Cry Uncle!

If you were waiting for Netflix to finally release the much-delayed episodes of Uncle From Another World, that happened Thursday.

(I’m not going to bother hunting down fan-art for a show I didn’t watch, so here’s Lasty bringing home the bacon)

Skynet snickers

Synopsys has announced AI-powered chip-design tools. What could possibly go wrong?

(this is the best-case scenario…)

Leak-be-gone?

I’d love to say that my contractor aggressively followed through on getting the basement leak fixed, getting the people who were already paid to seal any cracks to come out and deal with it before it got any worse, but that would be a lie.

A bit over a week ago, we had a lot of rain. Not news. The water pooled up on that side of the house and started coming in through the cracks. Also not news.

Then I walked by the door to the basement and heard splashing, and found water shooting a foot out from the wall. Definitely news. I put a full-sized garbage can under the stream, and by the time it was all over, I’d collected roughly 20 gallons of mildly-muddy water.

I sent the pictures to the contractor. A week later, I hear that they’re still waiting on a date for the appointment. And a separate appointment with someone who specializes in glass-block windows, since the crack-sealers are pointing fingers and saying their warranty will only cover half of the work.

At the same time, I’d texted my landscapers, who’ve been showing up again to work on the yard project now that it’s warmer and drier. Since the scope of their work included improving my drainage, I asked them if they could move that part up. As soon as the ground was dry enough, they had a crew out to completely rebuild the basement window wells, starting with the one that had the poorly-sealed cracks.

It looks like a little fort now, and the huge thunderstorm we had last night didn’t manage to get a single drop into the house. Gosh, who will I be recommending to other people in the future? Could it be Essential Landscaping & Irrigation?

I finally got around to using up a bunch of visa/mastercard gift cards from my birthday and Christmas, as well as two other unexpired ones that were left over from the move (refunds from service providers). I’ve always hated these things, until I discovered that you can just add them to your Amazon account and use them to reload the built-in gift card.

Blueboard’s Ghost

Blueboard is “Groupon for spot bonuses lazy managers”, so they can reward employees with something other than money, without revealing a precise amount. The rewards are highly concentrated to a few popular urban areas, so outside that you get generic “experiences” or the chance to donate to some left-wing cause. I had two of these sitting around cluttering my inbox, both from 2021, and the “experiences” were worthless even when I was visiting my sister in Chicago.

So now I’m getting 4 pints of gourmet ice cream per month for three months. Twice.

Konosuba Explosion episode 1

They spent money on animating the first episode, including the big boobs that every girl has except for Our DFC Mage. With a triple scoop for the Macguffin who revealed the power of explosion magic to her.

Verdict: busty schoolgirls, and Megumin. And excessively self-conscious wackiness.

Goddess Café Harem episode 1

In which they waste no time announcing that you should Buy The Bluray, introducing five lusciously-shaped girls in carefully-detailed lingerie, with at least one of them giving Our Cranky Hero the Full Monty. Right before she knocks him out with a naked roundhouse kick where the glowing censorship bars track her every move. So, exactly what I expected from the trailers.

Verdict: pave paradise, put up a parking lot shave paradise, leave just a landing strip.

(unrelated melonpan goddess demonstrates the subtlety of the fan-service in this show)

I wish to state for the record that I had never heard the word “actioner” before this past Sunday, when we found it in the back-cover blurb of the DVD for a movie made in 1996. I’ve an extensive movie library, and I have subscriptions to most of the streaming services, but this is the only time that I’ve ever seen a film described as an “actioner”.

On with the cheesecake action!

more...

A Spam email? In my inbox? Inconceivable!

I haven’t had spam make it all the way to my inbox in over a year, but this one somehow got through. The From header claimed it was from Intuit Quickbooks, the To header was to my kickstarter-specific email address (hacked or scraped from their site), the body was an invoice from Geek Squad, and the attached PDF was almost certainly infected with something. It looks like they’re exploiting a link-redirection feature in sendgrid to launder their links through an Intuit URL.

I’ve gotten three similar ones since then, but after marking the first, the rest ended up in the junk folder.

Konosuba Explosion episode 2

Well, somebody must have thought that was funny.

Verdict: more entertaining than watching paint dry, which is enough to make it one of the best shows of the season so far. Wish I were kidding.

Goddess Café Harem episode 2

This week’s message is: Buy the Bluray. I expect this to be every week’s message, because the primary and perhaps only draw here is the girls and the amount of underwear and skin they show. Our Jerkass Hero is lucky he hasn’t been killed yet by the free show; Our Evil Twintailed Vixen nearly did him in with a flash of premium panties while he was halfway down a flight of stone stairs.

