Trismegistus

...make a post.

I hit 400 hours of BG3 this afternoon. The game continues to be excellent.

I continue to love how well it simulates IRL D&D. Case in point: the 3+ hours I spent fighting Raphael in the House of Hope yesterday. No save scumming was involved; I did the entire battle in my first(!) try, and it took 3+ hours to do. What a freaking fun battle. So much space for tactics. So much fun.

I'm quickly depleting the number of unfinished major and minor quests in my journal: currently, I have about four of each left. And omg I am already mourning the end of this game. I love it so much, and I don't know what's going to occupy my imagination once I've finished it.

In part to postpone the inevitable, I've already started a replay from one of my earliest saves (approximately 2 hours into my initial playthrough).( Cut for shop talk. )

Non BG3 Items of Suckage:( Read more... )

これで以上です。

I was getting ready to go to bed last night when I heard a sound like water pouring from a tap into a bathtub. It was coming from my microwave.

Needless to say, this is not a sound my microwave typically makes. We unplugged it and pulled it out from the wall. The noise continued. I set about emptying items from the adjoining cupboard while the GC went around the island (the microwave is set into an interior wall) to check out the closet on the other side.

"Did you hear anything?" I asked.

"No," came the reply.

So I went around for a look myself. Not only did I definitely hear the something, but...

( Well. )

これで以上です。

Today began with the GC shaking me gently awake and saying, "It's 6:30; shouldn't you be at work already?"

Yes. Yes I should have.

The rest of the day proceeded according to precedent, with me leaving my lunch on the kitchen counter, my thermos at work, and scrambling to cover for the over 2/3 of the workforce currently sick with covid. (I tested negative again today, but fear my luck is surely running out.)

I returned home after a suitably trying commute to find my building surrounded yet again by fire engines. This time the fire was not so far as anyone knows attributable to Segueway Asshole, but it still took out much of the basement, including the boiler room (no more hot water in the building) and swamp cooler (no more AC in the building). We have since watched the unit temperature creep inexorably up from the comfortable 74 degrees at which we keep it toward parity with today's 96 degrees outdoors. I'd say it's because it's the 13^th, but 13 is usually a lucky number for me.

I also read some stuff.

What I Finished Reading This Week

Exit Strategy – Martha Wells
Written to the standard ( Murderbot template. ) I’ll probably give Fugitive Telemetry a skip but will definitely read Network Effect.


What I Am Currently Reading

White Mare, Red Stallion – Dianna L. Paxson
One of Paxson’s early novels, this published in 1986, at which time the paperback cost $2.95. I purchased it online for slightly less than double the original cover price; the seller neglected to take the $0.99 Goodwill sticker off the front cover before shipping it to me, in a blatant example of poor form.

No Shortcuts – Max Smeets
This is the clear, direct prose in which I wish all nonfiction books were written.

Dracula – Bram Stoker
I mean, good for Jonathan Harker for sticking it out for so long, but had it been me, I would have climbed out of that window on day 2.

The Qabalistic Tarot – Robert Wang
This week I read the sections on the Fives, Sixes, and Knights.


What I’m Reading Next

This week I picked up No Shortcuts by Max Smeets.


これで以上です。

...unfortunately, work continues to be a shitshow. This is largely due to the new cadre of bosses, who were clearly hired on for their commitment to providing seasoned employees with what I will charitably refer to here as a "guidance-rich environment." A bunch said seasoned employees met up this afternoon to take advantage of the unusually warm weather with a group BBQ. Asshattery was discussed, and it was cathartic.

In between work foolishness, I have created a provisional S4S entry, and should have enough time to write a decent letter before the 26^th. But oh my god, there are so. Many. Tags. To choose from.

It's also time for my annual Baldur's Gate II playthrough. But argh. Argh. ARGH. Windows 10 opens the game in a tiny microwindow in the center of the screen and nothing--not changing the screen resolution, changing the DPI settings, editing the LUA file--can make it display properly. At this point I'm at a loss as to what else I can do to get the thing running. Bah.

Luckily, I still have plenty of real life campaigns going on. ( D&Doings )

And finally, Witch Queen tomorrow!


これで以上です。

I had a massage scheduled this weekend with a provider who requires 24 hours’ notice for cancellations on pain of forfeiting the (not inconsiderable) cost of the service.

The provider cancelled it--with a mere six hours notice--the day of, through a peppy voicemail message to the effect of: “Hello, we're calling to cancel. We’re keeping your payment as a credit so you’ll need to reschedule—and we’re booked solid through the end of next week—BYEEE!!” I was not amuse.

The weather being both humid and drizzly, I spent the weekend engaged in book cataloging. Way back in the day, an elementary school teacher I very much looked up to mentioned that she kept a notebook listing every book she ever read. And from that day on, so did I...even after getting my lifetime LibraryThing membership in ‘06.

