agent_dani | Reading

More spontaneous restarts with WHEA errors (could be caused by...a ton of things).

So I'm sitting here running some diagnostics and seeing if I can fix the problem. Hopefully I don't need a new computer.

Current Mood: worried
Current Music: Computer fans spinning up

dorchadas

sashagee and I went out to an event!

Ever since Murasaki closed last year, I've been glad that I got a chance to take

sashagee there to see Van Paugam spin one of his sets before the end, and I've been on the lookout for more chances to see him. The people at the Anime Club mentioned this event, hosted by the Japanese Cultural Center in Kamehachi, the first sushi bar in Chicago, so I got tickets, yesterday morning

sashagee drove Laila out to spend some time at the grandparents--not a problem, Laila has been clamoring to see grandma and grandpa basically all week--and in the evening we got on the L and headed down to Kamehachi. The hostess saw how we were dressed and immediately asked us if we were there for the event and then ushered us upstairs.

The music schedule was Japanese vinyl from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and we arrived during the 70s section, took our bentō and out complimentary drinks, and sat down on one of the high tables.

It was a lot of fun!

sashagee, inveterate gacha fan that she is, bought a mystery box and then when Van Paugam offered another mystery box to the couple with the best dancing, we went out on to the dance floor and won the box! We got a lot of dancing in--though not as much as one guy, who spent basically the entire evening on the dance floor even when he was the only one there--

sashagee got to hear her favorite city pop song, Mayonaka no Door -stay with me, when the Hits section came on at the very end, and we chatted with people and had a lovely time. They even promised to do another event, though since we were in the slightly closed-in upstairs of Kamehachi and it was kind of hot, Van Paugam mentioned it would probably not be until next year to avoid the heat from causing any more problems.

I need to keep better tabs on his sets. The only problem is that they're mostly only announced a short time beforehand, and having Laila means we can't exactly drop anything and head out on a moment's notice. But right now we almost never get a date night, and that's definitely not helping things. It'll be better when Laila's speech is better, because right now

sashagee is worried that if we got a babysitter and something happened, Laila wouldn't be able to tell us what was wrong. So we need to wait a few months and see if her speech improves, and then we can re-evaluate.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: 松原みき - 真夜中のドア〜Stay With Me

dorchadas

That happens so incredibly rarely nowadays that I had to write it down.

It was basically inside a first-person shooter video game, in that I was basically a floating camera with a gun (as the saying goes) and almost never had any real sense of my body or its physical existence. The dream took place inside a sprawling haunted house in a way that my waking mind recognizes as obviously a product of video game considerations (like the giant stepped courtyard with basically no furniture and a thirty-foot wall separating it from the outside) but which seemed perfectly reasonable inside the dream. There was what we would call a hub area with several other people, but I can't remember anything about them other than their existence.

Everything beyond that was extremely gamey. In the dream I was exploring the corridors, fighting enemies, picking up weapons, and so on. The only weapons I remember are some kind of staff thing that required charging up attacks before being able to get off a shot and the trusty v1.0 Booted Foot. Enemies I remember a bit more variety: there were floating balls of light that zapped me, a gray faceless mannequin in a black coat that grabbed me and slowed me down (having this happen was basically the only time I had any sensation of my body), a blue floating headless shadow in a thick cloak, and a giant dog but one which looked more like the faehounds from Final Fantasy XIV. I went around exploring, fought enemies, went back to the hub area and healed up and talked with the NPCs, you know, like a game. And eventually in that courtyard a mannequin grabbed me and I guess that sensation of actually having a body shocked me out of the dream because that's when I woke up.

This is obviously inspired by me playing Infra Arcana lately.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Nox Arcana - Unhallowed Halls

twistedchick

Brief comments on current events, including a man with serious political courage, ICE recruitment, and of course the Epstein files.

lil_m_moses

Convergence is happening? This weekend?! Now I have many sads. In another time I'd have jumped on a plane this morning. We even have direct summer Denver flights now. But it's kiddo's birthday, her grandfather arrived yesterday for an extended visit, Mom needs her meds and groceries, and husband is stuck covering at his job for an ill colleague. Adulting is some real bullshit sometimes. Ok, most of the time.

EDIT: apparently stuff was organized on Facebook in the last 6 months, with tiny tendrils on Reddit. I won't touch the former, and never think to visit the latter. Not sure if the voting email lists got lost, or they didn't use them, or just didn't vote. I can tell I'm going to be a ray of sunshine today.

dewline

No visitation today. Got some shopping done, and the map projects have slowed down a bit. One job application filed this afternoon with the feds.

