All dried up?

The glass-block window that had sprung multiple leaks during heavy rain has now been replaced, which when combined with the drainage work the landscapers did should keep my basement nice and dry and ready for finishing.

Except that the company stock dropped from 31 to 22 while I was waiting, so I really don’t want to start any big new house projects right now. Once they finish the landscaping and send the final bill, that’s going to be it for a while.

(we never got to see the hero’s reward in BotW, but one of the few minor spoilers I’ve read about Tears of the Kingdom is that five years later, the house that Link renovated is now referred to as “Zelda’s house”…)

Slow Fire TV, Fast Replacement

Just under five years ago, I purchased the Amazon Fire TV Cube, with 4K streaming support. About two years ago, it started getting sluggish. Saturday at 5:45 PM, it collapsed under the weight of their UI updates, so I gave up and ordered a replacement, trading in my first-generation Fire TV to get 20% off. (seriously, it still streams 4K HDR video without a hitch, but it can’t keep up with the crufted-up user interface, and force-restarts every app when you switch between them)

They promised delivery between 4 AM and 8 AM Sunday.

It arrived at 7:20 PM Saturday. The faster CPU and increased RAM allows it to run the UI and stream video.

(unrelated angel-waifu Tia delivers)

Please Don’t Tell My Fans I Released A New Book

Or, “how not to use social media to promote your work”. Richard Roberts, author of the fun “Please Don’t Tell My Parents”/Pennyverse novels, abandoned his Twitter account when Elon Musk bought the place, and he’d already abandoned his blog, so you have to follow the link to his non-book-related Tumblr and then follow the link to his book-related Tumblr.

Which you can’t read without a Tumblr account, because they very aggressively pester you for a login now after showing minimal content.

You know, like Twitter did before Elon Musk bought it…

Anyway, Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Giant Monster came out a month ago.

(yes, NieR is still in limbo, kind of like Roberts’ internet presence)

USPS update

The two-day package sent last Wednesday was finally delivered this Wednesday, after traveling from Texas to Cincinnati to Iowa to Illinois to Cincinnati to Dayton to Miamisburg.

It wasn’t what I ordered.

We’ll see how long it takes them to make a new one and ship it out, preferably not by USPS…

(I’ll let Megumin tell you how I feel…)

Café Hooters episode 5

The early Buy-the-Bluray fan-service was a fake-out, and they really want to tell stories about how each girl comes to fall for Our Barista Hero. I stopped watching when Our Rocking Waifu finally had a concert.

Verdict: I should look up what else the character designer has done, to see if there’s a better show with girls that look like this.

(elf cheerleaders make much better waifus)

Z-Day - 7

I’m out of anime now, but at least next Friday the new Zelda game comes out, so I’ve got something to look forward to. Based on the carefully-sanitized spoilers I’ve scrutinized, it’s worth the wait.

(Leafa-chan is unrelated but blonde and elf-y)

This one leans a bit toward the NSFW side, for obvious reasons. I was honestly surprised I found as many SFW pics as I did, given the poses and camera angles generally involved in showing off garter belts and what they’re attached to.

OpenSCAD goes zoom

I’ve been too busy to do any 3D printing recently (everything’s still in boxes in the garage from the move), so I hadn’t checked in on OpenSCAD, which is a wonderful tool afflicted with cripplingly slow rendering. Fixed now:

The new Manifold renderer is much faster and multi-threaded, allowing significantly more complicated models.

Sick Transit, USPS?

Pretty sure the two-day priority mail package that was shipped from Texas on Wednesday won’t be getting here on time. It made it to Cincinnati by Friday, about 45 miles away, but on Saturday it went to Des Moines, Iowa, over 600 miles away. On Sunday it rested. Also Monday.

It left Des Moines at 3:25 AM Tuesday for Milan, Illinois, and arrived/departed at 6:33 AM. Maybe it’ll turn up in Indianapolis next.

(I’d prefer to have all packages delivered by Kiki, but she’s not available in my area)

Garter time!

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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…)

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!

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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…

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

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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)