Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1428
the expense and luxury of genuine dacor parts, WU LYF, happy Civ VII release day, NC Senate race, NAS naming
Good morning, hello. Thursday. Back from school drop-off. Oligarch SUV was back, so you know. Comforting. Just looked up 1428 in Wikipedia, aside from a minor action by Jeanne d'Arc. no one or thing I’ve heard of so I will spare you. It is forty-two degrees, clear.
Attention Facebook readers: GMHHAY is leaving Facebook, migrating to Slack. This will be over a few months, and we’ll be completely off by March. I love you all. Please come join us in Slack. The invite link is in the comments below. If you’re an email reader, reply to this email and I’ll get you the link.
Since Feb 1, I’ve just been posting that message, the descriptive header, and the link to Facebook. Comments there have almost completely dried up. I would say… 80-90% of the Facebook readers — well, the active ones, who commented — are now in the Slack. I am going to lose a few. But all in all, it is pretty amazing and I am very proud of people.
Soon I think we might even have enough Alaskans in the GMHHAY Slack to make an Alaska room!
At this moment, the GMHHAY Slack is 57% female so that is cool.
We are listening to a band called WU LYF, World Union Lucifer Youth Foundation. One album and done. Go Tell Fire To The Mountain. Old Alaska friend of mine, Gavin, Tweeted in reply to someone asking for a band with a single album and it’s great. I had never heard of them. He is right. This album is frickin awesome. They’re from Manchester, right up my alley. How did I miss this. There is so much music.
Might have to break my resolution for this one. Or sell something.
Also found out the new Sault does not, as of yet, have a vinyl release, so that is one temptation gone.
Thank you for all of your advice about my HOA lawn dilemma. Many of you gave the exact advice I give people in these situations: have you considered talking to the HOA about your dilemma? But yeah I am probably not going to do that because I do not possess that level of fortitude and maturity. Here is the grass for those that need a visual aid. On the left:
Downloading Civilization VII as we speak. Happy Civ VII release day to all of those who bought the pre-order. I am deeply torn about the game. Seems fun but also a) a bit too focused on warfare, but, then, they always are, and b) the UI is abyssmal and absolute garbage. I found out just yesterday that they do not yet offer quick combat in the game. This is the worst. Combat animations are tedious and boring. They have been tedious and boring in every Civ game, and they are even longer in this one. Yes, they are now happening all at once but still. They suck. Quick Combat is the first thing I enable in every Civ game. Not all of them have had it, but most have.
Also found out you can’t hit “B” to build a city. You can’t hit “R” for a ranged attack. It’s not even clear to me if you can hit “M” to move a unit across long distances. And you can’t queue techs.
The devs have been telling me for months that the whole thing with the new Civ is to make it so people complete games, but then they do this shit. I am deeply annoyed. Clicking your mouse is for chumps.
Also, after watching like 50 hours of videos on this thing, the art is gorgeous but… unusable? Absolutely impossible to find anything. Overwhelming. I am hoping that it is better on a computer, when you’re sitting right in front of it, than when I am watching Youtubes from ten feet away on my television. We will see.
When I find time.
Which may or may not be today.
And then I gotta go to Alaska.
And I’m probably not gonna ply on the trip.
But hey who knows I guess.
Five of the six knobs to our burners on our stove have broken since we’ve moved in here. One broke pretty quick, but for… oh, eight years we’ve been getting by just fine with five. But in the last year, almost all of the other ones have broken. Knob plague or something.
I tried to order replacements on Amazon and while there are a ton of Dacor range knobs, none of them were correct for our model. Which meant ordering the knobs directly from Davor, OG parts, which of course means they cost an arm and a leg. What is up with Dacor, anyway? It’s like insanely expensive but has absolutely ZERO brand mojo like Viking or something even though they are, like, 80, 90% of the cost? Weird-ass company.
So I order two knobs as a test and because that’s all we really need. Forty bucks each. And I am so pissed.
But then the knobs come and my god they are the total lap of luxury just the most awesome knobs you feel like you’re operating some precision-engineered masterpiece instead of a stove top. Just light years better than the old knobs. They are solid metal. The old ones were plastic. They’re silver. The old ones were black. These were the only option on the Dacor website: you couldn’t even buy the old black plastic ones. So, now, ordered four more. Gotta buy all six, since the one remaining good old one will no longer match. Two hundred and forty dollars.