I suppose that's enough for today, right?

Current Mood: sleepy

seishun

well, i went back to using Facebook after a shortish break. but i still want to post here, because it's a different feel.

mind you, i have nothing in particular to say at the moment, so…

how's by you? (as if anyone was reading this)

dorchadas

Annoyance the First:

I wrote a bit ago about how my computer is acting up, and having looked into it, it seems to just be a problem endemic to the Ryzen 5800 processor series--which is what I have, of course. There's a ton of threads about it with people's problems and solutions and so far I have two problems:

Screen turns back and the fans spin up: The one person I found with an actual diagnosis said this is related to the graphics card overvolting, so I downloaded MSI Afterburner and limited it to 90% of normal maximum voltage since it's not like I play Crysis on max on this machine anyway. It hasn't happened since but it only happens once every few weeks so no way to tell if it's actually fixed.
Spontaneous restarts during idle: Everyone seems to agree this is a problem with one or more of the cores undervolting, hence why it only happens during idle periods. There are a ton of solutions posted out there and I did try one that worked for a while (setting the power plan to high performance--I have a desktop, it's always plugged in anyway), but recently it started happening again. While investigating possible solutions, I saw people mentioning their BIOS version and thought, huh, I should look into that too and it turned out that the BIOS I have is version 303 and dated to 2021 (a year before I bought this computer). We're now up to 307 released this year. Well, the BIOS is partially responsible for controlling core voltage so updating certainly isn't going to make it worse, so I updated. It's been a couple days and I haven't had any spontaneous restarts yet, but we'll see if I need to keep looking. Everything I found online seemed to indicate this is a problem that gets solved different ways for different people because computers are notoriously finicky, so I might be back to the well.

All I can really say is, though, I have never previously had this degree of difficulty with a computer. I took a chance on AMD and boy have I had nothing but problems. Never again.

Annoyance the Second:

So yesterday I went into to buy Laila's medicine for the month as I do when she runs out and it came to this princely sum of three-hundred and twenty US American dollars, of which one single medication was $300. I asked the person at the counter what was going on, and she said that the manufacturer has coupons but I need to call my insurance. So I call my insurance and they tell me I need to call the manufacturer, and also that the insurance has a different price scale based on supply (a 43-day supply, like we got, is more than twice as expensive as a 30-day supply). So I call the manufacturer and can't get a hold of them since it's after 9 p.m., so I try again this morning. The main number you're ""supposed"" to call sends me in circles until the machine hangs up (and later, I learn, does exactly the same thing to the pharmacist when she calls them), so I call a different number and actually get a hold of someone and they tell me that they don't deal with customers at all, the entire thing is handled between pharmacists and the manufacturer. So I go into the pharmacist again, and she has also been on the phone, and the only thing she can say is that maybe the coupon was already applied but it ran out, citing the transaction in June where we were only charged $167 on a $300 expense, and that may be possible--I went back and checked and we were previously charged $55.03 for a for a $159 expense. Which is all well and good I guess, since we're almost at the spending limit for Laila's health insurance for the year, but still.

Well, the doctor wants to take her off two of those medications, and if she responds well, that will vastly reduce our monthly bill. I can only hope, becuase I'd rather not spend $300 a month for one medication on top of the other medical expenses we have. And this is with good insurance!

(That's a lie, America does not have good health insurance, only health insurance that is less bad Emoji Sad Eagle Flag

Current Music: Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail - Desertwalkers

dorchadas

Well, today was rough.

Last night I started feeling a bit odd at 9 p.m. or so, like I had a frog in my throat, so I assumed I was going to come down with the cold that first Laila and then

sashagee had. But then in the middle of the night, I started sweating profusely and my stomach started gurgling, and, well. I thought it was something I had eaten, maybe the sandwich I bought at the work canteen, but the next morning when I woke up after having called off work--

sashagee having kindly let me sleep in for a couple hours--it turned out that both she and Laila were also feeling bad in the exact same way. And the air outside was bad, so we didn't go anywhere, we didn't do anything, we just sat around in the morning and Laila watched Bluey and we mostly avoided eating anything. And then by the afternoon, we were basically back to normal again with only a bit of lingering bleh feeling.

I only write about this because it came on all of us nearly at the same time. Usually Laila gets sick first, then

sashagee, and then me (and not always me). This time it was

sashagee, then Laila, then me, and all within hours of each other. And then gone again by the next day.

I bet we have a lot more of this to look forward to when Laila starts school in a couple weeks(!).

