🎶 “I got keys that jingle-jangle-jingle” 🎶

I think I’ve finally switched gears from “I live in this house” to “this is where I store my boxes”. Now, if Goodwill would get out of their Covid mindset and start doing home pickups again, I could finish staging all the boxes for the truck and the PODs (I’ve decided on two, a 16-footer loaded and unloaded by hired help for the furniture, and an 8-footer loaded by me after I drive the good stuff to Ohio and fly back).

I still have to clean out the garage, but a lot of that stuff is already earmarked for a junk/e-waste truck, and the rest will end up in the second POD. I just have to sell off the stuff Goodwill won’t take, like the elliptical crosstrainer, the motorcycle, the grill, the smoker, and the gun safe (which is likely as annoying as getting rid of a pool table, but at least it’s still on the pallet it was delivered on twenty years ago). I’m hoping one of my neighbors will want some of that stuff.

Dear Youtube algorithmists,

I watched the trailer for RPG Real Estate, a show that’s about as clean as you can get in modern anime. 15 seconds in, there was a suggestion in the top-right corner: “HENTAI ANIME SEX”. This is because your search engine didn’t return the trailer posted by the production company, but a repost from some clowns who embedded their own ad links.

You(tube) are why we can’t have nice things.

Shutting my Pi-hole

I had to override the standard blocklists on my ad-blocking DNS proxy, because nespresso.com moved a lot of their main page to one of the CDNs that’s commonly used by advertisers (*.dynamicyield.com).

Cascading Mac Terminal windows

Long ago, Apple decided that tiling and tabs were the only sort of window management anyone would ever want, and removed the menu item to cascade windows. Unfortunately, Terminal.app’s tab and split-window features are horrifically bad, and the start position of new windows is an inadequate offset from the position of the most-recently-opened window, saved on exit, so that the next time you open it you have no idea where the first window will appear.

Here’s a quick Applescript hack to reset the position of the first 9 terminal windows in a clean cascade. Why 9? Because the only way I could get them into the right order was to explicitly send the command-key shortcuts to switch the active window; otherwise they get cascaded based on their current stacking order.

set x to 64
set y to 24
set x_delta to 32
set y_delta to 32

# get the count of open windows
tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    set wList to every window
    set w_count to count of wList
end tell

# select the windows in reverse order, so they're stacked correctly
tell application "System Events"
    set i to w_count
    repeat until i = 0
        keystroke i as string using command down
        set i to i - 1
    end repeat
end tell

# wait until they finish arranging themselves
delay 0.5

# reposition them relative to top-left
tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    set wList to every window
    repeat with app_window in wList
        set position of app_window to {x, y}
        set x to x + x_delta
        set y to y + y_delta
    end repeat
end tell

The most convenient way to use this is to paste it into an Automator action and bind it to a key. I picked Command-Option-C. I didn’t bother with error-checking, so if you have more than 9 Terminal windows or you’ve closed one in the middle, it will beep at you and continue.

More MacFixing

CleanMyMacX was preventing my MacBook from finding software updates (including the occasional “required to support your iphone/ipad” update); I just got a spinning wheel that lasted forever. It took a while to track down the root cause, but since I could still get updates if I booted in safe mode, I wasn’t left exposed to security holes and Apple QA.

Except that my Mac wasn’t rebooting properly, either, so that rebooting into safe mode required shutting it down, waiting five minutes for it to give up on a clean shutdown, and then powering it up while holding down the shift key. That nonsense turned out to be caused by the kernel extension for my 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse.

So, two more reasons to move all of my workflows over to the HP Aero 13.

…after I finish the move. All my 3D stuff is boxed up to go onto the truck, and won’t see the light of day again for at least a month.

Or two.

Maybe three.

Start Dates

Netflix has Komi 2 set for a three-week delay, so the first episode will be April 27th. Shield Hero 2 starts Wednesday the 6th on Crunchyroll. Demon Girl Next Door 2 starts Thursday the 7th on HiDive. So the three shows I plan to watch require three different subscriptions.

