The amount of microprocessor power available to small electronics is stunning. The little chip that might be running just your desktop keyboard is capable of emulating the capabilities of the 1984 Apple Macintosh. Designers are busy using that excess power to add cloud, smart, AI, etc features […]

A regular old cup of yogurt is about 80¢ here. You can pay almost double for that and get fancy Greek or Icelandic style. So is the cute little stoneware pot of froofy French yogurt, that is 20% smaller and costs almost 5x as much as the basic stuff, actually worth it?! Yes. 😑 Damnit, yes.

Me standing next to a supercomputer in 2077. Me standing next to a supercomputer on Thursday. The first picture is from CDPR's game "Cyberpunk: 2077". The second picture is from SDF.org's ICM https://icm.museum/blog/?p=15 #cyberpunk #cyberpunk2077 #cassettefuturism #sdf

If you're a retro-tech fan in the #seattle area, this is a GREAT weekend. First, stop by under the big 'R' this Saturday or Sunday to poke at some old tech. Similar to #vcf, the Interim Computer Festival is a neat little show of all kinds of vintage tech from my friends. Details at […]

Quick shout-out to Obsolescence Guaranteed who makes a series of working 1:3 scale mainframe computers from the 1960s. Last night I and another guest of SDF's ICM were sort of failing to appreciate the actual, real, full-sized models. The flippy switches on the real ones were mushy and simply […]

My doctor says I am "alert, well developed, well nourished, cooperative, and in no apparent distress". I don't have the heart to tell her that actually I am *losing my shit* keeping my distress hidden.

Old games suck. Sorry. They are fun to show kids, though. There's some joy in sharing the bad-old-days with kids. "When I was your age" stories don't have to be bitter. A few years back we played old 2600 games on a Dreamcast emulator with a friend's son. A lot of the experience was […]

My "Name That Ware" entry just went up at Bunnie Studios! If you are a fan of retro electronics and old computer stuff, go check out https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2025/name-that-ware-september-2025/ and post your guesses about that this big lump of chips might be.

I'm not allowed to whip out my phone while driving, so I hope this word-image will suffice: A crowd of *dozens* of #furries crowding the sidewalk of the #seattle waterfront, trying to get onto a lonely double-decker tour bus that is already packed with other big fluffy animals waving from the […]

Uh oh.

[us pol] Where's my horse in the H1B visa thing? My life has been enriched -- even saved -- by H1B visa holders. You know that H1B includes doctors, right? Also supermodels, for some reason, but I'm willing to say they've enriched my life a bit, too. I lost my job to foreign workers who don't […]

Weirdly threatening status message, FedEx.

Unlike most western homes, my laundry facilities are in my kitchen. Because of this, the top of the washer often gets used when preparing meals and when putting away groceries after a trip to the store. This is why there's a growing list of food items that I've accidentally laundered. I can now […]

I went to go change my Plex password after they followed up their last email of "hey you should pull updates on your server...for reasons" with a second email that said, "yeah, we lost your data." When I checked my notes, I saw the last time I spun a password was in 2022 for their LAST breach […]

Hahahaha. Asus is a laptop company that also makes phones. So when they go to ship a phone, this is how it is packaged. Banana for scale. That's 225g of phone and 781g of packaging. The phone is large, yes, but I think that's about 20 liters of box. I'm not […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

I dunno, I just want right and wrong to matter again.

I'm not crazy, right? That's a Gatorade bottle full of salad dressing, isn't it? This is giving me some horrific intrusive thoughts.

I've been watching a bunch of cozy anime of various types recently and I've been wanting to try omurice. There's the platonic ideal or omurice, and then there's what I was served. Don't get me wrong, it was very good and I enjoyed it. But I suspect I still […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

My robot vacuum got into an ant bait station and smeared boric acid syrup all over the kitchen floor. Ugh. I resisted cleaning it up, figuring that sugar-ants being what they are, they would eventually clean up the mess for me. It's totally working, and I feel highly intelligent right now. 😁

Kiddo: why do you put the full year with "20" at the front when you sign the school forms? Me: _thousand-yard Y2K stare_

Parking Squid by Seattle area artist Susan Robb is a functional bike rack, but I think many riders are rightly nervous about chaining their bikes to a piece of art. I think this might be the first time I've seen it used. #seattle

Don't tell anyone, but I think I've found the future of AI. I'm touring the @icm and they've got literal tons of important computer history hiding in a nondescript industrial park a couple hundred yards from where MS DOS was born.

I know that failing flash is a thing; I was here for the early struggles before the idea of wear-leveling was a thing. While I know the laws of physics are unforgiving, I had at least expected modern systems to notice this happening. But this machine was […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

If you're unaware, there's this whole subculture of entertainers who puppet characters on streaming platforms. One of the big companies appears to have done a little fraud and appears to be suffering a collapse because of it. Okay, caught up? No? Me either. So I went looking for a bit more info […]

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting some joy and flattery out of my employer hiring FOUR people to replace me, and I still don't think they're going to make it. But if I'm honest it is less credit to me and more evidence that my employer still has no idea what I do. Welp, the F.A. step […]

If you have ever telnetted to quake.think.org, we should compare colonoscopies.

