Attempts to breed hairless tailless cat have not been generally welcomed.
— Cat Breed ListIsekai: 2.1
It was good, not being alone. The dynamics were a little weird at first, with Angel being older and younger, more stable and more vulnerable, but we fit somehow. As partners, I mean, not physically. I’d be lying if I said that I never desired her as the woman she was rapidly growing into, but I never made a pass, and she never teased. We often slept together for warmth or comfort, touching-but-not-that-way as she’d put it, but while it occasionally came up, she never reacted to its presence.
Partners. Friends. Explorers in a world that didn’t seem to have anyone for me to save, or anything to save them from. A world that she didn’t know any more about than I did.
On the plus side, she was awesome at catching rabbits, which significantly reduced the amount of bugs in my diet. I was the better cook, which surprised us both, once we had a variety of things to cook. She was smarter and better educated, filled with ideas for how to improve our lives and extend the reach of our exploration together.
Always together. By unspoken agreement, we never went off on our own, never went out of earshot.
Chaptering…
Low-Code Noodles
Noodle Stoppers are a thing
Things I learned on Amazon recently: there is an entire class of anime figurines designed to sit on your cup noodle to keep it closed while the hot water does its work.
I think the $62 Nitocris is a bit pricy for this, though. I don’t think it would even be safe to work at home with the Super Sonico or Kanu toppers, but the Yui is cute.
Pricing is between reasonable and outrageous, naturally.
Which one did I buy? I’m not telling, but it isn’t one of the ones I’ve linked above. And it won’t go onto a cup noodle; I’ve upgraded to a better class of ramen over the years.
Apple: “I have altered the deal”
Apple’s Rosetta x86-to-ARM translator to be removed in OS update?. Sounds like a licensing issue, since it’s region-specific.
Learn To Low-Code
Microsoft is embedding Excel in YAML. Even after reading the “PowerApps” blog, I haven’t the slightest fucking idea what low-code is good for, apart from scattering business logic across an environment even less sensible than malware-infested spreadsheets.
Pod extract
I cracked open four of the useless “Archer Farms” Nespresso-incompatible pods and successfully brewed Aeropress coffee with the contents. Not bad at all. As expected, it was too finely ground for the Aeropress, requiring quite a bit of pressure even with only one filter (by comparison, with standard commercial ground coffee, I use three filters and still don’t have to press as hard).
Four pods was a bit less than the two scoops I generally use for 12 ounces of coffee, but with the fine espresso grind, it extracted more in the same amount of time/water, so it worked out. One more cup will use up the rest of the box of pods, and then I can crack open the Gevalia pods and see what I get.
1Password CLI notes wrapper
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# simple wrapper for creating/editing 1password secure notes from the
# command line, using https://1password.com/downloads/command-line/
# requires jq and md5sum (just to avoid uploading unchanged files)
#
# must do an initial full sign-in, like this:
# op signin my.1password.com jgreely@example.com --shorthand jgreely
# (using your sign-in url, account name, secret key, and password)
#
# The named vault must already exist in your account.
SHORTHAND=jgreely
VAULT=Notes
EDITOR=emacs
TOKENFILE=~/.1p_token
SESSION=
if [ -f $TOKENFILE ]; then
SESSION=$(<$TOKENFILE)
fi
if ! op list vaults --session $SESSION >/dev/null 2>&1; then
rm -f $TOKENFILE
SESSION=
fi
if [ ! -f $TOKENFILE ]; then
SESSION=$(op signin $SHORTHAND --raw )
touch $TOKENFILE
chmod go= $TOKENFILE
echo $SESSION > $TOKENFILE
fi
TMPFILE=$(mktemp /tmp/$(basename $0).XXXXXX)
OPTS="--session $SESSION --vault $VAULT"
case "$1" in
create|new)
shift
TITLE="$@"
if [ -z "$TITLE" ]; then
TITLE="(untitled)"
fi
$EDITOR $TMPFILE
op create item "secure note" notesPlain="$(<$TMPFILE)" --title "$TITLE" $OPTS > $TMPFILE
UUID=$(jq -r .uuid < $TMPFILE)
echo "UUID: $UUID, TITLE: $TITLE"
;;
list|ls)
op list items $OPTS | jq -r '.[]|[.uuid,.overview.title]|@tsv'
;;
print|cat)
shift
UUID="$1"
op get item "$UUID" --fields notesPlain $OPTS
echo
;;
less|more)
shift
UUID="$1"
op get item "$UUID" --fields notesPlain $OPTS | less
;;
edit)
shift
UUID="$1"
op get item "$UUID" --fields notesPlain $OPTS >> $TMPFILE
md5sum $TMPFILE > $TMPFILE.md5
$EDITOR $TMPFILE
if md5sum -c --quiet $TMPFILE.md5 >/dev/null 2>&1; then
echo "(file not changed)"
else
op edit item "$UUID" notesPlain="$(<$TMPFILE)" $OPTS
fi
;;
delete|rm)
shift
UUID="$1"
op delete item "$UUID" $OPTS
;;
*)
NAME=$(basename $0)
cat <<EOF
Usage: $NAME [new|ls|cat|less|edit]
new TITLE
ls (returns UUID and TITLE)
cat UUID
less UUID
edit UUID
rm UUID
EOF
;;
esac
rm -f $TMPFILE $TMPFILE.md5
exit 0
Isekai: 1.14
“Angel.”
