Thankful Thursday
Oct. 15th, 2026 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearToday I am thankful for...
- My new pillow. Not perfect, but better than what I had. I think -- this is based on only one night with it.
- The World Wide Web. I don't think I've ever put the Web in a gratitude post before. Fish, meet water.
- My new-to-me refurbished Logitech Anywhere MX 2 mouse, which arrived a day or two ago from eBay to replace the one whose scroll wheel stopped working.
- Related, my pretty new Starry Night mouse pad. It's a bit smaller than my old one, so it fits better on my desk.
- My sling bag and (formerly Colleen's) scooter cape, both of which can be put on and taken off without having to move my right arm in ways that hurt my shoulder. NO thanks for whatever is wrong with the latter.
I would be more thankful for sleep if I was getting enough of it.
To my Yuletide Giver --thanks!
Oct. 14th, 2026 01:53 pmtwistedchickThank you for writing a story for me for Yuletide! Getting a new story just for me is the highlight of my season.
Since I don't know what universe we matched on, here are my thoughts on the ones I've chosen: ( behind cut )
Yuletide weirdity
Oct. 14th, 2026 12:53 amtwistedchickSo today, I was looking for False Colors in the bookshelf where it customarily resides.
It wasn't there.
Royal Escape was there.
I have never owned a copy of Royal Escape. I honestly don't like Bonnie Prince Charlie enough to buy it. Yet there it is.
All I can think is that the House Critter (which moves things around, plays with socks and underwear in the dryer, etc) must have swapped it in.
oh well. I think it's time for me to rearrange bookshelves again...
Done Since 2026-10-04
Oct. 11th, 2026 01:54 pmmdlbearI got a few things done, but there are enough unfinished things that it doesn't feel like much. Dentist appointment -- and I have a root canal scheduled for next month. Yay (ironically). Doctor's appointment scheduled for Monday. Both should have been done a month ago. A little bit done on my (US) income tax, but it's due Wednesday. Four short walks.
Annoyance: neither my GP nor my dentist can be bothered to keep their websites up to date. Have I mentioned that I hate making phone calls.
On the gripping hand (literally) my trigger fingers have gotten worse, and so has my right shoulder. The neck pain is comparatively new, but probably associated with the shoulder pain because trapezius. Monday.
Linkies:
- Sad: Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90 | MIT News. More on Thursday.
- Tedious, but you may want to: Turn off Apple Intelligence in macOS 27 - Apple Community
- A man was draining a lagoon for routine work when a 33-foot sea monster emerged from the mud, the most complete fossil of its kind in Britain
- Scientists may have found a “unifying theory” of chronic fatigue | ScienceDaily
- Silly: I met a traveler from an inland state/Who said Two vast and humming racks of steel - both G and I quickly added it to our filk repertoire.
things and stuff
Oct. 9th, 2026 01:04 pmtwistedchickI am doing deepwater running twice a week, an hour each time. I'm gradually increasing the intensity of the exercise; I've gotten some 'float weights' or 'resistance weights' -- foam barbells -- to work with underwater and they are really toning my arms. At this point I'm not losing weight, but it's getting more solid and muscular, not that it shows that much so far. But I can feel a difference. It's also helping with the lymphedema.
On the other hand, ( something that's not easy to accept )
found on Tumblr
Oct. 9th, 2026 01:30 amtwistedchickIf you use a sewing machine to make clothes, pay attention: the big 4 pattern companies, McCall's, Vogue, Butterick and Simplicity, have one corporate owner, and that corporate owner is being sold to a liquidator. Do not throw out your patterns.
Folkwear patterns are separate from this and are not affected. There may be some other small compaies also not affected.
There is also the Commercial Pattern Archive, at the University of Rhode Island, which has 200 years of patterns. However, the search function is a bear and not the friendly variety of bear. I have just spent 15 minutes trying to search for a Vogue four-gore skirt pattern from the very early 1970s and not finding it; the archive showed me a fluffy one from the 1950s, instead of the sleek one that my mother, who could make anything with a sewing machine, used to make me several skirts, both short and long, that I wore for years. It would be nice to be able to make one for my current size, which is no longer size 10 (I was very thin in college). I have no access to the pattern, which was at my parents' house, which was sold 20 years ago.
ETA: Just found this: Simplicity patterns relaunces under employee-owned model. And here is their website. But I still can't find that simple four-gore skirt pattern.
Thankful Thursday
Oct. 8th, 2026 12:54 pmmdlbearToday I am thankful for...
- My heating pad and rice bag. NO thanks at all for the pain in my neck and shoulder which makes them necessary.
- Compression gloves and socks. NO thanks for edema and trigger fingers.
- The life and works of Margaret Hamilton (RIP), arguably the first software engineer. She coined the term "software engineering". NO thanks for her death on Sept. 30, nor for my current, irrelevant, earworm (see Music:).
