...p...p-p-PENIS?!!!

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:56 pm
azurelunatic: melting chocolate teapot (418)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
Today Belovedest had to bust the teenagers for playing "the penis game" in the library.

[You say the word increasingly loudly, in turns, until someone loses the game by being told to cut it out or being asked to leave.]

The weather's getting colder, but I have evolved myself an outfit to wear outdoors for lounging while the weather's in the high 50s F -- my slightly ratty plush bathrobe underneath my much more windproof corduroy floor length duster. And the ta'al fingerless mgloves Mama knitted for me, in rainbow stripes. They're just the thing for keeping my hands warm while I'm on the phone.

I've discovered I do enjoy cauliflower "wings", even though I don't enjoy chicken wings.

The scooter has arrived. I am plotting how best to bedazzle it. It does have its own USB power outlet! It also has head and tail lights. It's better for approaching counters than the wheelchair, since the tiller is so close to me.

[personal profile] norabombay points out that given all the poorly supervised international visitors who have been in and out of the White House, they're going to have to take it down to the studs when they refit it for #48 to use. So the general devastation in the East Wing is small potatoes as far as outrage fodder. And anywhere that the last major update was 1947-ish must really need some yanking out of the century of the fruitbat.

My legs are doing better. In part this is because I stuck ibuprofen in my nightly pill box, since I'd been waking up with aching legs and shouting knees pretty consistently.

Medication: the medication definitely has some activity. The main activity seems to be that my appetite has been fading in and out of "did we recently have chemo?!" mode. I'm tempted to give myself a week off every few weeks.

Makeup: currently waiting on a liquid formulation of the eyeshadow that promised to match the eyeliner, because the color is fantastic and I want it in a wide brush. I guess the powder can work for blending it out. (The powder just does not want to cooperate and layer on thick enough to get the color shift effect, even with a wet brush.) My skin continues to behave itself better than my ability to use foundation; there are only a few spots where I want to color correct if I'm doing Full Battle Makeup.

Games: keeping up with all the Gems of War events is sometimes tiring, but it does make winding down my brain at night much easier than other things I could be doing.

Perfume: went through my massive perfume spreadsheet and filled in the formulation for all the BPAL (which is the same except for that one spray). Cracked myself up at some of the descriptions I've left. One particular exceedingly long-lasting one
Read more... )
dancefloorlandmine: (Theatre)
[personal profile] dancefloorlandmine
Back from an evening watching Mark Steel on his 'Leopard In The House' tour, about his cancer diagnosis and treatment, presented with his usual humour, and also featuring some of his rather impressive piano playing in the interval, along with a bunch of digressions.

First time at the Churchill Theatre, too - a classic 70s theatre, which, thanks to being built on the side of a hill, features the oddness of the circle entrance being on the entry level, which means down several flights of stairs to get to the stalls.
pauamma: Cartooney crab wearing hot pink and acid green facemask holding drink with straw (Default)
[personal profile] pauamma

A Note on Windows 10

I want to talk about something boring, that most of you don't want to think about, but it's important so please stay with me.

Today, Windows 10 died but, like most deaths in IT, it will persist in an undead state, shuffling around for likely the rest of our lives. This is a VERY big problem.

When Microsoft stops supporting an operating system, the operating system continues to work - it just can't get patches. For decades, I've been in conversations like But I only use my computer to read my email, I don't need to upgrade, do I? From a security perspective, my answer was You really should upgrade, but I get it, money is always tight. You might be okay for a while.
This is no longer true - for a few reasons. We live in a confluence of changes:

  1. AI is making finding new vulnerabilities much more quickly than before. In the past, a critical vulnerability in Windows 7 or XP could take several months to find, and even then, it was hard to exploit. Today, we have AI finding all sorts of issues in just a few hours and — worse — chaining them together to make it very easy to take over a machine.
  2. The browser wars are back, but not like they were. How often have you see the little button in your browser saying that you should really update it. How often do you click that button? I work in information security and even I don't always click it when I should. If you are running a vulnerable browser on a vulnerable operating system, you are one click away from an attacker having access to everything.
  3. No one just checks email. They go to social media, they go to Amazon and eBay, they sometimes check their bank and retirement accounts. This means that your attacker can see your social media, buy things on your credit cards, and take money directly out of your accounts.
  4. We live in a interconnected society at a time when some groups in that society are being targeted by those in power *and* where other groups are emboldened by those in power to collect data to further target people. Whether it's in the form of doxxing, informing the police, reporting people and businesses to ICE, or direct surveillance by authorities, access to your computer does not just place you at risk — it places everyone you communicate with on that device at risk — family members, friends, social groups, political groups, whatever. A vulnerable computer risks everyone.

We can no longer rest on the idea that we are not interesting enough to be surveilled or attacked. We all have risks to ourselves and to others.

This is a long way to say that, if your computer does not support upgrading to Windows 11, you *really* have to stop using it. (Or install Linux on it, but that's a whole other discussion.) If you can use your phone or tablet for a month, there will some really good deals on laptops in mid-to-late November. If you can't, and money is tight, Dell and CDW have outlet stores that will be somewhat reasonable.

