Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

I've started working through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The professional artists I know need not fear for their jobs. It's just something I've always wanted to learn how to do. That, and I can draw my own pr0n. As with sex toys, I think some DIY is in order.

And speaking of a professional artist I know, the Stroppy One accurately described Vienna La Rouge as a "staggeringly beautiful wom[a]n". How fabulous, then, that I should run into her at the Merc last night in a Bettie Page wig and a very fitted Catwomanish outfit. Who me, gaze into the flawlessly made up eyes of an unfairly attractive lesbian exactly my height while I told Australia stories under the influence of nice absinthe? Yes. Yes, I did. (Shallow fashion details: the Sydney outfit.) Someday I'll ask her why her partner never comes.

Also at the Merc: Temptress, but without jengalicious's ex, praise Goddess. I didn't ask about that either, because as gift horses go, that's a Belgian. Maybe I'll ask if it becomes a pattern. She was with another fella, awfully dapper, who seems all right.

I punked out of the Merc, more or less as planned, at 2300 because I've forgotten how to sleep lately. I've only had one solid, seven-or-more-hour uninterrupted night of sleep in the last week. The Tickler has been nagging me to see somebody about it, and I'm beginning to wonder if they may have a point.

And now for something completely different: even with a new Mac, my (mechanical) backup drive had a few of the same issues. So, I replaced it with an SSD. It's so physically small it was hard to make it lie flat when connected to my Mac on its stand. I've kept the old drive for now.

And for something even more different: it occurred to me while I was doing my morning leg lifts that I might be able to make the little chair in front of my Mac comfier with a lumbar support. But why buy when you have a completed bum roll from an abandoned sewing project? The experiment begins.

Plan for tonight: ravey goodness at Substation. I shall abuse caffeine.

This is what happens when I neglect to write an entry for a few days. You get all the things at once. Sorry?

The rest of the coven – that's namoda and Tacoma Girl – came over last night for drinks, munchies, and chats. OK, I ate nearly all the munchies, but such nights are a Thing I Really Like Doing every few months if not more often.

From the Dept. of Foreshadowing:

• M'boy has agreed to take the old office chair when I get a new one, which should be next week. I've solemnly informed him of its limitations as an office chair for people with builds like ours, but that isn't how he wants to use it. Okey doke.
• I've ordered a Dyson vacuum because I'm tired of a vacuum cleaner that doesn't quite work. Good Sister has sung their praises to me. I'm not sure how I'll get rid of the old one. Yeah, my local Buy Nothing group is pretty effective, but who'd want something like this?
• My employer no longer gives employees old laptops when they're too old anymore because it's now part of a public company and, you know, security. That means I'm typing at you on a vintage 2015 Mac. It mostly gets the job done, but I worry about OS updates, storage, etc. and Blender can really make it crawl. The last (practical) item on my home improvement list is a new Mac. And before anyone comments, ixnay on the Inuxlay: I'd rather use my machine than mess with it.

About an hour ago the power blinked here at the Devil Girl Pad. 'No biggie,' thought I, 'I'll just reset the microwave clock, turn the stereo back on, and get on with my life.'

My life included doing a little something on my work computer. It was then that I noticed that the new (to me but not anywhere near new), huge, and fabulous Apple monitor wasn't working. Mess with plugs. Nope. Reboot. Nope. Google. Nope.

So I'm back to my single-monitor setup for now. Le sigh. Ah well, the angle on that integrated camera was too wide anyway. My employer has been notified; I believe they have others that I can swap out.

Between this and the missing blind, I'm tempted to blame the supernatural.

Update on buying a house: My slosh from one 401(k) to the other so I can get at the money for a down payment has been approved by the company that manages both of them, Fidelity. The trouble is, they said it would take 3-10 business days for the money to actually transfer. Le sigh. Then I have to get the loan from the newer of the 401(k)s; luckily, I can do that online.

