Note – Page 2 – Amanda Unvarnished

It’s cold up here, and the cold happened a lot earlier in the year than I’m used to, so I think it’s time to start listening to the Harry Potter film scores while I work.

I could do this in the summer but it’s just not the same.

Luckily there’s already a playlist for this, so I can just hit play and let it go.

I don’t shuffle them, I just let them play all the way through in order.

Best way to listen to film scores.

Other favorites: Star Wars, (originals, not remasters), Labyrinth, (original, not remake), Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, (all of them, in order of Hobbit movies and then Lord of the Rings movies).

I should put together a list of all the film scores I like and stick them on a page.

OK, this book and Hummus. First, if your hummus tastes like baby shit, then it’s really bad hummus. Second, if your tahini isn’t spicy, it’s not tahini. You mix the tahini with the hummus and then you dip your meat or pita bread or veggies (cucumbers or tomatoes or artichokes work best but zuccini is workable) in the mix. People who eat hummus eat meat all the time, you dip lamb in hummus if you don’t like mint jelly. This author usually does good research and it could be that this character is meant to be an ignoramus, but yeah hummus plus tahini plus meat is absolutely a thing, and you can do it with lamb or steak or chicken or goat. Trying to decide if this will effect the rating I give this book.

True love is your boyfriend buying a case of a local brew he thinks you’ll like, and recommending you drink some of it and call your best friends after you’ve had a bad day.

I’ll post about the beer later, but mad elf is fucking right. That’s also one of the best craft beers I’ve tasted, and it’s got something like two times the alcohol as store-bought beers, so yeah I ended up definitely drunk last night, and I have zero regrets. Will definitely do again.

Welp looks like I will be taking time out of my work day to pause and install a new iOS update that is thankfully available because after taking a phone call earlier today and ending that call I have encountered what I’ll call the “all your sounds are belong to us” feature of iOS 13.

Apparently this is applicable to VoiceOver users only, and it wouldn’t be nearly as big of a deal as it is if it weren’t for the fact that just about everything I log into requires two-factor authentication and I need my phone for that because Google Authenticator is on my phone and so is the SMS app which I use for backup or for services that won’t let you use an authenticator app.

I am very much not happy right now because this requires me to not do things like log in to GitHub or Google Drive or a ton of really important stuff for work.

For those of you who aren’t voiceOver users, it happened like this.

Take phone call, say things, end phone call. Phone then completely shuts down and refuses to reboot despite having 94% battery power, requires sticking it on the charger and having John call me which then rings my watch which apparently sets off a chain reaction between phone and watch which the attempt to ping my phone from my watch did not set off.

That’s it, the rule about not drinking while working is being temporarily suspended because I have a meeting at 8PM and I just wasted something like forty five minutes. Update is installing now so I get to restart the phone and go through the whole “getting started” bullshit and pray that this bug is resolved in 13.2 because it is absolutely not cool that I’ll have to look out for this every time I take a phone call.

How’s your Tuesday going?

Beer Drinkers Are Boycotting Yuengling After Its Billionaire Owner Endorses Trump. The rest of us never started drinking Yuengling in the first place because we know there are much better options out there, like Guinness. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I’ve been forcibly upgraded to iOS 13.2. Yes, it finally happened.

I was just pleasantly surprised by the fact that VoiceOver audio is no longer send to a paired bluetooth speaker. I forgot that was a new feature of iOS 12.

I was not so pleasantly surprised by VoiceOver repeating “space space” at its loudest volume even though its volume isn’t set there.

Thankfully it didn’t wake the sweety up. He’s out like a light.

#MeetTheBlind Independence means not being turned into a zoo exhibit without my consent by those who would claim the title of being my spokesmen, and it means calling out those who would lead the blind community when they attempt to coerse me into participating in inspiration porn after they have failed to convince me to join the ranks of inspiration prostitutes. Independence means calling out those who would represent me when they talk but do not walk with regard to sexism after having made repeated promises to fix it within their ranks. Independence means shining a bright light on significant accessibility failures on the part of those who would represent me when they claim the right to enforce accessibility for others. And finally, independence means that my friends and family and colleagues view and treat me like a human first and an inspiration second not because I’ve had to constantly remind them to do so, but because they didn’t need Meet the Blind Month to convince them of my humanity.

