Who was it in our circle whose blog occasionally featured photos of Korean women golfers exposing their belly buttons? So many folks have drifted away over the years…

Call Of The Night 5

In which Our Vamp’s exciting lifestyle and glamorous job are revealed. Also, how much cuter she is with her hair down.

Delay of Mystery Maid

…for a women’s golf tournament in the UK. Really. Mixed blessing, I suppose. I mean, there’s a chance they could use the extra week to make something good.

(unrelated maid is unrelated)

One for Pete

Japanese baby names 2005-2021, collected by Benesse. Top 10 baby names 1989-2018, collected by Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company. There’s no official country-wide data source, particularly for historical data.

cock scrub-blocked!

As planned, I upgraded my Synology DS918+ to the latest software before attempting the disk-swap into the new DS1821+, and… it immediately kicked off a multi-hour scheduled data scrub. No idea how long that will run, since I have two 26 TB volumes.

Mildly annoying, but at least when I get to the upgrade, I’ll have some extra confidence in the disks.

My Isekai Life

This show skips the obligatory “omigod I’m in a fantasy world with cheat powers!” origin and goes straight to “watch me wipe out an army of 10,000 monsters with status-screen magic”. Later, it’s revealed that he’s only been there a week, and within an hour of waking up had acquired an army of slimes and absorbed the entire contents of the world’s greatest secret magical library, so that his only limit is the time spent figuring out which overpowered combination of spells to use.

The only good news is that there are some cute girls, so maybe there will be some fan-art. The bad news is that not only is the story lame, Our Hero Autistic-Programmer-With-An-Inexplicable-Disinterest-In-Women is as dull as stale toast pulled from a dumpster.

(picture is completely unrelated and far more interesting)

Smoked leftovers for dinner

I took one of my leftover smoked strip steaks, sliced it thin, quickly stir-fried it to heat and crisp the slices, tossed it in Bachan’s Sauce (original; I’ll have to try the yuzu flavor sometime), and piled it onto toasted homemade bread. Tasty.

One-star review

Someone recommended a British sci-fi comedy novel. I looked it up on Amazon and the Kindle version was free, so what the hell, right?

I didn’t get past the preface, because the author came right out and told me not to read the book if I didn’t agree with her(?) sexual politics.

So I didn’t.

QNAP not-so-smart switch

Good: my new 8x2.5/2x10-gig managed switch came with a unique default password (all-caps MAC address with no colons) and required me to change it when I first logged in.

Bad: it didn’t accept the new password when I tried to log in. I don’t know if it was unhappy about the length or the special characters, but since I didn’t want to sit through multiple lengthy resets to find out, I settled for a mix of 12 digits and upper-case characters, just in case. It should still be more secure than their NAS products…

Seems like a decent switch, and one of the few managed 2.5-gig ones that’s affordable and actually available, so I should get decent performance when I upgrade my Synology NAS to one with a 10-gig card.

…which I just did

My new Synology DS1821+ and accessories arrived Wednesday afternoon. For all the fuss about the $X,000 FedEx shipment requiring a signature on delivery, it didn’t. I just looked out the door and there it was, baking in the hot sun.

Fortunately I’d been looking out the door frequently. In theory, the fastest way to upgrade is to just move the drives over from my DS918+, but there are a number of comments about newer models refusing to recognize some third-party drives, even though they appear on the official compatibility list. Fingers crossed, and I’m going to make sure I’ve got the latest OS updates before I start.

(side note: I’m not worried about porch pirates, since my driveway is 75 feet long and steep, but it annoyed me that after making me stay home all day to sign for the package, they just left it on the porch; I didn’t even hear them ring the bell)

s5cmd…

Good: fast replacement for s3cmd.

Bad: completely different command-line options and output. Seriously, why not just give it a name that doesn’t suggest it’s a drop-in replacement?

Mystery Maid 2

(please get better…please get better…)

…it didn’t get better. Our Maid is premium eye candy, delivers a bit of lingerie service this week, and Rie Takahashi is doing a good job with the (poorly-written) role, but Saori Hayami is wasted as Our Annoying And Suspicious Little Boy, and no other characters have appeared yet.

I think this is a show that Steven would have expressed deep disappointment in, yet gathered dozens of screenshots from for the top rotation at his site.

So far, so smoked…

Friday, I turned a pound of ground beef into three burger patties and loaded them into the smoker at 180°F for two hours, then crisped them up on the built-in induction burner while the buns toasted inside. Very tasty.

Saturday morning, I smoked 4 pounds of beef short ribs, hitting the “super smoke” button for a few minutes early on to try it out, and then very thoroughly scrubbing the inside (because my mom’s digestive system reacts badly to smoked meat) before cooking another set of burgers (commercially made but quite tasty) for dinner, this time on high.

