I may be fucked up because the fucking clocks were fucking changed again, which is fucking rough because I'm hard at work on this fine Sunday, but don't worry about bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• For the Love of God, Make the Stupid STOP! Look, more people want us to go on permanent Daylight Saving Time than don't. Some of us are so fucking desperate to stop dicking around with the clocks that we're even considering permanent Standard Time (which is not a better option, but it is the only one you can make happen without getting the fucking dumbasses in Congress to ACTUALLY FUCKING DO SOMETHING). This is all so stupid. Just do it. Just make Daylight Time permanent and fucking MOVE ON FROM THIS BULLSHIT.

   
• Nacho! One of my favorite chefs is Saúl Montiel, who appears on Epicurious often. He's entertaining and a genius in the kitchen. Even when he's cooking with meat, I learn new things that I can then adapt into a vegetarian recipes. Yesterday I found that he recently made Perfect Nachos that are vegetarian from the jump. They look incredible...

Damn that looks delicious. No clump of stuff dumped on top of the chips, and when you grab one chip you don't take the entire plate of cheese as you would with cheddar. My next grocery order is going to include the ingredients for this bad boy. Best cooking tip you'll ever get from me... go to the Epicurious page and search "Saúl Montiel" to get more awesome tips than you can shake a spatula at.

   
• YOU FOLD IT IN! After Catherine O'Hara's passing, I'm seeing a non-stop parade of clips with her in them. But this is the first time I've seen her in LEGO. It's one of her most classic scenes...

Oh how I miss Schitt's Creek.

   
• Libarry! Every time I see the Obama Presidential Library in the news, I wonder what in the hell they were thinking...

I detest this design. It looks like a brutalist nightmare... lacking warmth, beauty, elegance, or architectural fluidity. It could have been so much more. I often wonder what type of statement these oppressive-looking monuments are supposed to be making. Whatever it is, this one feels opposite of the presidency it is supposed to be representing.

   
• Lanterns! It's interesting how James Gunn is trying his best to differentiate all the DC projects so they're not merging into sameness. And while I can't say that the concept for a cosmic-spanning character like Green Lantern to be trapped in a distinctly earth-bound scenario, I do appreciate that Lanterns is striving to be something different...

And then there's the rumor that Gunn wants to bail from his contract a year early because he feels at odds with his studio's new Paramount overlords. And wouldn't it be interesting if he returned to Marvel? Seems like Paramount would do just about anything to avoid that.

   
• NEWSFLASH: LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy. For better or worse, I put my name on the shit I say. My name is at the top of the sidebar of every entry on Blogography. And my real name is used on all my social media as well. And, believe me, I struggled with whether or not I wanted to go that route. In The Beginning Times, it felt like more people were using a pseudonym than their real names, but I ultimately decided to skip past that. Who cares what I say? And then I got a reader showing up where I live, and figured I may have made a mistake (the threats were also having me re-think things). But now, decades later, it turns out that staying anonymous is a thing of the past. AI can unmask you with "surprising accuracy." I wonder if this will cut down on the number of people making "anonymous" threats? One can only hope.

   
• Frod! I think I shared this years ago. I bears re-sharing....

I do the same thing... for my cats.

   
• Denial Isn't Just a River In Egypt! Every time washed up, bargain basement Hercules homophobe Kevin Sorbo opens his mouth... it's either to say something shitty. Or work in movies like Meet the Spartans so he can kiss dudes...

That's it, Sorbo, put your back into it! Such a hypocrite. Lord what a piece of shit.

   
And now I'm going back to work. Feel sad for me since my circadian rhythm is fucked.

WARNING: This entry contains technical stuff most people won't care about!

Once I had finally saved enough money to replace my aging QNAP NAS (Network Attached Storage) system with shiny new UGREEN devices, I was dismayed to find that some of the apps I relied on were not available in their app repository. "ZOMG! WHERE'S PLEX?!?!" I screamed. "HOW CAN YOU SELL A NAS THAT DOESN'T HAVE PLEX?!?" Sure QNAP was always late to the table with updates to their apps, but at least they had apps.

Enter Docker...

