On details

On May 19, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Spent the last couple of days putting this little thing together:

I took the picture from a couple of different angles and then realized if I was going to give you a picture of the Tantive IV, it really ought to let you see the engines, which are the most iconic part of the ship. And once again, while putting a Lego set together, I found myself musing on why the designers make the decisions they do on certain things, and just how dedicated these crazy bastards are to including Easter eggs. To wit, an earlier, in-progress photo of the front of the ship:

What you don’t see there is a third two-stud stack behind the white and blue one. That one has a white base and a brown top, to go with the one that is gold-on-gold and the one that is blue-on-white. Note where this is in the picture above; it’s completely invisible and covered up by the pieces that attach to those clamps on the side.

Why are those there?

Well, it’s C-3PO, R2-D2 and Princess Leia, of course. Each rendered as two single studs in the right color. And it’s just there to put a little smile on your face as you’re putting the set together, and as a little secret that you know about once the build is finished. The Tantive IV, of course, is the ship that Leia is trying to escape Darth Vader in during the opening moments of A New Hope, and so of course she has to pass the Death Star plans on to the droids.

In other news, as of last night I thought I’d fixed my computer again, only to spend forty fucking minutes trying to get the damn thing to launch Chrome this afternoon so that I could work on writing practice finals for my classes this week. The following all happened:

Apple Music crashed, repeatedly;
Chrome crashed, repeatedly;
One hard restart;
After the restart, my desktop images on my extra monitors were on the wrong monitors (?!?)
My touchpad lost connectivity three times, and had to be turned off and turned back on again;
Audio was coming through the wrong monitor at one point;
Every so often I could move the mouse around but couldn’t click and the haptics on my touchpad were disabled, and every so often I could click on things but not move the mouse;
Attempting to open the systems settings crashed every other open app, then the system settings opened as if nothing had gone wrong;
Probably a few other things.

At this point, I have officially caved and ordered a new screaming fucking beast of a computer that is so much more computer than I need that it’s actually kind of sad. Like, I’ll need to develop a new hobby or go back to gaming on YouTube or something to justify this purchase. Naturally, after dinner, the computer had mysteriously reverted to working just fine, and I’ve been sitting here for just over an hour, writing the two initial practice exams and this blog post with no issues of any kind. I have no idea what the hell is going on, but I’ve had enough of dealing with it.

Not right now god damn it

On May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy5 Comments

I have had my current desktop for just a noodge over five years, and I am starting to think that I might need to replace it sooner rather than later. It is the most insanely aggravating tech problem I have encountered, in that it isn’t one tech problem. Shit just Keeps Going Wrong, and I can’t for the life of me isolate what the problem might be beyond a vague suspicion that my dedication to Apple products is about to bite me in the ass. If this were a home build, I could start replacing parts– I mean, that would be expensive and insane, but I could do it. I could keep replacing bits of the computer until this random fucking series of crashes, application hangups and hardware shutdowns — my trackpad, for God’s sake, keeps shutting down, and it has a physical on/off button– stopped, or I’d managed to create the iMac of Theseus and just gave the fuck up.

The Music app crashes. Chrome crashes. Safari crashes. The monitors are going wonky. The trackpad shuts down randomly. The entire computer keeps hard restarting in the middle of the night and when I first wake it up after a hard crash it takes a good ten minutes before everything starts behaving, and then it’s fine for an unpredictable amount of time– anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days– until it’s not anymore.

I don’t know how to diagnose this. I thought a Safari patch had cleaned it up but that only lasted a few days and now Music is crashing, and there are 65 fucking gigabytes of music on this damn computer, so moving to another one is going to be a huge pain in the ass. Also, just to make it worse, Apple isn’t making 27″ iMacs any longer, so I can either move to a smaller main monitor or a Mac Studio, and those start at two fucking grand before you buy a monitor to go with it. I mean, I can spread that out, and truth be told I can afford it, but I really don’t fucking want to right now. I want to fix this, and normally “fix my computer” is included among my skill sets, but there are enough things going wrong that I’m starting to suspect it’s either the motherboard or the hard drive, and … that’s a new computer, since I can’t replace either.

I mean, I could go back to Windows, but I could also shoot myself in the fucking face and not have to worry about it, and those options are of equal attractiveness right now. I loathe Windows and I’m not interested in going back into that ecosystem when every other piece of tech in the house has a picture of a piece of fruit on it. If Apple was still making 27″ iMacs this wouldn’t be that hard of a decision, because $1600 is a lot more palatable than $2000 plus a monitor. But even if I stuck with the two I have (and remember, I’m running a supervillain lair here)* it’s still $400 more than the iMac I’d probably end up with, which is pushing it.

Anyway, I’m off to spend three hours Googling “everything is wrong with my computer” until it crashes again. Wish me luck.

*Three monitors and a standing desk, and how the fuck is it possible that I can’t find a picture of my desk on this website anywhere? NO way.**

**EDIT: Found one, and added the link.

Mean but true

On April 18, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Music

My favorite moment at my kid’s Spring Concert tonight was realizing I recognized a piece of music they were playing, asking my watch to recognize it basically for no reason at all, and being greeted with an error screen I had never seen before– “No Music Detected.”

No Music Detected being tossed at me during a middle school band concert is a little on the nose for a smartwatch music app, don’t you think?

Back on my bullshit

On January 29, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn life

I’ve jumped back into Duolingo again, trying to regain what little Arabic I had learned on the first run, and … man, the way this software works just isn’t going to do it for me. I know how to learn from books, but software still eludes me; has anyone out there actually had any luck learning a language (use whatever definition you want for “learning”) using software of any kind, whether desktop or phone app or whatever? Particularly when the language in question was written in something other than Latin script? Let me know.

A puzzlement

On November 5, 2023November 5, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking2 Comments

It has been pointed out to me that, since October 22nd, when you click through to read an individual post off of the front page, the text all becomes black and it is very hard to read against the dark background. I cannot for the life of me figure out what has caused this change, nor can I see anywhere where I even have the option to change the font color in this theme absent changing the colors of virtually everything, much less make a change that only effects clickthrough pages or direct links rather than the front page.

Anybody have any idea what might be going on?

(ETA: I’m convinced that despite the black color going back to the 22nd, this phenomenon only started within the last couple of days. I look at posts through direct links all the time, and I didn’t see this until reading the comment about it this morning.)

In which there are 13 days of school left and I am exhausted

On May 8, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching

1:1 devices are the biggest mistake the education industry has made during my career. I’m not elaborating, I’m too tired and I’m still kinda pissed off.

Almost there

On March 4, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy

No pictures yet, because I still have a jangle and a tangle of cords and mess all over everything, and I think at least one piece of wall art still needs to be moved, but I think it’s fair to say that 80% of the work I alluded to in the “Before” post a couple of days ago is done. What’s left isn’t difficult so much as annoying, and I also need to get an adapter that I hadn’t counted on to make something new work.

Yes, I’m being cagey. No, I don’t care. I have to have my fun somehow, Goddammit, and pretending you guys are chewing your nails wondering what I could possibly be doing in my office is what I do for fun.

In the meantime, I am sweaty and tired, and my office is a mess, and I have far too much to do tomorrow. Whee!