This weekend I began backing up all the reading dates from said notebooks to LT (having already cataloged everything I’d read and owned when I first got the membership). The notebook I’m working through now has my reading history from August 23, 1994 to August 27, 2001, or 10 days before I left for Japan.

And because I was in an organizational mood, I reorganized many of the bookshelves and made a masterlist of all the language learning materials (written and audio) I have for various languages, with an eye toward systematically working my way through all of them and getting rid of at least some of them.

これで以上です。

So Microsoft's June 9 Windows "security" "update" destroyed the laptop, which now displays nothing save the white arrow cursor on a black screen when powered on. And, of course, since Microsoft helpfully disabled the F8 boot in safe mode option, there's no other way to troubleshoot the problem without being able to log in to reboot in safe mode that way.

So. We have dumped our Xbox Live, Office, and OneDrive subscriptions. Because, fuck forced obsolescence as a way of making us buy subscriptions for machines where we've already purchased permanent licenses. Now off to download the music we've purchased on Play Music before Google charges us to play that, too.


What I Just Finished Reading

Nuthin'. For whatever reason, this was one of those "I want to read something else...that's none of the books on my bookshelf" kinda weeks.


What I Am Currently Reading

In A Dark Wood - Michael Cadnum
Perhaps my favorite retelling of the Robin Hood legend.

The Wicked and the Just – J. Anderson Coats
I have about 1/3 left to go and the dark realism looks set to crescendo.

Making Friends With Alice Dyson - Poppy Nwosu
This one is set to publish in September. So far the writing is light, zippy, and engaging, and the depictions of adolescent social hierarchies and social media are spot on.

The Drunken Botanist – Amy Stewart
This week, I completed Part I (on fermentation and distillation) and read 2/3 of the first section, "Herbs and Spices", from Part II.



What I'm Reading Next

This week I picked up a copy of Mary Robinette Kowal's The Calculating Stars, courtesy of Tor.


これで以上です。

...that many, many, many of the transphobic comrades in arms who share her Big Thoughts^TM on the immutability of sex also hold very specific attitudes about the immorality of:

• single motherhood,
• working mothers,
• women's participation in public spaces,
• social programs, and
• family planning

among others? Setting aside the odiousness of her recent statements for their own sake, it's amazing to me that she's oblivious to the fact, from a completely self-interested standpoint, the people who share these views on sex and gender are not her friends.

To inject some levity into the situation, the current wank at least gave us this from Forbes, whose author seems as upset that HP fans are Interrogating This Text From The Wrong Perspective as he is by Rowling's bullshittery.

Never change, Fandom.

これで以上です。

Yesterday, I received a colorful, oversize coupon mailer from Amazon, promising lots of free money to spend on their website. Only upon opening it did I learn that the promised coupons were contingent upon:
- Selling my car
- Which I have owned for X period of time
- To the dealer from which I'd purchased it.

This is obnoxious on any number of levels:
- The dealer I used presumably sold my information to Amazon, even though I opted out of every "how we share your information" category they allowed me.
- Amazon obtained information about purchases I made with payment method, contact, and other information not linked to anything I've used with my Amazon account (I opt out of their information-sharing categories too), and
- Apparently, bezos & Co.'s almighty algorithms think brightly colored physical mail and a couple dozen bucks are all it'll take to convince me to trade the vehicle I own for another half-decade of debt.

I'm guessing they're also on to the fact that emails from Amazon go straight into my trash folder.

Just, yuck, all around.

これで以上です。

Many of you are probably aware of my deep and abiding love for Natasha Pulley's first novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. So you may be assured that when she announced the title of her second, I popped right over to Amazon to pre-order it so that I might read it as soon as it came out. And by "soon," I mean I wanted this thing waiting for me on my doorstep when I got back from work that day.

But lo, the release day came and went, and the book was nowhere to be seen. Nor was there a shipping notification from Amazon. Then, three days later, I received an email saying my "order has been canceled due to lack of availability."

"Wuh?" I said. "That makes no sense." So I logged into my account to see what was going on, only to discover that Amazon had not merely canceled the order, but purged every record of it from my account...including the "Canceled Orders" page. Had I not maintained their confirmation emails, there would no longer be any record of my having purchased it in the first place.

The cancellation email helpfully suggested that I try repurchasing the book, and helpfully provided a link. To the exact same book I'd ordered months ago, only at double the cost. So I emailed customer service to politely ask what was going on.

They responded that the item was back-ordered. I asked how it could be back-ordered when it was just published and they were selling it on their site right now.

The answer I got was more long-winded than this, but boiled down to: We reconsidered what we said we'd sell it to you for and if you want it, then pay the jacked-up price listed in the link we just sent you.

So I ordered it from Barnes and Noble instead, and while I was at it, transferred about half a grand of monthly utility and insurance payments from my Amazon card to a different card to further express my displeasure. At a 3-4 percent commission fee for each bill, that's a tidy little sum Amazon's just lost for not selling me the item I ordered at the price they initially quoted me.

But seriously, what the everloving fuck, Amazon?

これで以上です。