Nut brittle
Apr. 28th, 2026 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneAnybody have a favorite recipe for nut brittle? I guess I'm just never going to be able to buy it in a store again and making it would be much easier than ordering it from far away.
cimoreneThe cat separation dilemma
Apr. 28th, 2026 07:47 pmcimoreneJust imagining talking to a new therapist or new friendly acquaintance, like...
"Oh? Why do you think you've been in that depressed rut for so long?"
"Well, I haven't been in the same room as my wife in two years because of our special-needs cat."
(I have been, but not to sleep, and usually not for more than half an hour or an hour at a time.)
This situation all happened a bit at a time and seemed reasonable all along, like the boiling frogs. But taking a step back and looking at it every now and then is disorienting (and even more depressing).
"Oh? Why do you think you've been in that depressed rut for so long?"
"Well, I haven't been in the same room as my wife in two years because of our special-needs cat."
(I have been, but not to sleep, and usually not for more than half an hour or an hour at a time.)
This situation all happened a bit at a time and seemed reasonable all along, like the boiling frogs. But taking a step back and looking at it every now and then is disorienting (and even more depressing).
Search maintenance
Apr. 22nd, 2026 09:19 am![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
mark posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceHappy Wednesday!
I'm taking search offline sometime today to upgrade the server to a new instance type. It should be down for a day or so -- sorry for the inconvenience. If you're curious, the existing search machine is over 10 years old and was starting to accumulate a decade of cruft...!
Also, apparently these older machines cost more than twice what the newer ones cost, on top of being slower. Trying to save a bit of maintenance and cost, and hopefully a Wednesday is okay!
Edited: The other cool thing is that this also means that the search index will be effectively realtime afterwards... no more waiting a few minutes for the indexer to catch new content.
Should I have cleaned out my bookmarks before? Yes, but now's not the time!
Apr. 21st, 2026 04:20 pmcimoreneI finally got around to reinstalling Linux Mint on my laptop last week so that I could back up the last two years of photos. Going through the photos of 2024-2025 was wild. Wax and I have both been in such a fog of depression that we sometimes barely remembered the things in them, and it all feels vague and like a long time ago. Haha, great.
Anyway, the process of updating my laptop didn't go as planned.
First Tristana threw the external on the floor while it was in the act of copying, thus more-or-less bricking it (a computer repair store MIGHT be able to recover the data). It's possible that there wasn't very much on it that we don't have elsewhere, but I'm not quite sure without taking apart both desktops to access my hds from Wax's to check.
And then signing into Firefox went wrong and it failed to sync my bookmarks, even though they're all there still in the mobile version. The backup of my ff profile that contained the bookmarks was on the external but had not copied before The Incident. So I need to try removing and reinstalling the browser before I have to give up and move them manually, because apparently even though sync refusing to work is a not-uncommon issue, going by the support threads everywhere, they actually removed the "export bookmarks" button! ( Read more... )
Needless to say, I did consider switching browsers, but that feels like too many more steps to tackle at the moment.
Anyway, the process of updating my laptop didn't go as planned.
First Tristana threw the external on the floor while it was in the act of copying, thus more-or-less bricking it (a computer repair store MIGHT be able to recover the data). It's possible that there wasn't very much on it that we don't have elsewhere, but I'm not quite sure without taking apart both desktops to access my hds from Wax's to check.
And then signing into Firefox went wrong and it failed to sync my bookmarks, even though they're all there still in the mobile version. The backup of my ff profile that contained the bookmarks was on the external but had not copied before The Incident. So I need to try removing and reinstalling the browser before I have to give up and move them manually, because apparently even though sync refusing to work is a not-uncommon issue, going by the support threads everywhere, they actually removed the "export bookmarks" button! ( Read more... )
Needless to say, I did consider switching browsers, but that feels like too many more steps to tackle at the moment.
Green pants (trousers) saga
Apr. 17th, 2026 12:09 pmcimoreneHere's another fun ADHD story. I bought a pair of pants that are a lovely jungle green over two years ago from Freddie's of Pinewood (no longer there; they were limited run) (sorta-splurge, because they're "slow fashion" + customs fee from England). They close with a button but not a hook, and I immediately ordered a hook to sew in them, but then I didn't get around to doing that for the last MORE THAN TWO YEARS because I never planned an occasion to wear them. (They aren't dressy occasion pants. They're just cotton twill.) Today I thought to myself, "I might as well sew it in, or I'll never be able to wear them once I decide to."
Then I looked in my sewing kit, my spare needle and thread and button case, the sewing table in the living room, and the little basket full of embroidery tools, which was all the places I could think of where it might be. But no luck. I can't find the hook&bar. I'll have to order another because there's not a sewing shop in town (you can buy mending materials like thread, patches, low quality needles etc including regular hooks and eyes and zippers at supermarkets and the Finnish equivalent of K-Mart, but the larger flat hook and bar that goes on waistbands is apparently less in demand).
I am planning a trip to the big mall with rancid vibes next week, because Wax wants more fun socks and you can't get those locally; but I'm afraid I'm unlikely to find one there either. The last time I ordered from an online shop that would carry them was less than a month ago, because I finally started knitting socks to give to Wax's family next winter! But of course I had no memory of the issue then.
This is obviously not just an ADHD tax, though; it's also hardly having left the house in that time (burnout, depression?) and putting these pants on a pedestal (what a distracting metaphor... pant pedestal) because I'm so jazzed to have found pants in such a great color. And feeling that I don't have any tops that are as good, though I now know what I want to knit to go with them (a striped zigzag or ripple tee something like this, with lavender and green and blue).
Then I looked in my sewing kit, my spare needle and thread and button case, the sewing table in the living room, and the little basket full of embroidery tools, which was all the places I could think of where it might be. But no luck. I can't find the hook&bar. I'll have to order another because there's not a sewing shop in town (you can buy mending materials like thread, patches, low quality needles etc including regular hooks and eyes and zippers at supermarkets and the Finnish equivalent of K-Mart, but the larger flat hook and bar that goes on waistbands is apparently less in demand).
I am planning a trip to the big mall with rancid vibes next week, because Wax wants more fun socks and you can't get those locally; but I'm afraid I'm unlikely to find one there either. The last time I ordered from an online shop that would carry them was less than a month ago, because I finally started knitting socks to give to Wax's family next winter! But of course I had no memory of the issue then.
This is obviously not just an ADHD tax, though; it's also hardly having left the house in that time (burnout, depression?) and putting these pants on a pedestal (what a distracting metaphor... pant pedestal) because I'm so jazzed to have found pants in such a great color. And feeling that I don't have any tops that are as good, though I now know what I want to knit to go with them (a striped zigzag or ripple tee something like this, with lavender and green and blue).
