Notices by Patrick Perdue (borrisinabox@mindly.social)

While I wait for my new laptop power supply to come, I have just tried powering it from an external battery bank, which I have done before. Apparently, if the laptop battery is dead, it won't power from USB-C. What a stupid design!

@Kaliah @gtbray Do you have a free personal account? Apparently, that tab isn't there for those. Not sure if this means it is on and you can't disable it, or what. It was definitely in my dropbox Pro, so I disabled it.

Oo, is it time to eject my dropbox account now?
That "third party AI" switch has been on everyone's account for who knows how long. I didn't know it was even there until just now.
Holy crap, turn that off, everybody!
On web, go to account > settings > then to the third party AI tab, and flip the switch.
Edit:
Apparently, it is switched off in places that actually care, or pretend to care about privacy more than North America does.

Running over a MicroUSB cable with my chair, squishing those little springy clips on the end, has made me really appreciate USB C. Too bad I still have lots of stuff using MicroUSB.

When I was a kid, my father had a mechanical stopwatch that made the coolest springy ticky noise.
It's still around, though he hasn't actually used it since almost as long as I've been alive.
I can no longer hear it without lots of amplification, so I'm going to try recording it in the quietest environment I can create with the best preamps and microphones I have for no other reason than ... well, I'm not sure, really.

Just for fun, here's a short clip, heavily amplified, of a cheap Russian-made mechanical watch, recorded with a Rode NT1A, which is extremely sensitive. The one I want to record is more interesting.

One problem I always have, when explaining a concept to someone, is getting all the words right except for one critical thing that undermines everything. It can sometimes just be a single word.
This is why I hate explaining things.

OK, this is my self-reminder to not edit mentions in Tweesecake. It seems to drop the domains of mentioned users, which causes a default to my instance, meaning all the mentions break spectacularly.
@app

According to Siri, Sam Altman is 148 years old.

Yeah, that tracks.

In 2024, Social Security beneficiaries are receiving a Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) in the form of a 3.2% increase.
Every time something like this happens, I feel I must post this silly thing I did in 2009.

I woke up today. This was a mistake.

I had a clock that looked exactly like a Cobolt talking clock from the late 90s, but it had eSpeak built-in, and for some reason, randomly spoke ads for a dial-up ISP, called Dial-up Now. Ironically, it got the text for the ads by connecting to a cellular network with a built-in 5g modem.
#WeirdDream

I ended up using a hand-held recorder cranked to the max, aiming it on the floor like a broom, until I found it wedged in a corner in a box behind some other boxes.
Great fun.
I couldn't hear the Airpod through the recorder with headphones on, so I had to put the headphones over the existing Airpod. Even then, it was hard.
Don't be jealous.
For some reason, it didn't cancel out the chirp as heard through headphones via the microphone.
At least it wasn't in the trash can this time.

One of my Airpods fell out of my ear and landed in a really dumb place.
It was still active, so I had to use the other Airpod to hear my phone. My Braille display battery was flat, so no way to use the phone without turning off Bluetooth, which also disables "Find My."
Made the Airpod chirp, but couldn't hear it, even through the other Airpod with all the things maxed out. Why? Because it thinks that little chirp is feedback and cancels it out.

Hey kids...
The countdown is on.
Just 55 days until Christmas...
...
...
...

is over.

My Yamaha Motif XS from 2007 says "Hello. I'm stuck here in this cold, dark storage container. Please use me... I'm so lonely in here..."

While I was gone, one of my wireless access points fell off the wall. Stupid restrictions prevent me from mounting it in a permanent fashion. It still works fine, other than the fact that it now only connects to my gigabit switch at 100 Mbps.
As a weird consequence, the compromised access point upstairs on a MoCA bridge is providing far better throughput than the one directly connected to the switch. Go figure.
At least I am (mostly) the only person in the house directly affected by this.

My Asus laptop, for as long as I've had it, has always reported 10 hours and 0 minutes remaining as soon as it's unplugged. I've gotten that kind of battery life before, basically by not doing nuch.
Anyway, now it's reliably reporting 10 hours and 1 minute every time. That extra minute makes all the difference, tell ya what.

Today in 2012, Hurricane Sandy happened.
There is definitely a before Sandy and after Sandy partition in my life. I and my (chosen) family are still dealing with events that started to snowball because of that particular storm.