Update on the new M1 Mac that I'm using: Weirdly, my video quality seems to have improved, at least as seen by yours truly. I didn't change the camera or monitor. The laptop hardware, of course, is new, and it's running the latest major release of MacOS, namely Monterey. It's nice not to see a green stripe on my forehead.

Update on ( sex toy DIY )

Little house party at aaminahlefae's place with the stunning view of Puget Sound in honor of demonique. She's been moving a lot as part of her education, moving to Hawaii (!) soon for a job, and needed to take care of some business here.

This afternoon: Burning Man prep. Even if I'm not hugely enthused, I'm still pretty damn organized.

Tonight: That Place With No Liquor License that used to be on Elliott is reopening in Pioneer Square! Pretty much everybody I know who used to go with me is going to be there, and the Tickler is getting a membership after we have sushi. Latex will be worn. I am excite!

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I got a new work laptop, so what was my work laptop is now a newer, faster, better home 'pooter. Sooner or later I need to recycle the old home 'pooter, but not until I'm sure I don't need any more data off of it. (I didn't want to clobber the new machine with Time Machine.) I moved Traktor with my 50th birthday playlist, and installed VMWare so I can do stuff for Lambert House.

I've been on spironolactone for almost a week now.

Fat redistribution: check. You may reasonably suspect that it's water weight, but remember that spironolactone is a diuretic.

Peeing more: check.

Reduced aggression: check. I'm yelling at the Wendling less.

Reduced libido & (ahem) flaccidity: check.

I've been a little more tired at night. This morning and only this morning a lot of my muscles felt crampy, but lunch took care of that.

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In other news, my whole feature team just got several person-months of work shelved. My shiny new boss says this is not normal at MyCo.

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I just finished writing AutoNag, a Windows application that plays a .wav after the desired number of minutes have elapsed, and will loop until the stop button is clicked. Best of all, it has a repeat mode. Mmu hu hwaugh huh hah hah!

I think I'll add a list-of-.wavs feature to it, so I can automate nagging for my son's whole morning routine. I may need to change the wait time entry to seconds instead of minutes.

We got mail from my son's school today saying they've gotten complaints that my son has been riding his bike recklessly through the nearby high school parking lot to get to his junior high. That bears repeating: he's been weaving through cars in a lot full of teenage drivers and almost got hit today. He's been grounded from his bike, and the next two trips he makes to school on his bike will be with me. Dear Bob, his lack of executive function is bad enough, but this could have won him a Darwin award.

Oh yeah: his braces? $6300 total, of which we've paid $1500 so far. Those things better be made of titanium.

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SQL violates the principle of least astonishment with the frequency & subtlety of Prolog, and a destructive power exceeding that of any language outside of an OS kernel. And yet SQL somehow manages to be useful enough that people pay for it.

The special sauce turned out not to be running the timer thread in the background after all. I now call Form.Activate (via Invoke) each second when I update the display; that's what it seems to take to make it work when the device is locked. I also raised the priority on the thread, which may not be necessary but does seem to keep me from losing a little time.

Also, if you want a numeric-only text entry box, you need to handle its KeyPress events and intercept letters & punctuation - not all non-numeric keys, which eats your backspace.

ph34r my 1337 skillz.

Best feature: a repeat mode so I can remember to move the sprinklers or keep m'boy on task multiple times in a row.

Total development time: seven hours, tops, including an hour from 6:30 to 7:30 this morning editing the icon.

Total lines of nun-written code (i.e., not generated by Visual Studio): under 100.

Good: Visual Studio & MSDN, their navigation, mobile device emulation, GUI layout editor, and syncing.

Bad: getting at sounds on the filesystem and playing them, especially WMAs, is pretty klunky. I opted to make my timer, when it goes off, just play the system beep in a loop on the same thread that counts down the seconds.

My Internet access fled during the night. More Verizon techs are coming to the Abbey this morning. Nibs is displeased, because she needs it for work. Possibly a bad pair in the cable to the Abbey office, because the phone on the other pair works fine.

Still badgeless, and low on sleep.



And why would chickens rip your lips off? Because they don't have any of their own.