Hoe Harem 7

In which obvious plot is obvious, as is the cliffhanger ending. On the bright side, there’s enough Ruri to keep it from bogging down. On the infodump side, The Secret History Of Our Clingy Mom is revealed, as well as The Mystery Of Mister Mailman.

Best moment not involving Ruri: Our Farming Hero is sitting at home at night polishing his hoe (not a euphemism) when Our Dutiful Princess shows up unannounced, dumps him, and rides off without explaining.

Beast Tamer 7

In which Fairy Loli Twin Waifu #2 is rescued, to the surprise of no one, Our Obnoxious Hero Party is snidely astonished at getting what they demanded, to the surprise of no one, and a lengthy infodump is dropped explaining the whole hero-vs-demon-king thing, to the surprise of no one.

Then FLTW2 points out that Our Taming Harem Lord fits the bill just as well as Our Nasty Chosen Hero, to the surprise of no one.

In other news, they won the fight against the Big Bad Demon Knight because of a special power that he had all along but had never mentioned before, which even Our Dragon Waifu calls shenanigans on.

(…to the surprise of no one…)

Tsundere Linux…

In my upcoming trip to Japan, I was going to see if this had a new edition, and then I realized that tsundere linux is just systemd.

Temperatures are supposed to drop about 25°F tonight and stay that way for at least a week, so today’s rain will be followed by tomorrow’s snow. Welcome back to the midwest, eh?

1Password ssh-agent

I missed this announcement, but it does seem to work, as long as all of your keys are recent/strong enough. It imports your private keys into a vault (replacing the passphrase with their security) and acts as your ssh-agent, allowing you to transparently sync keys to your Linux, Mac, and Windows devices, and the browser extension correctly detects common cloud and source control platforms that you’d want to paste public keys into. It also handles any necessary format conversions on import, which is handy when you’ve got a mixed audience of Windows and Mac/Linux users.

Never explain!

I’ve been idly following the light novels for Realist Hero, and the latest one, book 17, finally fills in every detail of how things work and how they got that way. It’s been lurking in the background for a while now, with the author dribbling out nonsense about time travel, dungeons, “overtech”, and nanites, but it comes to a head here when Our Realist Harem King (who just added two more wives) resolves the Great War Against The Demons with the words “sudo make me a sandwich”.

This follows and is followed by a complete history of the world and its creatures. And it’s really dumb.

(okay, those weren’t his exact words…)

Related,

The Killin’ Slimes & Collectin’ Cuties light novels have pretty much run out of steam as well, with the latest volume consisting of a series of unrelated short stories that accomplish nothing. In fairness, the premise was always pretty limited in what they could do once the full cast was assembled and sufficient wacky hijinks ensued. Best Girl Beelzebub was pretty much the only thing holding my interest, and she doesn’t show up nearly often enough.

(see? no Beelzebub!)

False advertising

Last week, when discussing the upcoming election with my mother, I had to correct her on the nature of one of the items. Because she reads the local newspaper, she had picked up an erroneous impression about the constitutional amendment to prevent non-citizens from voting in local elections. She thought it would allow it, so she intended to vote no.

I hadn’t read any voting guides, and I haven’t subscribed to a newspaper in… well, ever, so I just read the sample ballot, which was perfectly clear. Since it passed 77% to 23%, relatively few people were fooled, despite the best efforts of the activists.

Dear Smith & Wesson

I would never buy a concealed-carry pistol that has giant letters shouting EQUALIZER on the slide. No matter how big your advertising budget is (and it’s apparently quite large, judging from the amount of email, ads, and puff pieces this week). I don’t even want to sign up for any of the giveaway packages at various retailers, because it just doesn’t appeal to me, even without the silly name and rollmarking.

I also wouldn’t buy a Tactical Rowdy Elite Combat Patriot Pit Bull Extreme, which would take up about as much space on the slide. I definitely wouldn’t carry anything with a “cool” name, because even a perfectly obvious self-defense situation will likely end up in civil court, where your Bloody Decker 45 with an engraved Punisher logo will look a bit peculiar to a jury carefully selected to know nothing about guns.

The CSX, on the other hand, is a very nice piece that would be a fine replacement for the long-discontinued Star M43 Firestar, except for the three-handed-hammer-and-punch field stripping and the smooth, floppy spacers on the 12-round magazines, which should be firmly attached and stippled.

(speaking of nice pieces, a while back I picked up the Jeff Quinn limited-edition Ruger GP-100 in .44 Special for an excellent price; good thing I bought lots of ammo during Obama’s first term, because 44SP is running $1/round most places, if you can find it at all)

Going on the list…

While I’m in Japan, I’ll have to see if I can find a P-90 keychain/charm to match the one Karen Kohiruimaki has. But I’m not going to spray-paint my PS-90 pink. 😁

(although…)

I wish to point out that in the brief montage where Fran thinks about the people she’s protecting in the town, they included the panty vendor. Combined with Fran’s post-battle reaction shots, this is sufficient for me to forgive Sword-Dad for geeking out over stats and skills.

Next week: Interview With The Jerkface.

(brief, but necessary for setting up something that happens later)

Voter ID

The first time I voted after moving to California in the Nineties, I naturally showed my ID at the polls, only to be told that I didn’t need to and they didn’t care. Now that I’m back in Ohio, I was pleasantly surprised that they still require ID.

So: paper ballot, at the Moose Lodge, with proper ID, and the poll workers were having a spirited discussion about preserving the chain of custody and getting the results delivered downtown as soon as the polls close.

Pity it’s not that way everywhere, especially today…

Speaking of Slime…

Reincarnated as a Slime the movie streams early next year, and season three of the show has been announced.

