marcicat: (cleocatra)
Got logged out of dreamwidth this morning and had to reset my password, which reminded me of talking about the '16 billion accounts revealed' data breach thing yesterday, when my first ridiculous thought was 'oh, I wonder if they have my instagram password!'

(I do NOT have my instagram password. I got myself logged out years ago and couldn't figure out my password, and I'm not sure what email address I used to sign up, and I've never cared enough to really try to get back in. Haven't used insta since!)

(The same thing would absolutely happen with several other accounts if I got logged out. I can't even remember my AO3 password, so I'm just... not logged in on my phone? It's mildly inconvenient, but not inconvenient enough to do the work of fixing it.)

(This would DEFINITELY have happened with tumblr, except they've got some sort of 'we'll send you the magic link email' thing, and I do still have that email address, and thus my tumblr dash lives on.)

ANYWAY, I'm just saying, there's gotta be a legitimate opportunity there in the realm of data recovery.

what?

Jun. 12th, 2025 07:13 am
marcicat: (snowbirds on a line)
*placed an order online

*received an order, but it was not mine -- box was addressed correctly, had the correct pick ticket in it, but none of the items were correct

*attempted to explain situation to an online "live agent" (Yael, if you were not a chatbot, I apologize, but you definitely seemed like a chatbot)

*they want the order back, said I would receive a return label via email, and would ship out my original order (tracking number provided)

*I have not received a return label via email

*the 'reship' confirmation email says I need to return the order within the time specified or be charged full price for all items in the reship

*no time has been specified

*OPTION 1: a return label was not sent, possibly no return is required

*OPTION 2: a return label was issued and has disappeared into the ether

*OPTION 3: neither A nor B, but some secret 3rd option
marcicat: (heart wings)
My phone's been sort of iffy about the charge cord for a while, but in the last week or so it stopped working entirely. BUT! Yesterday I was one of the day's lucky 10,000! [personal profile] starandrea revealed to me the secrets of using a toothpick to clean the phone charge port!

NOTE 1: the internet is Conflicted about whether this is a good idea or not, but my feeling is 'the phone didn't work before and now it does,' so I'm in favor

NOTE 2: it wasn't a big deal to only be able to use the wireless charger, except that the case I put on for this month doesn't work with it, and adding the extra step of 'take case off' every time I wanted to charge my phone definitely tipped the scale against it

NOTE 3: it probably says something that I genuinely just thought the charge port would just stop working after a couple years, and that was a normal thing to expect
marcicat: (badger travel)
Last November, I purchased a car. From a car dealership. Genuinely still boggled that I managed it, but it turns out that car dealerships are extremely motivated to make sales happen, so after five years of *thinking* about buying a new car, once I actually decided to do it, the dealership pushed me through the rest of the steps.

(PS: I was not unwilling to be pushed. It was fine. The salesperson had some cute dog pictures to share.)

But now I face my next DOING THINGS challenge: the maintenance visit. I mostly want to do it, because 1) I'm supposed to get two free visits a year for the first two years and I like free things; and 2) I guess maintenance is important. I know nothing about cars except that I have one, and that for some reason, you're allowed to just drive these massive safety hazards around with barely any training and very little supervision.

Which is to say, cars make me nervous. Doing new things ALSO makes me nervous. But this will be a NEW EXPERIENCE, and once it's done, I'll have had it, and then I'll know if I ever want to do it again!
marcicat: (penguins sliding)
The BIG STEP CHALLENGE begins at work today... I cannot even imagine what this will be like.

[BACKSTORY: the company I work for was purchased by another company years ago, with promises of 'completely separate' (haha), and has slowly been getting integrated ever since. This year we've been granted the (dubious?) privilege of access to the same benefits the other employees get. Including being part of their fitness challenges.]

APPARENTLY the step challenge is a BIG DEAL. We received a presentation about the new benefits that included several VERY SERIOUS references to the step challenges. As in, someone asked if they have to sync their step tracker to the app every day, and the presenter was all, 'no, no, except OF COURSE if it was during a step challenge, and then once a day would be the minimum, because you'd want to make sure you weren't letting down your team.' (That's literally NICER than the presenter was about it.)