NIST says they've built the most accurate clock in the world. But, how could you tell without an even more accurate clock to check it against? Metrology makes my head explode.

Lay's Dill Pickle Potato Chips are an abomination. They have a zippy flavor that I'm unable to control myself around. If I'm good, I can make a bag last two days. I'm not always good. Then, for the next week, the skin of my lips and inside my cheeks will slough off. It isn't painful, but it is […]

I said NO CILANTRO you goddamned ASSHOLES!!

Lots of talk about how failed notifications killed people in the Texas floods. "All official messaging from officials about WX conditions in Texas went out to Facebook and X only." @iliana and I were just talking about this a few days ago. All Hazards Radio exists, but reception is non-trivial […]

"Flonase", the allergy drug in the green-capped nasal spray, smells like summers on my dad's sail boat. Should I take a dose of a powerful drug that I don't need just to get a hit of nostalgia? No, probably not. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't considering it.

The word "JUST" is a four-letter word. If it is crossing your lips, you're probably about to be rude and insensitive as you trivialize someone else's problems. Ex: "I can't make bread." "You just have to mix four ingredients together." Unhelpful. Insulting. Don't do this. You will be a better […]

Do not allow soup nazis at your salad bar.

For consecutive days, instead of cooking that chicken I had been defrosting in the fridge, I went out to be social with friends. So today, I finally go to turn it into dinner to find I've got a pile of slimy smelly chicken to dispose of. I'm disappointed in myself for the waste of food, but […]

Today I'm pondering the overloading of words, in the conputer-sense of 'overloading'. I recently learned about 'Liquid Glass' sodium silicate, which is apparently a thick, gravy-like adhesive noted for it's high temperature uses. This definition got to me first, so headlines about a computer […]

Playing with bubbles in the park at sunset. There are worse ways to spend the off-hours.

When I say "Good Morning" in my meetings, I'm being passive-aggressive to the offshore team that my company is replacing me with. Anyone need a Linux systems engineer?

Hahahahaha! I think I just found a bug in my electric toothbrush firmware! Don't get too excited though. It isn't one that'll make your head explode or anything. Probably not even worth fixing. It just goes to the wrong state if you give it input at a precise time.

I'm rebuilding a NAS device, a process that is expected to take the whole weekend. The rebuild is set to run as fast as possible, but it slows down when there are other calls on the disk. I just realized that the security camera in front of the house writes to the NAS every time it detects […]

Remember when solari boards (split-flap displays) were all the rage? Did you always want one? Well, now you get one - and it'll even pull in some of the latest tech headlines for you, too. Images don't do my FLAPATRON justice, though - you've gotta hear the […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Did you know that anyone with an appropriate radio can ask some fog horns to turn on even if there's no fog? In case you're in #seattle and wondering why the West Point fog horn is going off right now... West Point Sewage Treatment Plant: Where the POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP Comes From(tm).

American towns are turning into living museums of bungled hedge fund investments. Oh look, that’s where the Sears was. That used to be a Radio Shack. Joanns was in that huge building, and Rite Aid used to be in that vacant storefront too.

"The Haçienda: How Not To Run A Club" by New Order/Joy Division bassist Peter Hook is an important book. It explains why all your favorite bars, clubs, and restaurants fail. Once you read it, you'll spot its lessions everywhere. I own it because it's an […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Did you know that moths can trigger touchscreens? Brightly-lit touchscreens? Waaaaannnnt to touch the screeeeeeeen.

Looking for something that works like Windows Notepad used to: * no styles preserved on paste * no connection to the Internet required (or even possible) * no file recovery -- everything in the window completely gone once the window is closed (on […] [Original post on infosec.exchange]

I'm glad the International Earth Rotation Service is operated from Germany, or Trump and his party would be ruining that, too.

I'm disappointed in @signalapp . Well, actually, not with them. They're doing the right thing, but I wish they didn't need to call attention to Windows DRM to get their way. Screenshots in Android are a minefield because of misapplied DRM restrictions. I can't show my bank a screenshot of a bug […]

There's a pile driver operating a block or two away from here, and the sound echoing down this urban canyon sounds like the first bars of 'The City Sleeps' by MC 900 Ft. Jesus. "Stealing down an ally on a cold dark night..." Kinda putting me in the mood for mayhem.

One of the more annoying things about living alone is that the answers to - "GOD DAMNIT WHO THE HELL DIDN'T CLEAN THE GRILL AFTER USING IT LAST?!" - get pretty repetitive after a while.