How's your week going?

Sunday night I realized that my dishwasher wasn’t draining. I had the problem back during the Great Plague, and I was lucky to get a repairman out to fix it. I assume it’s the same thing?

Anyway, I’m on his schedule for today between 1100 and 1400. Hoping for the best, because I hate having to wash dishes by hand.

Then, yesterday morning, for no apparent reason, Windows 11 stopped recognizing my external input/output devices. Nada, zilch, zero, bupkis. (I’d only just on Sunday fixed the issue of “New Outlook” not running spellcheck—after hours on the web trying to figure out what was going on. Evidently the geniuses at Microsoft decided that they’d “streamline” the user interface by making you set up preferences in an email (not in the application) and then clicking multiple times instead of two overall. Also, this has been a known user issue since <checks forums> 2023. 

(However, I still can’t get it to recognize keyboard shortcuts for diacritical marks; in fact—it doesn’t seem to have the capability to insert symbols from the toolbar. Oh—I have to press the Windows key plus > to do what you used to be able to do with a tab on the toolbar. Of course. But still no diacritical marks.)

(The same update that did the above also somehow managed to reset my home page in both Chrome and Firefox to Bing, so I had to change them back. I only use Edge when a website won't let me view with an ad blocker on.)

I again spent several hours trolling forums, updating drivers, rebooting and all…before finally unplugging the docking station and plugging it in again.

That worked, but I gotta tell you it’s been a hell of a week and it’s only Tuesday.

 

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

 

Reconfiguring my life

My HP Spectre laptop has turned out to be rather a disappointment.

No—a big disappointment.

Fourteen months after I bought it (so—just after the one-year warrantee expired), it developed hardware problems that required me sending it to HP to replace the motherboard, to the tune of $450. Then, around last Autumn—so, a year after I got the repaired machine back—it started crashing unexpectedly when docked (at the HP station).

Well, in my usual fashion, I delayed, but the tariff-happy Kleptocrat taking office was the forcing function that actually got me to buy an Asus (because I am not ready at this stage of my life to change operating systems); I ordered it through Best Buy right around the New Year.

But then, in my usual fashion, I faffed about because I didn’t want to have to go through the tsuris of standing up a new instance of O365, transferring all my files and finding or replacing all my passwords to online sites, portals, services, etc. The passwords alone include:

My home wireless network
Three email accounts (plus connecting two of them to Outlook)
Bluesky, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook
Microsoft (the only time I ever use this one is when I have to set up a new computer
Bitdefender
Teams (can’t use my Microsoft password, because my Skype account predated MSFT buying and then killing it)
AdBlock
Not a password, but I’ll have to install the driver to my printer as well
Well, last Friday, the Spectre crashed four times in a row while docked. I also got a message saying the Intel memory was degrading, so I should turn it off. Moreover, take a look at this machine; see the gap between the base and the top?

And the bottom case is coming apart:

I reckoned it was time. I finally pulled the machine out of the shipping box, plugged it in and then spent 30 minutes finding the network password, because it wouldn’t do anything until it was connected. Then it updated itself for about an hour or two, while it tried to get me to become enthusiastic about Copilot. (No.)

I moved all my files to OneDrive, so I hope that will make transferring them to the Asus less painful than the old method. And I set up my two email accounts in Outlook, but that’s as far as I’ve got. I’m taking my time.

But I have one question: why is the keyboard light up like a runway?

Oh—and who thought it was a good design idea to put the power key right next to the delete key?

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Armageddon delayed

Sorry, dear reader(s); I spent much of yesterday trying all the ways the internet tells me to get my Samsung mobile to charge, because it stopped.

One after another, I tried: different charging cables, connected to different outlets; using a wireless charger; cleaning the charging port with a pin and a clean toothbrush; forced restart; OS update. Nothing worked, and I was down to 27% battery.

