Monthly Archives: July 2021

making plans

Posted in adventure, everyday kimli, international kimli by

We have a trip scheduled.

It’s not the road trip to Edmonton that we’ve been trying to take since 2017 and have been foiled each time by the planet (smoke from fires, landslides, unseasonable winter conditions, COVID, radioactive Q-supporting yeti, etc), although that is tentatively penciled in for August – no, we have a Actual Trip planned.

We’re going* to New York in September.

Folks, I am basically beside myself with excitement. Not because we get to fly somewhere, not because we get quality time with excellent friends we haven’t seen in 18 months, not because it’s somewhere other than my beloved balcony – no, I am super fucking extra bouncy excited because of EATING.

Fuck my complicated fat girl relationship with food, I am 100% going to eat my way through New York the entire time we’re there and oh my god I cannot wait. Yeah, we have some non-food related plans while we’re there – there’s a Kusama exhibit I’ve been dying to see, and I really want to go to Coney Island and ride the Wonder Wheel again – but the rest of the time? We will be walking and eating and wearing masks and eating and also there will be a lot of eating and Diet Coke from Chipotle because fuck Chick-fil-A forever.

We get in on Friday night and my plans involve taking off my pants and ordering Chinese food (or as my people call it, “food”). That’s it. No pants and white rice all night long.

The last time we were in NYC was November 2019 as a consolation prize for that whole “no-Japan-because-Super-Typhoon” thing, and it was the first time we’d ever had Chinese food in New York. It was fucking incredible – like, I was very sad that I was full. It was probably the best Chinese food I’d ever eaten – suddenly, all the sitcoms talking about Chinese food in New York made sense. I’ve been patiently waiting for our triumphant return to the city so I can eat all the food I didn’t eat during the pandemic, and I cannot fucking wait. I don’t even feel guilty about how much I’m looking forward to food in New York, that’s how excited I am.

Everything is paid for and planned, but the actual “going” part is the only question mark at the moment. The border between US and Canada isn’t open yet, but it’s actually always been open for flights – we just can’t drive there (and I really want to). Only remaining complication is the America’s refusal to acknowledge the Astra-Zenica vaccine as valid, and unfortunately that’s the one most Canadians have – Ed’s rocking a half AZ, half Moderna life, whereas I’m a Pfizer baby through and through. Will it be resolved before we go? We’re more than two months out, so while it’s obviously time to start packing, we don’t know what’s going to happen. As of Tuesday, double-vaxxed Americans can come to Canada, but we can’t go down there until at least August 21st – and there’s no guarantee that this’ll be worked out before then. Hell, Québec is even offering AZ-vaxxed folks the opportunity to get a THIRD shot so they’ll be allowed to cross the “No AZ” border. Not entirely sure why a third untested shot has more protection than the proven-everywhere-except-the-US AZ shot has, but .. well, America. Nothing makes sense there, including why the Chinese food is so good in New York. Is it drugs? I hope it’s drugs.

I’m probably getting ahead of myself here, but I’m also trying to book .. something. I don’t know where or when, but something. I have a large credit with Lufthansa that has to be booked before the end of August, and used before the end of July 22 .. but where do I want to go? Will MWC happen next year? Would Ed even get to go to it if it does? Or should I just throw all these unknowns in the trash and book a comforting and long-overdue trip to London? The UK is terrifying right now, but surely it’ll be better before next July .. won’t it? I don’t know. I hate not knowing.

I’m going to practice wearing a bib!

this makes me uncomfortable!

operation overkill

Posted in cannabis, everyday kimli by

This may be the dumbest thing I’ve set up yet.

So, some backstory. As you might know, I spend most of my free time on my balcony, cultivating my new lifestyle as a cannabis aficionado. While the actual weed part is all fine and good, I find I’m far more excited about all the collecting and categorizing and displaying I get to do: tiny jars are absolutely my jam, and there are a lot of them. Not every provider labels products the same way, so I’m left with a disorganized assortment missing the important information that goes into making an informed choice about the strain you’re about to enjoy. This lessens my fun a little, because I like order. Organized order, with shelves and codes and coloured jars, and shit.

I also like electronics, and needlessly complicated solutions to problems that aren’t really problems at all.

Yeah, you know where this is going.

Over the past week, I’ve been wracking my brain to think of how I can display information about what strains are currently being smoked, which bong they’re in, and what’s in the grinders, in addition to knowing what is in each unlabelled stash jar, and what’s on hand as part of our (Ed started it, I’m just here to complicate things) collection.

I have the Raspberry Pi and Hyperpixel display I set up as a Sonos album cover display last summer, but I couldn’t find any projects online that would do what I want. I thought about making a Twitter account that just tweeted the weed information I sent to the account, but nothing seemed quite right. The following list of ideas were tried and discarded:

  • Setting up the Raspberry Pi as a Twitter board
  • Setting up an Android tablet as a Twitter board
  • Using iPhone widgets to display a single Twitter account
  • Use a whiteboard
  • Set up a wall iPad that displayed a Google Doc

.. none of those worked. The Twitter account idea seemed solid, but when I tried it I didn’t like the character limits – and I’d have to mentally remember which tweets were out of date and which were still valid. Using a whiteboard was probably the easiest solution, but I don’t like easy and I have ridiculously large handwriting so I’d have to basically make a chalk wall that Ed would just draw dicks all over so that idea was out. Also, it turns out there ARE no iPhone widgets for Twitter, and the ones I tried (Aviary and Twidget) weren’t great: one wants to show a random selection of your entire timeline, and the other made me log into the separate account I made (@halfwackhoots, although I’m probably going to delete it soon) every day. Using Twitter as a public message board would technically work, but it wasn’t the most attractive application of my idea.

I needed to think bigger.

