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resumed complicated curry
Wednesday, April 16 2025
My horrible no-good workplace-issued Windows 11 laptop (a Dell XPS that has forever sworn me off the Dell brand) somehow continues to frustrate my seemingly-reasonable desire to be able to listen to smooth-running audio from various client software running on that laptop. Today my nice SkullCandy-branded headphones started experiencing audio problems similar to the ones that had made me replace the cheap (~12 dollar) bluetooth headphones I'd tried to use originally. So then I tried swapping in another set of bluetooth headphones (one that is at least ten years old that had been gathering dust in the laboratory) and they performed the same terrible way. This suggested the problem was the laptop, not either of the headphones. I researched the issue, but nobody had a solution that didn't involve "updating the drivers." (They had been updated!) There ultimately was a solution to the problem: rebooting the laptop. But a computer that has to be rebooted every few days just to reliably produce acceptable audio is not a good computer (that's more typical of a Windows ME-era computer).
At lunch today, the courtiers of the lunchroom king were lightly jesting with the king about some air travel he will be doing in the fall. It was clear from what he was saying that the king (and everyone in the court) has far less experience with air travel than I have amassed. They kept saying things that people only say when they only have a vague understanding of concepts like Real ID, long-term parking, and security checkpoints. I was particularly struck by the fretting the king was doing about the numerous prescription medications (some of which are controlled substances) that his wife will be taking through airport security. He was convinced that all the drugs would have to be in their specific prescription bottles and perhaps accompanied with documentation. While this is technically true of all prescription medication, especially when it is carried out in public, it's clear from the many times I've been through airport security that the people working the scanners and such have no interest in enforcing drug laws. All they care about is weapons and liquids (the latter only because at some point it was thought liquids could be made into weapons). So, for example, Gretchen thinks nothing of carrying all her prescription medication, including tightly regulated pills like oxycodone, all mixed together in a mint tin. I've never attempted to carry cannabis on an airplane, but, unless one encounters a drug-sniffing drug at the gate (which usually only happens on international flights), one could probably do so without issue.
The workday proceeded similarly to how others had, though I was helped a little by a 120 mg dose of pseudoephedrine I'd taken this morning that focused my brain and had me digging into the nuances of the complex of backend and frontend code I was dealing with. At some point things got beyond my ability to debug (at least within a reasonable time frame) and I asked a question of the lead developer. It turned out I'd been trying to get a frontend to talk to the wrong (though similar) backend.
At the end of the workday, I've developed a habit of occasionally stopping at A&M Hardware in Accord to buy things. Earlier this week, I'd bought a stout (though flat) iron bar to use for fashioning a bracket to support my work-issue laptop when working at my desk in the laboratory. Today I went into A&M again to buy some JB Weld to use to cover parts of that iron to provide a surface that won't scratch things.
Back home in Hurley, I took the dogs for their usual afternoon walk, this time starting on the Farm Road and cutting over to the Stick Trail. But this morning Neville had been on a walk with Gretchen, Charlotte, our neighbor A (who is back living in her house after a multi-month renovation), and A's dog Henry, so he didn't have the energy for it. And Charlotte didn't really come either. So by the time I was down on the Stick Trail adding stones to the extension of the Chamomile Wall west of the trail, there were no dogs with me.
When I returned to the house, I resumed my work on the curry I'd begun (and aborted) Monday. Loosely following a recipe, I somehow neglected to add curry powder until I was nearly done with the curry, so I was puzzled why it didn't really taste particularly "Indian." But then Gretchen mentioned that the house smelled of curry powder, and I realized I needed to add it (and it must not have actually smelled like curry powder, at least not yet). The resulting curry contained chick peas, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, mushrooms, and spinach and was pretty damn good.
This evening I watched the rest of that vague Star-Trek-themed (by way of advanced virtual reality) Black Mirror episode (which is actually the sixth, not second, of the season), and it turned out to be better than expected. A new wireless computer-controlling remote had arrived in the mail today, and I used it to control my main computer Woodchuck from the beanbag, which greatly improved my laboratory's capabilities as a man cave. (In the past I'd always had to get up to start or stop videos, something that usually disturbed Diane the Cat.) Given how much better things were, I don't know why I hadn't tried to set up a remote in the past. But what had caused me to get it was not the beanbag but the KVM I use to attach my work-issued laptop to Woodchuck's main monitor. When that laptop is connected to the keyboard and mouse, you see, I no longer have control of the video that is often playing on one of the several monitors that is not attached to the work laptop. But with a remote, I always have some basic control of Woodchuck. One huge advantage of the new remote over the one we use to control the media computer in the teevee room is that it uses 2.4 GHz signals (unfortunately not bluetooth, though) to do its control. This provides much better range for control; using an infrared remote, the beanbag had actually been too far from Woodchuck to control it with an infrared remote.
The state of the westward extension of the Chamomile Wall after some of the work I did today. Click to enlarge.
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