- Hope -- I'll take what I can get, but I could use a lot more of it right now. Universe, please take note.
- Coffee.
- Recycling.
- Mastodon.
LAST CALL for beta update and inbox page
Oct. 6th, 2026 01:37 am![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceIt's only been... okay, I don't want to think how long.
We are preparing to take the beta update page and the beta inbox out of beta with the next code release. We don't have an exact date yet, but this is your last chance to tell us about problems!
To enable the beta versions: go to Beta Features and enable the "new Create Entries" beta test for the new update page and the "New Inbox Page" for the, well, new inbox page.
If this is your first time using the beta update page: nearly everything on it can be adjusted, moved, or removed to some degree. The upper right side of the update form has a " ⚙️ Rearrange Panels" link.
Not every panel is enabled by default! If you don't see something you're used to finding, look in the disabled panels. While in Rearrange mode, you can enable or disable panels, drag them to whatever position you want, and generally customize it to your heart's content.
Once we push the button and switch to the new update and inbox pages for everyone, we cannot keep the old ones available. We are so close to finishing the decade-long "get rid of the undocumented custom templating language from 1996 that no one else uses" modernization project that's been sapping our collective will to live that we can taste it, and we can't convert the old update page and the updated inbox page is the converted version. This is your last chance to alert us of problems. If you let us know after the switch goes live, we'll still fix it, but we can't guarantee how fast. Prevent future problems and test drive them now!
September 2026 catch-up
Oct. 5th, 2026 03:18 pmtwotoneI'll do something about the giant box of WIPs at some point, I swear. I've got a lot of Sunk Cost Fallacy going on with the in-progress knitting projects, but realistically speaking I'm not going to knit and wear any bulky knits for the foreseeable future, no matter how chilly some of those movie theaters get.
The guest room progress was a little slow for the first half of September, as we went to EPCOT to try out the Ducktales World Showcase interactive adventure/puzzle-solving game before Disney shut down the Disney Play app. And we ran around trying to use up the meal discount vouchers that Daniel got through work last year. And then we had a solid week of shows and socialization:
9/22, Tuesday: Fundraiser for Elder Tails Dog Sanctuary at SAK Comedy Club in Orlando(an evening of improv! Daniel bought some raffle tickets and won a basket with a Star Wars comic and an autographed Princess Jasmine Funko Pop, along with some candy!) and we ran into someone we got to know through their performances on the Starcruiser and at various Disney things!
9/24, Thursday: Stand-up comedy night at The Station, a local sports bar/restaurant - we went to see a performer from the Starcruiser and ran into friends from Starcruiser!
9/25, Friday: Come from Away, at the Orlando Shakes! We went to see this because several Starcruiser performers were in it (also, we were going to see it from the person we ran into at SAK Comedy Club on Tuesday, but she wasn't able to make it)
9/27, Sunday: Friends were visiting WDW for Mickey's Not So Scary Hallowe'en Party, and invited us to visit them at their hotel as they and their kids rested up in preparation for staying up past their bedtime at the party!
9/28, Monday: Single Rider Songbook, a musical/song cycle inspired by the lore behind the Disney Park rides and attractions! We saw this show at the Orlando Fringe Festival in May, and managed to convince the friends we saw on Thursday to join us for the encore/extended version on Monday.
So... busy. We've been busy.
The Summer anime season just wrapped up (top recommendation: Though I Am An Inept Villainess, which is Yet Another Fantasy Story Set In A Fictionalized Chinese Court but it has really charming characters and an engaging body swap/"nice girl navigates court intrigue" plot... second recommendation is probably Jadugaar: A Witch of Mongolia, which is historical fiction about a young enslaved girl who vows vengeance on the Mongol empire that destroyed her peaceful life) and the Fall anime season has started (we're waiting on the dubs for The Apothecary Diaries and Sasaki and Peeps)...
But what I've been enjoying even more than our CrunchyRoll subscription, even more than the DropOut TV shows that I put on while cooking dinner or crafting, is our new-ish nightly tradition of reading Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl to each other. Daniel and I take turns reading a chapter (or more, depending on chapter length) pretty much every night, and we're currently most of the way through the second book, Carl's Doomsday Scenario. It's a lot of fun discussing the book as we go, making predictions and criticisms (generally speaking, if Daniel brings up something, it's inevitably addressed in the text within a few paragraphs) and occasionally questioning each other's voice acting choices. (Daniel is a lot more committed to accents than I am.)
I started up this tradition both because our friend Steve does something similar with his partner Allie, and because I am hoping to curb our tendency to stay up late on our smartphones scrolling Instagram or reading manga. I chose Dungeon Crawler Carl as our subject matter because so many of our friends are fans of the books and audiobooks, and my Instagram feed has been full of Dungeon Crawler Carl content since San Diego Comic Con in August... plus I thought it would be a good idea to have a solid grounding in the books before the live action TV show airs, under the assumption that they'll do that live action adaptation thing of working in material from later books in the first season.