Frantically I went to Samsung and looked up their “authorized” service, something called (I’m not making this up) ubreakitifixit (by Asurion). Then I spent about 15 minutes walking around the Clocktower shopping center in Herndon, because there are about 50 different business in the big building and all I had was a street address.

Fortunately, the very nice young geek used something more effective than a pin or a toothbrush to get out a crap ton of pocket lint, and restored my ability to recharge.

I spent the remainder of the day retiring to my fainting couch to recover.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Over my shoulder

Microsoft Word, and its step-sibling Outlook, has got a lot more irritating in the past couple of years. I don’t know whether it’s AI, or just someone deciding that what people really need is not just spellcheck, but grammar and punctuation suggestions. And there doesn’t seem to be a way to turn those “features off.

Believe me, if I could find it, I would. Since the seventh grade, when Miss Bauer rammed the tools of English into us, I have not needed any jumped-up bog standard “help” with language, thank you very much.

But, back to spellcheck: a couple of weeks ago, Outlook signaled that it didn’t like “gormless” as my choice of descriptor for someone who absolutely personifies the quality. So when I clicked on the word, these are the substitutes it suggested:

Now—why would you object to “gormless” the adjective, but be perfectly happy with “gormlessly”, the adverb? See why I want to turn the dag-blamed thing off?

(As I write this, it’s still giving me the wavy red line under the offending word.)

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Social annoyance

Every once in a while Twitter gets more bolshie about serving up ads. This week is one of those times; I do what I always do: block any account that serves up an ad in my feed.

But in Elno’s quest to drive his $8 subscriptions (evidently his plan to make up for the billions in ad revenues he lost by displaying ads next to Nazi, racist & porn content), he’s added one extra step to the process.

You block the ad, and then get this opportunity to do away with ads forever, by renting a blue check. The only way you can make it go away is to click on one of the two options.

In my case, “maybe later” means “on the 12^th day after Armageddon”.

Twat.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: well & truly the 21st Century

A few years ago, a friend gave me his old Roku streaming device. I won’t deny that it took me some hours to figure out how to set it up. And use it. He also gave me a six-month subscription to The Criterion Channel, so I was able to watch some old classics that Comcast had decided that I didn’t need (by taking TCM out of my lineup—without reducing my monthly fee).

Well, I got out of the habit of using it. But last week I caught an ad for BritBox while I was zapping the 50% of my feed that Facebook now devotes to commercials. So I went there (not using the FB link—I don’t reward bad behavior) and signed up for a year at $80.

As you might imagine, it took me more hours to figure out how to find Roku on my TV. (My Comcast remote is nearly eight years old; it doesn’t resemble any of the devices you see on various forums these days.) But I got it working and started watching episodes of Death in Paradise.

The Roku user experience is pretty dire—it appears to date from 10-15 years ago. I can’t pick up at the next episode whenever I restart. I have to scroll to my Watchlist, then scroll to Death in Paradise, then scroll to Episodes, then scroll to seasons, then scroll to the season I want, then scroll to the episode I want. (Thank God I got my watchlist sorted online; if I’d had to do it through the streaming interface someone would be picking up a body from my residence.)

I’ve also got Poirot, Daziel and Pascoe, Miss Marple (with Joan Hickson), Midsomer Murders and Lewis on the list. I like mysteries and police procedurals. I could go to the PBS app for some of these, but only early seasons. Moreover, I’m looking forward to seeing the whole presentation—you will be interested to know that PBS blurs certain body parts lest the tender eyes of its viewers burn from seeing a female nipple or a male butt crack. (They even blurred the nipples on an abstract portrait in one episode.)

So this is my gratitude today—on-demand streaming of programming I find entertaining. Basically, I’m grateful for finally entering 2015.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Wishful thinking

When you block someone on Twitter whose ad has been served in your feed, you have to click four times. First three: on the ellipsis to bring up the menu, on “Block [advertising tosser]” and on “Confirm block”.

