dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
[personal profile] dialecticdreamer
Traveling Encounter
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1774
[End of March 179-]


:: Laszlo sets out on his planned trip toward the orphanage in Cluj-Napau. Part of the “Lost Son” story arc in the Frankenstein’s Family universe. ::




Three days of good weather left Laszlo nearly ebullient as he set up camp for supper. Just as he set a pot of water to boil, however, a gust of bitter wind dragged dull gray clouds toward the puffy white ones. By the time his vegetables were diced and ready for the pot, half the white clouds had been absorbed into the roiling stormfront.

The first crash of thunder brought a stamping, trammeling crowd of raindrops, fat and cold. Laszlo groaned, but collected his oilcloth cloak long enough to reposition the wagon and set up the awning rolled on one side. Only a little damp beneath the cloak, he resumed cooking his dinner while Boabe stood nearby, nibbling playfully on a bit of Măr’s mane. The gelding ignored the whole situation placidly, hardly noticing the fat raindrops dampening his back.
Read more... )

Playlist

Aug. 22nd, 2025 04:38 pm
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

A few months ago I heard a love song and thought "this captures how I feel about ice hockey" and thus was a playlist born:

three-plus years in love (with hockey)

Additional suggestions always welcome :-)

full list, with exemplar lyrics )

(previous playlists, titles hopefully self-explanatory:

first game feels
second season:stepping up

I have completely normal feelings about this sport.)

oursin: My photograph of Praire Buoy sculpture, Meadowbrook Park, Urbana, overwritten with Urgent, Phallic Look (urgent phallic)
[personal profile] oursin

Or maybe not.

Only over the past day or two there have been various things on listservs and social media relating to research I have done and published (and not just my research, much lamented Canadian historian in the same area's work) and I realise that this was Back in the Day and maybe it has fallen off the radar.

But how is this thing that this thing is that - I suppose this comes with working in a particularly niche area - that people are not aware of the Horrible Hystorie of the Heinous Synne of Onan?

I am almost tempted to go forth and offer a conference paper WOT.

I'm not sure I have anything in the way of startling new research to offer but a lot of the same anxieties have been popping up again around Precious Bodily Fluids etc.

On another paw somebody was advance-mentioning a book they have coming out and that made me think, though it's not directly related, that there's a piece of research I keep meaning to get back to that's a similar sort of story.

Meanwhile there is something a bit weird going on, I fear, with conference I have been invited to speak at next month, having had rather cryptic message from person who was liaising with me. Shall get on with book reviewing before investing any more energy in paper-prep.

matt_zimmer: (Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse)
[personal profile] matt_zimmer
Gilda And Meek

Brief Synopsis of The Terran Wars added! New section where I chart my progress added! Big night last night!

Check it!

https://gildaandmeekandtheuniverse.blogspot.com/2020/02/welcome-to-gilda-and-meek-and-un-iverse.html

(no subject)

Aug. 22nd, 2025 09:48 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] elisem!
dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
[personal profile] dialecticdreamer
First Steps on a New Road
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1754
[End of March 179-]


:: Laszlo sets out on his planned trip toward the orphanage in Cluj-Napau. Part of the “Lost Son” story arc in the Frankenstein’s Family universe. ::




Golden light draped over the tops of the trees as Laszlo double checked the latches on every drawer and cabinet. He dusted his hands as he inspected the interior of the vardo again, then put his gloves back on. The sound of a single set of footsteps made him hurry toward the door.

Kálmán walked steadily toward the house and vardo, smiling faintly. When he spotted Laszlo, he raised a hand to wave, and his smile widened. “Good morning!”

Laszlo waved back. “Morning! What brings you up this early?”
Read more... )
oursin: Illustration from the Kipling story: mongoose on desk with inkwell and papers (mongoose)
[personal profile] oursin

A few days ago Ask A Manager posted stories of co-workers overstepping their expertise.

And I guess this is not quite the same thing but I had a massive flashback to That Morning of Hours I Will Never Get Back when the whole library staff had a session with an outside consultant.

I am honestly not sure what the rationale was for having us give up an entire morning of our precious closed period - during which we did all - well, seldom actually all, but as many as we could manage - of those essential backroom housekeeping tasks which cannot be undertaken when the place has actual readers coming in and USING THE COLLECTIONS dammit.

Possibly we had either just undergone, or were just about to undergo, one of the restructurings of which I saw many during my years there, distinct from the physical relocation upheavals.

But anyway, consultant.

Had consultant been briefed? Had consultant done any due diligence about what sort of institution this was?

Okay, did know it was a LIBRARY.

Had not the slightest apprehension that this was a world-renowned RESEARCH collection and that, you know, we were not lending out books and stamping them with return dates (I am not sure that this practice, by the date in question, even pertained in public libraries).

We were sitting there cringeing and wincing, wondering when it would all be over.

Were we not very restrained by not going, in huge chorus, in the manner he would doubtless have anticipated we learnt as part of our professional training, SSSSSHHHHHHHHHUUUUUUSSSSHHHHHH!!!!?

(no subject)

Aug. 21st, 2025 11:27 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly


********************************


Read more... )

Phone, again [me, tech]

Aug. 21st, 2025 05:10 am
siderea: (Default)
[personal profile] siderea
Whelp, it looks like I'm in the market for a cell phone again.