The first complete Siddur (prayerbook) I ever used was the 1949 edition of Hasiddur Hashalem, translated by Philip Birnbaum and published by the Hebrew Publishing Company.

I still love that prayerbook, despite its stilted English.

Since the Hebrew Publishing Company basically hasn’t existed since 2016, all of their works have entered the public domain through a combination of a lot of the works being published before 1975 and several more of the works having reached 75 years since the death of their authors, which automatically puts them in the public domain.

One of the things I always wondered about is why Birnbaum spends a significant portion of the introduction to HaSiddur HaShalem essentially trashing the work of every translator who came before him.

Why would you spend something like 5 or 10 dense pages basically subtweeting every other translator?

Since all these works have entered the public domain, now I know why.

Apparently this is a thing they all did up to a certain point. There are limits, (for example, everybody’s wives and kids are off limits, and nobody’s Jewish status is questioned), but other than that, everything’s fair game, personal or professional.

It is, (or was) apparently a long-standing tradition which seems to have been set aside for the most part after the Holocaust and then is completely gone by the 70’s.

And it apparently started around the first time the prayerbook was translated and edited in America.

Brittish translations, on the other hand, are on the surface more polite, however the insults are basically “bless your heart” to the Americans and a lot more backhanded to their fellows in Britain, specifically England.

The Scottish make the Americans look like they’re having milk and cookies together.

All of this is fascinating to me.

I missed this earlier in the year, but apparently the NFB is partnering with Be My Eyes as self-described blindness experts.

Sorry NFB but if you’re declaring yourself an expert, you’re not an expert.

Why do I have a feeling this is going to be just as useful as WordPress experts?

I can see it now. All the disability related posts featuring hard-core federationists in the comments sections are going to come with tons of “as a blindness expert” in the comments aren’t they?

That’s all we need. Thought leaders ultiplying at gremlin-like rates.

Points to the first person who comes up with a stealable designation for these ever-multiplying thought leader gremlins, extra if the word gremlin is involved.

One of the things I love about Micro.blog is that the timeline is chronological. This means I can hit the back button after reading through a conversation and land on the post that started the whole thing off. On Facebook, for example, if I hit the back button, I get dropped to a random point within my newsfeed, and I lose the place I was at. The post from which I rabbitholed is never to be seen again. Thanks, Micro.blog.

I’m writing this because the trend of blind people using Facebook Live is unfortunately spreading.

So, friendly reminder to blind people who are using Facebook Live that it still doesn’t support captions or transcripts and we don’t know when or if it evere will.

I get wanting to do video, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t.

But if you care about accessibility, then you shouldn’t be using a platform that makes it pretty much impossible to not actively discriminate against an entire class of people, in this case deaf and hearing impaired people.

We can sit here and talk about positive impact and other buzzwords all day long. But you can’t good intention or positive impact your way out of this as long as you’re using Facebook Live.

We can sit here and say “don’t do dos and don’ts because it hurts feelings” all day long. But there are somethings that really are as simple as “do” and “don’t” when it comes to accessibility, and prioritizing convenience over one of the most critical and impactful aspects of accessibility by choosing to use a platform that explicitly doesn’t support captions or transcripts is one of those things.

So, if you really do care about accessibility, such that all the hell-raising about inaccessible apps and websites really is more than just looking out for your own interests, don’t use Facebook Live.

Today I learned that Bridgy Publish will pass alternative text attached to photos when syndicating to Twitter.

I’m using Micro.blog’s crossposting feature but I want to play with photos more and the fact that it passes alt text through to Twitter is a really good reason to switch back.

I love learning about accessibility improvements to web-related things I love.

Especially indieweb things.

I got breakfast from Dunkin Doughnuts for myself and the sweety this morning.

Mmmm Munchkins. I haven’t had these since forever.

Not gonna do this every day by any means because it would get too expensive, but it’s definitely a very nice treat.

OK, post properties do not carry over.

I need to think about how I want to resolve this. It’ll take some code.

