Okay, so with most of the premieres out of the way, I’ve got a cheesy power fantasy harem (Clueless Crafter) and an over-the-top extra-cheesy manic-pixie-busty-robo-dream-girl (Robo-Ho) on Sundays, one robo-buddy-cop memory-diving not-romance (I, Forma) on Wednesdays, Maomao on Fridays, three fantasy harems on Saturdays (Bumpkin, A-Rank, and the platonic Slime-Killing Witch), and… that’s it.

The subtitled version of Lazarus is a month away and not on any service I subscribe to, and even if I get desperate, Delusional Space Virgin shot its wad in the first week and won’t show up again for another two weeks. I could try to watch Moonrise on Netflix (all 18 episodes are apparently available now), but what little I get from the trailers is a mashup of bad shonen tropes, a really-poor-man’s Moon Is A Harsh Mistress from the wrong PoV, and poor character naming. Seriously, the leader of the lunar revolution is a cyborg badass warrior named “Bob Skylum”. And the “good guys” keep shouting out this name, including Our Hero, Jake Shadow. (wince)

How AI will win

The Apothecary Diaries 2, episode 14

Maomao gets the ghost story and Jinshi gets the handsome new eunuch, while bigger mysteries stir in the background. Poor little Lishu gets a small measure of justice, while sweet Xaiolan gets in trouble. No sign of Shisui this week, but her big moment is coming up fast.

Pretty soon I’m going to have to put anything I say behind spoiler tags, for the sake of those who aren’t current on this season.

Unrelated, Steak & Shake asked me for my opinion…

…so I told them: switching to beef tallow doesn’t magically convert tasteless soggy fries into gold, and also they have the worst burger and hotdog buns in the industry. The shake wasn’t bad, though.

Speaking of food

Well, which is it?

I feel so secure…

I’m currently going through the end-of-lease experience with the Kia Sorento I picked up the day I moved back to Ohio. I’d always gone with the standard purchase financing, but in April 2022 we were in the middle of the Biden/Fauci supply-chain disaster, and there were only a handful of new cars available within 20 miles. I didn’t want to commit to it long-term or tie up too much money, so I went with a three-year lease.

I’d been driving Toyotas for decades, but there were none at local dealerships. The Kia dealer down the street had exactly two Sorentos on the lot, with the dark blue one having better specs and features.

TL/DR: the only thing I didn’t like about the car was that I’d been spoiled by my last Camry’s continuously-variable transmission. Other than that, it’s been great, and the back seats are so comfortable for adults that my mother actually prefers sitting back there; her limited mobility doesn’t interfere with getting in and out, and it’s comfortable for a long ride.

So instead of trading it in on a new one, I just paid off the balance of the lease. From their finance website, I had to use Docusign to confirm the odometer reading. Which opened in a tiny mobile-sized frame that I couldn’t break out of, so instead of reading the legal document in a large browser window, I had to zoom and pan around the tiny frame to make sure everything was sane.

The next day, I received an email that looked a bit scammy, with a low-res company logo, some unloadable images, and a “click here to read a secure message” button. Clicking takes you to an Office365 page that’s missing half the graphics and asks you to click a button to send you an access code by email that will let you read your message.

It was legit, but the entire content of the un-downloadable, un-copyable, un-printable email was just “yup, we reviewed your lease buyout request, and we’re working on the title”. No account numbers, dollar amounts, or personal information that would justify the cumbersome process.

This is the Microsoft Office 365 “secure mail” experience, and it’s a horrible anti-pattern. The goal is to make it easy to “securely” send “encrypted” messages to anyone without any sort of password or key exchange, but the result is encouraging people to blindly click links in random unsolicited emails and then click links on the random broken site they send you to. This is the exact same pattern used by criminals for identity theft and malware. Blech.

(seatcovers cost extra)

Fun note: despite the shortages, I ended up getting a nice discount on the Sorento when I leased it. As I said, they had exactly two on the lot, and the dealer grabbed both sets of keys when we went out to check them out. I said I wanted the blue one, so he handed me the keys, and while my brother and I took it for a test drive, he went inside to start the paperwork. With the keys he had in his other hand.

I signed everything and paid the deposit, and the next morning they realized the paperwork had the VIN for the other car. So they called me to come down and sign an amendment, but they had to eat the price difference.

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