Aside – Page 105 – Amanda Unvarnished

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· 25 Kislev 5780 (Monday 23 December 2019) · 1 minute to read

One of my goals for the upcoming secular year is to start playing more with iOS shortcuts. Specifically, I want to learn how to create them as well as how to install shortcuts by third parties.

There are a lot floating around for various Indieweb tasks and workflows and it would be really cool to automate some things while posting from my phone.

I expect this will have the side benefit of posting more from my phone.

I have photos in mind for this more than anything else, but would also like to start playing with alternative implementations of bookmarking services.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

28 °F Clear

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Amanda CAARSON

· 25 Kislev 5780 (Monday 23 December 2019) · 1 minute to read

One of the best parts of doing a manual Facebook content migration is going through and remembering occasions which consequently sparked posts.

I’ve just come across one that I’m about to migrate that references my nepphew turning up my work phone as part of a weekend visit.

My nepphew is now on the edge of becoming a teenager. God, I feel old.

And I promise I won’t embarrass him later in life by pointing at these posts, because if he’s going to learn that the internet never forgets, it won’t be from his aunt.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

28 °F Clear

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Amanda CAARSON

· 24 Kislev 5780 (Sunday 22 December 2019) · 1 minute to read

I still can’t get Ditchbook to run properly on Windows, so I’ve started manually importing my content from Facebook.

I don’t really mind because it’s far from the only manual import I need to do, plus I have the time off to do it, and it’ll be a nice exercise in deciding what to keep and what not to keep.

I need to find something that’ll let me read the location data and such on Windows for the photo import parts, but it’ll be interesting to map locations to photos and other past content.

I’ve still got to start on the stuff from Goodreads and Foursquare/Swarm.

We did some grocery shopping and got some treats for this week and we’re planning to do more on Tuesday, along with getting some Chinese to eat while everyone else is eating traditional Christmas dinner on Wednesday.

And as usual we’re reading books. I’m up to one hundred and eighty for this year and we still have ten days left to go.

201 McCormick Ave, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

18 °F Fog/Mist

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Amanda CAARSON

· 17 Kislev 5780 (Sunday 15 December 2019) · 1 minute to read

I normally try not to transform into a complete geek while reading books, but now they’re talking about the Dark web and this character, who apparently spends a bunch of time on the on the dark web used a consumer as opposed to an onion router this one time when he went on the dark web and that’s how he got caught, and I want to slap Alex Cross for being so wrong right now. I also want to slap James Patterson for writing a character who manages to go on the dark web without an onion router. For the love of books can authors please please please research before writing?

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

36 °F Cloudy

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Amanda CAARSON

· 17 Kislev 5780 (Saturday 14 December 2019) · 1 minute to read

I’ve got micropub clients for remotely posting several kinds of posts to my site: Quill for notes and other post kinds, (it covers a lot), Teacup for posting food and drink, and Indiebookclub for posting books with reading statuses.

They’re all simple interfaces, very accessible, and very quick to post from.

I’ll link them on a page later since I need to add some other pages to this site and to the menu.

We’re spending this weekend reading books, although we took a break during the week since the two of us are avid book lovers and would probably read all the time and do not much else if we were willing to let the responsibilities of life fall to the wayside.

201 McCormick Ave, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

34 °F Light Rain

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Amanda CAARSON

· 6 Kislev 5780 (Wednesday 4 December 2019) · 2 minutes to read

I didn’t realize until right before candle lighting last week that I was on the last two, so I ordered some more this morning. They’ll get here on Monday, so I’m going to double-check the local Wegmans to see if they have some in stock. I think I remember seeing that they do which means I can order a couple through Instacart for this week.

I also ordered some of those little candles for Hanukah, because I have all three of the gifted hanukiot (plural of hanukiah, which is distinct from menorah, click the link for more info), but I don’t have the large one yet and I’m not sure if it will get here before Hanukah does.

This year it falls during the week of Christmas, which is just about as late as it can fall.

And no, I’m not going to get into the argument over how it’s spelled in English, since English is a transliteration of the Hebrew and there are multiple valid ways to do this, although the double K somewhat annoys me since Hebrew doesn’t have double letters.

There’s apparently at least one Jewish organization though that decided to troll everybody and take the opportunity to spell it eight different ways in English in their printed calendar this year for the eight nights.

If I find the link again I’ll share it.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

Cloudy

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Amanda CAARSON

· 3 Kislev 5780 (Sunday 1 December 2019) · 1 minute to read

I’m using <a href="http://quill.p3k.io">Quill</a> as my primary posting interface for notes, and am eperimenting with using other clients for different kinds of content, and I’ve realized that Bridgy is still configured for my site and that I can control syndication from Quill, so I’m running a quick experiment to see if I can selectively syndicate things to Twitter.

I’m continuing the switch to social readers, and I’m not sure if I want all my likes and favorites to go to Twitter.

I want to be able to like things ETC. without flooding people’s timelines.