I think the links themselves would carry over, but then we’re back to the problem of contrast issues for low-vision people viewing from the Facebook app, and there’s at least one of those who likes this page.

Photos I believe I’ve figured out. I’ll either need to attach a featured image using the standard featured image box, or add them directly to the content.

Checkins should be OK because location and weather data get attached automatically to the content, so there will be something, even if it’s just a weather status.

I’ll need to figure out how I want to work around book posts and other similara content.

I just accidentally closed my browser and lost a ton of work. How’s your Friday going?

This post is a test of how post kinds will display when sharing to Facebook.

I’m biting the bullet and letting WordPress.com manage syndication to Facebook since I really don’t want to rangle Facebook and Facebook seems to be giving Micro.blog a hard time by (seemingly randomly) discontinuing publishing to Facebook pages.

Specifically, I want to see if I can publish without manually adding a custom message and still have the contents of titleless posts post in their entirety to Facebook.

There’s a bit of an issue for low-vision users of the Facebook app on iOS at least when you post just the title of a post and the link without an accompanying message.

I seriously doubt Facebook is going to do anything about this, since they pretty much don’t listen to their accessibility team unless someone somewhere in management decides it’s time to throw them their occasional bone, so I’m trying to mitigate it from my end.

I of course have zero control over the styling of the app, and I can’t pass those kinds of changes through from my websites.

Apologies in advance to those who are following me on Facebook while I test this.

I have a feeling I’m going to be doing a lot of extra looking in the near future for hotels skipping the smart speaker craze. I do not want to walk into my hotel room and say anything to Alexa. If Amazon gets its privacy act together, (same with Google et al), then I’ll be happy to jump on board, but until then, I’d like to hold on to at least some choice in the matter.

I have several Facebook pages I have to manage or help manage for work, so I downloaded the Facebook Business app on my phone after I realized I can’t accept an admin invite from the standard Facebook mobile site.

I totally get why this app has a two-star rating on the app store, because this thing is a pile.

Shout-out to everyone else who has to use it.

Facebook: We make your life miserable just because we can. Move fast and break things yeah!

The wireless network is down because of a thunderstorm, and I have one out of four bars for cell phone signal. I think this might actually be slower than dial-up. Time for an unscheduled break from work. Hoping the rest of the day doesn’t go like this. Oh well, at least the radio is still working. L

I would like to sincerely thank the White House for attempting to unsend an email this morning.

Granted, this latest technological oopsy wasn’t nearly as hilarious as the Javascript 404 joke fail, or the or the fake news awards server fail within thirty minutes of launch, but well, this administration and its defenders have provided so few laughs over the last three years that I take them where I can get them.

Thanks guys, you brightened my day.

I think I’m going to change my site’s footer to “Site best viewed with a computer and a cold one.” I suppose I should modernize that a bit, since people use more than just computers to view websites, but I’d dearly love the opportunity to poke fun at the whole “site-best-viewed-with” (insert browser, usually Chrome) nonsense.

The surprise heat wave broke today, so the windows are open and there’s a wonderful breeze coming in. I looked at the temperature in Augusta and it’s 94 compared to our 72. Glad I’m not there.

This secondary character, (I think she’s secondary but can’t really tell at this point) likes both mojitos and Earl Gray tea. I’m trying to decide of the Mojito and Earl Gray tea liking should be categorized as one fault, or two separate faults. At this point i’m hoping she doesn’t become too important, because right now I’m not impressed with her.

This book has a main character who beats up bad guys with suitcases, and, I think I am totally here for this. Definitely original. Takes “anything can be used as a weapon” to a whole new level.

Hoping no one from TSA figures this out or they’ll ban suitcases as part of their security theater.

The book jacket information read at the beginning of NLS (Bard) audio books reminds me of movie previews.

Perfect for getting drinks or snacks or taking another kind of break before you dive into the next book.

And with that, on to book 98.

Since I am so close to finishing my original challenge goal, I have decided to update my reading challenge to 150 books instead of 100 books. We still have three months left in the year, so I don’t think this will be too hard to complete. It took me until the third book to really get into the series, but having read and really liked the last three books, this one will definitely end up in the re-read pile for later.

