Notices by Sheldon (sysop408@sfba.social)

Oh no! My cat has discovered Cheetos!

Last week I learned that you can buy blood glucose test strips direct from the manufacturer for significantly less than what it's sold on Amazon.com or other online retail outlets.

These 70 packs of Contour Next Test Strips are $22 each when purchased in 3-packs directly from Ascensia.

What blew my mind even more is that I also found out you can get 100 of these strips from Costco Pharmacy for $20! Pharmacies regularly sell those for more than seven times that!

The only complication is that I think you'll need a prescription to get them from Costco. I haven't had a chance to confirm with them yet.

Barring that, the fallback option of buying direct from Ascensia isn't too bad!

https://shop.ascensiadiabetes.com/products/contour®next-test-strips-triple-play-bundle

#diabetes #t2d #ushealthcare

@rberger it's hard to answer the question if King Egg Roll is good. It's fast food. It's good for what it is, but the egg rolls are really really good.

They originally only had a small take-out counter in San Jose on King Rd with a very limited menu. Finding that original location was like stumbling into a speakeasy. This was before you could easily look anything up online so if you wanted to find King Egg Roll, you had to know someone.

The only revealing detail about its original spot was that there were often people standing outside a small storefront and people coming out left with large aluminum trays (probably with 4 dozen perfectly crisped egg rolls inside that would make them the most popular person wherever they were headed).

They've since expanded into a local Chinese/Vietnamese fast food chain. I'd rate the food as solidly OK. It's San Jose comfort food. Some of the items are better than others, but the real reason why people go is there in the name.

@skinnylatte @tezoatlipoca

If anyone out there runs a #Plesk server, check to see if your have a ton of emails stuck in your mail queue. There was a problematic email security update that got applied within the past 12 hours that caused mail queues to stop processing both incoming and outgoing email.

Fortunately, it's an easy fix.

https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/30609832237591-Unable-to-receive-email-with-Plesk-Email-Security-extension-installed-connect-to-sql-unable-to-connect-to-DSN-DBI-mysql-database-emailsecurity-mysql-socket-var-run-mysqld-mysqld-sock

#sysadmin #mailserver #hosting

@steter

Tired: Easter Egg Hunts
Wired: Rotten Egg Hurls at fascist robber barons

@steter make them march through the streets so I can hurl a few $1 eggs at them on their way and you’ve got my vote, sir.

Today would be a good day to donate to #Ukraine. There is an official government website that allows you to donate to one of several funds including defense, reconstruction, medical, and de-mining.

I have a standing $25/month donation to their medical fund and periodically drop more money in on one of the other funds if there aren't boots on the ground kind of fundraisers that I'm backing at the time.

As I don't have the time and attention lately to feel confident in donating to the front line fundraisers, I donate through the Ukraine government's donation site:
https://u24.gov.ua/

I'll be showing them a little love later today. Slava Ukraini.

#NAFO

Almost every year since 1986, my town's had a Christmas themed celebration. I have now been involved in some way in over half of the entire history of this event!

In recent years the festivities have been organized by friends of mine. I'm always the event photographer, the event promoter, and I also help coordinate aspects of the event in other ways.

The highlight this year were a couple young girls who were amazing baton dancers. These girls were elite and I managed to shoot some hand-held long exposure light trails of their glow in the dark performance.

#photography #santa #streetportrait

I guess I'm on a bookstore kick this week so here are some more cool book store photos. This time it's Old Capitol Books in Monterey, CA. It's a pint sized used bookstore.

I shot these with with an ultra-wide angle so the shop looks a lot roomier than it really is. In reality, it's about the size of a studio apartment and the photo of the storefront shows almost the entire store.

#photography #bookstore #books

@Remittancegirl I recall a study done in the early days of online activism that showed that people who were highly vocal online were not always quite so dependable in the flesh. The hypothesis was that people who feel like they've done their part by speaking feel like they've partially fulfilled their intent and are less motivated to get their hands dirty.