"Docker is an open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications. Docker enables you to separate your applications from your infrastructure so you can deliver software quickly. Docker provides the ability to package and run an application in a loosely isolated environment called a container. The isolation and security let you run many containers simultaneously on a given host. Containers are lightweight and contain everything needed to run the application, so you don't need to rely on what's installed on the host."

Or, to put it another way, Docker lets you run the apps that aren't in your NAS's app repository.

Now, before I dig into it, there is something I've learned about Docker. Primary of which is that a lot of people are moving away from it because it's gotten bloated and resource hungry. There are even lighter alternatives being developed which do the same thing more efficiently. But none of them are in the UGREEN app repository like Docker is, and I don't want to take the time to learn how to manually install them. So here I am running Docker.

Not that Docker is easy, mind you.

Things can get very tricky when trying to install apps, even when you are following a step-by-step guide you found on the internet. You're still going to have to deal with SSH and config files (called "compose.yml") and other stuff that ain't a point-and-click process. You will have to get your hands dirty and that can be frustrating. I can say that the more you use Docker, the easier it gets.

The important thing to note is that despite some difficulties, I do have my apps up-and-running on my NAS now. I'm going to drop those apps here in case I ever need to refer back...

• Portainer. This is an app which let's you more easily manage apps with Docker. Something which is very much welcome. Half the tutorials I've found on the internet to install, alter, and maintain Docker apps use Portainer, so it should be the first thing you install.
• Watchtower. Updating your Docker apps can be a challenge, because you have to remember to log into your NAS often so you can see what needs to be updated. Watchtower handles this for you, grabbing the latest versions and installing them automatically.
• Pi-Hole. This is a "DNS sinkhole" that also allows you to do nice things like block ads on websites. Though I've found more and more websites are finding ways around being blocked by coding ads as if they're a part of the page, so it's not as useful as it once was.
• TailScale. This wholly remarkable app allows you to create a VPN (Virtual Private Network) between all your devices. This means you can securely access them as if you're sitting at home. I've installed it on everything from phone to laptop to tablet to every desktop I use, and it's fantastic. No more setting up wacky holes in your network to access stuff remotely. Lock everything down and let TailScale handle it! Whether I'm using Apple Screen Sharing to control my work computer from home... or feeding data to my iPhone from some service I have installed on my NAS, it's all just... there.
• Plex. The main reason I installed Docker was for Plex, the app I use to catalog and serve all my media (from videos to photos to music). It wasn't the easiest thing to get set up but, once I did, I just added the TailScale address for my NAS to Plex and everything works seamlessly. Far, far better than using the flakey remote access offered by Plex itself.
• Paperless-NGX. This is just too handy. It's like a repository for all the stuff you collect on the internet (or even Real Life). From recipes to notes to receipts... whatever. Just drop it into Paperless and it gets stored, cataloged, and converted to searchable text (if it's an image file). I've collected hundreds of vegetarian and vegan recipes over the years in all kinds of different formats from text files to screen captures to PDFs. They're all in Paperless now, and I've got them tagged for easy searches. Scenarios like "What was in that drink that I had in Hawaii?" used to be a mess because all I had was a photo I took of a menu at a bar. But now that the photo is cataloged in Paperless and tagged as "alcohol" and "Hawaii," it takes two seconds to find it instead of endless digging through files.
• Immich. This is a photo cataloging app that's very, very good. Far better than Apple's own Photos app (and UGREEN's Photos app too... maybe even Google's app!). And it's constantly being improved and updated with great new features. Since all my photos are already in my Plex folder, I just pointed Immich to it and that was it. Now I have all the cool Immich tools without having to re-catalog everything. So nice. And, just like Plex, I just enter my TailScale address into the apps on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, and I can get to my library wherever I am.
• IT-Tools. Over 50 tools that handle everything from temperature and date & time conversion to math evaluation. I do wish it included more useful every day conversions (like weight and measurements) but hopefully we'll get that eventually too.

Since discovering the joys of Docker, I'm sure there are several other apps out there that I will be installing. And there's a lot of apps out there.

So... my initial panic of UGREEN not having many apps has been resolved. About the only UGREEN apps I use now are Docker and Sync & Backup (I have a secondary cheaper UGREEN NAS in a separate location which regularly pulls all my data off my home NAS via TailScale so I have an off-site backup). Everything else is on Docker. Which has changed the way that I use my devices and store my data.