You don’t realize how dependent you are on a working internet connection until you’ve finished the last book you downloaded and are about to download more books, only to find that you have no internet connection.

I have ten books to go for my reading challenge and I will probably have this one in the bag within the next week. I haven’t decided if I’m going to up the challenge before I finish it in order to make it last through the end of 2019, or just call it a win and set the one for next year higher.

What say you internets?

Lord knows I have some very strong criticisms of the blind community, but if you think that the solution to constant negativity in your social media feeds is hang out with less blind people you haven’t spent time in any other small, tight-knit community. And if you want a less bitchy social media feed, spend less time on social media. Step away from your keyboard and your phone and go outside. I swear, the people constantly bitching about drama are worse than the people supposedly creating the drama.

It’s Friday, and I started the work day finding out that today is actually going to be the most full and most crazy day of the week. Three-day wekends are great, but then four-day work weeks make you pay for that greatness by piling five days of work into four.

I plan to spend Shabbat catching up on Elul preparations, reading others’ entried in the #BlogElul challenge/series, and generally relaxing.

I’ve closed my rings on the Apple Watch all but one day this week, and that one day I didn’t close them I was ten perecent away from closing my move ring, so I’m not that disappointed. Next week’s another week.

We are fast approaching the end of Thursday in the work day sense, and I, for one, will be happy to see that end. For being a four-day week, this one’s been a bit crazy, and there’s a book I’d like to get back to reading.

I had a big lunch today and am skipping having a big dinner, in case I decide to go to bed early. Since I had a big lunch, I’ll just snack and graze throughout the rest of the day.

There are a ton of fresh tomatoes on my counter, and by fresh I mean straight from a garden, and I plan to slice at least one of them up, sprinkle salt and pepper on the slices, and enjoy a refreshing snack while I read later on.

It really does look like I’m going to close all my rings today without any extra work and I am much more excited about this than I really should be. I happened to have my phone off Do Not Disturb this morning and so I didn’t miss the weekly summary. I went with the goal adjustment recommendation, which this week was a bit lower than where I had my move goal set, and I’m going to try to meet this new goal for a week so I can get perfect stand/move/exercise. If I manage this then I’ll see what the summary suggests next week and proceed from there.

#BlogElul 5779 is coming to a close, and it’s time to start preparing for the approaching year, 5780. This is my favorite time of the Jewish year for a lot of reasons, and I appreciate the fact that, (unlike the secular year), the Jewish year provides a month of preparation time to think about what happened and how we acted during the previous year and the improvements to our character we want to make in the ecoming year.

As in other years, I’m going to attempt to participate in #BlogElul, a journaling project that has existed since 2010 and which has spread beyond blogs and is now part of social media during this time of year. There are daily prompts for the whole month, and I expect my musings on these to be more stream-of-consciousness than anything else, because while the prompts consist of only one word, those single words can mean a lot of things.

I’m also looking forward to reading everyone’s posts and pondering those. This is the second day, so I already have some catching up to do, but this should be very enlightening.

It’s finally Friday! Current status: Trying to find an online version of the manual for this coffee maker that isn’t full of icons/graphics and just spells out the names for the buttons instead. This thing has a bunch of buttons on it, and I know which one turns it on and off, but it’s set to brew the first third of the pot, and then wait thirty minutes between the next two thirds, and I’d like it to brew the whole pot at once and then continue to keep it hot. I figured RTFM was my best shot.

Good thing there was an extra coffee pot hanging around here, because the one that gets normally used met an untimely death this morning. Somehow the basket cracked, which resulted in a pot full of coffee with coffee grounds settled at the bottom. We have some 24-ounce coffee mugs coming to us, and the new-to-us coffee pot is bigger, so in the end this works out. I would really love to know how the basket in the other one got cracked though, because it’s not like we throw it around. Oh well.

