Ok, maybe not for the win per se, but I am switching over to DeltaChat as I really only have two people I share with.

While its not perfect, it works well enough for me, I just send the occasional message, link or image to others or m'self, and it does that fine. This time around, I've got the sticker thing sorta fixed, Android doesn't offer a sticker option, something I need to see if'n I can figure a work around for, but I've got it working well on my desktop. I've also tried the Mastodon bridge, and that works fine, but having your home timeline show up as chat messages get old fast, notifications are a little bit better, but still, bad idea. There is a Telegram bridge, but that looks like it only works to bridge Telegram Groups to DeltaChat, so that's not all that great.

So what is DeltaChat? Its an email based encrypted messenger. You can use an existing email address, though I don't recommend that, or get one from DeltaChat or a couple other servers. Clients exist for Linux, MacOS, iOS, Android... And I suppose there's one for Windows too.

I guess if'n anyone wants to try it, or has questions, I can try to answer them, just shout at me here.

#deltachat #messenger

Yesterday was a bit rough, some 4+ hours dealing with the DMV and St Louis County to get the title to my husband's car, he died with neither a will nor a TOD on the car, but thankfully I'd found an estate lawyer's blog with instructions on how to claim it under Missouri's exempt property law, which might be a bit old...

Yeah, that list is fun.

Any how, fell asleep at an earlier time than normal, and slept hard, woke up a couple times like usual, but unlike usual I didn't stay up, usually I do because why not, but not this time. I did finally wake up at 5, and decide to stay up, though I needed some Tylenol because my everything hurt, especially my back. Now I'm just feeling kinda meh, but luckily I don't have much to do today, few things I want to get done today, but no pressure, just little odd things around the house, part of the clean up.

#life #missouri #mo #STL #stlouis

So, as y'all know, my husband passed back in July, and he had a loan on his car with no TOD (transfer on death). About a month and a half ago, I got the death certificate and reported it to the credit union.

Now, this is where being local, like headquarters is 25 or so miles from me, local is great. Obviously with no TOD, and it not being a co-loan, standard procedure is to start repo before I walk out of the branch door, right? Well, I told them that I'd keep up the payments for a month or two until I had the life insurance, and then I'd pay it off, and I assured them I was confident I had the TOD problem handled (we'll see), and they said Ok.

Yeah, really, despite standard procedure being repo and/or requiring me to qualify for a new loan, they verbally agreed to let things continue as they had been for a bit, imagine PNC or WellsFargo doing that, right?

#local #CreditUnion

So, I got my ducks in a row... In order... On order... Well, received them today.

These are for my participation in the Teal Pumpkin Project, something I found out about like 8 years ago, and have participated in every year since then. While I've offered a number of non-food items in the past, last year was the first year I did ducks when I found out you could buy a 30 count box of them. They were popular with the kids, we offered pick 2 ducks or get 4 pieces or so of candy, and most kids picked ducks. While 30 was enough last year, it was close, so I bought 100 this year.

Definitely not allowing them to choose, can you imagine how long that would take? But yeah, two ducks or candy once again.

#halloween #ducks #TealPumpkinProject

It's been a week already. Yeah, I know, its only Wednesday, but Monday and Tues were a pain. We had a little fun last week, going after a couple things last week, which didn't work, but we weren't trying hard, those were...

HIs Apple card, dumb luck that I caught a phone call from them and got instructions. First on the phone call, there's kinda a security hole on iPhones I've been exploiting, without his pin, something I haven't been able to come up with, you can't check alerts or anything on the phone, but you can answer phone calls... Well, that's useful for two factor authentication into some of his accounts, and that was how I happened to catch a call from Goldman Sachs. Did you know that even though its the 21st century, then only way to send proof of death to them is to mail a death certificate to their legal department?

Also because I think it a joint account, I've been trying to take care of the Amazon card from Chase. First problem is that I can't add my bank account so that I can pay it off, for some reason the link to add an account doesn't work in either Firefox or Vivaldi. Second, they have branches here, and while they can take payments, they can't do anything else with credit cards, only bank accounts. Uhhh, ok. Finally I haven't found a number to call that doesn't require logging in with the card number. Yeah, you read that right, I'm having trouble giving them money.

This week though, now that we have a basic financial plan in place, we started on the deposit accounts, and talk about headaches. Fidelity was the easiest one with only minor problems on the 401K side, but that's done, by the end of the week we should likely be making decisions on the disposition of the 401K and his stock (vested RSUs). But, ...

Morgan Stanley, organized chaos would be an improvement over there, it seems that they're not really organized or integrated. Stocks of all sorts seem to have migrated to e*Trade, and then each type of thing you might have with them is a different desk. I'm not sure how many people I got bounced between with no real answers, but this one is going to be a headache. The first sign of trouble was that his company gave me two people as points of contact out in California for his RSUs from when they used Morgan Stanley for that. There was no answer when I called, so I got dropped into the main Morgan Stanley phone tree, and things went from there. I'll prolly have to try calling them another time, possibly next week.

Discover, they're just about as bad, and bit of a dick about things. They do have an upload portal for documents, but after doing everything, it says I need to select the document type... but doesn't give me a way to do that. Also I have to submit documents and wait to see if'n I'm a beneficiary, otherwise I'll have to go to probate court because they won't have anything to do with me, married or not. And that's on top of the fact that there's one desk for deposit accounts, another for credit accounts, a separate one for CapitolOne who owns them if'n he has accounts there (he does and they were easy to deal with). Yeah, guess I need a lawyer and court, because the CDs there are worth fighting for.