In a good way.

Back when I used to travel constantly, I took my laptop and had all my work files on Dropbox so they were accessible no matter where I was at.

But my personal files back at home were problematic. I'd go to look at some of my photos while on the road and the Plex server would glitch. I'd be on vacation somewhere and find that I couldn't reach my files back home. It was a serious problem, because sometimes the files or documents I needed were urgent. I once had to have a friend run to my house, print out a document, take a photo of it, and send it to me while I was rushing around an airport. Not fun at all.

So when I traded in my old NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive for a new one, a priority was figuring out how to have a clean tunnel back to my house for whatever I needed to do.

I was about ready to give up when I saw TailScale mentioned in a NAS forum. For personal use it's free, so I really had nothing to lose.

It took some doing to get everything working on my NAS (it's not a click-and-install deliverable, so you have to learn how to run it as a Docker container), but once you get things running? You have your own personal network between all your devices! Just install the client app on your computers and phones and whatever via a VPN, then point your apps to the private address assigned to them, and you're done!

Now I can watch my videos streaming from my Plex server with zero issues (this is something that has always been problematic via Plex itself). I can use my iPhone to look at all my photos being indexed and served from Immich with ease. My personal document library is available anywhere I have internet. And Tailscale is blazingly fast about it, which is so nice.

If you're wanting to have a private network where all your devices can talk to each other securely, then Tailscale might be for you. All the information you need is on their website. And if you're looking for a VPN solution for your work, then Tailscale seems reasonably priced.

More tech drama. Have I mentioned how much I loathe Apple HomeKit HomeShit?

If I haven't (let's be real, I definitely have) then you should probably know that my hatred is very real, and has now reached such depths as to send me into a rage just thinking about it. As I wrote yesterday I awoke to find that on the first day in this Year of Our Lord, 2026, 3/4 of my "smart" home devices were offline and half my Automations were missing. Now, when this happens I can usually get most of those devices to come back online if I power-cycle all my hubs (nothing can be done to bring back the automations). It's for this reason that I have non-HomeShit power plugs on all my iPod minis and AppleTVs.

And so, before I left on an errand I had to run before work, I sat in my car to power off all the hubs. Then, when I finished my errand and made it to the office, I turned them all back on. Three hours later as I ate lunch, I pulled up Apple's HomeShit app on my iPhone... and... there were stil six devices which hadn't recovered. Which means I'm going to waste time removing them then resetting them so I can re-add them before re-writing the Automations that got trashed somehow.

Easy.

Just time-consuming.

And here's a new wrinkle... the re-written automations do not work!

No idea why. I can test them. They test as expected. But they don't work.

For exmaple... I have it so when one of the lights in the guest bathroom is turned on, the other light turns on too. Turn one off, they both turn off. It's incredibly basic, but important because otherwise it's not light enough in there.

Absolutely no idea what I do now. After dinner I'll delete them all and try re-writing one more time. If that doesn't work, I guess I have to try removing devices and re-adding them. If that doesn't work, then I guess I have to completely reset absolutely everything and start over from scratch.

If that ends up being the case, I can say goodbye to my weekend.

Which brings me to a decision I have to make...

1. Waste two days resetting everything and hope it works.
2. Give up on HomeShit and save my money to replace it with something that actually works.
3. Give up on having a "smart" home completely, and go back to the dark ages of having a dumb home.

I gotta tell you... Option #3 is looking very appealing to me. If I waste two days and the shit is still broken, I'm going to be angry and never get over it. If I trash HomeShit and start over with something else which ends up broken, I'm going to be angry and never get over it. If I just end up giving up completely on having a "smart" home, I'm totally going to be angry.

But I'll get over it.

I just have to go back to remembering where all the light switches are and figure out and possible have to re-think some lighting in a few places. Like the guest bathroom.

In other tech drama, I'm slowly getting all my data transfered from my QNAP NAS to my UGREEN NAS.

This is taking a while because I have a metric shit-ton of photos to copy. I always took a lot of photos when I traveled. Then when the charity closed and I wasn't traveling as much, I ended up with Jake and Jenny and started taking a metric shit-ton of cat photos. You know how it goes.