Today has consisted of discussing the particulars of securing a domain and all its subdomains with address records and two servers mixed in because same site in two different languages but separate vendors and … I need a drink is it too early to start drinking this rule about not drinking during work hours is being severely tested what do you mean it’s only Wednesday aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I kept seeing this Dabel thing popping up all over blind Twitter, so I googled it. Looks like it’s the next AudioBoom and I downloaded the app and read the terms of service. Spoiler alert: they’re nasty, and I would strongly encourage anyone who gives a shit about the content they’re creating on the service to not create content on the service and own your content instead. This applies especially to all the blind musicians who are working on music while on the service. Some tidbits:

For clarity, you retain all ownership rights in your content. However, by sharing or submitting content to the Service, you hereby grant the Company a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the content in connection with the Service and the Company’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including but without limitation to promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media format and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Use.

and

5. The Company determines the user’s shared or submitted content is in any way offensive, including but not limited to, pornography, obscenity, or hateful speech. The Company reserves the right to remove such content, without prior notice and in its sole discretion.
6. The Company decides to do so, at its sole discretion and without prior notice or liability, for any reason whatsoever.
Illegal and/or unauthorized uses of the Service, including, but not limited to, unauthorized framing of or linking to the website or unauthorized use of any robot, spider, or other automated device on the website, will be investigated. Such actions will not only be subject to a suspension or termination of user’s access to the Service, but will also be subject to appropriate legal action, including and without limitation to, civil, criminal, and injunctive redress.

(The whole thing’s here), and while this version is linked from the Ball site, I’ve compared the version at this page and the version in the Dabel app and they’re the same word-for-word. Friends don’t let friends engage in digital sharecropping. Own your content.

Thunderbird’s “It’s Friday so I’m going to be a little shit and not properly launch” game is strong today. I have to say it’s working and I am becoming more and more convinced that I should just take a three-day weekend. Well-played, Thunderbird. I suppose I could restart this machine one more time but I really don’t think that’s what’s going on.

Summer colds are absolutely a thing and OMG muh brain! My eyes will not stop watering and I am coughing my brains out and I have a headache which is probably a result of the coughing and general stuffiness. The good news is that there’s a Rays game at 1PM and I get to go to bed early tonight.

Good morning and welcome to Friday. The Tampa Bay Rays swept the Boston Red Sox last night. Who’s your daddy now Boston? I hear tears mix well with several liquors, you guys should look into that. Also my Braves beat the Reds last night, so yesterday was a great day for baseball. Reds fans, see my comments regarding tears and liquor above. I don’t have any specific plans for the weekend but I’m glad it’s almost here. We’ve entered the most pathetic month of the year and I can’t believe how fast this year is flying by. No, we are not doing Christmas music or Halloween or even pumpkin spice this early. You monsters can wait for the appropriate time.

Good morning and welcome to Friday. I’ve been eating breakfast every day for the last four months or so, and then skipped it yesterday, and believe me, I paid for it with a nagging headache that didn’t go away all night. I got up and ate breakfast this morning and am working on consuming caffeine and things seem to be under control. I guess I just didn’t consider how much dietary changes can influence things like background-process headaches.

Tonight for dinner we are having barbecue rotisserie chicken with mustard potatoe salad. The potatoe salad has egg in it along with the usual stuff. This is going to be awesome, especially since there will be leftovers for later. No, it’s not homemade, we got it from the local deli, but sometimes that’s the best eating out.

Oh cool. I logged into micro.blog on my laptop, (which I haven’t done in a long time), and there’s a discussion of markdown versus HTML going on and it’s civil as usual. I’m team HTML because I find it much simpler than Markdown. In other news, I’ve started using My Fitness Pal again because it syncs with my Apple Watch and, (for that ecosystem), it’s the most accessible food tracker I’ve found. I started tracking my food again on Monday and I’ve made some slight changes to my diet, but I’m not expecting any losses this week. Because of the goal I’ve set for myself, I have a calorie allowance of 1870, which is amazingly hard to spread out over a day while I’m still collecting things like dishes and cooking gear. I’ll be happy if I don’t gain anything, but I don’t suppose I’m going to be too disappointed if I do. I’m still gettiing back into the habbit of keeping track of what I’m eating and drinking, so I suppose I’m cutting myself a little slack on making changes. The book challenge is going forward, although I need to spend some time with Goodreads logging the ones I’ve finished since I last logged one. I’ve finished the Prey Series, but it’s not all logged yet, and I’ve started rereading the Scott Harvath series by Brad Thor to introduce John to that series. I have some Audible credits to spend, so I picked up the next book in the Kill Chain series by William Hertling, Kill Switch. It’s the sequel to Kill Process, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I think this is enough for now, more next time.

