Bit of a fumble there at the end, as if they ran themselves out of material and padded things out to avoid having to start the next story arc, which they’ve spent the past few episodes dropping hints about. Especially since season 3 isn’t coming out until next Fall. A few good character moments, anyway, and a nice self-contained story at the bridge.

This Fall will have Maomao, Fran & Sword-Daddy, and in the hopefully-won’t-suck column, Isekai Space Merc & Harem, Isekai Goblin Mayor, and Isekai Fetish-Porn Gamer (aka “Magical Explorer”), but having to wait a year-and-a-half after such a short season is a bit of a downer.

(season 3 of The Apothecary Diaries will be Fall and Spring, with a movie in between)

This week, the mystery of Why Are They Setting Up Beardo’s City Of Gold With Only One Episode Left And They Just Started A Big Fight? I’m not complaining, just wondering how long until the show resumes.

Packagefail & win

Thursday morning, the “delayed” Amazon package still hadn’t gotten a status update, but not only did I have the option to cancel the order, they promised same-day delivery if I reordered the same items. So I did, and they were delivered at 5:30 PM on the same day.

This strongly reinforced my belief that an unqualified driver crashed the original truck.

“We bought your email provider to spam your inbox!”

If you guessed Network Solutions, you win the daily unsolicited shit-tier upsell email spam!

Fridgefail

I pulled a fresh carton of milk out of the fridge, and it was half-frozen. I opened a plastic bottle of Diet Pepsi, and the top half-inch instantly turned to slush. The compartment was set to maintain a temperature of 37°F, but this was clearly not happening, so I put my remote-probe thermometer inside, and saw it gradually drop to 20°F.

Yeah, that’s gonna be a service call. On the bright side, it didn’t fail in the other direction, so my food’s still safe, and setting the thermostat to 44°F got it up to 36°F, so I can make it until they get a tech out with the right part.

(admittedly, for most of my life, having a bottle of soda turn to slush on opening was precisely the temperature I wanted it to be at during the summer)

Ctrl-F “QA”: not found

Microsoft just sent a mass email announcing “Our Commitment to Windows quality”; you may have already seen people react to it, but here’s the exact wording of the bullet points. Based on the past several months of feedback, they plan to improve in the following areas through April:

1. More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions,

2. Integrating AI where it’s most meaningful, with craft and focus,

3. Reducing disruption from Windows Updates,

4. Faster and more dependable File Explorer,

5. More control over widgets and feed experiences,

6. A simpler, more transparent Windows Insider Program,

7. Improved Feedback Hub, available starting today.

In order, that’s:

1. restore lost functionality,

2. back off from turning Notepad into a critical remote-code-execution vulnerability,

3. stop forcing you to install broken updates right away,

4. restore lost functionality,

5. cut back on ad-riddled screen-filling bullshit,

6. “higher quality builds” (that’s “insider” preview builds, not public releases…)

7. overhaul broken website.

All of these promises come with an implicit “(for now)” appended.

(some people are paid to put a more positive spin on this email…)

Chuck Norris, R.I.P

While most of his accomplishments have been widely praised, I’d just like to thank him for teaching me the word “gusset”.

This week, they not only pull out all the stops, but the organs as well. Frieren’s role in the battle was… educational, for all concerned, while Methode was definitely the star.

(Frieren might be popular in Japan…)

A Wild Last Boss Reappeared!

The light novels have returned to Amazon, as completely new listings. Same publisher, same contents, but different ASIN and no series metadata linking them, and backdated as if they’ve been there all along.

Bad tiger!

There are two Tiger Gyoza locations in Kyoto. The one near Karasuma & Shijo is the one we found first several years ago, but on our most recent trip, we were near the other one East of Teramachi when hunger struck, so we went in, only to discover that their menu did not include the pukkuri (plump) variety. The one in Osaka does, so we’d just assumed it was their signature style. Still good food, but we’d never deliberately go there again when the other location isn’t that far away.

Incense countermeasures

After a few whiffs at an incense or diffuser display, it gets really difficult to tell them apart. To me the solution seemed obvious, something I’d first seen in an outlet-mall cologne shop in Gilroy: a dish of coffee beans. The strong odor of the roasted beans is quite effective at resetting your sense of smell.

A grocery store supplied a small bag of dark-roasted espresso beans (which will get cycled through my espresso maker soon), and a dollar store supplied a pair of small screw-top plastic containers. Not only did this make it easier to pick out the fainter incense varieties, it came in very handy when mixing ingredients in our chinese-medicine-style incense-making class.

Today I Learned…

…that I apparently lost power yesterday long enough for the UPS to run dry and shut off my NAS. I didn’t notice due to my body and brain still being spread across three time zones.

Speaking of which,

I made the NAS basically unusable by trying to download the torrent version of Flashpoint Ultimate. Something about how it was trying to preallocate 2.2 TB of space across multiple files before starting the download. Apple’s Samba stack did not approve.

So I copy-pasted the list of URLs and downloaded them directly with wget in a loop.

Unrelated,

Not only does Alton Brown have a new Youtube series (plus a few shorts), he’s following up his final tour with… another tour.

Y’know, if Himmel had discovered Methode’s method, things might have turned out differently…

This week, we get only the opening moves of The Big Fight, which is going to be three separate fights (or perhaps four…), so I revise my estimated length to four episodes. That’s not a complaint.

(y’know, Fern may be the least eccentric of the first-rank mages, old and new)

First Ass-Guardian trailer

Here. Not much substance to it, but it looks to be competently done. Fingers still firmly crossed they don’t screw it up.

