that supposedly lets you play existing games made with the Unreal engine in VR. Which is lots of games, including lots I own and like. So it’s really, really worth it.
Most VR games suck, because they count on the VR wow! factor to distract you from shitty graphics. (I’m lookin’ at you, Gorilla Tag).
All the cool YouTubers say it – just plug it in and WHEEEEE!…it doesn’t work.
The mod operates by injecting itself into the running code. That is also what viruses do. So Windows Defender slapped it out of my hands as soon as I tried to download it, and at every step along the way.
Anyhoo, that was Obstacle One. I won’t bore you with the rest. I’ll get there in the end, but’s it’s all so tiresome and it’s Booze O’Clock. I wish they’d stop making me learn stuff. I’m too old for it.
Have a good weekend!
March 22, 2024 — 9:02 pm
Comments: 2
Cursed, I tell you
Last night’s post has vanished without a trace. It was just a boring thing about trying to get the Hogwarts game to run in VR, but that’s not the point. It’s not in the database; it’s not in drafts. It’s just…gone. Uncle B saw it, so I’m not nuts.
This afternoon, I was Googling around, trying to find out how to draw a page border in Google Docs, and I clicked on a popup I really shouldn’t’a. My ‘cookie warning’ reflexes took over and I batted it away carelessly.
Sure enough, I caught a dose of the “You’ve visited illegal infected website” scam.
It’s fairly harmless. It just makes that or a similar message pop up every few minutes in hope you’ll click on the link (where the real mischief would happen).
To my surprise, Malwarebytes couldn’t find it. I gather it acts like some kind of…fake browser plug-in? I deleted the most recently installed program and rebooted, but no. In the end, I had to reset the browser. Which closed all my tabs. Which really bummed me out because I keep, like, thirty open tabs as reminders of things I need to do.
I wonder if the missing post will ever float back in…?
March 21, 2024 — 7:51 pm
Comments: 8
Where will I get my conspiracy theories *now*?
Looks like my Twitter is borked. No idea why. If I were suspended, I would expect it to tell me so. My work account seems okay. Is yours working?
I’ve had a technology day, whether I liked it or not. I bought the Hogwarts game in the Steam Spring Sale and I’ve spent my day trying to mod it to work in VR.
Just a couple of clicks! say the YouTubers enthusiastically.
Feh. There was a time in my life when I loved figuring out a new piece of software. Now I just want it to shut up and work.
March 20, 2024 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 8
GAH!
I’ve spent my whole evening trying to get my Chromecast to talk to my phone. It all started when I wanted to show a clip off Xwitter to Uncle B and ended an hour and a half later in tears. Metaphorical ones, but still.
Why is technology such shit?
We have a new wifi router, which was the start of the problems. I put in the new password, no soap. Then I thought maybe the Chromecast was trying to connect at 5GhZ when it’s an original and can only do 2.5GhZ. So I tried going into the router and renaming the two connections so I could tell which one it was trying to open. And that broke everything.
I know just enough to fuck everything up completely.
Anyway, I’m going to add alcohol to this mix. That always helps. Good weekend!
March 15, 2024 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 3
They’ve deep-sixed their own product
There’s been much hilarity this week about Google’s Gemini and its allergy to images of white people. They’ve had to pause marketing of the image generator.
Someone asked Gemini to explain how it works and it did. Basically, when you ask Gemini to make a picture, your prompt first goes to the language model, which is instructed to insert words like “diversity” into your phrase before passing it to the image generator.
This is an extremely dumb and crude method of getting the result they thought they wanted. There’s no attempt to distinguish between plausible diversity and historical impossibilities, which leads to hilarious images like a racially diverse Waffen SS. And my personal favorite: a 17th Century English king eating watermelon (Gemini couldn’t recognize the racial stereotype because the model itself had injected race).
I can’t get over how crude this bodge is. The irony is that if they hadn’t messed with it, it looks like they had a pretty good image generator on their hands. They have damaged their product, perhaps fatally.
February 22, 2024 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 8