April 14th, 2020. I’m bored (but it hasn’t been boring).

Heather’s first webcast Saturday night went swimmingly. I was behind the curtainish pushing the URL out and cutting and pasting and replying to requests for information, but more importantly, Heather was awesome. She put a lot of thought into her presentation and continuing her web branding into her physical environment shows how she really ought to be in charge of the visual look of ilyAIMY. Except…. damn. I want to do weird shit with my beard and she will NOT let me.

For today’s walk there shall be no gunshots, just a kitty. For Easter we wandered over to our friends’ house – they’ve also been self-isolated for nearly a month so we walked over for a socially-distanced (they had laid out two tables out on the porch so we had to sort of LOB conversation from table to table) atheist Easter dinner. It was really, really good to see them.

I’m sitting and watching James Bond. Live and Let Die specifically. I’m not proud. But it’s long-time comfort food buzzing pleasantly if rather mundanely in the background. It’s been kind of a dumb day. I started off spectacularly productive, and I think in general I’ve actually been accomplishing a lot, learning a lot, putting things into action. Maybe not as effectively as some, but way more efffectively than others. But after the office-type work of the morning, catching up with clients, doing clerical work, prepping ads and tech for tomorrow’s show and Friday’s video premier and the Institute of Musical Traditions show on Friday night I delved back into a particular problem I’ve been trying to solve – one that I’ve already spent too much money and time on : getting better audio into my phone. For whatever reason it absolutely refuses to consistently recognize an audio input through the 3.5mm jack and YES I’m using a TRRS jack don’t be silly.

Easter dinner on the veraaaaanda. Pineapple mead? Thank you! I think I will! We picked up dinner from our local Farmhouse Greens, a wonderful restaurant here in Catonsville that was doing a spectacular curbside feast pickup. It was a little chaotic, but delicious – and possibly the first time I’ve truly enjoyed bread pudding!

And sometimes it sees it. Sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve restarted the phone in safe mode and managed to make it work… mostly… so I’ve stripped out ALL my mods, shut down third party and Microsoft launchers and now can… I THINK… make it work consistently. Though sometimes when it detects the 3.5mm jack go Live it wants to launch Google…. no fucking clue why… I’ve disabled it’s voice recognition so I have NO idea why it’s even cuing to audio triggers. But when it IS working it gets a really dirty signal out of 2 of my 3 outputs – and the THIRD output… bear with me… for some reason triggers NPR One for about five seconds before then settling down and working correctly.

Yes. For some reason the headphone jack on my mixer (but not the main or control room outputs) when inserted into my phone (but not into my Zoom or PC) triggers a five second burst of National Public Radio.

Well, here’s my home made mask. My old Sunergos coffee t-shirt from Louisville KY was long ago ruined by a run in with a Sharpie in the dryer, but it has found a second Life in the midst of pandemic. Though we’re able to do print-at-home postage, which is great, the Baltimore-area post boxes were wired down after one of our various security threats and won’t accept anything larger than a letter (remember when they used to open wide and you’d pretend they were one of the Yip Yip NAAAAWP aliens from Sesame Street? No? Just me then?) so we’ve still got to take them to the post office. This was the first time I’ve been in someone else’s enclosed space since… gosh… I actually don’t remember – but in-and-out drop off was less than 60 seconds but still harrowing. Mentally projecting “I’m smiling at everyone” with my eyeballs, only one door was unlocked (presumably to limit needs for wiping down the blocked-off others), the cashiers were masked, gloved, and the entire service counter was blocked off by plastic sheeting. People in line were good about being spaced out (and there was a lot of signage to remind them) and the place was almost completely silent as I slipped in, dropped off, and slipped out again. I’m usually pretty big on eye contact and making sure my postal workers think of me as “the friendly one with cool handwriting” but today there was no interaction – just a hasty retreat.

What… th…. FUCK? Try explaining THAT in a help chat.

Also, help message boards are a cesspool of contempt and idiocy.

We sat and watched Star Trek for a while. Meh. I read for a while. Bah. I played guitar for a bit. Fff. I played a video game for a bit. Bch. I think…. I think I’m just almost there…

Yep. I think I’m BORED.

The only bright point of the day was that Heather, aka the chili faerie, dropped off some chili on the front porch. Life saver, that woman. I miss playing with her.