My problem is (and always has been) that I don't sort through photos after I take them. I snap! snap! snap! snap! take them with the intent of keeping the best images and tossing the rest. Except I never have time to do that. Maybe I'll commit to sorting through 50 photos every morning when I wake up and see if I can whittle down the number of photos in my archive by half. Or, if I get serious about it, whittle down to a quarter of what I'm sitting on. Which should be easy because there's just so many pictures that are practically identical. There's AI software which is supposed to make the task easier, but I've not looked into it. And maybe I should.

In the meanwhile, I guess I save my money for a new pair of hard drives, given the ones I have are all older and probably not very reliable. They will likely be giving up the ghost soon.

Like myself.

Or like my patience with HomeShit, which has now evaporated.

I believe in supporting the artists whose media I consume, so I buy the media I want to own.

For the longest time this meant VHS Tape, then LaserDisc, then DVD, then Blu-Ray, then Digital. I liked digital because I didn't have to make space for physical media in my home, and it seemed the ideal solution for being able to access the stuff I buy from wherever I'm at. Except it didn't end up working that way. Unlike when you buy a movie on DVD, when you purchase via Digital, you aren't purchasing the media. Instead you are purchasing a license to view that media... and it's a license which the studio or licensee can terminate at any time. And when a TV show I bought was removed by the studio, I swore I would never buy digital again and went back to physical media.

Physical media that I ultimately rip into a digital format as a personal backup (because physical media can deteriorate and become unusable). But all that digital media has to be stored somewhere, and that's where Network Attached Storage (NAS) comes in. This is a box of hard drives that hooks up to your network and can serve your files to wherever you allow it. Meaning that I can access my purchased media wherever I want.

When I went shopping for a NAS years ago, all I wanted was Synology hardware. But I couldn't afford it, so I went with QNAP which was supposed to be the next best thing. It was not. Multiple problems culminated with a ransomware attack that would have lost all my files if not for the fact that I maintain a backup. Between this horrific bullshit and the fact that QNAP apps are always numerous versions behind in their app store and I was done with QNAP, but still stuck with it because I couldn't afford to replace the thing. Instead I turned off all outside access, which was a bummer because I could no longer access my media away from home.

Fast-forward to May 2025 and Synology made a move towards requiring proprietary drives, something to which I said "Oh fuck no!" and scratched them off my list of NAS manufacturers I wanted to deal with. After the fiasco with WD, I buy Seagate IronWolf Pro drives. Period.

Fast-forward again to Black Friday 2025, and I ended up buying a replacement NAS from UGREEN because my QNAP NAS has gotten old with its Celeron J1900 processor, and the 8.5× to 10.5× speed jump of the Pentium Gold 8505 processor in the 4-Bay UGREEN 4800+ was too good to pass up. Even if I had to put it on a credit card to pay the $550.00 price tag.

UGREEN, which is a highly reviewed relatively new player in the NAS market, wasn't originally on my list of options. I don't have anything against a device made in China (because isn't everything?), but knowing that their government might have built a back-door into the system which may compromise my cat photos, and that was a deal-breaker.

But then I found out you can replace the OS with TrueNAS Open Source, if needed, and was like... alrighty then. Not that it much matters, because I was going to firewall it off completely, remove UGREENlink, and go with VPN-only access.

But Anyway...

I've been slowly transferring all my media to the new NAS and have been quite happy with it. The UGREEN model is freakishly faster compared to the old QNAP model I had. Usually, NAS manufacturers put old, slow CPUs in their boxes because you don't need really fast chips to perform file serving tasks. Except serving files is not all that a NAS does. In my case, the NAS also has to run apps to serve media for my laptop and my television (which I do with an app called Plex)... along with a bunch of other apps which do various tasks with my data. And having a fast CPU for those tasks is important.

One of those apps is TailScale, a secure connectivity app which allows me access to my data without having to go through QNAP or UGREEN. Kinda like a private VPN. Thus eliminating my distrust of major companies... no matter where they're located.

Overall I'm very happy with the UGREEN 4800+ NAS. If I have a gripe it's that they don't have many app packages available. For example Plex can't simply be downloaded, installed, and set-up from within the UGREEN app repository. It don't exist. Instead you have to download an abstraction layer called Docker which has all kinds of apps (including Plex and TailScale) to be run and set up as containers that are interpreted for UGREEN. It's nowhere near as easy to go this route than to have a native app, but it does work if you're willing to put in a little research, time, and effort. It took me a couple days to get Plex working correctly because the various "instruction" videos were contradictory and often glazed past critical information, but it's running just fine now.