She jerked in surprise, then relaxed in my arms. “It’s… not entirely appropriate. Are you sure?”
“It was either that or Anchor.”
She laughed and pulled away slightly, staring at me with those older-than-she-looks eyes, understanding what I wasn’t saying. A tiny smile grew into a big one, and we finally met.
“Hello, Jack; I’m Angel. My name is Angel.”
“Hi, Angel. How do you feel about eating bugs?”
“Bugs?”
“Beetles and crayfish, mostly. Sorry, I’ve been away for a while, so the larder’s bare, and I usually have terrible luck catching rabbits.”
“This is a terrible resort and I shall be leaving a scathing review.”
Isekai: 1.13
I hugged her. She needed it.
She clung to me fiercely, and something shifted inside. She wasn’t the wrong redhead any more, not an underage replacement for the one I’d spent so much time wanting to screw or strangle or both. Suddenly I hated there, whatever it was, and whoever had made her live nameless and afraid. I wanted to destroy what had hurt her, protect her from being hurt again, and…
Huh. I wanted to be a hero. For the first time, maybe really the first time, it wasn’t about me.
Ji, ta, shizen. A phrase that mattered to my cranky old sensei, that I’d just memorized to keep him teaching me new things. Self, others, nature. Caring about more than yourself. Caring for more than yourself.
Turns out I’d been alone long before I got here.
Note: not Kaiso
Mega Moos
Long Since Begun, The Clone Wars Have
On the left are two Nespresso-branded capsules (Capriccio and Tokyo Vivalto Lungo). In the middle, you can see good third-party pods (Peet’s Crema Scura and Illy Classico Espresso); slightly different construction at the base, but dimensionally identical to the real thing and completely compatible, including recyclability.
On the right, two plastic clone pods. In front, Gevalia Luminous, which is extremely mild compared to, well, anything else I’ve tried; real espresso lovers seem to describe it as weak, pathetic instant coffee. Unlike the above, it’s not even worth trying it in the larger “lungo” pour, even for someone like me who likes his coffee tarted up in French lingerie and four-inch heels. Pity, really, because I like their k-cups and bagged coffee.
Back right is a thing of pure evil, the Target house brand “Archer Farms”. Where the Gevalia pod will put some of the coffee into your drip tray and some of the grounds into your cup, this nasty thing barely functions at all, making my Essenza Mini strain to push water through it, with the lights flashing in warning, and delivering maybe half the volume of coffee. Safeway’s house brand shows a picture of the same kind of cheesy plastic/foil pod, so I would never try those, either.
I’m going to cut open the remaining Gevalia and Target pods to see how the contents work in my Aeropress. The grind is likely too fine for easy pressing, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the coffee, just the pods.
(Gevalia markets their pods as compostable, but apparently they mean professionally, don’t-try-this-at-home compostable)
Carnation half-n-half tubs
How do they manage to keep customers with a 5% failure rate? I’m shaking each tub as I pull them out of the box, to make sure they’re still liquid. I’ve never had a failed Mini-Moo.
I’ll have to see if someone else sells real half-and-half creamers. You have to read the labels, since many will prominently claim to be “half-and-half” but contain no actual dairy products. “Half what and half what?”
Costco sells a different brand through their business centers, but doesn’t seem to stock it in warehouses. costco.com stocks Mini-Moos, and claims they may be available in warehouses; I’ve never seen them there.