Yeah, that was my Monday, surely Tuesday was better, right?

Yes and no, I went out to the Lowery family cemetery to get a plot chosen and all that. That went well enough, and in fact I spent an hour and a half or so visiting with some of his family, and the cost isn't bad, the cemetery asks for a $300 donation for a single plot, $400 for a double. I'll prolly give them extra as I was expecting to spend more, have the money, and would like to help the cemetery, and can't be sure if'n I can donate in the future. We will need to work out the monument, but that shouldn't be too much either. Problem was the drive, 158 miles each way. And I'm in an electric car. And they're doing construction on multiple sections of I64. Lets see, left around 0840, returned around 1845. Is it any wonder that I asked work to take it easy on me today?

Yeah, I'm exhausted and the week has only begun, three more days of work, yay.

No, that's not a typo, though this one is somewhat more understandable, since rest is not an option in my life.

Get up, switch out the dishwasher, feed the cat, cook and eat breakfast. Then wash dishes, cook a batch of rice, wash counter, sweep and mop floor.

Then its try unsuccessfully to deal with Chase Bank, that's going to require a visit. Also talk to Goldman Sachs, unplanned steps towards closing Vik's Apple Card.

Got work in about 1½ hours still, no idea how big that's going to be, the current alert shows only a small route, but the last small route more than doubled in size by the time I got to the warehouse, so who knows.

Lunch'll have to be bought as I forgot to thaw out a sandwich last night, so no food for me, yay.

••yawns•• I wanna go back to bed.

#today

What a day, slept fine far as I know, not through the night, but I never do that, but wasn't up more than usual. But dreams, I rarely remember dreaming, let alone what I dreamed, but I did sorta remember these, at least in as much as they were weird, very trippy.

So for whatever reason I was dragging this morning, but I did get out of the house close to on time so I could go sit at Bread Co and wait for RoadieXD to drop jobs... And nothing today, action there's been nothing for a few weeks I think, however I haven't had the time to work for them as I've mostly transitioned back to BetterTrucks, so I was checking as frequently, but Tues is a free day, so we were looking for something today. No dice, so I'm going to have to decide what to do with my Tues in the future, maybe back to Better Trucks, or be more careful on Sunday so I can catch when Jitsu drops their Tues blocks, not sure yet. I did however while I was out make a payment on his car, once his burial and memorial is sorted, I'll have to look at what's left of his life insurance and see if'n buying out the car is an option, but with no TOD, taking ownership might be tricky, I'm going to see if'n the Credit Union can help with that by repossessing the car on paper, then selling it to me for the pay off amount and some extra fees, otherwise there's a form to fill that will transfer ownership so long as the car isn't worth too much, and of course probate court is an option, but I'd rather not deal with that if I don't have to.

Either way, came home, finished my usual web surfing, though that took longer than usual as I was still dragging. And sleepy, very sleepy. I did wind up taking a nap, but do need to figure out why I've been sleepy lately, been busy getting the comics ready for sale to the tune of 20 or so hours a week on top of 30 to 35 hours of work, sometimes more on either of those, plus chores. Oh, and the yard work, part of a much larger project that was going to involve me, Vik and our room mate, the latter is helping here and there, but I'm mostly getting the backyard sorted out, it serves as a break from everything else, but its a large project, the yard waste pile is now 6ft or so, and we have piles of pavers and concrete. It is however mostly done, just need a few cubic yards of dirt to fill in some holes, and its done. Might also be thyroid or vitamin, my mom has basically no thyroid function and my sister very little, so runs in the family, but that'll have to wait until I find some insurance (anyone want to help with that?). If its vitamin, that's going to be tricky, I did try to go back to multivitamins, Vik had about a half bottle left here, but they turn my stomach, so that's not an option.

Should've called the cemetery about the burial, but was tired, so napped, then scanned a shelf of comics, and here we are. I suspect the burial is part of my problem last night and today, Vik was often out late whether he had game, town council meeting, pen club meeting, genealogy research, and so on, so him not being here is only unusual in the fact that its for an extended period, since I haven't cleaned out much of his stuff yet, things feel mostly normal here, but planning his burial... Yeah, that kinda hammers things home.

Need to figure out dinner, surf the web and then bed.

#today #life

So, today got off to an interesting start, was up late, plus up for a bit in the morn, typical for me, and finally woke up at about 0825... And my phone has a message saying that I've been assigned a work shift at 1010. I had put in for one, but assumed I wouldn't be getting one, but nope, must've been short handed again, joygasm.

So, slightly accelerated morning, cancelled my casual plans for the day, those'll prolly happen tomorrow, and got to work. Assigned to a fairly decent zone, with a reasonable package load, in fact it was all small to medium stuff, so I had all but about four things in my totes that sit on my passenger seat, making it easy to grab when I arrive. From load to done, six hours, $130, not a bad day.

Really, nothing to complain about, I could use the money, and wasn't a bad day, I could use more like that, but still, didn't really want to work.

Got home, worked on comics for a bit, I'm beating on the letter S, and I think its winning. We've got five long boxes, and two short boxes of just that letter, with the shorts and one of the longs still to be organized into the rest of the books. So far we have a long box for Star Trek & Star Wars, though that might become just Star Trek, and I'm setting one up for DC Super titles, Superman, Superwoman, Superpowers, and on and on. I'll continue on that tomorrow, and maybe I'll finally get that done. Then there's merging some previously sorted boxes with recently sorted, and some restacking, and when that is finally done, its onto the letter T and beyond. Yeah, at least another eight hours of work, prolly more.