Also coming soon…

I’ve been busy the past few weeks. At what, you’ll soon see. Assuming people haven’t already figured it out…

Worth the wait, as Frieren is reunited with two of the least annoying characters from the exam arc. I’d have preferred the little hot-pants redhead, but she and her frenemy failed the exam, so they’re not allowed to enter the Northern plateau. Sadly, this means we’ll likely never see them again unless there’s a collection of side stories.

Anyway, this week reminds us that demons are evil-with-a-capital-E, using language only to deceive. This will no doubt trigger another round of how-dare-they reactions from the Left, sigh.

It’s a slow buildup to a confrontation with a new Big Bad, that’s at least a two-parter. With four first-class mages on the scene, plus Stark, the fight is likely to be flashy, so maybe they’ll pull out the stops and give it three.

(unrelated postcard from AI Japan, because AI love you long time)

In which Frieren does the meme, and then gets sentenced to 300 years hard labor.

I’m guessing there’s an AI behind this…

Dear Apple,

A while back I bought the recently-updated AirPods 3 Pro. They worked fine with my phone, tablet, and laptop, but Apple’s “find my” service couldn’t see them. At the time, the explanation was that I hadn’t yet upgraded my devices to the “Liquid Ass” OS v26. Since I wasn’t traveling much (indeed, I often don’t leave the house for days, especially the way this winter has been going…), I didn’t worry about it.

Now that they have a mostly working 26.3 release, and they’ve added back some of the legibility that was abandoned in the pursuit of random UI restyling, I updated my phone and tablet (not the Mac; that needs to work). To no surprise, the AirPods did not magically start working correctly in “find my”; they were detected, but it insisted that setup was incomplete and they could not be located.

Clicking on the error message took me to a support page, where none of this worked. At all. There’s yet another screen where you have to completely disassociate the device from your Apple account and then reconnect.

(flux2 is a lot slower and more memory-intensive than Z-Image Turbo, but it’s better at text, styles, and prompt following; there’s a lot I can’t do with it because my graphics card only has 24 GB of VRAM, but for simple one-off pics without refining, upscaling, or multi-image editing, it’s great; I’m thinking about setting up SwarmUI on Runpod with a better card, for the times when I want precise prompting)

Amazon Japan gets clean

Unless you have an active VPN connection with Japanese servers, you can no longer view adult books and videos on Amazon Japan. Searches pretend there’s nothing there, and direct links to products throw up an error page as if the page doesn’t exist. Items in wishlists appear normally with their title and picture, but you can’t click on them or move them to your cart.

(the accurately-rendered poster titles come from the collection of dirty-book covers I acquired some years back as part of my collage-wallpaper project)

How to spot the hero in a harem anime…

This week, it’s the thought that counts, especially when you’re a pair of socially-awkward teens fumbling through their first date. Much easier to fight ogres. Or Pokemon.

(fan-artists frequently draw Fern much bustier than she is in the anime, while Nagi is pretty much spot-on)

Underground Healer, anime and novel

Since I’m only watching Frieren this season, I cast back looking for recommendations of completed series, and found a lot of positive commentary for this one. I’m watching about an episode-and-a-half a day while on the elliptical, but it’s interesting enough that I picked up the first few translated light novels.

And then I hit this bullshit in book 3:

“You clap at us, we clap back harder.”

The speaker is one of the three slum-gang boss hotties, squaring off with a bruiser from the Black Guild who’s smashing up their festival. She says this as their argument escalates into a full-scale gang battle.

This is not the first line that didn’t ring true, but it’s easily the worst.

Not only does the slang instantly date itself, it makes no fucking sense in the scene. It’s like a mafia don getting uptwinkles from his lieutenants.

What could possibly go wrong?

Apple is allowing third-party AI apps in CarPlay. The jokes just write themselves…

I’m okay with it this time…

I put in an Amazon order Thursday night that promised delivery between 7AM - 11 AM Friday. Sometime before that window opened, the “clear skies” forecast proved wrong, and 4 inches of fresh snow was dumped over the course of several hours. It didn’t stop until after noon, and the trucks didn’t come out to clear the roads until evening.

I cleared a path to the street and salted it, but I didn’t actually expect the package to show up until Saturday, which it did.

Setting aside the sequels to shows I never watched or have abandoned, Spring is not looking great, but summer has some promise:

• Spring: Farming Life In Another World 2: still hoping they stop being coy about how thoroughly the divine farming tool plows the fields. The first trailer shows off plenty of pretty gals, at least, so it promises to be as decorative as the first season.

• Summer: The World’s Strongest Rearguard: please-don’t-suck-please-don’t-suck. Still no video preview, but the initial casting is up, and Our Upright Ass-Guardian is voiced by The Universal Boy Hero, Mute Lizard Best Girl is Komi, Sexy Former Manager’s biggest roles have all been porn, Cursed Swordsgirl is perhaps best known for voicing 2B, and Jailbait Shrine Maiden is Yor (aka Visha, Yun-hua, Ryu, Angeline, etc). And both the light novels and manga are resuming after a lengthy hiatus.

• Summer: Bumpkin & Harem 2: yes. From what I know, the gals never actually become haremettes, despite Red showing signs of jealousy. I would like to see Age-Appropriate Hot Magic Teacher emerge as the leading candidate for wifehood, but White is determined.

• Summer: Skeleton Knight 2: yes, please.

• Summer: Magilumiere 2: yes-yes-yes!

Mini-gyoza!

I’m really looking forward to spending a few weeks in Japan soon. Osaka-style hitokuchi (one-bite) gyoza will be on the menu, but not quite this tiny. It’s going to be a mostly-Kyoto trip, but thanks to my sister having to leave early, I’ll have two-and-a-half days on my own in Tokyo.