Current status: Looking around the Podtrac dashboard to see if I can delete my address and phone number, which it required for registration and autopopulated, correctly, without asking my permission. I am very much not amused right now. There are zero, absolutely zero reasons why podcast statistics should require anybody’s personal details like that. If those details are sought, then permission should be explicitly asked. If those details are going to be autopopulated then explicit mention of where they’re being pulled from should also be made, and permission to autopopulate should also be asked for. This kind of shit is why people hate big tech so much.

I just spent over an hour fighting with an admin consul with a pretty much inaccessible UI and a metric fuckton of settings. I really don’t care at this point why things on the web end up inaccessible or how it happens. If you put things on the web that are inaccessible you can go fuck yourself and you can do it until your shit is accessible. If you are a person with disabilities urging dipplomatic restraint in accessibility negotiations you can go fuck yourself too. I am tired of this shit. All I want to do is get my work done without a ton of shit, without having to fight with screen readers and browsers and switch back and forth between the best combinations and I am tired of negotiating and educating. I want to live my fucking life why is this so Goddamn much to ask? Fuck!

? I’ve read all but one of the books in the Prey Series by John Sandford and started the latest one yesterday. I’ve finished forty-two percent of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I plan to read some of his other novels, including Fall which was published this year if I can get them. The book challenge is moving ahead at full steam, but other than the Neal Stephenson books, I’m not sure what I’ll read next.

The crockpot barbecue chicken has been unit tested. Verdict: Awesome! Dinner is going to be amazing, and all the moreso because I get to have it and you don’t. 🙂 If you want it, it’s a matter of getting some of your favorite barbecue sauce and some boneless skinless chicken thighs from your grocery store, making sure they’re thawed and washed, and put in the crockpot with the sauce poured over them and cooking on high for about five hours. Cook on medium if you’re going to be gone all day. For the blinks, when it starts to sizzle, turn it off and let cool, after unit testing of course. Then, serve with veggies cooked and seasoned according to preference, and a starch, (potatoes new or red, or yams). Bread and dessert optional. If you’re going to serve with a bread, challah is great.

A huge grocery run was executed yesterday, and since I got one of the boxes with pots and pans in it this past weekend, I am making barbecued chicken in the crockpot tomorrow for dinner and mixed veggies and I am looking very much forward to it. I’m looking forward to doing a lot of cooking experimentation this summer and into the fall. I have so many recipes I want to try out. Welcome to Wednesday everybody.

So apparently the 10,000-step count was a marketing campaign to promote a particular pedometer. I’m glad to find this out. Not that I’m feeling particularly guilty for not meeting my 10,000-step goal, but I now have sort of official permission to rebel against my pedometer overlords and adjust my goal down. Thanks for that tip, Kerry.

Shoutout to the humans I know who work at Google and had to endure the outages Sunday and yesterday. It might be fun to snark on social media when big companies fall on their faces, but there are always humans who end up having to stick around and thanklessly fix the messes. I don’t know if any of you were caught up in that, but if you were I hope you get some extra off-time.

The president bemoans the indiscriminate bombing of Idlib Province as his administration indiscriminately bans anyone from said province from seeking refuge from that bombing. Thoughts and prayers for all those dead civilions and their families I guess. The one person who could do something to alleviate some of the suffering for some of the people would rather play keyboard commando instead. What a pathetic contemptible weakling.

Wow. Apparently I have not had enough coffee yet, because I just tried to log into a WordPress install on a domain I haven’t owned for a while now. I have no idea why I even typed that domain as I haven’t thought about it in months. Maybe even a year or more. I’m not sure why it popped into my head just now. I wasn’t planning to be up this early today, but my brain woke me up around 4AM, so up it is I guess. Welcome to Sunday.

Me, after the windows have been open for a few minutes: “Something smells good coming in here. It’s probably the drier.” The Sweety: “Na, I farted.” This is how you win Friday night, I’m still laughing. Shabbat shalom y’all.