#today #gig #work #driving

Started at 0630 with the front lawn that hadn't been mown in three weeks. Mostly went well, but my Hart equipment needs new batteries, could've sworn I had four, but could only account for three, one of which broke, and the remaining two seem to have drained way to fast. While waiting for them to charge, I started on project two, finally reining in the south side where things have been growing like weeds. Not sure if most of it was goldenrod, or the Missouri equivalent of bamboo, but I went to work cutting each piece down with pruners and piling it in the back against the fence.

At one point I took a break, ordering MickeyD's delivered, which is stupidly expensive. After eating, I got back to work, finishing the pruning before returning to the front to finish that. After that, we went to work using a trimmer to cut the grass in the same area because there was no way the mower would get it done. In the end, the room mate joined in, since his equipment is better than mine, and everything along that side was cut.

Yep, no before pic, but there's the after, not real impressive looking, but at least its no longer an eyesore.

That said, I do think I overdid it, from neck pain to unquenchable thirst, as well as the coffee I had with my breakfast, I went through four 12oz Gatorades while I was working. Since I came in, I've had another coffee, and cup after cup, after cup of water which doesn't come back out. My neck is also sore, and I'm fairly certain I'm a bit sun burned.

Ugh, no grocery shopping or laundry today, those can wait until tomorrow, though I will do the mileage log and finish proofreading a story I've been working on, along with my regular night's web surfing... Well, extended version since I didn't surf this morn. Once I get that all done, it'll prolly be bedtime.

Tomorrow I'll have to start scanning documents to share with my financial manager related to Vik's passing, we need to get a plan in place so I can start taking care of the big financial decisions, and winding down his estate. I did accidentally kick over a hornet's nest yesterday, hopefully the bank doesn't repo his car now that they know he's dead, I'd rather like to keep it, even though ownership transfer will be challenging, but them taking it is not that big of a deal. And I do really need to get back to the comics, prepping that for sale, and that's the really big project. I do have someone brokering the sale of his fountain pens, and that's going well.

#today #mo #STL #Yardwork #fountainpen

Not much to say this week, five weeks have passed, and still digging this place out.

Focus has switched to comics, and then books, this'll make the largest difference in the place. The original desk focus was good, that helped find all kinds of documents and info that I didn't have, but now its more a matter of volume, and books and comics will clear the most space the fastest. i'm leaning towards bring books to Half Price Books, and then to Thrift Books, though for the latter I'll have to check, I think they normally pay shipping for you to send books to them, but they have a warehouse not far from here that I worked at, so no shipping needed.

On the legal and money sides, last week we finally got his death certificate, and have started the process of claiming his life insurance. The money from that'll pay for a plot and service, and hopefully enough money to buy out his car as there's no way the bank'll let me take over the note, not with my kind of work. For everything else, I'm in contact with a financial manager/planner that my mom uses, figure I need to figure out which way I want to run before I start, no?

Cleaning has been interesting today, was cleaning out a few milk crates from the basement, stuff from his life before I met him, stuff he never really talked about, and I think it would've been interesting to hear. He'd mentioned having had a tongue piercing, but it was gone by the time I met him, but I did find a pic of him showing it off. That was back when he lived in San Francisco, where he was also quite active in the gay pagan community as well as the gay fetish community. I really wish he'd told me more about that time in his life.

#life #death #family #taur

So today I picked up Vik ( @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe ) from St Louis Crematorium, 4 weeks and a day since his passing. It took a while as there was a problem with his death certificate which I think I mentioned

Not sure what I feel, now I have his ashes and his death certificates, I guess it seems a little more real? Before I was just cleaning the house, sure, somewhat intrusively and making decisions on stuff that he'd usually decide on, but some how it still hadn't sunk in I guess?

I'll need to get some help with making financial decisions, definitely want to speak to someone what works for me rather than a rep at Fidelity or Morgan Stanley with regards to investments and 401K, and then there's chasing down bank accounts. And of course taxes will be rather interesting I'm sure.

Beyond that, mostly just continuing to sort, sort and sort some more, and figure out who wants what, who buys what, etc. I've got help on the comics and fountain pens, prolly give a lot of the stickers and stationary to the local journalling group. Need to donate some bags and basic stationary items to someone, and for the rest... No idea yet.

#Life #death #family

Three weeks since my husband passed. I took this week off in a number of ways, I went back to work, I needed to get some normal back in my life.

Bit of a rough week, little work for me Wednesday and Thursday, so I worked yesterday, and still fell short of goal. Wednesday wasn't a surprise, my main #gig RXD doesn't have much on Wednesday, and most of what they have is garbage, but Thursday was a surprise, I couldn't get a route for the life of me. Also I wasn't available Monday as I was taking care of things at his office.

This week I've got a Better Trucks shift lined up for Wednesday, and depending on how the week goes, I might start signing up for more shifts. Pay wise its better than RXD, however I actually have to work, so... Might go back to my old zone if'n I do, my husband was a good part of why I dropped it, at least until winter, that zone has an 1140 load time and takes 6 to 8 hours, so I'd be getting home after him by an hour or two, no more dinner together. Now though? Yeah, my night vision sucks, so when it starts getting dark at 1700, I'll have to drop it again if'n they don't shift the load time earlier by then.