Checking HiDive’s schedule revealed that Iroduku just moved over to that service, so if you have a subscription and haven’t watched that one yet, do. Recommended for international air travel, or maybe that was just me.

How A Magical Queen Saved The Kingdom With A ‘Days Of Future Past’ Gambit, episode 26

Inevitably, this was the talkiest episode in both seasons, as Our Retired King explains his reasons for handing over his kingdom and his daughter in the first episode. And this was the short version of the story, lightly skimming over the queen’s history leading up to Our Realist Hero’s arrival.

Surprisingly, they did not announce a third season, and left a bunch of threads dangling with a vague “we’ve come so far, let’s keep going” New Year’s closing scene.

(picture is unrelated due to lack of interest by fan-artists)

Kuroitsu, episode 12

In which Our Agastia fends off a hostile takeover with the aid of massive spoilers, Our Former Temp Minions prove that their promotion was not a mistake, Our Blader once again reveals his greatest weakness, and Our Kuroitsu blows her cover.

Here’s all of the decent fan-art I could find of Our (Evil) Heroine:

…and some screenshots from last week’s episode:

Side note: so far, merging Funimation into Crunchyroll has not resulted in an increase in streaming capacity. Trying to watch this on a Saturday afternoon was pretty painful, with frequent quality drops and pauses.

So the real April Fools joke here…

…is that people thought it was a joke. Yes, the company that makes the catgirl-paradise Nekopara games really is making the doggy-girl game Inupara, despite releasing the trailer on 4/1.

The power of the algorithm

Browsing through featured recently-added movies on Starz, I found Concussion, starring Will Smith. 😁

(demi-chan maid cafe is unrelated)

Fry the friendly skies…

Airbus successfully completed a three-hour flight powered by used cooking oil.

(picture is unrelated, except for the french fries)

The season’s hottest isekai show…

“Bitchslapped into another world by an angry cuckold for making a joke about the town bike”

Oh, wait, my mistake, that’s this week’s Hollywood news.

(picture is unrelated but fishy)

Apple QA, episode 15.4.1

If you upgraded your iPhone/iPad to 15.4, upgrade it again, to fix rapid battery drain and a critical security vulnerability in the “AI” library.

(Osaka Expo 2025 mascot is unrelated)

“I felt a great disturbance in Hyrule, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly delayed until Spring 2023.”

CrunchyCashGrab

Crunchyroll’s free-with-ads anime tier is basically going away. The (shrinking!) backlog will still be available for now, but nothing for continuing shows, and only the first three episodes of new shows.

(gotta crunch ’em all!)

Coming in October…

The Flatcat and Her Humungous Sword.

No idea if it’s going to be a good time-killer. There shouldn’t be any A-cup angst, at least, since Our Catgirl Heroine is only 12, and apparently completely oblivious to adult topics.

Before and After

Looking at the averages for my current city versus my new one, violent crime “score” (not rate) from 38 to 8, property crime “score” from 45 to 28. This is a pretty vague comparison, since crime is not uniformly distributed around cities, but it at least suggests that I’m moving from the good part of a city with some problems to the good part of a city with less problems. That also has 1/8th the population.

And since the only problems on my block in the past 20 years were one car being broken into (that had an electronics equipment visible on the back seat) and one empty house being taken over by just-graduated teens for a mildly-destructive party (which ended when the cop across the street came home in his squad car), I’m feeling pretty good about it.

(my preferred form of personal protection is unrelated)

Nth Party

It has been 2 days since I argued
with an idiot on a forum.

There is a very chatty Discord loosely associated with the Nespresso subreddit. It’s generally pretty friendly, but if you turn your back on it for a few hours, it’s not worth trying to respond to the hundreds of on-and-off-topic messages that showed up in your absence.