And then you are served up this pop-up before you can move on:

Believe me, my friends, when I click on “Maybe later”, I mean “That would be on the 32^nd of Nevruary.”

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Intelligent artifice

Here’s a thing: some years ago, a guy filed a lawsuit against Avianca Airlines. His name and the reason for the action don’t really matter (but Roberto Mata and being struck in the knee by a service cart).

There’s been a cartload of back-and-forth on this case, giving job security to the folks at the courthouse who have to keep track of such things, but in the most recent filing, Mata’s attorney, Steven A. Schwartz (of Levidov Levidov & Oberman, if you're asking) argued against Avianca's motion for dismissal. And in the course of his 10-page document, he cited several similar cases as precedent.

The law loves precedent.

A tiny problem, tho—no one who paid attention to the cases could find them.

Turns out Schwartz enlisted the help of ChatGPT, the AI tool released by OpenAI last November, in his legal research. Cheaper than paralegals, I expect. ChatGPT wrote up the argument and cited the cases and Schwartz looked it over, logged his billable hours and submitted the filing.

Well, he did some form of due diligence: he asked ChatGPT, “Are these cases real?”

And ChatGPT nodded, “Yeah, bro—totes real.”

So this is where we are: AI has learned how to lie. It’s at the stage of a seven-year-old when you ask if they’ve cleaned up their room and they tell you they have, even as you look past their earnest face and see a rubbish tip. "Nope, nope—I have not made up any of this stuff, it's all real and genuine and truthy. What else do you want to know?"

I do not know what to make of this, but I’m betting Schwartz doesn’t deduct any hours from his monthly bill to Mata.

 

 

Non-support

I spent an hour on the phone with Cigna and Express Scripts yesterday because the latter’s flipping website wouldn’t let me log on or reset the password. About 20 minutes of that was being on hold—first getting the Express Scripts order-a-prescription person even though I’d called the number for web support, then being walked through the password reset process for Cigna’s site, even though I called the Express Scripts number.

In the end, I couldn’t do what I wanted, which was to upload a prescription from my dentist (which he gave me <cough> in January), so I have to call his office and ask him to call or fax it in.

Anyhow—I need something beautiful after that. So, here’s a daffodil.

 

Getting around

This week I am coming to you from Sedona, Arizona. Technically, Cottonwood, but people know Sedona, so that’s my story.

While here I have use of someone else’s car, a 2021 Subaru Forrester. This is quite a change from my 2001 Saab 9-3 coupe. For one thing, it’s enormous; I feel like I should have a battle fleet around me. For another, it’s automatic transmission.

I thought I was going to have to consult YouTube just to get the thing started. Not the keyless part, that I know. But you have to simultaneously depress the brake and press the Engine Start button. I can’t tell you how many minutes I tried to get it going before I managed the magic combination.

Then there was the seat adjustment—on my Saab, it’s a lever under the seat; in the Subaru, there are knobs and switches on the side. I had to get out and examine all the things before finally getting it moved. I don't know for sure, but I think it's a hybrid. I mean—I hope it is; when I stop for longer than maybe 10 seconds, the RPMs drop to zero and there's no engine sound. Then when I press the accelerator (or, to be more precise, take my foot off the brake), everything's tickety-boo.

Gonna be an interesting week.

 

 

All aboard

An industry publication, The Cyber Post, reported Monday on a cyber attack on the Iranian rail system that occurred in July. According to researchers, on 9 July a wiper attack disrupted train service and directed customers via all the displays and message boards at train stations to call 64411, the number for the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, for information.

Look, cyber attacks are bad; I am not arguing otherwise. Ransomware operators in particular are zeroing in on hospitals and healthcare systems because they’re more likely to pay than negotiate to get their life-critical systems back up and running. These people are despicable.

But bringing the nation’s railway system to a halt and then redirecting customer service calls to the head of state?

Chef’s kiss.