So now I am curious: did Dacor realize at some point that the knobs sucked balls and just completely remake them? And in doing so also said “fuck it we’re gonna make em silver too bad if you care about black knobs.” I mean, to be clear, I’m a goth and even I don’t care about black knobs, but you know how some people are about their kitchens. I’m sure some people care.
And was there, like, a pandemic of broken knobs on Dacor Er366Gs?
Anyway, these new knobs are DOPE.
Looking into the NC senate race. Got an email from a potential candidate down here, though I am fairly sure that our former governor, Roy Cooper, who has never lost a statewide election in his life across five elections, is going to make a run for the seat? But he has not yet announced? Getting Thom Tillis, that rat bastard, out of the Senate and replacing him with a Democrat — well, shit, just anyone who does not caucus with Trump — is one of the most important things we can focus on for the midterms. I think I will go meet this guy, even though I don’t think we really need a contentious democratic primary for the seat, but, then, I don’t really believe contentious primaries are as bad as people say they are. I looked up his record when he was a US congressman (he got gerrymandered out of his sest in the great, illegal NC gerrymander of 2018-2024). It was mostly fine but also he voted yes on a symbolic bill denouncing socialism and, like, sure okay you are not in the safest seat in the world but come on, dude. But of course Roy Cooper would have probably voted the same way because 99% of democratic politicians are calculating machines.
This is gonna be a thing, I suppose. I am so annoyed with the hamfisted, incompetent, lazy response Democratic congressional members have been offering up the last few weeks. I am somewhat sympathetic — Trumpelon’s blitz has been almost completely EO-based, no congressional action. But also… fuck you for your stupid-ass calls for “bipartisainship” and talking about how DOGE “has some good ideas and we will work with them to eliminate waste” and voting to confirm his nominees. No no no no no. I am thankful I do not have to face the moral conundrum of voting for these ossified insiders in the next election, because I have republican senators here in NC. And it’s funny. I have mostly been very into the establishment Democratic party for most of my adult life, not one of those “both parties suck maaaan” kinda people. It’s a big tent and I’m forgiving of the inconsistency and messiness of a big tent. But since Gaza, since Bernie — and I wasn’t even a Bernie bro! — I am slowly becoming pretty much done with them. Yet I need them to win the mid-terms. And winning the mid-terms is the most important medium-term thing. So I guess I will just keep voting for people I don’t really like.
Can’t understand why people are sick of that.
Yesterday my second Ubiuiti Unifi UNAS Pro showed up, and I filled it up with seven 28TB drives and got the RAID to start formatting. It has 22 hours to go. It will be 130 TB at RAID 10, with a hot spare. It will be where the other servers back up to: an “offsite” (it is at Chore House, connected by fiber and 10gig SFP+) backup that I do not have to pay $600 a month to Backblaze for. If I am lucky, I can get the Plex backup going before I leave to Alaska.
Anyway, I am telling you all this not just to nerd out but to tell you that I came up with the best name for NAS whose sole purpose is to back up other NASs:
Thank you very much.
Justa Mix for you. Hoo boy I gotta remember to take a picture of Justa Store for you guys while I am in Alaska to make the connection on this dumb, recurring, obscure joke. RIP Marrianne Faithful. The Wannadies’ “You and Me Song” came on shuffle yesterday while I was driving back from the bank, took me right back to the Pill and being young and drunk and dancing and kissing and loving and feeling and oh man yeah. Shit yeah. Keeping on with this Chandeen investigation, working backwards now, the last album was non-goth and good too. I want to know precisely when, in their 12-ish album run, they stopped being goth. I bet there is an amazing transitional album in there around the turn of the century. More XTC, Till We’re Blue or Destroy, recent nostalgia obsessions. The second new Calla song, which ends up in a The-The-inspired riff and is so good. Man I am excited for that new album. New Josh Ritter, reminds me of my friend Ali, Hi Ali I miss you, new Bonnie Prince Billy, both great, both very country. Oh and the WU LYF band I just learned about and passed on to you. Thank you again, Gavin.
Until tomorrow, fine feathered friends.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.