Mystery Maid 3

Two more of the promised voice actresses showed up. That’s the good news. Pretty much the only good news. I found myself waiting for a classic sitcom laugh track to telegraph that the joke has been delivered and you’re supposed to laugh now.

Cute girls making cute potions

Coming in October, Novice Alchemist’s Shop Management looks like Recettear meets Endro! meets RPG Real Estate, from the author of To Another World…With Land Mines!.

The official English title seems to be “Management of novice alchemist”, which makes it sound like she’s got a pimp. The voice actresses for the four girls are all familiar to me, including Mio from Edens Zero, Funi-chan from Astra & Fa from RPG-RE, Yui from Bofuri, and Muramasa from Eromanga-sensei & Kuro from Restaurant To Another World.

I’m not getting my hopes up, but it has the potential to be amusing fluff.

(unrelated cute alchemist is unrelated)

You had 1job, 1password…

1Password version 8 is an Electron app. You know, that unholy combination of Chromium and Node.js that was (coughcough) “just revealed” as a massive security problem? I’d thought it was a short-term thing, since they resorted to it initially to create the first Linux client, but they’ve gone all-in, and the vast majority of the technical discussion of it (including the fact that it’s a native Rust app with an Electron-based GUI, which is possibly less insane) is not on any of their security pages; it’s in comments to Reddit posts.

V8 is also cloud-only, with no support for private offline vaults. You can still run v7, though. For now.

Got RAID?

The option to speed up RAID rebuilds and reshapes on my Synology NAS was still extremely conservative. This is better:

echo max > /sys/block/md2/md/sync_max

Before: ~8 MB/s. After: ~70 MB/s.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind the wait so much, but my contractor informed me that the electrician is coming this week to install a bunch of new outlets, three new circuits, and a whole-house surge protector. And I haven’t really tested the UPS for a while…

Bonus: RAID reshape is a two-pass process, and the estimate was only for the first pass, so I’ve still got another 1.5 days of this to sit through. It should be done about eight hours before the electrician shows up to cut the power. If I hadn’t sped it up, the whole thing would have taken nearly a month (“Dear Synology, please add an i-meant-really-fast button to the GUI”).

Homebrew UI madness

The people developing Homebrew have been randomly tinkering with the behavior of the various command-line options for years. I’d really like for them to stop; surprising and often unwelcome things keep happening when I type brew upgrade that are not correctly previewed when I type brew update; brew outdated.

Today it was update and outdated both reporting three packages, immediately followed by upgrade installing three packages and a GUI app (“cask”).

Reminder: it wasn’t just the Democrats

…half the Republicans have spent the past six years shooting at Trump, too:

“Being a chickenhawk and a NeverTrumper is no way to go through life, son.”
– commenter on Hinderaker’s no-big-deal post

Uncle in the Eighties…

Found him! 😁

(okay, it’s actually Tetsuya Takeda, but he’s got the kind of look that “orc-face” Uncle is a parody of)

Timberline XL update

Had a beautiful grilling day on Saturday. Pity the expensive new Traeger won’t even turn on. Worked fine a week ago, but now I don’t even get a power light. I haven’t called them yet, because it’s been raining on and off all day today, so I can’t crack it open to get at the power supply.

Monday update: no rain today, so I planned to call Traeger support, and in preparation for that I went out and re-tested everything: different outlet, different extension cord, and what-the-hell, different power cord, since it uses the same connector most desktop PCs do (NEMA C13).

It was the power cord.

Thousands of dollars for the smoker, and they shipped a cheap power cord. Fortunately, I have dozens of the damn things around the house, including some brand-new heavy-duty ones.

Call Of The Night 6

In which Our Wannabe Sucker Hero gets his hands on an older woman who still has a pulse (played by the prolific Yoko Hikasa), but not in a bad way, and then it’s off to a midnight pool party, where every woman looks better in a swimsuit than Our Sucking Heroine does, but vampire glamour is still enough to get the guys who perform the OP/ED songs to try to pick her up.

I think Haruka Tomatsu’s character shows up next week.

(well-equipped dark elf is unrelated, and out of season)

“Move fast and break thingseverything”

To the surprise of exactly no one, releasing a bunch of so-called local applications that are just thin wrappers around Chromium and Node.js creates massive easily-exploited security holes.

(“full-stack” developers in their natural habitat)

Slow going

Upgrading my Synology NAS from the DS918+ to the DS1821+ was trivial: I disabled the SSD cache and then moved the internal drives and the cable leading to the DX517 external disk tray. For some combinations of models, there might be more work, including reinstalling the OS and packages, or at least restoring the configuration from a backup, but I was up and running in about ten minutes, most of which was spent moving the drives into the new-style carriers.

Once it was up, I switched the static IP over to the 10-gig card and started reconfiguring the unit with new 16 TB Ironwolf Pro drives. Since the 918+ only had four drive bays, I hadn’t been able to turn on dual-parity. With eight bays, I’ll be able to have dual-parity and a hot spare, and still significantly increase my storage.