I've always taken that finding to heart and valued actions before words and similarly support people who are doing acts even if they're not saying things that validate my belief system.

@cobalt this is funny, but it's not necessarily an AI content issue. Google is just shitty at spotlighting good content now. I had a site that benefited from that.

For over a year, an event page I setup to promote a performance for the 80's band "Flock of Seagulls" kept showing up in Google's highlighted results leading us to get a puzzling amount of traffic for a topic that was barely relevant to our site.

We weren't using AI content at all. We didn't do much more than post a stock press kit bio about the band plus a publicity photo they provided. I'm sure there were dozens of almost identical pages.

I guess I should pat myself on the back for nailing the SEO so that this could happen, but there's no way a page on a regional website using boilerplate content should have been ranking anywhere near the top 5 in North America on a search like this.

@TheBreadmonkey

I've been digging into Drupal's new Single Directory Components system and I'm in awe. This is a game changer for expert site builders. It's going to save me so much time writing code and make my sites much easier to manage.

It's even better if you pair it with Layout Builder or Paragraphs because then you bypass all the confusing Twig template coding you have to do to inject one block inside another.

The only drawback is that it adds one more layer of abstraction to the View Mode system, which is a vital piece to understanding the power of Drupal CMS.

I just hope it's performant because I'm going all in on a large build I'm embarking on for this year.

#Drupal #CMS #PHP

@skinnylatte wait, did you end up moving? Or did you just get a commuter rental so you wouldn't have to drive as much?

@skinnylatte if you're doing the instant film walks in SF, you probably have met Polaroid Jay?

@HistoPol is that verified? The wording doesn’t sound like it’s Leon and if he did post it, it appears to be deleted now.

@WJBL @dangillmor @palin

Microsoft Outlook is already my least favorite email program ever. Every new edition of it reaches an even lower low.

Behold #Microsoft 365 Outlook. It's a fitting name for the champion of worst in class products. There are 365 days in the year and on every single one of those fucking days my Microsoft products ruin them.

They released a calendar and email manager that doesn't let you export your email or calendar unless they were tied to a proper Microsoft Outlook service. That means you can setup your own mail service, save a bunch of shit to your MS Outlook and now you can't move it. It's fucking stuck on an island with no obvious way to export it.

Good job Microsoft! 👏

BTW, I don't need suggestions for new mail programs. I don't use Outlook. I just have clients who do and so I have to help them figure out why nothing ever works.

@inthehands every time I get asked if I'm nervous about some random technology replacing my skills as a developer, I laugh. The tech isn't the roadblock. The humans are. Until humans are better at humaning, I'll always have a job understanding what the humans really mean when they say they want this vs that.

I got into doing tech work an unusual way. I was a physical therapist before and I spent my days hearing people's theories on why their knee hurt. It was the weather. They sat in the wrong chair 10 years ago. They took the wrong supplement. It's because they wore shorts on a cold day... and then after all that I'd conclude they actually had a hip or a back problem or needed new shoes.

Figuring out what humans want with technology has actually been a lot easier than understanding humans well enough to help them understand how their own bodies work. I had no and still have no certifications, but leaned hard into my interviewing skills to gain an edge as a late starter.

@tess

@mattsheffield she also pointed out that people leave his rallies before they’re over and by the 60 minute mark, I had sympathy for everyone who went to one expecting more than 15 minutes of material rehashed over and over again. He was worse than just being a liar. He was a boring liar.

The verdict is in on tonight’s presidential debate between #Harris and #Trump. My #cat Lu does not like angry orange people yelling at him on TV.

He got very distressed about 15 minutes into the #POTUS debate and eventually retreated to his safe place underneath the bed.

The Trump years sucked for him and he’s not going back. He was homeless.

@darnell ok, but the thing I’m wondering is just how much celery was this farmer selling?!?! Anyone selling a full ton of celery might actually be more sus than someone selling meth. 😳

Oh, it was in transit. The headline made it sound like someone hid 2300 lbs of meth in the celery at a farmers’ market… which would have been quite impressive!