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: Infinity Nikki - Serene Sounds of Danqing Island

dewline

Rachel Maddow argues that the United States is "there" now...

I have figured out some things that I have already been doing, that I will keep doing, in order to keep the Problem from fully installing itself in Canada. Other things, I need to either stop or start doing. There are lists that others have worked up, lists I should be copying from, to that end.

Resistance to the revival of the nightmare continues in the States and in Canada, of course, with or without me.

I'm also still looking for work because until either that job is secured or I'm driven out of the workforce to whatever result, I still have to live within the existing system.

Current Mood: busy

twistedchick

Who's going to jump into the big interstate game of musical House chairs next?

jessie_c

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

dorchadas

It's been a slow week, but thanks to first Laila and then

sashagee being sick with colds, we haven't done that much. After the babymetal concert,

sashagee needed some dental work done so Laila went away to papa and nana's for another week and when she came back she was very ornery--I think she finally missed home. It's died down finally, but it was a rough few days.

We have some worries about Laila's speech progression, but one positive thing is that we've gotten a much longer period of cute toddler speech than most parents get. I still smile when Laila points at two things and, with a big grin on her face, says, "Same same!"

I a fun ("fun") argument on a Discord server when I pointed out that the classic "violent Old Testament/ chill New Testament" dichotomy comes from early Christian anti-Jewish attitudes and someone was obsessively fixated with me saying they were thousands of years old. They claimed it only dated to after the Crusades, ignored all evidence otherwise like Chrysostom "Against the Jews," tried to turn it into oppression Olympics by pointing out other places the church had, he claimed, been violent like Ireland (there is no historical evidence of forced conversion in Ireland), and after being wrong about basically everything said he had been compelled to step in because of his autistic fixation (his words) on historical accuracy. It was annoying at the time but in hindsight it's impressive just how completely wrong he was. But yeah, antisemitism is foundational to Western thought and fish cannot see the water they swim in.

Remembering all the times people posted memes about some conservative politician not following biblical rules and me stepping in like "I don't eat shrimp. Idon't wear mixes of wool and linen. Am I following silly outmoded rules?" And of course the meme fails in multiple ways because Christians have an explanation for the parts of the Hebrew Bible they say no longer apply, even if I don't like it.

For most of this month it's been horrifically hot, until just a few days ago the weather finally shifted and some cool winds blew down from Canada...and brought wildfire smoke with them. Yesterday the air quality measure was over 200 and the air smelt like smoke. It's not quite so bad today but the sky has a grey haze to it and it's still not safe to go outdoors. What a lovely summertime this is.

Alright, enough complaining. It's almost Shabbat.

Current Mood: apathetic
Current Music: Bluey - Theme Song

zhelana

Progress This Month

Exercise every day in 2025
Weight lift every day of 2025
Brush teeth 360 times in 2025
Shower weekly 2025
Art Every Day 2025
Paint 12 times in 2025
Write in Spanish every day of 2025
Write in Russian every week of 2025
Finish my memoirs
Write 300k words in 2025
Write weekly 2025
Work through a book of writing exercises
Read 2 pages of Spanish every day 2025
Read 12 new fiction titles 2025
Clean 2 minutes per weekday 2025
Clean 10 minutes per week 2025
Cook 12 times 2025
Watch a video in Spanish every week 2025
Watch a video in Russian every week 2025
Read 3 science textbooks
Read 3 social science textbooks
Read 3 history textbooks
Work through 3 math textbooks
Read 12 new nonfiction titles 2025

Finished This Month

Go on a cruise
Go to Scotland
Go to Ireland

dewline

Not every episode is meant for me.

This one wasn't, and that's alright.

Current Mood: busy

lil_m_moses

Books Finished
- Blonde Bombshell by Tom Holt [paper & Hoopla e-book]
- A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- Never Flinch by Stephen King
- And Another Thing... by Eoin Colder [e-audio] (reread)
- Warm Up by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- Vicious by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]

Library DVDs/Streaming Programs Watched
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: S3D4 [1]

twistedchick

This is a prayer for Lughnasadh. This is a prayer for the Resistance. Lughnasadh is a fire festival, the first harvest, the beginning of our look towards the dark. Lughnasadh is the time of plenty, the time to gather in, the time to store what we have. Lughnasadh is a prayer for the Resistance.

This is a prayer for hopeful people who plant saved seeds in the chilly ground, in the February dark, charging the seeds and calling Ceres — people who want a clean harvest. This is a prayer for the Resistance.

