jc blog - tales of a modern-day nomadic hunter-gatherer

Follow jcomeau_ictx on Twitter This is the weblog of Intrepid Wanderer. You never know what you might find here; graphic descriptions of bodily functions, computer programming secrets, proselytizing for the antichrist, miscellaneous ranting and kvetching, valuable information on living off the land... if you don't share my rather weird interests you may want to try slashdot instead.

You can consider my Del.icio.us links an extension to my blog, as are my LifeTango goals and my other to-do items. My to-buy list is also public, but only for sharing any useful ideas that might be there; I'm not requesting charity, neither do I offer it.

You can find me easily in google searches, as jcomeau, jcomeau_ictx, or jcomeauictx. There are lots of other jcomeaus, but AFAIK I'm the only jcomeau_ictx out there so far.

If you want to comment on anything you see here, try the new Facebook comments, reachable by clicking the "[comment]" link at the end of each post. If for some reason that isn't working, go ahead and email me, jc.unternet.net. You know what to do with the first dot. Make the 'subject' line something reasonably intelligent-looking or it goes plunk! into the spambasket unread.

This RSS feed may or may not work. Haven't fiddled with it in forever. RSS Feed


2019-10-27-1349Z

tested out that free sample Hollister incontinence kit a day before leaving. second time I urinated it leaked at the external catheter, which doesn't make a good seal. threw away the whole thing in disgust.

slept in parks today, then caught the 10PM Megabus to L.A., whose driver accepted my ticket for the midnight bus. but the Wifi, again, failed to function and the plug kept falling out of the socket. and the Love's truck stop had stopped selling beer at midnight, probably due to some stupid fucking blue laws. I never remember that shit and it irritates me every time. "free country" my ass.

re-learning to use half and half in my Starbucks coffee. it reduces the icky feeling in my stomach after drinking it.

got my day pass on Metrolink already. I'm thinking about hanging out on Palm Avenue near the ocean until my flight, instead of in San Ysidro. we'll see. [comment]

2019-10-16-2309Z

my bread wasn't rising. either I used insufficient yeast or dead yeast, but I wasn't willing to throw it away and didn't really want bricks either. so I tried an experiment: dissolved more yeast in a water/flour suspension, added a little sugar, and after it started bubbling, tore my dough up and re-kneaded it, adding more flour as necessary. skipped the first rise and just shaped it into two loaves, leaving the pans in the oven with the light on. it rose nicely! salvaged my bread!

took the pans out, turned off the light, and set it to preheat to 375 degrees. hoping for no more mistakes! [comment]

2019-10-13-2015Z

oh, and I was able to load my $5 Foldapp card directly onto my Starbucks gold card at the counter at the East Washington location. [comment]

2019-10-13-2008Z

I can connect to gmail fine from my laptop and one phone, but not from the other. it say "Gmail unavailable. Try again." rebooted, no help. login to gmail from an incognito tab, it works fine. close that tab, logout from the primary tab, log back in, logs me in fine but again says "Offline", and on refresh gives the "unavailable" error again. if I click the hamburger and scroll to the bottom and select "Older version", it works, but that's annoying. [comment]

2019-10-13-0332Z

accidentally discovered a way to read Facebook direct messages on the mobile site, at least on an Android phone with Chrome browser.

first, enable desktop mode: click on the 3 vertical buttons on the upper right, scroll down to "Desktop site", and click. this will make everything shrink to unreadability, but be patient. turn your phone sideways, that will help, then click the messages icon, it looks something like "(~)". now hit the "back" button in your browser. if you're lucky, as I was, your browser is still sending a "desktop" User-Agent string to Facebook, but for some reason it's using the CSS for a mobile device, so everything is readable, and it doesn't redirect you to Google Play to install the messenger app.

now when you switch to another site, you may find it's still in desktop mode, even if while in Facebook you clicked the 3 dots again you might have found it's disabled. at that point you can disable it. [comment]

2019-10-10-0118Z

Vortex (Jay)'s suggestion of using alcohol to kill underarm bacteria and thus avoid bad body odor seems to work well if I remember to apply it several times a day. it doesn't seem to matter if I use the 96% stuff or regular 40% vodka, but it has to be reapplied regularly. I could maybe set up a drip system. and now I'm wondering if 3% H2O2 would work as well. it's a lot cheaper. [comment]

2019-10-07-2047Z

upgraded the Debian Buster system on my Lenovo laptop to fix a problem with the ethernet port, and wifi stopped working. so I googled using my phone, and found it was an old problem, which somehow just hadn't affected me yet. had to find the ath10k firmware, and renamed firmware-6.bin to firmware-6.bin.disabled, so that it would load firmware-5 instead. and now it works! [comment]

2019-10-05-0341Z

I spent most of the day fighting with Debian GNU/Linux, exim4, dovecot, and bind9, trying to solve a problem for someone whose Comcast email server suddenly and without warning changed its configuration. I finally got it working about an hour ago.

in the late afternoon, wearied from my attempts, I went for a jog, landed at Redwood Credit Union and took out the $300 I had withdrawn from my silver investments (it's so easy using UPMA over buying and selling on eBay and paying fees to both eBay and PayPal), added it to the $200 I'd managed to save from this month's budget, and paid my debt down another $500, bringing it to below $250. if and when I survive until my next Social Security payout, it'll be done. meanwhile I've got about $23 to last me the next 15 days. it's doable but I've got to be really frugal. [comment]

2019-10-04-0445Z

now that I appear to be the only one on earth mining Americancoin, I notice that mined blocks are considered "immature" until 120 confirmations! [comment]

2019-10-04-0133Z

learned something yesterday: don't fill a Coleman stove all the way to the top of the reservoir. the pressure pump doesn't work right, and you get scary-high sooty yellow flames that don't go out when you close the valve, for up to maybe 10 minutes afterwards. [comment]

2019-10-03-0614Z

last night I tried some homemade curry rice. started out with 12 fl oz. of rice, 24 fl. oz. water, and a pack of 3 chicken leg quarters. by the time the rice was done, the chicken was still only partially cooked. broke up some of it and made fried rice, which lasted me until around 5PM today. it was really good, and simple: added about a half tablespoon each of powdered turmeric and ginger, about 6 6-ml packets (total 36 ml) of soy sauce, black pepper and red pepper flakes to taste. also some duck fat. as good as any curry rice I remember. [comment]

2019-10-02-0352Z

I couldn't build Americancoin on my newer laptop, but then I found a script I had made some months back, wheezy32run, which allows me to run 32-bit programs using the libraries from a 32-bit download of Debian GNU/Linux. I'm running it now, and have mined two more blocks since yesterday. but those may not be spendable if other people are running the new hard fork. [comment]

2019-10-01-1806Z

last night I ate a very filling meal with no meat, something that for me is rare to find. I took a 8.5 ounce package of Village Harvest Tikka Masala and a package of their Basmati and Lentil rice, mixed them together. then added maybe 5 or 6 tablespoons of Earth Balance coconut and peanut spread for protein and fat, some water and soy sauce, and some red pepper flakes. finally, because I was worried about it not being fatty (and filling) enough, I added maybe 3 tablespoons of duck fat. cooked it for about 15 to 20 minutes and it was delicious. I was still just a bit hungry, though, so I ate 3 ounces of cheese I had left over from the camping trip, and drank a little over 1/2 bottle of wine with the dinner. I had no hunger pangs during the night, and no sour stomach from the wine, which usually happens when I don't eat red meat.

now I'm wondering if I had skipped the duck fat and cheese, and had started with more cooked rice, if I could have been satisfied with a vegan meal. I'll have to test someday. [comment]

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