The quality of the hardware is also very good. The housing is an aluminum alloy instead of the janky plastic housing on my QNAP, for example. I also like the trays for the hard drives, which are tool-free fr 3.5" drives. There are a variety of ports... including SD card slot, USB-C, and USB-A on the front... and HDMI, 3 USB-A, plus 2.5Gb and 10Gb ethernet ports. As if that wasn't enough, the unit arrives with upgrade tools to install an SSD cache and more memory, two CAT-7 ethernet cables, and a power adapter. Maximum capacity is a whopping 136TB over four drives (I have four 16TB drives in a RAID 6 configuration which gives me 29TB of usable space, because I like redundancy for safety).

If I have an outright complaint to offer, it has nothing to do with UGREEN. Instead it's with Plex. This is by far my favorite media serving platform (I bought a lifetime pass within a month of installing it), but it's not without its faults. For one thing, it wants to build movie "collections" even if you tell it not to by setting it to "disabled." And most all of these collections are fucking useless and stupid, so I end up deleting them all. Which takes a crazy amount of time because there are so many. But even worse is the fact that I have found no easy way of transferring all my title adjustments and poster art from my old install for all the titles I have. Which means I'm going to have to start all over again from scratch. That's hours and hours of work. Why there isn't just a folder I can copy over I have no idea. There's a "config" folder, but what I'm looking for isn't there. I guess. Because if there is, I'm not finding it. You'd think that this would be a no-brainer.

I just wish I had the free time to get my latest media purchases ripped so I could add them to my new NAS. I've been wanting to re-watch Superman, and this would be a great excuse to do that.

Every year or so people are sharing what apps they have on their phone's home screen, and I'm not immune to the immense pressure to join in.

Either that, or I am totally lacking content for today's post.

Anyway... here's my home screen...

Yes. I know. I am aware.

My screen is boring as hell. But that's intentional. I want as distraction-free an experience as possible. Which means my background is black so the icons have focus. I know what the icons are, so I remove the text by having them at maximum size. The only widget I have is Carrot Weather (both hourly and forecast). And there's the apps...

• Carrot Weather: The weather is kinda important where I live, and I appreciate the raw snark and hate you can get from Carrot. The widget at the top is also from the app, which shows the hourly and 4-day forecast in one.
• World Clock Pro: Having to coordinate time zones is not as important now as it used to be, but it's still handy to know what the time is in Uzebekistan from time to time.
• Apple Maps: After years of using a combination of Waze and Google Maps, I finally went to Apple late last year because I preferred the experience (and it's what I like for CarPlay).
• TickTick: I bounced between this, Things, Todoist, and Apple Reminders for forever. But eventually decided to just settle on the one I like the best, which is this. Also on my "Action Button" because it's constantly in use.
• Messenger/Facebook: Despite the fact that I despise the platform, this is the place where most of my online friends are. And so I use shitty Facebook Messenger and shitty Facebook apps to connect to the shitty service.
• Telegram: Mostly used to communicate for some of my work which requires it.
• WhatsApp: Used for work and for friends in foreign countries where this is what's used instead of texting.
• FindMy: I am forever losing my shit. And losing my stuff. So using Apple's FindMy to figure out where my Apple Watch, iPad, or stuff tagged with AirTags are hiding is something I do often enough that I keep the app on home.
• Photos: I take photos not just for keepsakes (or to have an hourly record of what my cats are doing), but also for communicating complex things more easily and remembering stuff. So I'm in this app all the time.
• Halide: My "Camera Control" opens Apple's Camera app, which is what I use most of the time. It's quick and easy. But when I want to take a photo where I have absolute control, Halide is my go-to.
• Wallet: Despite the fact that Washington State is a backwards fucking void when it comes to allowing us to have our driver's licenses stored digitally, I love Apple's Wallet. My house key, all of my credit cards, my loyalty cards, my insurance cards, my tickets, my passes... just everything lives here and is immediately accessible.
• Settings: I put this here years ago because I was constantly having to fiddle with something. But now-a-days I keep wanting to replace it with something because I'm rarely using it. Something to think about, I guess.
• Toyota: This app ain't great, but it's the only one they have to interact with my car. I don't use it very often, but when I do it's usually important enough to be slapped on my home screen.
• HomeKit: There's a growing list of things that suck about Apple's apps... but HomeKit HomeShit is at the top of the list as to being the suckiest. Lord how I fucking hate it. But, that's how my entire home is controlled, so here it is living on my home screen like it has earned it rather than just being semi-useful.
• Nest: This is where I can view my abundance of security cameras and smoke alarms and such. I keep thinking that I'll be forced to switch to the Google Home app, but this still kinda works. I have to re-log-in way more often than I should and you get errors often, but it's better than Google Home until I can no longer use it. Which is probably any minute now.
• Microsoft Outlook: It ain't perfect, but it's a damn site better than Apple's shitty fucking Mail and Calendar apps which have absolutely zero features for people who need to use these critical services for actual serious work. My personal email is still in Apple Mail on the next page so I can keep things separate.
• Phone: Yet another Apple app that's not as good as it should be, but it works for those times I am forced to make or receive a call.
• Safari: I actually rather like the browser better than most. But Arc is gaining ground fast and I may end up switching one day.
• Messages: This is an Apple app that's okay... but that's a serious problem, because it needs to be better than okay. It's a clutzy app that's more interesting in looking pretty than actually being a functional texting app. Most of the time, that's fine by me. But there are times I wish that Apple would just get their shit together for the love of God. I probably wouldn't be so sour on it if it would only handle spam in a sane way. But, alas...