Like, digital signage bigger.

Obviously I don’t want a billboard for my balcony, but what about a small screen? All I really need is something that can play a slideshow of images, and accept them from a wireless source. Something like .. a digital picture frame.

Welcome to my cafe, apparently.

I found a small, wireless digital photo frame that I can send pictures to with an app. I’ve been spending most of my free balcony time not smoking cannabis, but making little posters of our collection and what we’ve been using, so there’s no more guess work about what you set up last night but can’t remember in the light of day. I have minimal graphic design skills, but I have another app that provides me with thousands of templates so I just pick something that looks cute and then waste an evening making dumb little signs:

  • sorry, billy idol
  • sushi jerry
  • ed likes cars, so ..
  • a diner menu of weed
  • this one is exceptionally bad

It’s not a perfect system. These cards have a limited shelf life in that the text expires, so when we’ve finished with a particular strain or bowl and change to another, I need a new poster. I can’t imagine I’ll be doing this every single time, but for now that’s exactly what I’m doing and it’s the stupidest thing ever but it makes me laugh every time.

Stop on by the Halfwack Smoke Shack! We have a great selection, no prices, and many cats to pet!

I really need to teach myself Swift so I can make the organization apps I want but don’t exist. I’d like an app that allows you to track the strains you’ve tried and how you liked them, then suggest other strains you might enjoy based on your list. This exists for craft beer and wine, but not for cannabis. I’d also love an app that I could insert some text and have it generate me a poster and automatically send it to the frame. I can’t control the contents of the frame remotely, so when it’s time to hide a poster because it’s no longer in use, it’s a manual process to hide it via the frame’s UI.

I’m still working on a poster that shows the contents of the unlabeled stash jars, and one for the No Fun Box (we don’t often find strains that are a no-go but there are some. they’re kept in the “polite company” airtight container.) At this rate, I’m going to get really good at early Web 2.0 graphic design. If this whole tech writing thing doesn’t work out, maybe I can fall back on posters.

I’d say I need a new hobby, but that’s what led to this. At least it’s not a spreadsheet.

but i get up again

Posted in everyday kimli by

Disastrous Failures for Thursday, July 8, 2021

  • My skin thinks we’re 15 years old and every trauma – and there are a lot of them – gets a new celebratory pimple
  • Half the contents of the fridge fell out and I broke one of the bowls we already didn’t have enough of
  • I COMPLETELY FUCKED my dev environment and needed to call in the big guns to unfuck my dev environment
  • I tried to be sneaky and put a file where there ought not be files and that probably did not help with the fuckening
  • CUSTOMERS ARE CONFUSED AND I’m pretty sure it’s all my fault for not anticipating people not knowing what an expand icon does I mean the first thing I would do is click on it to see what happens but maybe that is why I am made of disastrous failures and not rich with retail successes
  • I’ve been annoyed at all four cats at different times this morning because it is apparently Love Cats, Not GitHub Thursday and I was caught unaware
  • We ran out of creamed corn.

Relative Successes for Thursday, July 8, 2021

  • I didn’t exactly FIX my dev environment, but I did create a workaround that resolved everything nicely
  • Then I pushed a patch to fix something I missed, but everything is where it should be now
  • Ran into a Documentation Emergency and was prepared for it and have fixed things to an appreciated degree
  • I got a new hat and it is great
  • I thought I lost a couple of videos we took on motorides out to Fort Langley but I remembered the existence of a second SD card and there they were
  • The cats still love me even if I had to push them off my desk around 18 times
  • When I order another set of bowls to replace the one I broke we will then have 7 bowls which is much better than 4
  • An Adventure is planned for the weekend!
  • I got more creamed corn.

*explode*

the famous variant

Posted in everyday kimli by

One of my variants is super famous for some reason, to the point of having a dressing room rider to ensure their/my every desire is met before and after a performance/event/coup/insurgency/orgy/etc.

This is our rider:

  • 12 x 2 litre bottles of cold Diet Coke with an expiry date no sooner than 2 months out of the current date
  • 6 coolers full of ice (4 for bottle storage, 2 for ice for drinks)
  • 6 large bottles of ice cold Dasani water
  • 4 bottles of Cherry Blackberry Mio water enhancer
  • 2 party-sized bottles of Mott’s Clamato (Extra Spicy)
  • 2 tins of Matt and Steve’s Caesar Rimmer
  • 1 large bottle of Tabasco sauce
  • 1 large bottle of Worcestershire sauce
  • 3 limes cut into wedges
  • 12 large drinking glasses
  • 12 reusable straws
  • 4 fresh fruit platters
  • 1 x large bowl of baby carrots
  • 1 x large bowl of cherry or grape tomatoes
  • 1 x large container of jalapeno ranch dressing
  • Random selection of adult items from this site only
  • Bouquet of dahlias in random colours
  • Electronic charging station with lightning, USB-C, and mini-USB connections (x4 each)
  • Peanut M&Ms in a serving dish shaped like a pineapple (not an actual pineapple)
  • Secure, fast wi-fi
  • 2 x Flopping sofa, for flopping
  • 3 x pairs of scissors

It’d be nice to demand this stuff, but let’s face it – I’d be mortified to make demands of anyone, let alone a list of things I need for my own comfort. Don’t get me wrong, I love to be comfortable .. but this is all stuff I’d bring myself so no one else would have to worry about it. I don’t go anywhere without my own Diet Coke, reusable tumbler/straw, and emergency Mio supply. If I want a Caesar while I’m out of the house, I’ll get it myself. Ditto M&Ms. When I was in the hospital last, I got in trouble for doing my own medication injections and tech support on the devices they left plugged into me. What? I’m very self-sufficient, until it comes to spider removal and phone calls.

What’s on your rider?