Happy May the Fourth be with you! Today is the only day you can watch this Video where Tim Russ explains star ways day. Poorly Organized Thoughts on: Bad decisions. Sometimes I make bad choices. I was complaining to a friend about my iPhone ten R, which as a diminished total battery life, due mostly to being over five years old. Batteries don’t last that long with their original capacity. My friend said that he had the same thing and a new battery put a tone of new life into his phone. On more or less a whim, I looked into what it would take to get the battery replaced I don’t have any apple service providers anywhere near me due to my living in The Woods, so the best option was to have it shipped to a service center and the battery replaced there. Of course I would be without the phone for a few days (maybe even a week) but I wasn’t too worried. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you might remember that I bought a google pixel 3a to load Ubuntu Touch, the linux OS for smartphones onto it. I figured I could drop my sim card into that phone before shipping my iPhone off for a replacement battery. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Except it turned out to be difficult difficult lemon difficult instead. Well putting in the sim card was easy, because I had a sim tool in my desk drawer and my cell phone carrier is fine with swapping sims between devices without any particular notice. I spent most of the day using the linux phone as we went out to mail my iPhone off and pick up groceries. While I was in town, everything worked fine. But then I go home and I eventually realized that mini calling wasn’t working. Living in The Woods, I have no cell service, so instead I rely on connecting to the network via wifi. My carrier has wifi calling and text, which is great. But ubuntu touch doesn’t have this feature. It turns out the technology is proprietary and locked up between the carriers and phone companies in a way I don’t completely understand. But what it means is that I can’t actually use this phone as a phone. At least not with the current OS. So I have to re-install android on it, a prospect I do not relish. I’ve use android before, and even tried the android spinoffs like cyanogenmod (now called LineageOS) but since switching to an iPhone, I never really looked back.
I’ve had android for a few days now, but even with that it’s been a rough adjustment. Whichever version of android I’m using has gestural controls, but not the same ones that ios has, so I keep swiping or flipping or whatever and the wrong thing happens. I would probably be able to better shake the muscle memory if the gestures I am using didn’t do something on the phone. So my lizard brain* gets the haptic feedback that whatever i just did worked, even as the rest of my brain gets mad because the phone isn’t doing what I want. But at least I’ll be back to my trusty iPhone soon. But not with a new battery. Oh didn’t I mention that? Apple won’t replace the battery because the phone also has a crack in the glass backplate. (why are we still making phones with extraneous glass?) I should have known better. Apple is notorious for this sort of thing. And I should know, I used to work there. The only option for me (because I have multiple “issues” that need to be fixed is to do a full device replacement which costs $400. For hundred dollars. I could get a new in box iPhone 12 for roughly the same price on eBay (I checked.) I’m not paying four hundred dollars for a “new” iphone that is five years old. So now they have to ship the phone back to me, unrepaired. My next step will likely be to take it to a local mom & pop shop and have them do it. Either that or go buy the supplies on fixit and give it a shot myself. Oops, I just checked and it’s a 40 step process just to remove the battery. I’m not going to do that. I may make bad choices sometimes, but I’m not going to let that be one of them.
*I feel obligated to note that the lizard/monkey brain whatever understanding of how the mind works is apparently vastly oversimplified and not even a good or useful simplification like pretending imaginary numbers don’t exist. It’s bad science and I’m strictly using it for artistic license.
Stuff I'm Eating I don’t know if it was Futurama’s Bachelor Chow or that guy who lived on monkey chow for a week that made me first think about a “human food” version of dog kibble. Now, before we get too far, I like food, I like food with different flavors and textures and I like the experience of cooking food. But also I’m lazy sometimes and spoiled for choice. How many times have I been caught in that “I’m hungry, but I don’t know what for” loop. So the idea of an all purpose food seems like a good one. At least occasionally. And I’m not the only person who’s thought of this. There’s actual companies out there making products called Soylent and Huel, but both of those are liquid/shake concoctions rather than something with any textural experience. Plus the names are really off putting. Soylent is named after the famous all purpose food in the movie Soylent Green, which my dude, my guy, you don’t want to name your food after that. ITS not as funny as you think it is. Also the Soylent company (and resultant products) in the movie were bad guys, profiting off overcrowding and poverty, naming your company and product after that isn’t ironic, it’s bad marketing. Plus the founder is exactly the sort of guy who would think naming your company Soylent is a good idea. And Huel sounds like the noise you make when vomiting.
But the dream lived on. When would I have my own freeze dried balls of food? Starfield, Bethesda’s latest space based RPG even has a company called Chunks, which manufactures cubeoid food products in easy open pouches. The Expanse books and tv series has Kibble, a common staple among belters. Whole researching fan made recipes for that kibble, I discovered TVP or textured vegetable protein, which turns out to be exactly what I’m looking for. First of all, the name is the sort of straightforward uncluttered sort of thing, that tells you what it is, but also has a relatively useful initialism. It comes in a few different shapes and sizes, but at the core it’s a plant based meat replacement that is relatively shelf stable and in certain configurations comes in little dog food shaped chunks. It even says chunks right on the bag! How do I know this? Well I bought a couple bags. This is a product typically used by vegetarians or vegans who want a convincing meat substitute. I don’t actually need it to be convincing, because part of the appeal to my brain is the inherent inauthenticity of a human kibble product. The bags only just arrived yesterday, so I haven’t actually eaten them yet, but I’ve got a simple curry dish I’m probably going to throw them into this week instead of diced chicken or ground beef. Should be fun! Or weird!
This Week's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Song of the week is The End of the Movie (reprise)
