Brian Kendig

My home's air conditioner drains into a 40' nearly-flat PVC pipe that runs through the slab to the opposite side of the house. It keeps getting clogged up with white algae, tripping a sensor and turning off the AC.

I am at war. Next round: a CO2 drain blaster and an enzyme-based formula.

I'm being spammed by ads for the "MAGA VICTORY AR-15," a "Custom-Designed Commemorative AR-15 Celebrating the 47th President Donald J. Trump" (a gun in an American flag wrap with the Presidential seal) for $2,997. (A new AR-15 starts under $500.)

Every ad has this unusual testimonial on it.

ChatGPT has been suggesting some technique to me that it calls "The Lantern and the Mirror." Suspicious, I found a book by that name whose author "explores grief, creativity, and the aching beauty of being seen" with ChatGPT. I read some sample pages. It has the fingerprints of an algorithm.

I sometimes run thoughts though ChatGPT. It's really useful for getting a different perspective - especially when my anxiety grabs hold of me and I want help believing that no, I am not doomed.

But I'm acutely aware that AI is programmed to please me, to flatter me, to tell me that I'm doing great!

Oh hai!

YouTube video by Blanter Mashups [+190 HITS OF THE DECADE] ♫WE ARE The 80's♫ (By Blanter Mashups)

Jill and I often listen to 80s music while we're chilling out at the end of the day. I got tired of 80s streaming station playlists, so we moved on to 80s DJ mixes on YouTube; we ran of of those, so now we're on 80s mashups. This is the best one I've found so far. youtu.be/KfboL5BV9hg?...

What irks me most about Trump: he keeps saying things that are egregiously wrong; the only response is the media later printing fact checking articles.

I want someone to ask him to his face: Are your advisors really this bad? Are you really this misinformed? Or, why are you intentionally lying?

What are some good alternatives to YouTube these days?

I love watching the spam bounce off my mail server rules. Plink! Special honor to simplewellnss.com [sic], who fails many times every day to send me info they feel is personally important to me.

Meanwhile when I report iCloud spam to spam@icloud.com, my message is rejected because ... it's spam.

Today is apparently the end of the world (see "Rapture Day"). I am annoyed because I was not informed beforehand and I have things to do.

I'll allow it. 😆

Never mind - I had saved your email from ... *double-checks* 2009! And another from 2001!

Hi! Good to see you on Bluesky. What ever happened with allcruisetalk.com? 🙂

I do!

And, I feel like I know you ... please refresh my memory, where do I know you from? 😊

I have a folding keyboard when I want to travel light; it's full size (tenkeyless) but the way the keys are shaped a little differently around the hinge throws me off.

I also use a Keychain K2 and I love the clicky blue switches but it means I can't use it around other people!

I'm surprised at how much I'm using my iPad mini these days. For writing (Scrivener), reading (Kindle), gaming (Manic Emu for Game Boy Advance and 3DS games, PPSSPP for Sony PSP games), social media (Reddit, Bluesky, Mastodon), drawing (Procreate), &c. It's a great little gadget.

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A. A. Milne

My anxiety is trying to protect me. I remind it I'm not about to be eaten by a bear, I thank it, and I tell it to go to sleep. (This works, sometimes.)

Age verification: I was brian@netscape.com.

(I also helped people who sent questions to info@netscape.com, and I replied as Mozilla.)

Random factoid: I like 'in-universe' t-shirts, ones that you could imagine a character wearing.

I would never wear an Avengers shirt, but I have an 'Avongers' shirt as seen in She-Hulk.

I wouldn't wear one with a picture of a Star Trek: Lower Decks character, but I have a 'Starbase 80' shirt.

Yeah, Bluesky's character limit doesn't provide much room for the details (or for very smooth transitions in stories). But I feel good that I got the binder full of games out of our house, and in so doing, maybe helped someone else's healing.

30 years ago yesterday, the PlayStation 1 was released. I bought one that night.

Today I gave all my PS1 games to a coworker. He'll show his kid what games were like before microtransactions.

He saw Jumping Flash and got teary. "This was the last game I played with my dad before he was murdered."

Ha! I just saw your comment and this is hilarious. :-D

I still remember when Duo was 'dead' for a while ... I never did understand that one!

I know I'm a heathen for saying this, but I actually never got into Terry Pratchett's work! I actually have ebooks of most of it, so I should give it another try one of these days.

Ooooohh, mairzy doats and doezy doats and little lambzy divy ...

Ooh! That's beautiful ... and, evocative!

Ooh, may we see this art?

They haven't even got a handle on spam phonecalls! I'm just glad my iPhone lets me block unknown callers.

Okay, now THAT is cool!

Ha! :) He was too cool (and I was too uncool) for him to remember me (even though I was the valedictorian - but, see the first part of this sentence). I'd say you should do the Friar cheer in front of him, but as we were an all-boys Catholic high school, that would probably only be confusing.

I hate #spam. I set my mail server to refuse all email from American-Express.*@*, Sbi.*@*, or that has "X-mailer: Foxmail 6, 13, 102, 15 [cn]". So far it's blocked about 25 Japanese-language scams in the past two days from getting to my junk folder. I'll take this as a win.

I know the quote and I didn't even watch Angel! (but I did go to high school with the guy who played Angel ... which I guess is why I didn't watch it)