Verdict: should have killed him when they had the chance.

(unrelated maid is sufficiently stacked for this show)

Just to make sure I had enough… volume, I included both おっぱい and 巨乳 in my 猫耳.

more...

One of these things is not like the other…

Random much, Amazon?

(classical reference)

I Get To Be A Jerkass Hero Again! episodes 1-2

I gave Summoned to another world… again a try, so you don’t have to. Let me sum up: Our Hero is an overpowered arrogant prick who treats everyone like NPCs. I did not enjoy spending time with him.

Late Boomer episode 3

Okay, we’re done here. The overextended joke this week is about a lovestruck loserboy stalking the prettiest girl in town. This may sound familiar, since it’s continuing from last week, where it wasn’t any more interesting. The highlight of the episode was Megumin shooting rubber bands at a taunting spider. No reason for it, it just happened.

Verdict: plonk

Café Hooters episode 3

They reduced the amount of skin and underwear to make room for a bit of story. Not sure how I feel about that, especially since their storytelling method involves a lot of shouting. They did still manage to flash some premium panties by having Snidely Whiplash show up to trash-talk Grandma in a manner so over-the-top that the entire cast was ready to go medieval on his ass, with customers cheering them on. Also, literal meme.

Verdict: this will never be a heartwarming story, no matter how often they reference Our Dead Grandma. $10 says the big reveal is that she hand-picked the girls as Our Dickish Hero’s Bride Variety Pack.

Next season?

At least Ryza should be decorative. That is the most positive thing I can say about what’s been announced so far. The most negative thing would be Spy Classroom getting a second cour…

(the least-used element of the show…)

On the bright side…

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom comes out May 12, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 comes out in June. And I’m sure eventually they’ll finish airing NieR…

I gave up whittling the list down after knocking out over 85% of the images I downloaded in this month. Still a very long list, but there’s a lot to like here.

Zelda Identification Fail

This popped up on Amazon, anticipating the upcoming release of the new game:

Um, no:

Wide base to prevent loss

Sadly, the plastic is brittle, and if you actually use them as snap-caps, the rim will break off and it will get stuck inside.

Inside the chamber, that is. I needed to jam a cleaning rod down the barrel to get my .22 revolver back open.

On with the cheesecake!

more...

Bang-bang-bang-bang-BANG!

That’s the sound of my two-car garage door coming down with excessive force when the 23-year-old spring snapped.

Good news: it’s a good door that was originally installed well, so it survived the trip.

Bad news: $700 to replace the spring (with two new ones) and refurbish all the associated hardware.

Good news: some months back I got a recommendation for Wayne Overhead Door Sales, and I’d been planning to call them this summer anyway to replace the 23-year-old openers. They sent someone out first thing the next morning, and I had him install a new top-of-the-line belt-drive opener for another $1,000.

Bad news: the new opener has wi-fi and a camera and an app.

Good news: you don’t have to set that shit up. I like the motion sensor for the light, though.

(Princess Stompyboots Best Girl Mela is unrelated, but likes to build things)

Dear Apple QA,

Since updating to macOS 12.6.{4,5}, many files fail to open when double-clicked; the app opens, but the file does not, with no error message. This appears to be related to hidden permissions, and making any change (copy, single-character name-change, etc) fixes it. It doesn’t just affect newly-downloaded files; stuff that’s been on my drive for years was affected, and including one of them in a list of arguments to open canceled the whole list.

This is different from the behavior when the quarantine flag is set or the app doesn’t have permission to access the directory.

(not a representative of Apple’s QA team…)

Café Hooters episode 4

We’ve replaced this coffee shop’s bountiful cheesecake with cheesy plot tropes; let’s see if anyone notices. Our Oh-Suddenly-He’s-Chuu-Ni Hero opens a booth at the cherry-blossom festival to boost business, giving Our Tsundere Waifu a chance to shine with design. And also to get hit on by a trio of assholes backed up by the power of last week’s Snidely Whiplash, who trash the booth when their advances are rejected. And then a few more tropes happen, until Our Bonkers Fighting Waifu saves the day with kicks that reveal they ran out of fancy-panties budget.

Verdict: the OP animation delivered the best cheesecake this week. Not a good sign. (not the only cheesecake, but Our Alcohol-Fueled Nympho Waifu's nearly-nude scene was brief and trope-driven)

(unrelated crossover show I’d watch the hell out of…)