At high temperatures, the Traeger is basically a wood-fired oven, and the Schweid & Sons burgers came out beefy and juicy with just a hint of smoke.

(the leftover ribs were picked off the bone and saved for stirring into other dishes)

Sunday morning, I smoked strip steaks. I think I’m set for the week. 😁

“It’s worse than that, she’s dead, Jim!”

J: “Alexa, what time does jungle jim’s close?”

A: “Jungle Jim’s on Country Club Rd in Rehoboth Beach closes later today at 6:00 PM.” (this is in Delaware, a 9.5-hour drive from my home…)

J: “Alexa, what is the jungle jim’s nearest me close?” (sigh, misheard “when does”…)

A: “Jungle Jim’s on Country Club Rd in Rehoboth Beach closes later today at 6:00 PM.” (note that the place I’m looking for actually has the domain junglejims.com…)

J: “Alexa, what is the location of the nearest jungle gyms?” (grrr…)

A: “I found a few nearby options: there’s The Jungle Gym Adventure Center, 89.8 miles away on South Sandusky St Ste 302, Workout Anytime - Miamisburg, 1.7 miles away on N Heincke Rd, and Gem City Crossfit, 0.3 miles away on S Alex. You can ask me for things like, what’s the address for the first one.”

J: “Alexa, where is jungle jim’s market?”

A: “I found a few options: there’s Jungle Jim’s International Market, 33.8 miles away on Dixie Hwy, Jungle Jim’s International Market, 50.3 miles away on Eastgate S Dr, and Jungle Jim’s, 493.9 miles away on Country Club Rd.”

J: “Alexa, what time does the jungle jim’s international market” (missed “close”…)

A: “Is that Jungle Jim’s International Market on Dixie Hwy, or Jungle Jim’s International Market on Eastgate S Dr?”

J: “the closer one”

A: (no answer)

J: “Alexa, what time does the jungle jim’s international market in fairfield close?”

A: “Jungle Jim’s International Market on Dixie Hwy in Fairfield closes tonight at 10:00 PM.”

(the sticker was mildly amusing the first time I saw it in the store; it got old fast, as the vandalism was apparently random)

The empire strikes back?

Once there was a continent-straddling empire, tying together the lonely highways with gas, restrooms, and pecan logs. When I moved to California in 1993, Stuckey’s had been reduced to a mere handful of locations, few and far between, and I counted myself fortunate to encounter one (I still have the soda travel mug).

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that the branded candy display at Jungle Jim’s was not the last gasp of a sold-off brand, but part of the revitalization of a nearly-forgotten chain, now in the hands of the third generation of the Stuckey family.

No, not my wallet, savings, or retirement accounts. It’s not like there’s massive inflation or an obvious recession or anything like that. Definitely not. Probably not. Maybe not. Okay, maybe just a tiny bit. Or a lot.

Makes me awful glad the house sale went through and turned my equity into cash.

Call Of The Night 4

After I recently binged episodes 1-3, I was actually looking forward to the next one, and I enjoyed it. Once I adjusted to the art style, I even found Our Fun-Loving Bloodsucking Fiend attractive, apart from the weird boobs (which, by the way, most fan-artists are ignoring… and enlarging).

So I have one show to watch now.

Unrelated, Microsoft has made it really difficult for me to type “binged” or “binging”; I keep seeing it with a hard “g” in the middle. 😁

Smokin’ 2, Electric Boogaloo

The new board for the Traeger arrived as promised, and the weather forecast abruptly changed for the week, so I was able to get it installed Wednesday afternoon. I had a brief moment of not-panic when I discovered I had a connector left over, but apparently there was a second ground wire to the sub-board that was no longer needed in the new revision.

Since it was a brand-new board, it made me go through the 60-minute seasoning process again, but since that conveniently verified that everything worked, I wasn’t upset about it. I think I’ll cook something this time before I re-pair the Bluetooth meat probes, just in case that wasn’t a coincidence. 😁

At the very least, I should smoke some burgers…

Dear fan-artist, WTF?

This showed up on the Pixiv top pics list recently. Nothing wrong with the picture, and artist hews has other nice ones, but the title? WTF?

Mostly in California and New Jersey…

…but also in a lot of places GM has abandoned: the most miserable cities in America.

No smoke, Bluetooth!

I got the new smoker up and running Friday night (wifi config, software update, bluetooth pairing for the induction burner, seasoning process, all good), but by then it was too late to cook anything.

Then I didn’t get to use the smoker Saturday morning, because the weather forecast suddenly changed from “partly cloudy” to “brief thunderstorm”, and then I got distracted with some shopping errands.

Saturday evening, I decided I should at least pair the Bluetooth temperature probes that came with it, which I hadn’t done Friday because they needed to charge for several hours. I woke up the smoker and successfully paired the first one, and then I told it to search for the second one.