This is a prayer for mothers bearing children, poets birthing poems, engineers who see how to strengthen a bridge. This is a prayer for the Resistance.

Lughnasadh is a fire festival, the first harvest, the beginning of our look towards the dark. Lughnasadh is the time of plenty, the time to gather in, the time to store what we have. Lughnasadh is a prayer for the Resistance.

This is a prayer for the scholar in her garret, making the cleanest translation, for the teacher setting off sparks, for the whistleblower who takes the risk. This is a prayer for the Resistance.

This is a prayer for the farmer who grows an extra row for the food bank, for the activist in plastic handcuffs, for the nurse who ignores the insurance company’s orders. This is a prayer for the Resistance.

Lughnasadh is a fire festival, the first harvest, the beginning of our look towards the dark. Lughnasadh is the time of plenty, the time to gather in, the time to store what we have. Lughnasadh is a prayer for the Resistance.

This is a prayer for the coder who fends off the hack, for the politician who doesn’t take the bribe, for the paper ballot. This is a prayer for the Resistance.

This is a prayer for phone bankers, demonstrators, people with signs in their yard. This is a prayer for early voters, people who call Senators, door-to-door canvasers. This is a prayer for the Resistance.

Lughnasadh is a fire festival, the first harvest, the beginning of our look towards the dark. Lughnasadh is the time of plenty, the time to gather in, the time to store what we have. Lughnasadh is a prayer for the Resistance.

And, of course, this is a prayer for yarrow and Black-Eyed Susan, for summer squash and basil, for peaches and corn, for fat blackberries and seedy dill. This is a prayer for Resistance, because Lughnasadh is a festival of Resistance.

Lughnasadh is a fire festival, the first harvest, the beginning of our look towards the dark. Lughnasadh is the time of plenty, the time to gather in, the time to store what we have. Lughnasadh is a prayer for the Resistance.

Lughnasadh is how our ancestors said that they would resist winter. They would have less now, but they would store up what they did have against the long, dark nights when tummies rumbled, illness went untreated for lack of herbs, old people died from the cold. And our ancestors said, “No.” Lughnasadh was a fire festival, the first harvest, the beginning of their look towards the dark. Lughnasadh was the time of plenty, the time to gather in, the time to store what they had.

Lughnasadh has always been a prayer for the Resistance.

I am praying it now. Will you pray it with me?

--HecateDemeter

(she has not posted this year, so I am assuming she is gone. I am also assuming she would not mind me reposting, as she never has.)

twistedchick

Suppose the current occupant of the Oval Office is gone. Who should succeed him until the next election?

dewline

Once I got back to the house from this morning's visitation, the job search resumed. No applications filed today. Not sure what impulse brought me back to Facebook tonight. Maybe it was seeing the news from Elayne Riggs on Blogspot about her employer's office building being the site of the shootings in Midtown Manhattan yesterday. (Glad you're okay, Elayne!)

And now that I'm here, I've learned that Pat Augustine has finally passed away.

We knew each other from Mike Norton's Comic Book Crossroads fanzine as contributors. A few years back, as part of his downsizing efforts in the wake of his cancer diagnosis, he sold me his Wacom Cintiq, which I'm still using as of tonight. It's been incredibly useful in my art hobbies. (We were both annoyed at the import duties I had to cough up in addition to what I paid him as I recall.)

A good guy, and I miss him.

(And I note that his Discord account is still logged in as I type this. Not a complaint.)

Current Mood: numb

dewline

I know there's complaints - with cause - about the management of Substack. I still follow several accounts there, and one of them belongs to former MP and continuing punk rock musician Charlie Angus.

This was today's upload:

https://charlieangus.substack.com/p/the-riot-of-christie-pits

He uploaded a history lesson on Canadian anti-fascist resistance and how it went at a baseball game in Toronto in August 1933...

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: "The Daily Beans" on YouTube

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Sharp Dressed Dyke

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Sharp Dressed Dyke

Reading

Stressed about stress tests

Wamono: the Art of Japanese Rare Groove

Actually had a dream that I remembered

New Substack post

Out of the Loop

Checking In - 8 August 2025

fuck it

Two annoyances

The House of Plague

What To Do Next

New Substack post -- Interstate musical chairs?

What could possibly go wrong?

A bit late to posting this

Goal Checking

SNW: A Space Adventure Hour

July Media

This is a prayer for Lughnasadh. This is a prayer for resistance.

New Substack post

A Near Miss and a Death

Charlie Angus: The Anti-Fascist "Riot" of Christie Pits

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August 2025

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