Oh... by the way, Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

For future reference, these recipes turned out pretty great and are suitable for Thanksgiving or any time...

• Roasted Butternut Squash With Brown Butter Vinaigrette — I love butternut squash, and this is an incredible way to cook it.
• Cacio e Pepe Green Beans — If I had it to do over, I would steam the beans, shake them in melted butter, salt, and pepper... then layer the cheese. The water doesn't evaporate fast enough and the beans don't cook as well as steamed.
• Corn Casserole — I wasn't sure it was done and ended up overcooking it. I did like the surface area of a 13×9 dish for the cheese topping.

It's the busy time of year for me! I start work at 4:30am, head into the office at 8:30am, then head back home at 3:30pm, grab something to eat, then work until I fall asleep.

The problem is that I am so exhausted when I go home to eat that every little thing feels like too much effort. Just look at the number of times I dreaded having to do something menial...

• Ugh! I have to walk across the street to get to my car.
• Ugh! I have to drive home now.
• Ugh! I have to turn on my turn signal.
• Ugh! I have to get up, grab all my stuff, and go inside.
• Ugh! I have to cook a burger to use up this bun that's expiring.
• Ugh! I have to open a new tub of butter because I used the last of it for breakfast.
• Ugh! I have to squeeze ketchup on my burger.
• Ugh! I have to clean up the kitchen.
• Ugh! I have to go back to the kitchen because I forgot to get some chips and something to drink.
• Ugh! I have to go back to the kitchen, rinse my plate, and put it in the dishwasher.
• Ugh! I have to finish the work I didn't get done at work.
• Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! I want to go to bed.

But anyway...

Eddy is back, and this time he's entering psychosis with CHATGPT...

How does this not scare the ever-loving shit out of people? He did this for fun, but you just know there are thousands upon thousands of people going through this for real.

I have turned off every AI option I can find on all my devices and have done what I can to eliminate AI with the services I use (including Google, where you can search with "-ai"). I do this not just because it's rarely helpful and a waste of time, but also because I don't want to contribute to AI farms stealing resources and destroying lives.

Maybe AI can destroy my life so I can stay in bed tomorrow.

I'm sitting here wondering what the heck happened to my weekend and all the things I was supposed to get done that I never did, but I'm still getting Blogography done... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Melissa. Hurricanes are a way of life in the Caribbean. But there are hurricanes, and there are hurricanes. And it's looking very bad indeed for Jamaica. Right now it's looking like Hurricane Melissa is going to hit at a minimum Category 4... maybe even Category 5.