It beeped once, and the screen turned off. “Ah, it must have crashed due to some stupid Bluetooth bug”, I think to myself, so I power-cycled it. The screen stayed blank. I tried again. Then I shut it off, unplugged it, gave it a good 60 seconds, and tried again. The power light comes on, the induction burner’s light pulses that it’s searching for Bluetooth, but there’s nothing on the screen, and the app can’t see it on wireless.

It had bricked itself.

First thing Sunday morning, I called Traeger’s customer service 800 number, and after some brief issues with address/phone conflicts between their different databases, we went through the same troubleshooting I had, and then they instructed me to crack open the case and look at the boards.

One of the screws on the side stripped out, but I found a bigger screwdriver and got it open, checked for damage and loose connections, and confirmed that both boards showed power lights.

They’re shipping replacements out by two-day air, and they’ve already sent me the how-to video. All I need is a dry day late this week.

With apologies to Wayne

Sometimes when a song comes on, I find myself changing the lyrics just a bit. Watching the video, I always thought Rachel Hunter would be a bit too sophisticated for that boy…

🎶🎶🎶🎶
(Stacy’s mom has got a strap-on dong)
(Stacy’s mom has got a strap-on dong)
(Stacy’s mom has got a strap-on dong)
(Stacy’s mom has got a strap-on dong)

Stacy, can you come save me after schoo-o-o-ool?
    (after school)
In the hidden room by the poo-o-o-o-o-o-ool.
    (room by the pool)
When your mom got back from her business trip,
    (business trip)
She knocked me out while I was trying on her sli-i-i-ip.
    (wearing her slip)

You know, it’s been almost a week since she captured me.
I’m all tied up, now,
Baby, can’t you see?

Stacy’s mom has got a strap-on dong
It’s thick and black
and it’s over a foot long.
Stacy, can’t you see?
Your mom’s too much man for me.
Untie me while she’s gone,
please save my ass from your mom’s schlong.

(Stacy’s mom has got a strap-on dong)
(Stacy’s mom has got a strap-on dong)

Stacy, do you remember when she mowed the lawn?
    (mow the lawn)
And showed it off with just a towel o-o-o-on.
    (towel on)
She could tell I liked it from the way I stared,
    (way I stared)
And the way I begged
to put my finger in the-e-e-ere.
    (finger in there)

And I know I said pegging’s a cool fantasy,
but since your dad escaped
it’s been non-stop abuse for me.

(chorus)
🎶🎶🎶🎶

(there are related pictures on Pixiv, but I block all of those keywords, so…)

The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious

(late start in the season, for no apparent reason)

The only thing that interested me about this show was the character design for the titular maid, who shares many elements with the adult Jahy-sama by the same artist. Sadly, he’s also the writer for both, and I dropped Jahy-sama very quickly.

Unfortunately, I checked the credits on ANN, and it’s heavy on voice actresses I like, so here goes…

TL/DR: this is not bad enough to be good. It’s just bad.

Our Boy Hero, voiced by (Yor, Yun-hua, Ryu, Visha, D), spends most of the first episode shouting out the title, and when he’s not overreacting to her, he’s loudly proclaiming all the ways he’s overreacting to her. In return, Our Busty Maid, voiced by (Megumin, Mashu, Emilia, Sagiri), spends most of her time feeding his delusions and blushing like a schoolgirl watching her first tentacle porn.

No other recurring characters appear this week, so I don’t know what (Marika, Rebecca, Fels, Sanae, Oboro)’s character is like. Or (Emma, Crim, Melty, Kizuna, Chiyome, Rizu)’s. Or, most importantly, (Belfast, Coorie, Jens, Millhiore, Toru, Olivia, Excel (no, not that one), Nepgear, Wiz, Makie, Honey)’s.

By their voices, I am doomed to watch another episode of this turkey.

Smokin!

The new smoker arrived Friday, with curb-side delivery. The driver was willing to try to back his truck up the steep 70-foot driveway, but his lift gate simply didn’t have the clearance. Since it was on a pallet, he was willing to pull the pallet jack uphill while I pushed from behind. Given the heat and humidity, he didn’t object too strongly when I tipped him $20. I could probably have managed it myself with my four-wheel dolly, but It Would Not Have Been Fun.

I still needed to get it to the back patio across 50+ feet of grass, and there’s a neighborhood teen who’s been dropping “will work for car money” notes in mailboxes, but before I had the chance to call him, the HVAC guys returned my call for an updated air conditioner quote, and showed up an hour later with the big-wheeled dolly they use to move things like… air conditioners. They also gave me a 5% discount on the new unit, because they like my realtor.

After that, the unboxing and assembly went well, thanks to Traeger’s impressive packaging and instructions (measured in beers), and I’m looking forward to breaking it in this weekend before next week’s five days of rain.