Any how, as I said, going for a normal week, not dealing with his passing in any way this week, being a little lazy, I do have some proofread work that I should've been doing, I'll just have to make time this coming week to get that done.

Friday brought an interesting phone call from the crematorium, I had been wondering what the delay is. Apparently they're having problems getting his death certificate signed, for some reason his GP was listed, and he refused to sign it for obvious reasons, he works out of SSM DePaul, Vik died at SSM SLU, so no real surprise that he's refusing to sign when he wasn't there. Not sure if'n that was a mistake, or its standard practice out here for his GP to sign off on a nature cause death. I've emailed them about the mistake, and I think they were contacting the city Medical Examiner for some help, so hopefully this'll be sorted soon, and things can get moving, I kinda need the death certificate to close accounts, collect life insurance, and so on. Might also need to grab a few copies of my marriage license as well, might be necessary to prove our marriage.

Got his car cleaned out today, though the interior will definitely need cleaning. Also have a link for sorting out the title as he didn't put down a TOD for whatever reason. Trying to avoid probate court if all possible, I mean my relationship with his family is fine, they expect that I inherit everything, so there's no real reason to get the courts involved, the only thing is on Apple, but if'n I'm reading that right, that'll just get me access to his iCloud, and I'm not sure I need anything there.

So, that's about all the news.

#family #Life #death

Yeah, doesn't look like much, does it? This is the test button on the package of a neon look LED sign that I got. The thing that's so neat about it is that is what's not there, the sign is powered by a USB cord, unlike the decorative signs I've gotten in the past that are powered by batteries. This becomes important, because those would come with batteries installed, and a switch like this that connected to two bins on the sign. This sign however has no batteries, so how does it work?

The give away is the thickness, I haven't tried opening it yet, but I'm willing to bet that there's a button battery in there. Kinda amazing how cheap this stuff has become, the sign is $9.99, and for testing you get a free button battery, cheap switch, and a USB female socket, how are they even doing that?

#sign #electronics #China

I have a Bip 3 Pro, which is a fairly cheap smart watch, but cheap means the fitness features don't work great, but that's fine, I mostly bought it to check time and alerts without having to pull my phone out of my pocket.

Thing is I've had a few posts go viral or near viral (what is viral on the Fediverse?), and the alerts are killing my watch's battery, so I had to turn off alerts from @Fedilab Apps . Besides, those have gotten distracting at this point.

So when cleaning my husband's desks (work and home) and bag, I've been finding some money...

Yeah, coins, paper, foreign as well as US, savings bonds, gift cards and certificates, and credit/bank cards. Need to figure out if'n there's anything valuable here and what to do with the foreign currency, any ideas? Paper currency's current stack is over $200, plus what I have in my wallet, and what little bit I've spent so far.

I also really need help sorting here, I've collected 9 collapsible cube storage bins worth of stuff that needs further sorting, and I'm not done yet, though I am running out of places to put stuff. Anyone in #STL up for a sorting party, especially someone who wants to take a lead on figuring out how best to further sort this stuff? I'll pay for the pizza, and within reason, anyone what helps can take what they want.

I've got help to deal with the comics, I've made 3 short boxes from his desks so far, and I think I've found all the loose ones, but there's still this downstairs:

Some stuff has already been set aside to figure out what to do with it, like his collection of fountain pens and ink, I've given a shout on Messenger to the STL Pen Show in hopes that they can help me figure out what to do with those. Craft stuff I'm giving his family first dibs. Ditto for clothes, after that...

Anyone in the furry community want to help with that side of things? We've got prints around here as well as MFM memorabilia, and possibly other stuff.

#STL #Mo #missouri #help #fountainpen

Ok, starting to agressively clean up @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe 's desks here in the computer room, largely because with no access to his Apple devices, I have to hope there's paper here to help me find accounts.

So, the good news is that this desk...

now looks like this...

Unfortunately, that's because the area where we have the trash can and recycling bin looks like this

That also where the A/C vent is, so its getting rather warm in here. A lot of that will be getting shredded, quite a lot, because with this volume of paper, the rule will be when in doubt, shred.

―

I'm still trying to figure out how I'm supposed to feel about losing my husband, my reaction is certainly not what you're told you're supposed to have, at least as society says, but then I've always had a problem with society and relationships, is it me or is there no grey in it? Its either love or friendship, that's what's expected, nothing in between. But really there is a lot of grey, isn't there?

Did I love him? Honestly I'm not sure, I mean what is love (feel free to insert Haddoway)? I'm sure some of my problems come from my autism, maybe a lot. Me, I'm a hermit, I leave the house for work, grocery shopping and Sunday brunch, and that's about it. I avoid people like the plague.

He always said he was introvert, something that seems so weird, I mean he was well loved at work and involved in some many parts of it. He was active in the fountain pen community and Ingress community, active in local government, and genealogy.

Certainly hard to imagine him as an introvert, right?
But introverts need to recharge mentally, right?

I suppose that's where I fit in, I provided that, a place where he didn't need to be anything but who he was. I kept the house clean more or less, took care of finances, had last word, sometimes only word on big things, it was me who decided we should stop paying rent and buy a house Here he could come home, touch base with me, then crawl into a computer for the rest of the night, food would be taken care of, home was where he could relax.

