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continually shocked by how BIG silksong is. sunk like 75 hours into it and only just now got the last movement tech. i think it's the last one I CAN'T EVEN BE SURE

Current Music: Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy - Queen

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use my fancy patter on the telephone

Yesterday, I went to Burnley to upgrade my phone contract to SIM only, and buy myself a new phone.

Between that, the rent, a few other things, and the fact that I have to go back to the dentist next week, I have spent A LOT of money in a very short space of time, and I don't like it at all. I am glad I can manage to do this, thanks to my job, but SHEESH it feels very uncomfortable.

(That said, I just checked my bank account and actually my spending wasn't too ridiculous? My balance now versus what it was when my last pay went in wasn't actually too different - I was expecting it to vary by WAY more than it did).

Anyway, the SIM only deal is £25 per month less than what I was paying, so it will even out in the end, and I can afford it.

As for the dentist - I had to go for a check-up, and I need a filling, as the tooth he'd previously identified as cracked now has a very visible chip out of it. Although I qualify for NHS treatment, I don't get any help with it, as I'm working*, so I've already paid for the check-up, and the filling will be twice as much, YAY. On the plus side: it's pay day this Friday, and also this is my first filling in well over a decade.

So yeah, the phone I ended up getting was a Samsung A26 in mint green. I haven't finished setting it up properly yet, but omg it's so nice to have a phone that functions how I want it to, and I don't feel like I'm struggling with all the time. AMAZING.

(My old phone is a Pixel 7a, and I do not like it ONE BIT. Apologies if you have a Pixel and you like it. I just don't think it was the phone for me).

Also while I was out, I did a bit of shopping for my nephew's birthday (not for a while yet), and feel like I failed at that, because I've seen him so little over the last twelve months (for understandable reasons), that I don't know what he's into these days. I've got him some Pokemon and Mario stuff, but that feels very predictable.

I also - because I am a fool of epic proportions, and somewhat predictable myself - bought myself a squishmallow. It is a frog, and his name is Robert, which amuses me for a variety of reasons, not least because I have a beanbag frog I've had since I was a teenager that I called Robbie, after Robbie Williams. Because I was very into Take That when my mum bought him for me. So I sort of felt I had to buy him. And then when I got home and read the bio on his tag, I saw that he has the same birthday as my dad. Which amuses me even more, given how little he and I got on together.

If you want to see what he looks like, I posted a pic on my bsky yesterday.

Anyway, all that aside, I am on holiday from work (apart from the bit where I'm not), and it has rained every day so far, because that is just my luck (and also autumn in the UK). Also my meet up with Sarah had to be cancelled because her husband got ill, and she didn't know if she'd pick up what he has, and obviously didn't want to pass it on. So I am thwarted in being social! (for now)

~

*~~I could apply for an HC2 certificate, but I still probably wouldn't get totally free treatment.~~ I have applied for one! ~~I don't know! I guess it would at least help with my prescriptions?~~

Current Music: Love Rescue Me - U2

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and the sun in the sky makes a shadow of you and i

Work is terrible. STILL. I thought it was going to get better, but alas! twas not to be!

I have a week off this coming week, though! I really needed it, because I am lousy at booking holidays (as I'm sure y'all are aware at this point, lol). However, I've said I'll take two short shifts at the end of week to help out (and also because I know pretty much nobody likes the shorter shifts, apart from me). I have some more holiday a couple of weeks later (as that's just how it turned out wrt available slots), and I will not offer to do any shifts then because fuck man, I just need a week to myself.

I am going to meet up with Sarah next week, partly because we haven't hung out since Xmas last year! We do see each other around in town, and on the buses, but never for any great length of time, so that will be nice.

I've managed to get a bit more stuff done around the house, which is nice. I feel like I'm making a bit more tangible progress than I was, which is good!

I do not have an outcome for The Thing I did the other day, which is frustrating, but I kind of expected this to happen, so it isn't really a surprise.

Oh! and I have beaten a video game recently! I played Magic Archery, which is an idle numbers go up game that can be completed in around an hour. To say I'm not really into incremental games, I actually enjoyed that one - maybe because it's so short, IDK.

And that's pretty much everything for now! I think.

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At Least One Underlying Condition [Covid, US, Patreon]

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1882720.html

0.

Hey, Americans! Look sharp, the Trump Administration is trying to play a head game on you about Covid vaccines, and it's apparently working, because I see nobody talking about this in the news or on social media.

There's a lot of complexity and chaos right now about what is available to whom and how to get it. Things are changing fast, especially on the state level. I hope to discuss it in another post, but there's one thing in particular I want to clarify for you.

As you've probably heard, week and a half ago, the FDA changed the authorization for the Covid vaccines, in a way which curtails access. The thing that people are hearing is that for people under 65 years old the Covid vaccines are not authorized with some exceptions.

That's technically correct, but badly misleading. A lot of people hear "not authorized" and stop really listening to the rest of the sentence. They hear "with some exceptions" and assume they're not likely to be one such, and won't qualify to get it, and tune right out.

To be cynical for a moment, you're meant to assume that.

But it turns out you're one of the exceptions. Probably. How can I know that?

The actual language from the FDA authorization just issued ( Read more [2,750 words] )

This post brought to you by the 218 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

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pols,
tech

Interesting app for Android [tech]

I don't know who needs to know about this, but:

I just discovered the Android app "Periodically". It's described as an "event logger". It's for keeping track of when a recurring thing has happened, and figuring out what the average time is between occurrences. You just keep it updated each time the event happens, and it will do the math for you to figure out the frequency, and even give you a notification when it predicts the event is likely to happen again. If you're tracking more than one thing, it will try to suss out correlations for you.

I mention because twenty five years ago or so, I needed exactly this functionality and could not find any application that would do what I needed, so I wrote a thing for myself, and since then a lot of people I've mentioned it to have wondered where they can get one like it. Mine was Mac/Palm Pilot, so not of much use to most people, especially these days.
Lo, somebody seems to have realized the need for this functionality, and brought it to the market. So I thought I'd mention.

Now, in this day and age, a lot of people, especially in the US, are concerned with security. Especially if they're tracking something to do with their health. This app is not specific to health, so nothing about it immediately reveals that it is storing health information on casual inspection; you could use some sort of other term for whatever health condition it is you are actually tracking. So, for instance, If you were tracking how often your migraines happened, you could call that "new box of cereal".

This app defaults to local-only data storage on your Android device, and the developer claims that it only collects "app activity" for analytics, and shares nothing with third parties. It outputs CSV and has an option to back up to Google Drive.

I haven't tried it myself, but it has a rating of 4.6 stars out of five on the Play Store.

Reviewers on the Play Store note that tracker apps that are specific to the kind of event – such as health- specific loggers – often have needless complexity, and often some weird ideas about graphic design. They praise this app for its clean, elegant look and simple, effective functionality.

In addition to its obvious applicability to episodic health conditions, it strikes me as potentially extremely useful in one of the trickier parts of prepping: figuring out one's burn rate of resources. I think I might trial it to help me figure out how often I should expect to have to buy a fresh bale of toilet paper and how long the big bottle of ibuprofen will last me.