(well-lubricated robot girl is unrelated)

I can’t go hog-wild with it right away, though, because (yippee!) all my new appliances arrive Wednesday morning, so I have to empty the fridge and freezer by Tuesday night.

Unrelated

There seems to be a slight wiring problem with my new elliptical. See if you can spot it. 😁

The vendor will be overnighting replacement parts to Tiger Joe’s, who’ll send someone out to fix it as soon as they’re in. Great unit, though, apart from the glitch.

Power Ring: Activate!

Is it just me, or does Young Sauron look like he has a Tumblr profile listing half a dozen self-diagnosed mental illnesses and a set of invented pronouns?

I have a feeling the big reveal is going to be that he’s just misunderstood.

(via)

Also, the in-your-face diverquiclusion suggests that faithful storytelling was not a priority.

House selection: validated

When moving back to Ohio, I rejected houses that didn’t have a decent dry spot outside the front door. I was amazed how many houses had been built in the area without even token eaves, much less porches, allowing rain and snow to come right up to (and with wind, into) the front door. Even before the days of ubiquitous package delivery services, this didn’t make sense in an area where it can rain at any time, but these days, where are they supposed to put your Amazon packages?

Today, which was supposed to be sunny, was interruped by a quick-but-fierce thunderstorm. My covered front porch is eight feet deep; more than four feet of it was wet. The two lamps that arrived today would have been soaked if I’d bought one of those houses.

Speaking of invisible handcuffs…

…Anon’s got it goin’ on.

(via; NSFW! Disable Javascript!)

Vermeil In Gold

This show is almost bad enough to be good. Almost.

Fingers crossed there will be some decent fan-art, at least, because the girls are cute, although Our Tsundere Childhood Friend’s breasts change size quite a bit from scene to scene. At least Our Not-Kelly-LeBrock Summoned Magical Girlfriend has the excuse of being a shapeshifting succubus. Also, the background art is a bit odd.

Uncle From Another World

Two-week delay because Netflix. Also, nope.

(Miss not-from-this-show doesn’t want to hear it)

“Automatically closed as stale”

I really, really hate the common practice of automatically closing bugs unless the reporter keeps responding to a bot and confirming that it still hasn’t been fixed. It’s not like bugs just go away on their own. I just happened to revisit a bug I’d filed on Joplin’s sync code, having gathered new information that could be useful for getting rid of it, and discovered it was closed in May.

This nonsense not only discourages people from reporting bugs, it trains the developers to just ignore anything that looks difficult or uninteresting. “Yeah, the verbose log file that never gets rotated eventually fills the user’s drive, and the leftover lock files fill up the temp directory, but check out this shiny new thing I added!”

Elf with a shelf

Partial Ordering

My plans for the yard include a fair amount of hardscaping, most conspicuously in the form of doubling the size of the patio, adding some rain cover to it, and building in a Traeger electric pellet smoker and perhaps a natural-gas grill as well. I’ll be talking to the landscaper about the preliminary design on Wednesday, but I just ordered the Traeger, which will arrive well before they build out the patio, so I can use it for a while.

The good news is that this model doesn’t need any complicated assembly; you basically tip it over, add the wheels, and stand it back up.

The bad news is that that means I have to drag the 300-pound box a good 50 feet across the grass to the back patio, and then open it up. After convincing whoever delivers it that they have to back their truck up my steep 70-foot driveway, because there’s no way in hell I’m dragging it uphill. 😁

(Kiki does not accept delivery orders of items larger than she is)

Belated Christmas present report

Many years ago, I found myself in Ohio for Christmas, and discovered that the gift exchange would include my step-sister’s three young daughters, whom I’d basically never met (I’d seen the oldest a few times when she was a toddler). On very short notice, I had to come up with something that they might like. I went with the DVD box set of Kaleido Star, about the only age-appropriate anime series I could find in a quick trip to the mall in the snow. (three girls, three discs, perfect!)

I had to cross my fingers on “appropriate” because I knew they’d watch the dub, and I’d heard that Fool’s dialogue had been cleaned up at least a little. I figured that anything left would go over their heads, and nothing in the visuals would upset their parents.

On Sunday, I went over for dinner with my parents, and one of the three, now age 20, was there learning recipes from my mom. After dinner, she asked if I was the one who’d bought that for them Way Back When, and I found out that they adored it, and still watched it together at least once a year. When one of them moved out of state, they fought over who got to keep it.

So that worked out.

(picture is unrelated, but does include a star…)

Dark patterns…

A vendor I recently did business with sent me an email asking me to verify my email address. This is not an unusual practice, but usually happens before you can use the account you created with them.

Sure enough, if you click on the “verify email” button, what you’re really doing is verifying that you want to receive more than a dozen types of marketing emails.

Nailed it!

In which Michiko Hada absolutely nailed my invisible-handcuff fetish. 😁