I suppose I'm angry at him, the obvious would be for leaving me, the less obvious, I've been nudging him to take serious the fact that he would get out of breath on stairs. Lately when grocery shopping, at the second store, and sometimes the first, he'd have to use one of those powered carts. And then there were another minor problem, at least that one he went to the doctor, but that was just a couple weeks ago. Then there's the problems here, from the fear over money, I don't make much with what I do, and I had no idea what he had in place as he'd never told me. Frustration, since we never really planned, so I have no access to his computers or devices, which has me operating somewhat blind. I'm pretty creative, so I've got some idea of what I need to deal with, but still. Sad? That comes and goes, it has to be rather strong loss for me to be sad, that's been rare in my life, and this is definitely a strong loss. A stew of emotions and confusion.

My greatest strength is organizing things, putting together a plan, its just a matter of figuring out where to start. I'm lucky that help is available, as I told his father this morning, I'm kinda drowning in help, plenty of family, co-worker and friend support, but its hard for me to ask for help, harder still when I don't know what I need. I think funeral and memorial is the biggest area where I need help, I have an idea of what cemetery I think would be appropriate, but not just for him, but for his mom and his cat, assuming all three would be allowed, but the details are something that I'm uncertain about.

Beyond that, its a very simple though annoying process of reporting his death to various banks, insurance, etc, providing proof, settling debts and closing accounts. Honestly that's mostly easy, its my comfort zone, while I hate desk work, I do enjoy any task that amounts to fill in the blank. Interspersed with that will be returning to work, and trying to clean this place, a task that I'm estimating at taking months.

Surprise sympathy flowers sent to me by Chewies after settling my husband's account The image features a bouquet of flowers arranged on a marble surface. The bouquet consists of white lilies with subtle purple speckles and yellow carnations, complemented by green foliage and small white flowers. A white ribbon is tied around the bouquet, adding a touch of elegance. Two cards are attached to the bouquet: one is a business card for "Bloomers Florist" The other card is a handwritten note that reads, "Sorry for your loss. I am so sorry to hear about your loss. All my love and prayers are with you. Love, Andrew and your Chewy Family." The background is a simple, light-colored marble surface.

I think I'm going to have a lay down, hopefully this was understandable, it certainly was draining.

#love #Life #death #feelings

As I mentioned on Monday, my husband passed away suddenly. This is bad enough, but he neither left a will that I'm aware of nor access to any of his computers or devices, a rather large problem as his life is mostly stored online.

So, I've been dealing with minor loose ends while things got sorted with the morgue, cancelled the cat food subscription, and the toilet paper subscription, got a computer trade in he was in the middle of wrapped up. Got instructions from Patreon on how to close his accounts, and scared up a site that helps me find out what bank accounts he had, though its accuracy is somewhat iffy.

I'm hoping to avoid having anything to do with the courts, anyone know if they need to be involved? I'm his spouse, we're legally married, and his family has accepted that, so there's no challenge to me inheriting everything, I see no reason to get the court involved unless its required. There is however one thing that might need to involve them, and that's his Apple account, the only way I can access it is with his death certificate and a court order. There may be other less pleasant ways to get access to at least his computer, but I'd kinda not do that, though it might be necessary. Does anyone know what you get in a case like this? Just what's on his iCloud, or can we unlock his devices? I'm not sure if'n he exclusively stored to his iCloud, backed up to it, or had a mixture of backed up and not backed up files on his computer.

Beyond that, I think its just sorting his belongings and deciding what to keep, if'n you're local, I may have some food to give, some of the stuff he liked not only wasn't stuff I like, but stuff I don't think the food bank'll have much interest in, especially the perishables.

#Life #today #STL #stlouis #missouri #Mo #death #help #family #Apple #advice

I'm kinda having a problem over here, my husband @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe just passed away a few hours ago. Unfortunately in our life he was the chaos and I was the order, and he left me no arrangements, estate info, etc.

Yeah, I know, sounds like I'm moving fast, but as I said, I was the order, the solver of problems, the planner, plotter and schemer, as such, the only way I can really handle this is to fix what I can fix, try to make some order here, and keep moving.

I'm working on figuring things out, if'n anyone can point me to some good resources for how to handle this, I could use them. If'n your local and want to help me, I could use some help obviously as I'm dealing with a hoarder who didn't share much information with me unless I thought to ask. Oh, and I have a memory like a sieve, so that only makes the situation worse.

For those wondering if'n I need any financial help or anything like that, I'm fine, I was in charge of that, so I've got enough for I think 3-4 months with zero income, and obviously at some point I'll get back to working.

I have contacted @Bitwarden 's support to see if'n its possible to get access to his vault, as that'll allow me to sort out his private life.

youtu.be/Jy5XiRFCosM

And never knew the origin of the line 'You don't have to call me Mister mister, the whole world calls me Hank', but now I do

youtube.com/shorts/vm00ons0wlQ

#Music #YouTube #country

I saved the oddest for last, Reggae Pink Floyd cover anyone?
Pretty good, and really, really unexpected

youtu.be/zsGOVzfKsc4

#Music #YouTube #pinkfloyd #reggae

Every time I see mention of Guam, I think it might be nice to move there. This time I took a serious though not detailed look, and I gotta say I like the idea. Kinda like Hawaii without the rampant tourism from the looks of things? Been to Hawaii, and quite liked it, everything cost more, but manageable, especially if'n you had the option of shopping in Honolulu, and avoided Oahu.

Anyone recommend some good resources, or want to answer questions? Mostly wondering how the costs stack up compared to Missouri, taxes look like they'll drop, housing will be a bit higher, not sure about the rest.

