author: xoagray
Hey! It's been a while. I got a new computer and couldn't get back in here for a bit, but I'm back. I've been doing pretyt good, hope everyone here's been doing great!
It's interesting to see how the names change over the span of a couple months here. I know I've been a little sparce at posting myself, but now compared to when I first started coming here a couple months ago I still see a couple names I recognize, but a whole bunch I don't. Hi new folks! ... Now where did all the other folks go? o.O
I've started noticing a new trend with stores, at least it seems like a new trend to me. But like every time I go and buy something now it seems like the store I went to wants me to fill out a survey.
Like for everything... Even mundane little things like when I walked into an Office Depot to buy a pen, or the local Target for a bicycle pump. I get it, once in a while surveys are useful, but I have to wonder what marketing genius thought, "Let's send them a survey after every purchase, they'll definitely fill them out every time and won't get annoyed at even more emails from us!"
Living in Florida for the last 20 odd years, I really miss what the fall season is like up north. I spent the first half of my life living mostly in NY, so the fall colors and cooler weather always brought in the start of the holidays, and long walks with my cameras taking photos of the changing leaves.
Florida can't give me that. Just like it can't give me snow as a backdrop for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sure, the warm weather year round has it's advantages too. But even after all these years, it's never felt completely like home and that's definitely part of why.
Decided to kill off some of the subscription crap that was nickle and diming me and realized that between my partner and I we had nearly $100 in fees for things like Amazon Prime, Audible, Paramount+, etc. I have to admit I'm really going to miss some of those things, but I really don't like all these little fees coming out of our account all over the place and I'm just kind of tired of how much we were spending on it. it's amazing how fast "Eh, it's only $5 a month" turns into $100.
I kidna' want to learn to play the Hurdy Gurdy. The only thing really stopping me is that even an inexpensive one comes in at just under $1000. That's a lot to spend on something I don't even know how to play. o.O
Finally I think in the last stages of Covid-19. I honestly feel pretty lucky compared to some of the things I've seen friends and family go through, including unfortunately 2 deaths. We got off pretty lucky here, neither of us having much worse than bad cold / flu symptoms and only really being ill for about a week. While not 100% quite yet, we're both at the stage now where at most a DayQuil will keep any lingering symptoms at bay and we're able to go about our normal lives agian. Lesson learned, do not miss booster shots. Next time I get one I'm setting a reminder about it on my calender so I don't miss it again.
Well, it finally happened. After like 3 years of avoiding it my boyfriend and I have both come down with Covid-19. So far it's not too bad, mostly flu like symptoms, Though last night I got the chills like I've never had before. I've been outside in -50°F temps and not felt as cold. Fortunately that let up by morning.
Still feel weak and achey, hopefully this doesn't get too nasty before it's over.
I don't really consider myself a fountain pen collector, but I find myself gathering a small collection of them just in the process of trying different things. And just today I picked up a Jinhao No9019. I've never bought a Chinese pen before because most of the time they're knockoffs and the originals are just better. But with the No9019, Jinhao has done a lot more their own thing and the pen seems to be pretty decent quality. Is it on par with a Montblanc No149? I've never used one, but I can't imagine. It does punch above it's weight though for a $13 pen.
I've been playing the Quake II remake and it's genuinely good. The enemies are a little smarter, and now duck. The graphical improvements look good, the game has accessability options now that are pretty cool for those that need them. Overall a really good experience.
Just finished listening to the first season of the "City of the Rails" podcast. On the surface it's the story of a mother who's trying to find her daughter who runs off to live the train hopping hobo life. But it's also got some interesting looks into the railroad industry from the angles of the people that work in and with that world. Worth a listen if you've ever had a passing thought about hopping on a train, or know someone that has.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/city-of-the-rails/id1664440759
Well that's interesting. I just found out after working on a post here that if I actually used up all the available characters, it just fails outright and says my post exceeded the allowed length.
That was with the little character counter at 0. Not negative, just 0. I also noticed that hitting shift - return to do a paragraph is 3 characters instead of 1. Oh well, learning the little oddnesses of a new, (at least to me,) thing. LOL!
I finally figured out how to get this working in Amfora. Command line stuff in actual command lines, it's actually kind of neat to see an internet from this perspective.
So Gemini being mostly text makes it great for use with screen reading software! I use "Speak Screen" on my iPhone / iPad a lot to have it just read the contents of pages to me. It's increadably handy! I've also mapped it to the back tap accessabiliity shortcut in iOS, so I just tap the back of my iPhone 3 times and it reads. If you're on iOS, and visually impaired, (or just like having your phone read to you while you've got your hands full with other stuff) give it a whirl.
I'd love to find something that gave Lagrange this kind of functionality so it could read on PC as well.
So Gemini, and Gopher are both pretty new to me, I had heard of Gopher in passing ages ago but never used it till recently and Gemini I've known about for less than a week. But I like this place; I like the feel of it, and I'm interested in exploring what I can do with it and what's out there from Gopher holes to Gemspace.
I'm also already thinking about creating my own site and what I want to do with it. But I need to learn more about what I can do with it. Like what the limitations of Gopher and Gemini sites are, and to figure out which best fits with what I'm considering doing.
Whatever else, it's always fun to dig into a new thing. :)
Just found this place and decided to dip my toes in. Hi all. :)