At the 3:29 and 5:40 there's a cat in the frame, and chickens at 5:51, and it fills me with despair for the animals that have no idea what's coming... and no way to prepare and stay safe.

   
• Papal Security! When you're raised Catholic, the Pope becomes a rather large figure in your life. But when I was young, I didn't know much about him other than he was the leader of The Church whom I should keep in my prayers. Then I left... or rather I was kicked out when I was asking too many questions during Sunday School... and that was the end of it. Except my grandmother remained Catholic, and so on my first trip to Rome in 2000, I decided to visit the Vatican museum and buy her a rosary souvenir because I was told they all got blessed by the Pope. It was there that I was first introduced to The Swiss Guard, which is a fascinating topic...

The thing that makes them so iconic is their hallmark colorful uniforms, which I think have got to be one of the most beautiful uniforms there's ever been. Despite being so bright, they don't cross the line into garish. Probably because of the way they're constructed. With the exception of the cuffs, the red accents are hidden in-between the panels of gold and blue, so they are only visible when a guard bends or moves. It' a very cool effect. It's commonly thought that Michelangelo designed the uniforms, but it's not true. They were designed hundreds of years later, long after he died, by Commandant Jules Repond in 1914. It's a fun urban legend though.

   
• WE PWNED! If you're not scared shitless for the future of this country as it's being taken over by corporations owned by the wealthy elite, you're not paying attention...

It's all by design. All of it. Our government is owned by these incredibly wealthy people who get regulations and laws changed to benefit them instead of the American people. You can see it everywhere if you just look around. We are beyond fucked.

   
• Classic! You can have my old-school 1990's Speed Queen Washer & Dryer that came with the condo I bought when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. I am forever indebted to my friend who told me I was crazy to get rid of them. Since I've already had to replace an oven that only lasted 5 years, I'm betting my microwave, refrigerator, and new freezer are not long for this world. And here's why...

There's a huge, huge opportunity for a company to start releasing old-school appliances that will actually last. I would happily go back to an oven with knobs and dials if it means I don't have to replace them so quick. Though it sounds like that might not even be possible given what's presented in that video.

   
• Package PingPong! A couple days ago I wrote about a package which was supposed to have been delivered this past Monday. It made it to Spokane, 3 hours away, but then kept going back and forth. Last I checked, it had made it to Spokane twice but then was headed back to Ohio. Again...

But then Friday night I checked again. Sure enough, it was back in Ohio. But when I checked this morning, all the previous back-and-forth had been erased. As if it never happened...

Apparently UPS has finally realized there's a problem, corrected it (I hope), and then made it look like nothing was amiss. And it gets worse... if the package is in Spokane, then it should be delivered to me on Monday. And that's what UPS says is going to happen. But they've said that previously. Before the mysterious "YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT!" correction, it was projected to arrive on Wednesday. Now it's two days earlier. I will be very interested to see what the package looks like when it (eventually) gets delivered. It's been through a lot.

   
• iBusted! I finally did a Google Search to try and find out why I'm having so many problems with the Apple iPhone keyboard lately. It seems as if it's constantly coming up with words that I'm not typing. And since I use the "swipe" method of typing, it's very, very noticeable. And the answer is nope! Not just me...

It's absolutely pathetic how fucking bad that Apple products are becoming. Between Apple Home, CarPlay, and Siri all being a pile of shit, the Apple "experience" is so far behind what others are doing as to be embarrassing. Forget about all the broken promises that were supposed to make Apple reign supreme by having "Apple Intelligence" make their products the best in existence... Apple can't even be assed to through money at the problems they can actually fix!

   
• ERROR! ERROR! I watch a lot of YouTube videos. It's pretty much the only thing I do watch any more since streaming companies have lost their damn mind with their pricing. Last night a video came up about a horrible software error in a radiation treatment machine which killed people. Twice the city where tragedy happened was Yakima, Washington... a city not too far from me. It was a fascinating watch, but grated on me because they kept mispronouncing "Yakima"...

In the video, he says "yaw-KEEmah" but it's actually "YAKihmah." Now, when it comes to Native American words, nobody is going to get it perfect if they've never heard it before (and even then it's not guaranteed). And then there's the added complexity of non-Natives changing the pronunciation so that it's more comfortable for them to say. But in any event, there's a way that locals say it and, given how this is most certainly available somewhere on the internet with an easy Google search, it's strange that the narrator for a video wouldn't take a minute to make sure their pronunciation is accurate. Or at least in the ballpark. Oh well. Just another case of my being picky, I suppose.