#guam #missouri #retirement

I love pizza, I mean really love, as in I could live on pizza and coffee as my only foods, and I love trying new combos. Aldi is a great source for this, while they don't carry many pizzas standardly, they often have special buy pizzas, and those can get really interesting, like this one that I thought was just a BBQ chicken pizza with a fancy title.

So I toss it on the pizza stone, ready to cook it up for lunch, and... Is that corn chips on there?

Check the label, yep, it is. Well that's new, and actually not bad, adds an interesting crunch to the pizza and pairs well with BBQ chicken. I think this is one of my favorite pizzas, frozen or fresh, but unfortunately I have no idea who makes it, Mama Cozzi's is a house brand, they relabel the source brand, sometimes without even changing the packaging other than removing the original brand, and in this case, this is not something I've ever seen here in #STL .

#Food #pizza

Oh come on, had to use that headline, even if'n we're just talking about my accounts. For the most part I'm on the Fediverse, although I am also on Reddit and Tumblr.

For those that remember my last post about this, I got rid of my Diaspora, the idea was for it to serve as an easy bridge between Tumblr and here, since Friendica doesn't thumbnail Tumblr post usually. Diaspora does that, until it doesn't, plus sometimes posts on Diaspora wouldn't properly display here, so that was rather pointless.
These days I just throw the memes up directly here, however there can be some lag if'n I forget to make a new post, and then I need help with alt text and @Altbot isn't entirely reliable ( @Micr0byte ), such as giving me alt text in the wrong language, or not at all. In fact today it managed to give me no alt text, but to message me and tell me that I should add the alt text to the image.

Here I have four accounts, this one, @Kāpitan which is the admin and occasionally posts server, admin or moderation commentary, @Recalls which posts all the recalls I can find, and finally @The Taur Nation which is devoted to posting centaur, lamia, naga and related artwork links and occasionally artwork, rated from G-R18G, content warninged as necessary.
Here there be questions, things about my life, and politics, though we do try to make sure they're properly tagged so you can make them go away.

If'n you don't like the politics, try my Mastodon, @Taurnsndhaus Admin , originally planned to be a back up in case something happened here, its boosting general content from here, occasionally original posts, so long as the post fits in a single tweet. Any politics that show up there will be local, St Louis, St Louis metro or Missouri, nothing national.

Like politics? Then my Tumblr is for you, here I post the most interesting and/or important stuff I find there, but I boost a lot more over there. Not much original content over there, despite how much I like it, I just tend to forget about it.

And lastly Reddit, which is mostly content I can't find here on the Fediverse, r/StLouis and ones related to my car (r/ChevyBolt) or my gig work. If that stuff starts showing up on the Fediverse, I'll start moving away from it.

#friendica #mastodon #Fediverse #socialmedia #Reddit #tumblr #STL #stlouis #missouri

So, I've been casually looking for a compact bookshelf stereo for my desk, something that could replace my computer speakers while at the same time giving me the option to listen to CDs or the radio, and yesterday I got this:

The image shows a silver JVC audio system with a digital display and various buttons and knobs. The display is illuminated with a blue light, showing the number "101." The system includes a radio tuner, CD player, and DVD player, as indicated by the labels on the front panel. The device is placed on a desk, with a red flexible tripod and a colorful LED light display in the background. The desk also has a small figurine on top of the audio system. The overall setting appears to be a workspace or a home entertainment area.

That's a big bigger than it looked in the pictures, or rather really deep. It is however great, and very much over kill. Why? Because it doesn't just do radio and CD, it also does DVDs, as in its a DVD player. No HDMI, but does have composite and I think S-video, so very nice piece, music and video in one small unit.

I might actually go back to the computer speakers, while this works fine, that'd allow me to hear things on the computer and play music at the same time, which is very appealing. Also since I've retired my engraver, I can replace my other computer with a small TV and watch DVDs at my desk if'n I want to.

Dunno if they still make units like this, but highly recommended, it's nice how it saves space while giving you so many options, imagine living in a tiny home or RV (caravan), all your media in one small box. I scored this one for just $20 on Marketplace, which seems about fair considering these were sold back around 2005, so really old.

#Stereo #electronics #Entertainment

Assuming the price was low enough, I'd buy one, should work well for my job. Top speed is a little limiting, have to avoid freeways, but unless I'm going west of St Louis county, that's easily done.

youtu.be/ddhjsKqrvOo

#YouTube #Electric Vehicles

So, over the weekend, I finally got around to putting up my M2 car collection mounted, which was not easy.

The picture doesn't show it well, but we live in a split level, so those are on the wall above the stairs leading to the basement level. That took some fun ladder settings which was still janky as hell. The shelves are an older Ikea picture ledge mounted upside except for the bottom one that I scored off of marketplace at an awesome price, 7 for... I think $30, something around that. A quick check on eBay, and people were selling NOS ones for over $100, so... I already have some figures on the newer model of picture ledge, those cost about $12 each, so it was a no brainer to snap these up, especially as they were nearby and I could pic them up while working.

I do have a thing for cab overs, which is why the vast majority are VW vans and pickups or 60's era American pickups and vans. I do have a few other things, but those were mostly bought before I found that I could get these at WalMart, when my choices were slimmer, stuff I like, but don't love.

And yes, those two cars with the orange background are Batmobiles, the Adam West one as well as the one from Batman Adventures, my two favorites.