On Saturday night, I noticed something dangling from the corner of my cell phone, which immediately struck me as odd, as there's no aperture in the protective gel case there for something to get stuck. Well, there's not supposed to be. On further inspection, I discovered the corner of the gel case no longer fit over the corner of the phone, and some random shmutzig had gotten wedged... between the back plate of the phone and the rest of the phone, to which it was no longer attached along the bottom. Pressing it back down didn't work: something in the middle of the phone was causing resistance to closing the phone.

Lo, verily, my phone's battery was pregnant.

Some of you who follow me on the fediverse might be thinking, "Wait, didn't you just replace a phone, the battery of which swelled up?" Lol, yes: late April. That was my work phone. This is my personal phone. Lolsob.

So, being a proper nerd, I went right to iFixit to order myself a battery. Whereupon I was stopped by something that did not bode well. I entered my phone's model information and iFixit, instead of telling me what battery to buy, alerted me that it is not possible to determine what kind of battery my phone took from the outside.

It turns out that the OnePlus 9 G5 can take one of two batteries, and which one a given OnePlus 9 G5 takes can only be determined by putting eyes on the battery which is in it.

Well, okay then: I clicked through the helpful link to read instructions on how to pull the battery on a OnePlus 9 G5. I read along with slow dawning horror at exactly how involved it was and how many tools I would have to buy, and made it to step twelve – "Use a Phillips screwdriver to remove the ten 3.8 mm-long screws securing the motherboard cover. One of the motherboard cover screws is covered by a white water ingress sticker. To unfasten the screw you can puncture the sticker with your screwdriver." – of thirty and decided: fuck this, I will hire a professional.

(I think maybe it was a fortunate thing that I went through the prior fiasco with trying to change the battery on the Nuu B20 5G, first, because it softened me to the idea of maybe I don't have to service all my electronics personally myself.)

Alas, it was late on a Saturday night and all the cell phone repair places around me were closed until Monday.

Fortunately, I had a short day Monday and would be getting out of work around 5:30pm. I called ahead to a place that is open to 7pm to ask if I needed an appointment and whether they did OnePlus phones. There was a bit of a language barrier with the guy who answered the phone, but he said no appointment was necessary and whether they could fix my phone would entail putting eyes on it, and please try to come before 6pm to give them time to fix it before they close.

So after work, Mr B took me there, and we presented the phone. Dude got the back of the phone the rest of the way off the phone with rather more dispatch that I would be have been able to, and pretty quickly discovered that he was in over his head. Credit where it's due – "A man's got to know his limitations" – he promptly backed off, and told me to bring it back tomorrow when the more-expert boss was in.

I'm slightly irritated that we made the unnecessary trip instead of him saying, "Oh, a OnePlus, come tomorrow when our OnePlus expert is in", but it did give me the extra time to do more thorough backing-up. I have never managed to get Android File Transfer to work, nor any a number of alternatives; snapdrop.io would only do single files at a time, not whole directories, and, weirdly, Proton Drive, both app and website, doesn't allow uploading whole directories from Android either.

Finally, I saw a mention that the Android app Solid Explorer "does FTP". I wanted to make a local backup to my Mac, but, fuck it, I have servers, I can run FTP somewhere just to get my files backed up off my phone. Imagine my surprise on opening up the "FTP" option on Solid Explorer and discovering it wasn't an FTP client it was an FTP server. Yes, the easiest way I found to exchange files between my Android phone and my MacBook Pro was to put an FTP server on my phone.

Worked fine. My FTP client on my Mac sucks, but I'll solve that another day. (Does Fetch still exist?)

Mr B and I discussed it and decided he'd bring the phone in the next day, Tuesday, to spare me the hike. He returned with the phone, still with the back off, and the news that they had discovered, as I had, you have to get at the battery to even figure out which battery to order. And that he was told that the battery would be in by 3pm the next day (Wednesday). The only surprising thing here is that they could get the battery that fast.

So, today (Wednesday), after 3pm, Mr B took my phone back for a third visit, and they attempted to install my new battery.

It was the wrong battery.

Hwaet! The saga continues... )

(no subject)

Aug. 21st, 2025 09:04 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] kerrypolka!
dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
[personal profile] dialecticdreamer
Trading Confidences
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1666
[End of March 179-]


:: Vladimir helps Laszlo get his mind and heart aligned before he sets out. Part of the “Lost Son” story arc in the Frankenstein’s Family universe. ::




An hour before sunset, Laszlo picked his way down the still-muddy path, walking on the stones and bits of stick at the edge, and taking his time. Staying clean was worth the extra effort, but one badly placed foot could mean slipping, and having to drag himself to Gregory’s wearing a cloak of cold mud from crown to knee.

Vladimir met him at the intersection of the two paths, holding up a lit lantern that they did not need. Laslzo stepped into a half hug, then brushed past almost without faltering.

The man rubbed at one faun-brown eyebrow, then took a deep breath, and stopped walking. “Am I really setting out to just find some strange child and bring it home to my parents?”
Read more... )

Soooooooo

Aug. 20th, 2025 06:49 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
How does one compose an email to say "I got a job offer that seems just on the cusp of too good to be true, but as you and your company appear to actually exist I thought I should contact you and see if it *is* legit before I delete it"?
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