Home Stone

Pallets of Pavers for Patio have arrived. Looking forward to the upcoming work. The hardscaping should start Friday, and the landscaping should start next week (delayed by the supervisor’s wife’s early delivery).

Hopefully they can get a lot of work done before it gets too cold; the current extended forecast has it dropping well below freezing at night starting Saturday and lasting at least a week.

Also, they finished up the floors today (with the exception of one little stretch of shoe molding that can’t be installed until the main contractor finishes making the new shim to connect the shower insert to the floor; which won’t happen until he’s back from vacation). Time to unpack!

“You keep using that word…”

I was looking at tech accessories on Amazon, and came across the following delightful description:

“Made of high-quality organic silicone”

This week, bikini clam hunting. The jokes just write themselves, and that’s before the slimy tentacles came out to play…

Amusingly, Our Darling Flat Alchemist picked out an age-appropriate swimsuit for Our Young Shopgirl that just happened to mask her large chest. Fortunately, Our Clam-Diving Gather Girls went for tiny little string bikinis that the camera was happy to zoom in on.

Credit Space

Today I Learned that some previous version of 1Password inserted literal spaces into credit card numbers to break the number into groups. It always displays them this way, but you have to edit the item to find out if they were stored with spaces or without.

This is important because some Javascript validators only allow you to paste 16 characters into a CC field, even counting non-numbers that they ignore, but then don’t run the trivial checksum against the results before you hit submit. Took me a moment…

Roam, if you want to

Apparently there’s no point in renting a pocket wifi device while I’m in Japan, because they’re out of stock at all the vendors I’ve tried. Spectrum’s international roaming isn’t bad compared to ¥860/day, but the pocket wifi would support 10 devices at once, allowing us to freely use our tablets as well while out and about. Maybe they’ll have them at their airport kiosks when we get there.

Hoe Harem 6

In which Pure Farmer Power causes the Evil Plan to backfire, awakening Our One True Best Girl to her destinies, both professional and personal.

Very personal. Seriously, Ruri, “gochisōsama-deshita”?!? That little slip more than made up for the bad CGI on the giant worms. And the excessively talky fight scene.

Sadly, Our Worst Mom also gets some screen time, although she ends up acting her age in the end.

(unrelated heroine is unrelated)

Beast Tamer 6

Team Waifu demonstrates their loyalty and their susceptibility to light petting as they follow Our Taming Hero deep into the woods to run an errand for Our Dipshit Hero. After last week’s digression, we’re back on track for harem expansion, with Fairy Loli Twin #1 begging for help rescuing Fairy Loli Twin #2. Next week, that is, and I’m sure they’ll both officially be Waifu-broken by the end of it. Pretty safe bet, since they’re in the credits…

If they keep to the pattern, I expect another episode of dealing with the hero party and two that focus on Fox Loli Waifu, leaving three episodes to introduce Yet Another Girl (a human knight who doesn’t seem to be a tameable haremette) and have her recruit the party to clean up corruption in her order as some sort of series finale.

Covid/Customs QR Code

The Visit Japan Web site processes scanned passports in about five minutes (provided you actually rotate them, not just let an iphone flag them as landscape), but apparently the Covid certification is reviewed by hand, and takes a few days. Three, for me. But now I’m all set for the trip.

They want you to log into the site on your phone’s browser to display the QR code at the airport, warning you that showing up with a printed code might take longer. Oooooookay then.

What a guy!

Elon Musk just paid three months salary and benefits to thousands of struggling workers to give them the opportunity to Learn To Code.

In which Our Killer Kitten pouts adorably when Our Sword-Dad accidentally steals her kill, and big bugs are no big deal, but a greater demon is a real… handful. Next week: the boss fight continues.

Futoku no Guild 1 & 2

Proof that there really isn’t much “fansubbing” going on any more (as opposed to just copying the work of paid streaming services), I finally found the first two episodes of this show over the weekend, each from a different group.

It’s terrible, by the way. Badly drawn, poorly written, and yet still more entertaining than some things that got licensed this season (I’m looking at you, Renai Flops).

Apps!

Post-reopening, there are two apps used for getting into Japan. One to prove your Covid status (mandatory), and one to pre-clear immigration (optional).

No, wait, they changed it again on November 1st. Now there's an all-in-one site that generates the QR codes to get you through.

Unrelated, no kids came to my door for Halloween. Something to do with the combination of rain, a dead-end sidewalk, and a 75-foot walk uphill, no doubt.

In which a teeny-tiny bit of plot leaks into the daily adventures of Our Unstoppable Alchemist, but is quickly smothered under bats, hats, and gloves.

(official art again, because there’s no fan-art to speak of)

After banishing coherent plotting and pacing, we’re going to make a second season of McPharmacist & Waifu anyway

Yeah, whatever. How they’ll put the pieces back together after throwing so much story away, I have no idea.

Fuck you, Homebrew devs

They just added this lengthy message to their software when you run brew upgrade:

Warning: You are using macOS 10.15.
We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version.
It is expected behaviour that some formulae will fail to build in this old version.
It is expected behaviour that Homebrew will be buggy and slow.
Do not create any issues about this on Homebrew’s GitHub repositories.
Do not create any issues even if you think this message is unrelated.
Any opened issues will be immediately closed without response.
Do not ask for help from MacHomebrew on Twitter.
You may ask for help in Homebrew’s discussions but are unlikely to receive a response.
Try to figure out the problem yourself and submit a fix as a pull request.
We will review it but may or may not accept it.

On the bright side, I’m now saving $10/month on Patreon!

The literal meaning of リブ生地 is “rib fabric”, but in context, it refers almost exclusively to snug knit sweaters. This theme brought to you by Best Girl Ruri (sadly not pictured).

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