The maximum number of steps PER DAY that count towards the challenge is 40,000 STEPS PER PERSON. That is a WILDLY high number of steps. I don't know if I've EVER gotten that many steps in a day. (Maybe when we were walking around at Disney??? LOL I was younger then; that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

WHAT WILL THE NEXT (okay I don't actually know how long the challenge is -- a month, maybe?) SOME AMOUNT OF TIME BRING INTO MY UNIVERSE OF EXPERIENCES??? HOPEFULLY SOME FUNNY STORIES TO SHARE!!!
marcicat: (hug it out)
Okay, so USUALLY I wake up around 6:30 and turn on the radio. But SOMETIMES I sleep in, and today I learned that at 7 am, the radio turns ITSELF ON, but in cd mode?!?!? And then it TURNS ITSELF OFF at 8 am.

This is boggling to me. It is indeed the SAME radio that I had way back in college (and before!), so it is over 20 years old. And I very vaguely recall that in my freshman year of college, I had it set to turn itself on as my morning wake up alarm, because I remember there was a Christmas music cd in it, and I heard the first few seconds every morning before I turned it off with the remote. (TWO ROOMMATES, YIKES.)

And maybe, POSSIBLY the radio remembers that, somehow??? After being unplugged so many times? Why in the world is it turning itself on and off? BOGGLING.
marcicat: (cats at sunrise)
I got an email yesterday from the state rep's mailing list with the subject line "Does your passport expire soon?" and I immediately thought 'DOES my passport expire soon???'

(Note: I've never used my passport. BUT! In a hypothetical future where we went to Iceland for the 2026 total solar eclipse, I'd definitely need it!)

Obviously I could have checked my passport for the date, but here's the thing: it's in the fireproof safe. (With a bar of chocolate, so I definitely considered it!) But the fireproof safe is not sitting in my lap. My computer IS sitting in my lap.

And so, thanks to the miracle of email archives, I found my passport appointment confirmation, dated 2018. So I've got a few more years! (Also, thanks for checking, state rep mailing list, but it turns out I'm all set.)
marcicat: (tron sunrise)
Since the previous news was: microwave that doesn't work, having no microwave at all is indeed an improvement! A very helpful person was paid to uninstall this non-working appliance and remove it yesterday afternoon.

Questions I asked:

*do you want a stepladder? (they assured me that they had their own stepladder in their truck, to which I replied that it was Very Hot outside, and our stepladder was already inside, where it was Relatively Cooler, and this -- somewhat to my surprise -- led to our stepladder being used)

*do you want some help? (they probably did want help, but also probably recognized that it was uncertain whether my help would reduce or increase the chances of the microwave falling on top of the stove; my help was declined, but politely!)

*do you get paid extra if you do a job where there's no AC? (they do not)

*could we hire you to fix our screen door? (they estimated that perhaps even I could fix the screen door, but they said it more politely than that)

*weren't you supposed to charge us the disposal fee for the microwave? (they were; this likely got us much more goodwill than my offer of help, or even the use of our stepladder)

ANYWAY, I think we were all reminded that I am Extremely Awkward when talking with human beings, but we also learned that our microwave was vented (who knew?), and then I got reminded of the True Powers of magic erasers when I used one on the tiles that we could never reach before when the microwave was installed. Call that a day of learning!
marcicat: (superhero rainbow shirt)
The Archive will be down for about 10 hours of maintenance between 07:00 UTC and 17:00 UTC on July 1 (check what time that is for you). This will allow us to prepare our search database for a software update. Please follow [profile] ao3_status on Twitter or ao3org on Tumblr for updates.

AO3, nooooooooooooo!

(I mean, software updates are good! Thanks for doing that! Also we have plenty of warning, so I'll just go, uh, download some things real quick? Not that I'd be doing any reading during work hours, haha, that doesn't sound like me at all.)

SUCCESS

Jun. 17th, 2024 11:42 am
marcicat: (rainbow giraffes)
We are now the proud owners of a FULLY INSTALLED CEILING FAN! (This may seem like a small thing, but it was not a small thing. Well, the fan itself is pretty small.)

This epic adventure required RESEARCH! It required TALKING ON THE PHONE! (More than once, even! Multiple phone calls!) It required a NOT INSIGNIFICANT investment of time and money!