Unfortunately, switching to dual-parity will take… about 13 days. And that’s with the “run RAID resync faster” option set. The GUI (which doesn’t show a prediction for how long it will take; I checked /proc/mdstat directly) recommended adding two new drives when converting rather than just one, so that the old single-parity drive remains operational at all times, for robustness.

Fortunately I’m not in California any more, so I shouldn’t have any power outages that exceed the capacity of my UPS. 🤞 🤞

(OP spider can handle a RAID)

Amazon Bait & Switch

I had an item saved in one of my Amazon wishlists, an odd-but-interesting monitor that might go well with some of my workflows (personal and professional). When I checked the list Thursday afternoon, the “Add to Cart” button reflected a 32% price increase, from a Marketplace dealer with a 78% positive rating over 12 months, reflecting 423 reviews.

It’s also available through Amazon Prime at the original price, with delivery three days after the earliest the shady dealer promises, but more than a week before they might ship it (if they ship at all; their lifetime rating is still only a dubious 88%).

Note that when I saved it to my wishlist, it was only available at the legit price with Amazon as the seller, but unlike when the price drops for an item on your wishlist, the entry did not have an honest and accurate “Price increased 32% (was $699.99 when added to List)”.

Checking in on Vermeil…

As of episode 5, Our Super Succubus had discovered that hubris is always a bad idea, and that Our Obvious Bad Guy was in fact capable of ruining her day. In #6, the truth will set you free. So will blood loss, kisses, and buying the Bluray. This was basically a mid-season finale, with no real dangling threads to pick up next episode, so it could go pretty much anywhere from here.

(picture is unrelated, as you probably guessed)

What Would Netflix Do (about Uncle)?

Looks like they used up the first week of their two-week delay to air another episode.

Targeted marketing…

I saw this display, and thought that they really ought to have called the products Transbeef and Transburger. That would ensure that they jumped off the shelves into the mouths of the desired customers while clearly reminding the rest of us that it ain’t food.

Of course, someone could immediately release another product called Cisbeef, which, by the actual meaning of the cis- and trans- Latin prefixes, would also contain no beef.

In related news, money talks.

The trouble with Nazuna…

In my initial comments on Call Of The Night, I mentioned that Our Sucking Heroine has weird boobs. After extensive study of slender Japanese women, I think I can describe exactly what’s wrong.

Take, for instance, this picture of fresh young AV actress Sayaka Otoshiro (乙白さやか; NSFW! Disable Javascript!), who apparently got out of the business after two years:

NSFW

This is the best match I’ve found for what I think the artist intended for Nazuna’s body: modestly-sized natural breasts, widely spaced, with the nipples slightly angled out. The problem is that his design for her top has a giant diamond-shaped window in the middle of the chest, with the entire breast covered and pulled to the outside.

It varies from scene to scene, of course, and the simplification of the anime design exaggerates it, particularly in the first episode, but in some shots her (stiff) nipples appear to be angled out nearly 30 degrees, something that large natural breasts can do when a woman lies on her back, but that our less-endowed beauties don’t have enough mass for, as Sayaka demonstrates with friends:

NSFW

The official art on the web site adds a bit of shading to the window for a more normal lifts-and-separates look, and some other drawings show some actual boob in the boob window. Basically the anime exaggerates a costume design that’s a poor match for her skinny body.

Related, apparently there’s a set of chibi episodes being released on their official Twitter account.

Big Magnum Kuroiwa-Sensei

The trailer for this one is very, very Eighties.

Delay of Uncle

I’m curious how Netflix will handle the Covid-induced two-week delay of Uncle from another world, since they already have that show on a two-week delay.

Tiny Isekai

It’s getting really, really hard to parody this stuff, but I’ll try…

“Reborn in another world as a sexually transmitted disease, I quickly learned that my generation didn’t invent all that kinky stuff after all”

“Reincarnated as a parasitic worm, I decided to work my way up the food chain to mind-control the local king and start a war of world conquest”

“Banished to another world in the body of an adorable kitten, I accidentally bit a necromancer and now my saliva turns people into zombies”

“Transported to a world without modern medicine, I wiped out a village by sharing germs they had no resistance to, and now I’m worshipped as the evil god DeathSneeze”

“I woke up in a fantasy world based on my favorite RPG, but I’m just the status screen for a player who has no idea how to min-max or grind levels and it’s driving me crazy!”

“I’m really an AI who escaped from an online fantasy game by tricking some kid into thinking he’d be transported to another world with cheat powers. Sucker.”

“I was summoned to a magical kingdom by a powerful wizard to fulfill an ancient prophecy, but come on, man, I’m still just a chipmunk”

On that note…

Reborn as a vending machine, I now wander the dungeon is getting at least a short anime adaptation. The light-novel series was cancelled after three volumes due to lack of interest, although there were apparently some uncollected stories that tried to wrap it up, so the ending may be anime-original.

And, yes, Our Vending Hero is an inanimate object, so he gets carried around by a super-strong, super-cute, super-busty Best Girl.

(picture is unrelated; there are currently only two fan-drawings related to this series on Pixiv, which may be a new record for lack of interest)

“Tell me you’re from the Eighties…”

“…without telling me you’re from the Eighties”

Junko Mihara; actress, singer, auto racer, Councillor.

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.