But sometimes you catch something right away, like the person who wanted to draw a distinction between Nespresso-branded pods, pods “manufactured for another company by Nespresso” like Starbucks, and clone pods that vary in their compatibility. He said about the Starbucks and Nescafe pods, “we call those 2nd-party pods”, and I questioned both the “we” and the novel and confusing use of “second party”, a term that has a well-defined meaning in everyday use.

I think he’s about 19, so he was quite certain that his construct made sense, and that it was pointlessly pedantic to disagree. Sorry, kiddo, but if your goal is to communicate, don’t choose a term that you have to explain to everyone you use it in front of, every single time.

I don’t know if he continued arguing about it. Discord has basic killfile functionality, although you still see a “message blocked” placeholder every time they post.

My archives are strongly biased toward smiles and other lively expressions, so consider this a Minority Report. Also, I was at the dentist twice this week, and I’m going back Tuesday, so I’m kind of burned out on teeth right now. 😁

This is a long set, so if you want to skip directly to the naughty ones, I won’t judge you.

Bonus Sukabu:

(picture is related, and also the first thing Sukabu has posted to Pixiv in over a year)

more...

Breaking News!

…and I mean “breaking the promise they just made to be ‘all your anime in one place’”, in which Crunchyroll is dropping a whole bunch of shows after adding a whole bunch of others that were on Funimation.

Um, thanks?

How A Naughty Duchess Gave The Queens Realistic Training, episode 25

In which a 500-year-old great-grand-milf blackmails the waifu harem into attending Bride Skills 101, while Our Realist Hero is off tasting yakisoba sauce.

One more to go. Will they get another season to bring on waifu #5, make some babies, and finally hold a wedding? The team doesn’t seem to be feeling any pressure to force a wrap-up.

(bunny/mummy is unrelated, but wrapped up!)

Kuroitsu, episode 11

In which the OP finally gains classic sound effects, Our Kuroitsu boldly goes where no peon has gone before, Our Executive Staff retreats, Our Wolfservice Girl faces a fate worse than death, and Our Temp’s fate is sealed. Oh, and whoever makes the bubble-bath soap at that hot spring apparently works for the buy-the-bluray department.

This is really a world-building episode for the upper echelons of Agastia, so most of the regular cast is absent, which is an odd choice for the next-to-last episode. Honestly, it feels like it was strung together from the sort of short gag comic that typically fills a few pages at the back of a manga collection, with an art budget to match. Lots of off-model close-ups and panned stills, even for a show that was already a budget production. This may be the only episode that I feel no real urge to rewatch.

As usual, here are screenshots from last week’s episode:

Bonus: Our Blader can’t fight this feeling any more…

Very Expensive Toaster,

Very Cheap Translation. Seriously, if you’re going to import a $333 single-slice toaster, you really ought to spring for something better than Google Translate. Especially since it requires an external transformer to keep it from catching fire when used in the US.

Highlander: Demon Warrior

Today I Learned that the Japanese sub-title for the first (and of course only) Highlander movie was “Akuma no Senshi” (悪魔の戦士).

I’m idly curious what changes they might have made to the story…

Skills: Death Metal Voice

This is exactly what I want to see on the CV of the lead voice actress in an isekai show. I’m not sure I’m kidding.

Also half-Japanese/half-Egyptian, but prone to terrible makeup that makes it unclear if she’s blessed with hybrid vigor.

She hasn’t had any significant roles in a show I’ve watched, so I have no idea if she’s any good. The flatcat in this show, on the other hand, was Emma in Hidden Dungeon, Crim in Interspecies Reviewers, Melty in Kuroitsu, and Rizu in We Never Learn.

Oh, that slave-harem isekai anime!

In which Our Hero ends up in a fantasy world with cheat powers and buys an adventuring party of slave girls of different races. And, yes, the original web-novel had “slave harem” in the title, and removing one word doesn’t change the… “thrust” of the story. I gave this one a quick skim a while back when it was originally announced, and his girls are so thrilled to serve that they even train and discipline his newest acquisitions for him. From what I saw, it quickly degraded into an internal monolog that was equal parts “how can we become more OP” and “which one(s) will I fuck tonight”.