What you can't do, however, is to keep using that Windows 10 machine. It may be undead, but it's time to kill it all the way and move on to something better.


Addendum from [personal profile] pauamma:
Comments are and will remain screened, but I cannot and will not promise that your IP address if commenting will remain hidden. Exercise due caution.

Portable power chair

Oct. 11th, 2025 09:14 pm
azurelunatic: A metallic blue and black horizontal-handled cane with an elastic loop at the bottom of the webbing wrist strap. (gimp)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
There's a new power scooter out, the Golden Buzzaround Carry-On HD. The HD part is important. This is the heavy duty one, which is also first-in-class lithium ion battery scooter. But that's not what this entry is about (and the scheduled arrival date is Tuesday).

Since the scooter was backordered and not going to arrive in time for the Michigan trip, I ordered a (not too expensive for the specs) power wheelchair off Amazon. The choice was partly informed by the advertised shipping time: two days. Plenty of time for it to arrive. And then I watched the shipment crawl over what was clearly ground transport, likely because of the battery. Eventually the package arrival date got down to our departure date. Meanwhile, I was paralyzed with anxiety about the trip, and was barely able to pack. At least I was able to make checklists for when I eventually unfroze on the day of departure.

FedEx said my power chair would arrive between 1 and 3. This was inaccurate, and at some point the forecast switched to "end of day".

When it hadn't arrived by 4, we loaded into the car with my upright (unpowered) walker. At the last minute as we fled out the door, I thought our snack supply looked a little too small and grabbed a random bag to toss a few more things into. As we pulled out of the neighborhood I called the airline accessibility services line to report the change. Which took a little while, as I had to explain that no, I hadn't "changed my mind" about bringing the power wheelchair, the reason I wasn't taking the power wheelchair was because it hadn't arrived yet, so I couldn't take it. At that point I got the appropriate amount of sympathy.

Within the MINUTE I told the very nice customer service person goodbye, Alex spotted the FedEx truck.

By that point Silver and I were on I-5, but with a very nice turn off opportunity. (Silver had taken that specific route because it's a pain in the ass to get over another couple lanes that quickly and in traffic.)

So we went back, we thanked the Bastard profusely and profanely, with the double thumb-tap to the lips (both of us, simultaneously). Silver offloaded the walker and onloaded the chair while I talked to the airline accessibility department again and tried to figure out what the battery voltage was. The footrests fit into the duffel bag with the extra snacks, just as if I had planned it intentionally. I asked Silver to empty my padded tote bag, so we could use it for the battery.

We got to the airport on time for all of that.

I got the best of both worlds: chair coming with me, but since the battery wasn't charged we checked the main body of the chair at the Special Services counter and got wheelchair service through the airport. Security was less of a zoo than usual because we went through the wheelchair lane instead of the endless maze. I got pornoscanned for the first time.

That got us to the gate an hour earlier than we'd intended.

I was very glad to have the power chair with us, as it made some of the bits that would have been excessively strenuous much much better. Silver got used to lifting the thing into the back of their mom's SUV, and eventually we banged our heads on the car less often.

Coming back, it wasn't quite as easy going through security since I was still new at steering the chair and we didn't have the professional chair-pusher to finesse security. (No, not the ateva way.) We gate-checked the chair. I checked in with the two wheelchair-pushers who met us at the Seattle end of things, and assured the one who was waiting for me that I had my chair (as Silver cussed gently at the footrests).

And when we eventually got home, Yellface cussed us both out like I've never seen her cuss before. She was Peeved! That we! Had Abandoned! Her!!!!

I have since decked it out with retroreflective tape, electroluminescent wire, and a miniature disco projector meant for a bike.

Health (good news)

Oct. 8th, 2025 08:08 pm
azurelunatic: Karkat Vantas yelling. His shirt has the astrological sign Cancer in grey. (Karkat Yell)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
My immunotherapy infusion yesterday may have been my last!! I have a scan on Monday that will probably say that. Belovedest celebrated by cracking into the Strategic Redpop Reserve. This will mean much more leeway to leave town and such.

Colonoscopy results: mostly normal, one pre (not sure how many pre-s to put here) cancerous "lesion", and all of them removed. Repeat in two years, this time with Extended Prep. (My understanding of "lesion" and the medical definition may not align entirely well.)

Started the new injectable after the colonoscopy. I can definitely feel the impact. It remains to be seen exactly what kind. One of my friends has a new injectable too; she's getting some sinus clearance from it. Of all the random effects.

After the infusion, Belovedest and I trekked up-city to pick up a package for [personal profile] alexseanchai. All Pampered Chef, and a high proportion of likely goodies vs. likely duds. There were some varying scrub brushes. The utensil/knife scrub brush looks like dentures that are actually a scrub brush, but I can see that coming in handy. There was also a quarter-sheet pan with two eighth-sheet pans. And then we trekked back down when Belovedest realized they'd left their tablet at the cancer center. Freakin' ADHD. We're on The Assassins of Thasalon in our progress through Penric.

I have a smallish makeup hobby. Part of that is sometimes going all Weird Barbie on my face with eyeliner or whatever. Tonight I've convinced myself (via iridescent green eyeliner) that some kind of moon phase forehead jewelry might really slap.