But victory is now ours! One (1) day before the Big Heat Wave (aka we're being alerted with an EXCESSIVE HEAT ADVISORY, which is something I would much prefer to avoid, thanks), the electrician has come through for us and arrived to install the fan.

Also a new light in the laundry area. With a pull cord!

So now we have the following powers:

*The fan light and the laundry room light can be operated separately. (They are on the same light switch, why??? The pull cord for the light and the fan remote resolve this issue nicely, with no need for rewiring.)

*The fan will, presumably, help move air through the upstairs. (It will certainly do more than the not-a-fan that was there before.) How much help this provides is yet to be seen, but I am VERY HAPPY to do this science.

*The fan has a colored LED backlight that can be set to rotate through colors. It's a party!
marcicat: (dreamsheep rainbow)
I did, eventually, sort of, make it through all the relevant(?) pages of my AO3 history looking for the particular Star Wars fic scene I remembered. I did not find it. The most likely reasons for this include:

*I got bored of looking and mostly just skimmed a bunch of the pages

*The scene was probably a very small part of a much larger fic, possibly one that didn't catch my eye as a 'yeah I'd like to re-read this'

So I've moved on to a more general 'just read a bunch of stuff and maybe it will pop up again on its own.' WHO KNOWS?!?!? It could work!
marcicat: (cookies)
We had an electrician here last week (okay, there were two of them, but that looked weird when I wrote it out -- it was one visit, with two people) and one of the things we asked about was putting a ceiling fan in our upstairs hallway.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, they 'didn't love' the idea. We have low(ish) ceilings, and it's not a huge space. 'Maybe if it was an enclosed ceiling fan,' they said, and I nodded as if I had any idea what they were talking about.

But APPARENTLY that is a thing! Enclosed ceiling fans -- small, low profile, designed to fit in small spaces with low ceilings. I NEVER KNEW. Anyway, I'm going to try to get them to confirm they'll install the one we're looking at, and then we'll see how well it works. (I mean, I feel pretty confident in saying it will move more air than not having a ceiling fan at all, which is the current situation. So hopefully improvement is guaranteed!)
marcicat: (penguin)
Things I learned yesterday:

*When the battery is replaced in a car, it often causes the car alarm to go off

*Sometimes the car alarm won't STOP going off

*There are a surprising (read: distressing) number of reasons this might happen

*Sometimes the reason a key fob won't work isn't because the battery in the key needs to be replaced, but because the car battery is not charged enough (I guess this makes sense???)

*There are MANY suggested fixes for getting the alarm to stop going off, all of which are extremely hard to think through while there is, you know, a car alarm going off

*In my car specifically, it turns out that inside the change drawer to the left of the steering wheel, there is BOTH a small switch AND a small button

*The garage THINKS that "fiddling around" with those is what eventually stopped the alarm, and recommended I do the same "if this happens again"

*IS IT GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN?!?!?!?

*In conclusion: I believe my car may be possessed by gremlins

BRILLIANT

Jan. 14th, 2024 08:20 am
marcicat: (polar bear)
I'll admit it: I enjoy facebook. There's a crochet group I enjoy following, and a couple town groups that have some surprisingly useful nuggets amidst the 'what was that noise?' and 'could everyone please stop asking about that noise' posts. (PS: the noise was fireworks.)

BUT! I don't enjoy getting myself stuck in a never-ending scroll. And no matter how many times I told myself 'I'm only going to scroll for five minutes, then I'm leaving,' it rarely actually worked. (PS: why does facebook think I'm interested in tiny houses? I'm not interested, facebook. Could you show me practical storage solutions for regular-sized houses instead?)

THEN! I finally did the thing I kept thinking I should do, which was to find a firefox extension that would close the tab for me. Tab Sleep Timer Fix by Mitch Crane has been ideal. When I open facebook, I open up the extension too, and set it for a few minutes. When the timer runs out, the tab closes.

I LOVE IT. When I'm scrolling, the activation energy required to keep scrolling is soooooo tiny compared to the energy required to stop scrolling and close the tab. (What if the next post is a cute cat picture??? Maybe I should just check...) But when the tab closes on its own, the energy required to open it up again feels like a lot compared to doing almost anything else.