This one’s scheduled for summer, and between the concept, the character art of first-slave-girl Roxanne, the fact that I can only find one familiar performance for one of the two lead voice actors, and the director’s less-than-stellar track record, I’m not interested.

(picture is far too wholesome to be related)

Coffee vs coffee

Nespresso has sued Peet’s over their compatible pods. What makes this interesting is that they’re suing over trade dress, which is a “creates confusion in the marketplace” handwave. But Nespresso doesn’t sell pods at any retail outlets but their own, and the packaging of the Peet’s pods stresses their brand, with “compatible with Nespresso original” in much smaller print. And they’re generally stocked right next to house-brand clone pods, so if you go after Peet’s without also going after Target and Safeway, you’re clearly not really upset about “confusion in the marketplace”. (Starbucks-branded pods are actually manufactured by Nespresso, by the way)

What’s really going on is that Peet’s merged with competing coffee megacorp Jacobs Douwe Egberts in 2020, which also owns things like Gevalia, Maxwell House, L’OR, Senseo, Tassimo, and tons of other coffee companies around the world in markets where Nestle would no doubt love to increase their market share.

Eldritch, ho!

This picture is not the result of an accidental encounter between an innocent fan-artist and an ancient horror from beyond space, time, charm, spin, and good taste. It is in fact the official mascot of the Osaka Expo 2025.

[Update: yes, Rule 34 kicked in real fast for this one]

Season-enders

Lots of shows have their final episode this week, and a few Spring shows are having their debuts. Fortunately, it’s not over yet for the two shows I’ve been watching. Unfortunately, the shows starting this week aren’t ones I want to watch.

I didn’t even put these on my NO list, but yeah, not a chance: Thermae Romae Novae, in which an ancient Roman bath designer ends up immersed in modern Japanese bath culture; Shin Ikkitousen, the show that constantly gets beat up but never dies; Estab-Life, in which the future is a furry theme park run by AI, with a story that’s part of a multi-media made-for-microtransactions franchise.

Fuck you, paypal.

I’m making another pass through all my online accounts, updating addresses, phone numbers, and credit cards (if they don’t automatically pick up the billing address change)..

Paypal won’t let allow me to delete my primary home number (which is an Ooma VoIP line), or change it to my new home number (which is an Ooma VoIP line), because your home number can’t be VoIP. I had to set my mandatory home number to be exactly the same as my mandatory mobile number, set it to be primary, and then delete the old home (VoIP) number.

“How about ‘no’, Atlassian support guy?”

So there seem to be (at least) three completely different circumstances that trigger the Atlassian clusterfail that bit me in our Jira upgrade testing. The first, where a brand-new node is starting up for the first time to run the upgrade; the second, where a new node is attempting to join a cluster so it can perform the upgrade; and now a third, where the simple act of restarting the application on one of the nodes after the upgrade has a chance of failing.

The symptom is exactly the same in all cases: core plugins fail to start within the 5-minute timeout. When we hit failure type #3 today, I opened a fresh support ticket, and the immediate response from support was “y’know, starting plugins is expensive, so try increasing the timeout to ten minutes”. I managed to be polite in my rejection of this “workaround”.

I am quite certain that that would not solve the problem, because the logs I sent them clearly showed that the same node that had timed out succeeded on a subsequent startup, without even one minute of delay, and that three other nodes also started up quickly.

Despite having included this information in the initial ticket, we’ve now had three back-and-forths where the tech is still hung up on increasing the timeout. As I commented to a co-worker, this is a perfect example of “how to fail J’s troubleshooting interview”.

Meanwhile, when I opened the ticket, their system auto-recommended a likely-related issue, in which the workaround was “fall back from Java 11 to Java 8”. Given that we’re using the Java included in Atlassian’s own installer, if that really does fix it, it’s an Apple-worthy QA fail spanning at least 5 minor releases.