#collectibles #Cars #diecastcar #homedecor

youtu.be/t1TDvy7djJg

#YouTube #Music

Found out that Waterfox plays nice with both Hitomi, and FimFiction, so decided to give it a shot as my main browser. FimFiction doesn't work well on FireFox but does on Chromium, while Hitomi doesn't work on either of those. Later I found out that WaterFox handles AliExpress fine too, a site that works on Chromium, but not FireFox.

Looks-wise, no different than Firefox, has a tab sidebar, but that's about all that's better. Oh, and it was giving a pop up about security settings with a link to click to get more info, official WaterFox and all, and the link was a 404. Yeah, that's real encouraging. After a bit I logged into my FireFox ID so I could gather all my add ons there, and see if'n they broke any of those sites, but they kept working. What didn't stay working was the browser itself, there was a blink, and most of my tabs disappeared. Oh, and GoComics oddly doesn't work with it, if you try to enlarge a pic, you just get a blank page.

Ok, so it's not going to work out, fired up Firefox... And now I'm missing my containers and one of my home page sites. Quit, went back to WF and logged it out of my Mozilla ID, quit and opened FireFox, and got most of my stuff back. Lots of logging in and a few settings later, and we've got almost everything, I've lost access to my Recalls group here.

The Recalls problem is partially my fault, BitWarden never saved the password, and I'd deleted the account email address, replacing it with a new account. Solution seems pretty simple, right? Just create that address again... And for some reason the Friendica password reset isn't making it to that address... Oh joy.

Any how, so I'm back to using FireFox for most things, and Chromium for a few others. Might keep WaterFox for Hitomi, dunno on that. Now to figure out something with @Recalls

#webbrowsers #friendica #friendicahelp

Figured I'd make some extra money, I mean over $200 to do a route? Sure, it's 150 or so mile route up in farm country, but we've done that before.

First problem was getting out there, Doppel's never had great highway range, but with the new tire and wheel combo, it's noticeably worse. Of course I kinda new that, but hadn't worried about it as my regular gig has very little high speed driving, plus I didn't expect it to matter much on this, but I'd forgotten that in Illinois, most rural roads are 55MPH. Yeah, problem.

Still, manageable, until we got to Staunton, this is wear things really went pear shaped. I mean Worden was bad, connection problems, and the app is garbage, but not too bad. Staunton? Forget having a connection at all, for some reason it's a dead zone. Aside from by the Casey's, I couldn't get a signal, we're talking showing one bar of 4GLTE at best, but nothing actually working. Weirdly, just 3 miles out of town and across the border into the next county and I'm getting two to three bars of 5G, so this is really weird. Also the app had one stop in the wrong place requiring four miles of backtracking, and with the connection down and the app glitchy, I had to route m'self as best as possible which really wasn't all that great, adding more miles to the route.

After that, connection was sometimes bad, but mostly worked. App was still a dumpster fire until about ten stops from the end when it would finally show me what the route plan was so that I knew what it was doing and could correct it as necessary, a big improvement.

Finally get to the last stop in Carlinville, and I have... fifty-nine miles of range left. Lovely, nearest charger? Around 32 miles or so, and remember the highway range problem. We did make it there, with a little over twenty miles of range left... And the charger won't work with my car. Thankfully it was only about five or so miles to another charger, most of it low speed roads, so not as much range degradation. Still, finally arrived with all of eighteen miles left.

When I took the job, I was expecting to finish around two hours early, and I suppose I did, but once you take in the trip to the charger, which was basically on the way home, and the trip home, that ate up those two hours, so I didn't get home until... eightish I think. By that point I was too tired to care, got home, plugged in as I didn't bother fully charging where I stopped, enough to get home and then some, but not a full charge.

Yeah, that whole thing was one problem after another problem. Not doing that again, Staunton, only if'n I get another cell service, which is something that might happen, maybe a prepaid that's not tied to any one network, thanks to modern 5G that could work, as long as at least one of the companies has good service out there. There's also the possibility that @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe and me might change service entirely, assuming we can save over Verizon where we're spending about $195 for 5G home internet, two cell phones and around 5 or 6 streaming service accounts I think. Yeah, getting a lot of services at a discount, so I doubt we'd find a better deal. I'd say that my next EV will get better range, but that's iffy, I'm looking at getting a Slate Van in 2027 possibly, and the standard range battery is only 150 miles, there will be a longer range battery, but price and range haven't been announced.

#electricvehcles #work #gig #driving #badday

Not sure why though. Yes, I didn't sleep well nor much last night, but that should just mean tired, instead my neck, upper back, shoulders and feet all hurt.

#today was a good enough day, because of the sleeping problems I cancelled my shift with Better Trucks, but in the end wound up working any how even though I didn't need to as I had the opportunity to work in Wood River, somewhere I have been in at least six months, maybe longer. Funny, thanks to the tariffs, Better Trucks is drying up, but one of my other gigs is heating up as it looks like UPS is trying to build their own alternative to the USPS. Well, money in my pocket as long as things keep going like this, so no complaint here.

Oh, and this song just feels appropriate today: youtu.be/YApDcvIhlWw

#YouTube #Music

For those what don't know, I drive an electric car, a Chevy Bolt to be specific. While I don't usually need a fast charger, when I do, it's a bit of a pain as there aren't a lot of CCS chargers in St Louis, but Tesla chargers are a fair bit more common.