None of my 2024 resolutions were 'improve my online experience,' and yet it has indeed been improved. Thanks, Tab Sleep Timer Fix by Mitch Crane!
marcicat: (loaf cat)
How the car repair experience went yesterday:

Me, dropping the car off as planned: "Great, thanks, when can I call about picking it up?"

Garage: "Give us a call at 3:30."

hahahahahahaha

*called at 3:30, was told they were still working on it and they would call me back in 45 minutes, or if I didn't hear from them, I should call back at 4:30

*called at 4:30, was told they were "almost done" and I could show up at 5:15 to pick it up

*arrived at 5:15 to see my car still up on the lift, was told "10 or 15 minutes" and it would be done

*actual completion time was about 6

BUT THERE IS GOOD NEWS!!!

1. All will be pleased to know that I fed the cat BEFORE leaving for the garage, so she was not waiting for her supper at the same time I was waiting for my car.

2. My car has snow tires AND an inspection sticker AND they repaired (yet again!) the exhaust system that they predicted would be a problem way back in 2021.

YAY! All in all a good outcome.
marcicat: (cat in snowy window)
*woke up this morning, no internet (well, small internet on phone: yes! big internet on computer: no!)

*check app that's supposed to say what's wrong with internet: app says it needs update

*update app: app says internet is fine, and I should connect devices so they can use it

*devices say no internet network exists to connect to

*turn off devices

*turn on devices

*no internet

*cry a little

*app says if I'm REALLY SURE, I can restart my connection, but it could take TWELVE MINUTES

*I'm really sure

*app says IN THAT CASE, go unplug the device, wait 30 seconds, and plug it back in; maybe it will work after that!

*me: flashbacks to sixth grade and having the Encarta game freeze the computer while I was supposed to be researching: oooookay

*while waiting for the device to turn back into a good robot (the light goes from red to yellow to green to blue; shoutout to Star Trek Lower Decks!), use small internet to look up 'xfinity says I'm connected'

*learn that "Power Cycling" is the fancy name for 'turn it off and turn it back on'

*internet is restored, hallelujah!
marcicat: (penguin)
Backstory:
I have a new-ish coworker who truly seems to believe that phone calls are better than emails or texting. And while I personally disagree, they are certainly not alone in the company.

Current Story:
This week I found myself involved in getting information from an outside company at the request of this coworker. (I emailed, naturally. Attachments were involved; it was all very standard.) After a small amount of back and forth, I offered to email the company regarding the clarifications requested. "I'm just going to call them," my coworker declared confidently. Obviously, I wished them the best, and hoped that was the last I'd hear about it.

The Inevitable Conclusion:
Several hours later, coworker calls me again. "I tried to call them," coworker explains. "I got voicemail!" (sounding shocked) "When they called back, they said it would be better to email them!" (moving on to scandalized)

Yep, welcome to the world of minions, new-ish coworker. You don't need to build a relationship or make a deal, you just need to be able to clearly communicate information in writing, because it's got at least three more layers of minions to get through after you, and none of them want to be blamed for not having your exact request to refer back to.
marcicat: (kitteh hugz)
Me: oh wow, somehow I never realized that you can tap the humidity measure on the weather app and see the predicted humidity over the next week, just like with the temperature! neat! what's it going to be like? nicer???

Me: [views predicted humidity]

Me: ...

Still Me: ...

Me: okay, you know what, lil' bit of regret about doing that, because I think I might have preferred just imagining the future
marcicat: kismet sleeping (kismet sleeping)
On the list of 'things this month neither needed nor was expected to include': tornado warnings. I genuinely didn't even know that my phone would make a special noise for emergency weather alerts, and now I've heard it twice in one day.

(Luckily we have not seen any actual tornadoes thus far, nor do we think we are at major risk of flooding. Still keeping our fingers crossed.)
marcicat: (cat says hi)
Things to do while A03 is down:

*make listicle posts about what to do while A03 is down

*the aforementioned weeping, gnashing of teeth, etc

*moment of thanks for the fact that it's not *usually* down

*be extra careful not to close any fics you might happen to have already open in tabs that you were saving for later -- their time has come!

*I guess grocery shopping? and then work?

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marcicat: purple (Default)
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