   
And now I guess I'll load my dishwasher so I can feel like I accomplished something before Monday rolls around.

Picture it...

You just spent $3,500 on a new smart refrigerator. It has a 32-inch touchscreen on it where you can see your calendar, display messages to your family, show your security camera feeds... even display photos and reminders! Not only that, but there's cameras inside so you can see inside your fridge while at the store... and AI watches what you put in and take out so it can remind you when you're running low on something. As if that wasn't enough, the doors open by touch sensor, so there's no having to grab for a handle when you've got your hands full. Smart drawers can be adjusted for different tasks... from keeping frozen foods frozen to keeping vegetables fresh!

Sure it cost you $3,500, but just look at all the features you get! It's everything you never knew you needed in life!

And then...

Samsung decides that they're going to display ads on your refrigerator's screen.

$3,500 for a refrigerator that turns into a billboard.

And this is everything that's wrong with modern companies. They cannot fucking stop selling you shit. They want those sweet ad dollars, and don't care how much you fucking hate them for it. Because money...

It's like Netflix all over again. The entire appeal of Netflix was the fact that you didn't have to sit through ads. But now you have to pay a shit-ton of money to get an ad-free experience. All the other streaming channels are the same. With the exception of AppleTV+, I think, but surely it's just a matter of time?

I find stuff like this Samsung bullshit to be outrageous. If I owned one of these refrigerators and was told that now I'm going to be sold ads ON SOMETHING I FULLY PAID FOR, I would sue. Sue like the wind.

Then I would use all the money I won to go ad-free on my new refrigerator.

More smoky days ahead, but it would seem I can still blog while being trapped indoors... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• AI is Still Shit: Part 1,683! Dang. Googling my own blog to find something... and seeing their AI summary at the top is scary as hell. "Gemini" is drawing some very good conclusions each time, but missing the point entirely on a lot of things I've posted. Sarcasm and humor are left out of the equation, which means what I was intending to convey is badly misrepresented. Kinda freaking me out that people will see what Google is telling them and think that's what I was saying. But that's AI for you. Anybody who trusts it entirely needs to drastically reevaluate what they're being told.

   
• Unboxed! Marques Brownlee will be reviewing all the new iPhones in short order, but I wanted to reiterate how gutted I am that we finally get a brightly-colored iPhone Pro the minute I decide I'm going to pass on upgrading. Just look at how awesome it looks...

Yeah... the orange color paired with the camera lenses being upgraded (not to mention the sensor) almost makes me want to upgrade. Almost.

   
• Jaws! My current mood...

Cats are fiesty, that's for sure.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Whey to go: Is cheese the new reason to travel? It always has been. Going to the Kaasmuseum (Dutch Cheese Museum in Alkmaar) became a life ambition the moment I found out it existed. That's why you always travel for cheese! Parmesan and mozzarella in Italy. Cheddar in England and Canada. Feta in Greece. Butterkässe in Germany. Pepper cheese in Australia. Camembert in France. Cotija and Queso Fresco, and Oaxaca in Mexico. Manchego in Spain. Queso Tico in Costa Rica. Provoleta in Argentina. Sakura in Japan. I didn't have a specific cheese in Korea that I can remember, but I DO remember their corn cheese! And of course ALL THE CHEESE IN THE NETHERLANDS! I don't eat so much cheese now, but I would still travel for cheese!

   
• Big! This really takes me back. The interesting thing to note here is that projection TV technology was shit back in the day. If you don't view it directly-head-on, you can't see the picture well at all. Viewing from off the side was impossible...

Of course now people are thrilled to have their entire living room taken over by a television. I know I am!

   
• NEWSFLASH: Child dies of horrifying measles complication in Los Angeles. Herd immunity is failing now that anti-vaxers have created the society they’ve been dreaming of. And the death toll is only going to rise. This is horribly sad. Herd immunity is critical for protecting people unable to be vaccinated... like babies. How the fuck did we get here?

   
And now back to our regularly-scheduled wildfire season.