I'm already a little regretful that we won't be able to read to each other while we're at Halcy-Con. From past experience, I'm guessing that we'll be way too tired to do anything but sleep after the convention festivities are done.
PS: The fig trees and pepper plant that I mentioned a month ago arrived... somewhat safely. The fig trees look good, but the pepper plant...
I waffled back and forth on whether to contact Trees.com and say 'hey the pepper plant you sent showed up looking real bad', but decided that I'd remove all of the currently growing fruit and see if the plant bounced back.
(The above photo is all the fruit that was on the plant when it arrived, plus a bunch of basil that I trimmed back).
A month later, the pepper plant has bounced back and is flowering and producing new fruit. Yay! I'm going to make Cowboy candy (Pioneer Woman recipe) once they're ready for harvest.
The calamansi bush has given me maybe half a dozen little citrus fruit, each one smaller than the fingernail on my pinkie. I've been poking around the internet and it sounds like it could take three to four months for the fruit to reach maturity.
Done Since 2026-09-27
Oct. 4th, 2026 11:54 ammdlbearI did get a few things done this week. Most notably, made a dentist appointment. (Obviously I should have done that two years ago, but better late than never, I suppose.) Worked on the GoingSideways post about the eclipse trip, which is going rather slowly, but it is going. Cleared a lot of dead leftovers out of the fridge. Had my hematology appointment on Thursday, where I was told that my anemia was stable enough not to require a biopsy or other intervention. Got my iron supplement increased to 3/week, at my suggestion.
OTOH, failed miserably at getting appointments at my GP. That requires a phone call and, well, ... And my beloved Logitech Anywhere mouse died. Scroll wheel doesn't work. (I have another, but since I'm down to one I can't just leave it in my backpack and forget about it.) (I do have another but it's bluetooth only. I suppose I could give it another try; last time I tried to use a BT mouse -- BT anything, for that matter, it sucked, but I suppose it may have improved.)
On the gripping hand, there some positive things going on out in the world, including the Dutch government switching to Linux. Not that that comes anywhere close to compensating for all the bad stuff, but I'll take whatever hope I can get.
Linkies:
- No More Windows For The Dutch Government, Ze Kiezen Nu Linux | Hackaday
- Scientists discover a bizarre “devil flower” hidden in Thailand -- more on Sunday.
- Abstruse Goose | Turtles not quite all the way down. Rabbit hole warning.
- Orders of magnitude (length) - Wikipedia Rabbit hole warning.
Code pushed -- FYI
Oct. 3rd, 2026 10:20 ammark posting in dw_maintenanceHi all,
I had to push some code live today to fix something, and that brought with it a couple of new things like if you have two-factor authentication (2FA/MFA) enabled, you got automatically logged out and it is now required to log in. If you don't, you can set it up if you want (you don't have to.)
This also means that if you have 2FA enabled, you will not be able to use 3P clients using your username and password anymore. You should be able to use API keys in most cases, but there's some nuance to that (and tbh, I just am not precisely sure what clients anybody even uses.)
Please do comment if you're seeing anything weird, as per usual, and we'll work on it. Thank you!
a few things
Oct. 3rd, 2026 02:20 amtwistedchickGeorgette Heyer -- The Corinthian
Dana Stabenow -- Kate Shugak series
Nancy Springer -- Plumage
Emma Bull -- War for the Oaks
I wasn't sure if Plumage would make the cut -- two of the nominated characters are birds -- but that might make for interesting storytelling.
In other matters, I am now up to doing an hour of deepwater running at one of the county pools twice a week, and starting to feel stronger because of it. I hope eventually it will help me lose a pound or two while getting in shape, but at this point that's not happening because muscle weighs more than fat. The pool is well run and maintained, and oddly enough I'm one of the younger people doing deepwater running (or else some of them appear to be in far worse shape than me, both male and female.) I wear a float belt to stay at the top of the 11 feet of water, but some sit on one or more pool noodles. Apparently sitting astride a pool noodle is something to be ignored, though at times when a man is getting out of the pool with a long blue cylindrical thing protruding from between his legs it's a bit hard not to laugh.
I've watched all of the Fast and the Furious movies I can find (haven't gotten to 8 yet but enjoyed the first 7). Part of the enjoyment, along with the pretty boys and the found family and acceptance of everyone without racial slurs, is watching people who actually know how to shift gears competently on muscle cars. I learned to drive on a '66 Impala 4-on-the-floor with the sweetest gearshift I've ever encountered, and for the last nearly 35 years I have been living where I hear truckers on the Beltway a quarter mile away grinding their gears and mistreating their brakes going around curves. So the movies hit my competence kink straight on.