I could also just buy actual pint containers of half-and-half while California remains under Corona-chan Quarantine, but I like the shelf life and portion control of the little tubs.
No shit, Pixiv…
I think we’d all figured this one out.
The real surprise is that only 60% of the recommended images were by Houtengeki (NSFW).
Isekai: 1.12
I’d thought about this a lot over the years. “The three weeks?”
“Yeah. It’s not like there are rules, but she’s not stupid. She must have snagged you on the right day, then went back to set you up the night before, and somehow missed. Like something changed between A and B, or from your viewpoint B and A, and it threw off her aim.”
I tried to wrap my head around the idea that she’d slept with me before I slept with her, but found myself more focused on the girl beside me. “You’re not really twelve, are you?”
“Ten, technically; we’re early bloomers. But we don’t really change when we’re there.”
She shivered a bit as she said that, and I caught the implication: she’d been ten years old for a very long time, in a place she was glad to be away from. There was a lot more I wanted to ask her, but I changed the subject to try to lighten the mood.
“I’m Jack, by the way. And you’re…?”
She shrank inside her furs, suddenly looking lost and very, very young, and in a tear-stained whisper I could barely hear, begged, “please… give me a name”.
Well, that hadn’t worked.
Ranting On Writing On Notes
(I’ve moved all these asides after the jump, so the series pages flow better)
Dear Amazon,
Sunday, 6:40 PM
Amazon: “Unfortunately, USPS ran into an issue when attempting your delivery.”
J: “Yeah, the issue was they didn’t attempt to deliver.”
A: “They will try again.”
J: “…when the package actually gets loaded onto a delivery truck.”
It’s not like I really needed hinoki saké cups tonight, or tomorrow night, or any time before Covidiocy eases up and my sister comes out to visit, but I continue to find it adorable that Amazon pretends that USPS has predictable delivery dates that are compatible with Prime.
Related,
The giant case of Carnation half-n-half single-serving tubs arrived, and I can’t blame Amazon for the fact that a non-zero percentage of them are dried out. There’s no sign of rough handling, and the expiration date is a good four months out, but out of the first ~25 tubs I pulled out of the box, 3 were either completely or partially dried out. My guess is very small punctures or slight sealing failures, since the interior of the box doesn’t look like an AirBnB that got used for a porn video.
And I’ve settled on calling them Calfs, as an appropriate replacement for Mini-Moos.
Full disclosure: the one and only time I bought Mini Moos on Amazon, the case arrived with maybe a week to spare before the expiration date. Never tried that again.
Monday, 2:15 PM
Bullshit:
As far as Amazon is concerned, this is a completed successful delivery.
I fully expect it to be delivered today, but if it didn’t show up, for any reason, it’d be at least another 48 hours before I could start playing phone tag with USPS and twiddle my thumbs waiting for an offshore Amazon rep to follow the script and credit my account.
Monday, 5:45 PM
As expected, the package was delivered today into my locked mailbox. Also as expected, Amazon still shows it as “held for pickup” at the post office. Sometime tomorrow, I expect they’ll either update that to claim I picked it up, or rewrite the update history to show that it was always delivered to me today.
Isekai: 1.11
Everything started spinning as I unpacked her awkward sentence, and I stared in shock. It was her face. Her voice, her hair, her freckles, her everything-that-was-still-growing.
“You… she… how does that even work?!”
“We’re complicated. I don’t really understand it very well myself, but I think there are about a dozen of us. It varies from time to time, and I’m certain that at least two of the ones I’ve known were the same person at different ages, but I don’t know if they were also her, or me, or…”
She shrugged apologetically. Oddly enough, that gesture gave me the confidence to say, “you’re not her; you’re… more grown up.”
I’d surprised a smile out of her. “Thanks. When I say it in my head, it sounds like wishful thinking, but for what it’s worth, you’ve seen us both from the outside, without all the complications.”
“Can you at least tell me if it was all bullshit? I know this is isn’t the world I’m from, but did I really die there, and am I really supposed to become some kind of hero and save this world?”
She closed her eyes and sighed, and when she opened them again she looked much, much older. “I’m sorry, but yeah, it’s probably true, at least in broad strokes. It’s hard to move between worlds. Moving someone else must have been a lot harder, even with a solid connection, and she wouldn’t have tried something like that without a good reason.”
“And I think she screwed up.”