So, let’s see if this works.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

Light Snow and Fog/Mist

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Amanda CAARSON

· 3 Kislev 5780 (Sunday 1 December 2019) · 2 minutes to read

We’ve finally reached the point of the year where things start to slow down, and I’m glad for it.

Well, at least that’s the case if you don’t celebrate Christmas.

Data Recovery 2019 has begun in earnest, and there’s a new 2TB external hard drive to help with the effort.

This is good, because the old computer is finally complaining about hard drive failure and urging me to hurry up.

We watched the Ohio State Michigan game yesterday and I at least was pleased with the way it turned out.

We also finished the Dark Tower series. I’m not going to spoil it other than to say if you like Oy the seventh book is going to piss you off in a couple of ways. We’ve started the Alex Cross series by James Patterson because I think we’re both still sore over the treatment of Oy in the seventh Dark Tower book. It’ll still end up on the reread list because of the middle books but the seventh book I think was just King doing his best to destroy the dreams of every fantasy fan on the planet.

I’m putting in some extra work today so that I can hopefully have a three-day weekend later in the week. I have several project hand-offs this week so assuming all goes well after this week things will start to taper off for the rest of the year and I can hit the ground running in January.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

Unknown Precipitation

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Amanda CAARSON

· 30 Heshvan 5780 (Thursday 28 November 2019) · 1 minute to read

Initially I subscribed to someone else’s Harry Potter film scores playlist on Spotify, but today I decided to make my own.

I did this because I wanted to include the bonus tracks from the original scores as well as the scores for Cursed child and the two Fantastic Beasts movies.

I haven’t seen these yet, and I’m still researching which streaming service they’re on, (probably Amazon), but eventually I’ll watch them.

The chili turned out very well and we’re still grazing on it, although it’s almost gone. We’re definitely doing that again. It was really good with some tostitos scoops.

There’s also still some pie left and I might get into that in a little bit.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

36 °F Cloudy

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Amanda CAARSON

· 30 Heshvan 5780 (Thursday 28 November 2019) · 1 minute to read

Shoutout to all the people who are working today, especially all those working as Uber Eats and Doordash drivers, since they’re running "Tired of Turkey" and other similar promotions.

I can only imagine the kind of cajoling, enticement, or maybe even veiled threats that went into getting drivers to work Thanksgiving.

Shoutout to all those doing geek duty for your families. Be sure to block Facebook at the router level if you can, and at the computer level if you can’t.

Shoutout to everyone who’s spent all day cooking. Take advantage of the turkey-induced nap as soon as possible.

Shoutout to all those who had to go in early to your retail job because Black Friday couldn’t wait until Friday.

And finally, shoutout to all those who work the truly essential jobs, even on Thanksgiving, without which society would grind to a hault: Hospital staff, paramedics, fire and police, and the IT professionals making sure everyone’s internet is up and running as soon as possible should it go down. Oh and the people who had to handle Facebook maintenance this morning.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

36 °F Cloudy

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Amanda CAARSON

· 30 Heshvan 5780 (Thursday 28 November 2019) · 1 minute to read

We’ve decided not to do a traditional Thanksgiving and are doing chili instead, along with general snacking on other good things throughout the day.

We’re rereading the new Atlee Pine book since I fell asleep for several hours during the middle which means I missed some key parts.

Otherwise we’re just chilling.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who’s celebrating.

I hope those of you who are spending it by yourselves are doing so because you want to, and for those of you who are having a hard time, I hope you find some solace.

And for those of you who are with your biological family, and are nonetheless finding the day difficult because of all the pretend love and affection, I hope you get some time alone to reflect in your own way and to rest from the stress.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

39 °F Cloudy

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Amanda CAARSON

· 29 Heshvan 5780 (Wednesday 27 November 2019) · 1 minute to read

Today, (well, I suppose it’s yesterday now), we got a new, bigger crockpot for cooking chili and other good things in, and we got a new coffee pot because the one I brought up here started leaking a while ago.

We also got some mixing bowls and utencils, and a new silverware tray with silverware.

These will go nicely with the other dishes we’ve acquired.

We haven’t made definite plans for Thanksgiving yet, but either way there will be good food and sportsball involved since this Saturday is the Ohio State Michigan game.

I’m looking forward to the four-day weekend and the slowdown of the rest of the secular year.

We’re currently reading the new Atlee Pine book and so far we’re enjoying it. More on that later in the form of a review.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

41 °F Partly Cloudy

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Amanda CAARSON

· 28 Heshvan 5780 (Tuesday 26 November 2019) · 1 minute to read

Cannot stop yawning but there’s a light at the end of this project tunnel and it’s not a train.

The hardest parts of this thing will finally be off my plate by the end of today and I can’t wait.

The policies are in place, the mostly user-proof content editing interfaces are in place, and all that’s left to do is train the people who will be entering the content going forward on how to use the interfaces and follow the prompts.

I’m not saying there’s no possible way this could be screwed up, but the content creators at least will have a very difficult time doing this, and I’m proud of that.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801(1106ft)

55 °F Partly Cloudy