Obviously the solution is an adapter, but I'm frugal, so I've been holding out. Frugal, not cheap, you can get some adapters down around $100, but those are usually unknown Chinese brands with a warranty not worth the paper its printed on, and quite capable of melting down when used. So, I went to one of the well respected companies, A2Z to get one, now that they're on sale, use the code FLASHSPRING and it's just $127.50

#ElectricCar #NACS #CCS1 #Charging

We've started both a Mastodon and a Diaspora, mostly for crosspost testing, and having a backup for contacting @#SpaceHost Help should this instance go down.

That said, as the newest toot on @Taurnsndhaus Admin says, I'll be using that one for St Louis related toots, maybe unique to there, maybe boosting stuff from here. No political stuff unless its really funny, or #STL related. We'll also be posting any STL or #missouri based recalls there as well.

@Taursndhaus Admin 's use is uncertain at this time, testing purposes definitely, beyond that, unsure. I might post (toot?) my Tumblr favorites over there too, that's what pushed me to set up these accounts, I my send them there and re-share them here, we'll see. Beyond that, I'm not sure how I'm going to use that. Heck, I set that one up as my old #diaspora on rageoss vanished, actually the whole pod seems to have. Activity on that one is obviously uncertain as Diaspora's lack of #ActivityPub limits the reach, if it had that, I'd prolly be running Diaspora instead of #friendica

So what started all of this?
It was brought to my attention that although my Tumblr posts were showing up fine on my end, albeit with some work as some posts wouldn't show a thumbnail or a link from the blog I found the post on, requiring me to find a re-share that would work, there were problems with sharing those posts. Mastodon shows nothing but a link, but that's the same whether its coming from here or directly from Tumblr; Diaspora however could show them fine when direct posted there, but when crossposted from here, all they see is a link. Clearly Tumblr is somehow breaking sharing from here as regular news articles, boosts, and any original posts here share fine, but none of Tumblr's posts do. Somehow I'm not surprised, I mean Tumblr offers an RSS feed, and I can follow feeds here just like I do any member of the #Fediverse , but their feeds are flaky at best, sometimes they won't work at all, giving me no way to follow them, other times posts lag and/or show up in clumps.

But any how, there's the whats and whys of where else I can be found.

So, just picked me up a new used LG Ultra wide monitor, got it set up and...

1920X1080 maximum available resolution. Yeah, that's a problem, the native resolution is 2560X1080 and that's why I bought it. Sure, size is wrong in the preferences, 34in, but the 29in LG ultra wide has always done that.

So, we go searching for an answer and on one thread, the question of cable quality comes up along with some ways to determine port, mode and things like that. Notably, despite it having an HDMI input, it shows my computer is using Display port. Hmm, that means I'm using one of my old Amazon Basics DP to HDMI cables, I wonder...

The computer has both HDMI and DP output, at one time I'd had two monitors connected, and I guess I just kept using the DP for no particular reason, switch to HDMI, and Bob's your uncle.

Yay, now I have...

#linux #monitor

He's the lead singer of Pearl Jam, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that remembers when Jeremy came out along with a few other great songs during the grunge era, right?

Thanks to Hawaaii Five-0, the new one, not the classic one, I got turned on to The End, which is a great song, particularly acoustically...

youtu.be/BHR9QTk2ERM

I've shared that before, but here's something new that the algorithm recently turned me on to...

youtu.be/lZVrOtO25zM

Doesn't sound like Roger Waters could've handled the singing himself, and I really like Eddie's voice here, along with him not trying to imitate the original, but instead singing it his way, which I think works quite well.

#music #pinkfloyd #Pearl Jam #RogerWaters #eddievedder

For whatever reason, the Better Trucks shift app doesn't have a decimal point restriction when it comes to calculating your pay. Sure, that gets fixed when the day is done and your pay is finalized, but until then you get things like this:

#work #programmingflaws

Not much to say about #today, relatively slow down, household finance stuff and did some work for fun. Yes, work for fun, picked up in Glen Carbon, did one drop in Edwardsville, three in Marine, and one in Highland, four from WalMart, one from Petsmart. I've already more than made my money for the week, so there was no need to do any more, but... Couldn't resist.

Too many miles for too little money, but like I said, did it for fun. Turns out I've been to both towns, did Amazon deliveries in Marine around 2018, and last time me and @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe drove out to PA to visit my family, we'd stopped in Highland at Huddle House for breakfast. Ain't a Huddle House no more, which is a shame as I like them, but I'm up for trying the new place, Eddies Rise 'n Dine, if'n it's still around next time. Whole thing was just wandering around rural and small town Illinois for a few hours, then coming back 44 miles.

So #today I made the rather bizarre decision to jettison my scheduled package route that would've paid up to $150 for an on demand $50 order.
This was a gamble, I mean I could wind up with $50 and nothing for the return trip, but I got lucky. It started with this one, fifteen gallons of paint down to Crystal City, somewhere me and @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe had been to tour the caves down there, but that's about all we did down there, so I figured this'd be a more fun to do than my usual package route.
After that, we did start heading home, only to score a decent gig in Arnold at WalMart. Cool, but we still have a long drive home, right? Best Buy stepped up with a route ending about two miles past my home.
Yeah, that worked well, a wandering route home that in the end paid $115 for 116 miles. Usually you have enough wasted miles that you don't get anything near $1/mi, but there we go, almost spot on.

Yep, fun work, good money, and there's still plenty of time to do more. Today was a good day.

#work #gig #driving