domesticity

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ms-demeanor:

People seem to like that post about fixing computers and the fucked up little components in apple laptops and here is some solid advice on getting started fixing your own equipment:

Start recreationally watching repair videos.

There are a ton of mechanics who have youtube channels that show how they do their troubleshooting process and how they navigate engines. They might put up a video or two a month talking about an overheating problem on one SUV that they can’t track down or on replacing some fuck-off part that’s all the way in the back of an engine.

Teaching people how to troubleshoot is one of the hardest things about any kind of technical repair, and watching professionals zoom in on a problem can teach you that kind of troubleshooting.

You’ll see the process that they go through in trying to replicate the problem; they’ll see which things cause the problem and which things don’t. They’ll see if a problem is persistent or intermittent. They’ll show you their order of operations and how they organize their tools and you’ll learn how they keep bolts in order and how they keep their hands clean.

One of the comments on that other post derides “spudgers” because the commenter doesn’t know what a spudger is (which is fine! it’s a silly word and it is in the screenshot of the parts that I was complaining about! people don’t have to know what that is and I don’t expect them to!) – it’s a narrow tool you use to wedge open the clips on the side of a laptop. Some people use old credit cards for this, I used a jeweler’s screwdriver and I scratched my case. A spudger would have been handy, actually, but a mac-specific “pentalobe” (star) screwdriver is bullshit.

Watch tech repair videos and learn the names of tools. Watch household appliance videos and learn how your fridge works. Even if you don’t have something to repair. Especially if you don’t.

Watch plumbing videos, watch carpentry videos. Watch videos of people removing insulation.

It’s great to watch specific videos when you want to do a specific task, but honestly once you watch ten videos of someone assembling a gaming PC it becomes a whole lot clearer that this is probably something you can do yourself.

Watch ten different people on youtube change their brake pads.

Working on your brakes is one of those things that sounds fucking terrifying until you know exactly how simple brake systems on most cars are.

Even if you don’t have something to work on right now, it is so, so worth it to learn how to tinker around and repair things, and one of the absolute easiest ways to do that is to watch other people doing it and friends, people fucking love putting their repair videos on youtube.

Tags:

#…I *want* to have a better understanding of the hardware around me but also processing A/V input is mentally taxing #and I can see why having video specifically would be helpful here #hmm #I dunno maybe I’ll try it anyway at some point #maybe with captions on so at least I don’t have to process *both* A and V #Youtube auto-captions are pretty fucking good these days so #(you can even have it open a transcript on the side‚ it’s great)

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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rustingbridges:

ime one of the upsides of gas is that as long as you have gas or electric your home has heat and cooking capability

also I’ve never had a gas outage. presumably they run those underground? whereas I’ve lived in places where you were, at some point, definitely going to have the electric out for hours

 

brin-bellway:

…how is your heat set up? Is that from having a gas stove?

I have an electric stove and a gas furnace (also a gas dryer and water heater), and I would have said the exact opposite: one of the *downsides* of gas is that your heat needs *both* gas and electricity to work, and fails if either is missing.

(Not that gas has ever been missing, true, but “works when electricity is out” is like the *one* major advantage combustion-based heating can have, and it can’t even fucking do *that*. It had one job! What am I paying all this carbon for, if not that?!)

(I can*not* fucking wait to get a heat pump and some hybrid solar.)

 

rustingbridges:

huh, TIL. has this always been the case? most of my lengthy power outage memories occur the late 90s / early 00s and the furnace might have been old at the time.

maybe the kerosene space heater people are right after all

What am I paying all this carbon for, if not that?!

my understanding is that vs resistive heating you’re not paying carbon, since gas furnaces are extremely efficient. heat pumps can change this equation, yeah

 

brin-bellway:

My furnace is from 1990. I doubt it’s very efficient; it should, however, give pretty accurate results regarding “what things were like in the late 90s”.

We had a 16-hour power outage in late December a few years back, and it got pretty cold in the house. (Though the downward slope over time was shallower than I would have expected: I guess our insulation is better than I thought.)

I’m not sure what you mean about not paying carbon relative to–oh, are you assuming the electricity is *also* produced by burning gas? We’re mostly nuclear and hydro around here, though with a minority of natural gas.

—

>>maybe the kerosene space heater people are right after all

I’ve thought about it, but I’d rather not risk it. My current plan for extended cold-weather power outages is to set up a family-sized tent in my kitchen (the only large enough open space for it) and pile on the insulation.

 

rustingbridges:

My furnace is from 1990. I doubt it’s very efficient; it should, however, give pretty accurate results regarding “what things were like in the late 90s”.

right, given that furnaces are often quite old it’s possible the furnace in question was from 1970 or something like that.

but also maybe it just never got that cold, the longest outages I can remember were in the summer. there were some fall / winter ones but as I remember it they were less than a day.

are you assuming the electricity is *also* produced by burning gas

not gas necessarily, but yeah that was assuming fossil fuels. typical furnaces are very efficient at turning fuel into heat, as heat is normally the waste product of energy generation and the only trick is to extract as much heat as possible from waste gases that you want to pipe out of the house. whereas with electric heat the waste heat at the power plant is, well, wasted.

but yeah if you have hydro that’s not at all the case.

I’ve thought about it, but I’d rather not risk it

yeah this was mostly a joke. I’ve been around a few kerosene space heaters and they smelled, which I took as a bad sign in addition to fire risk. I don’t think I’d buy one if I had the option of using an electric one.

as an emergency survival plan I’m willing to consign myself to living in cold weather clothes for a while, which I have anyway for cold weather activities

>>given that furnaces are often quite old it’s possible the furnace in question was from 1970 or something like that

I’d heard that furnaces tend to fail after about 15 years, suggesting our 31.5-year-old furnace is staggeringly ancient. I figured a 1990 furnace would give a decent sense of the state of things circa 1997, since it was halfway through its life expectancy then.

—

>>#I don’t actually own a tent at present but yes if you have one even a tent not meant for cold weather stuff will do a lot

I didn’t actually *know* we owned a tent during the 16-hour outage, and Mom apparently didn’t think of it. Shit like this is why I want to inventory the basement and attic.

(she says she inherited it from a retiring Girl Scout leader, and never got a good opportunity to use it for our own troop)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #domesticity

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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rustingbridges:

ime one of the upsides of gas is that as long as you have gas or electric your home has heat and cooking capability

also I’ve never had a gas outage. presumably they run those underground? whereas I’ve lived in places where you were, at some point, definitely going to have the electric out for hours

 

brin-bellway:

…how is your heat set up? Is that from having a gas stove?

I have an electric stove and a gas furnace (also a gas dryer and water heater), and I would have said the exact opposite: one of the *downsides* of gas is that your heat needs *both* gas and electricity to work, and fails if either is missing.

(Not that gas has ever been missing, true, but “works when electricity is out” is like the *one* major advantage combustion-based heating can have, and it can’t even fucking do *that*. It had one job! What am I paying all this carbon for, if not that?!)

(I can*not* fucking wait to get a heat pump and some hybrid solar.)

 

rustingbridges:

huh, TIL. has this always been the case? most of my lengthy power outage memories occur the late 90s / early 00s and the furnace might have been old at the time.

maybe the kerosene space heater people are right after all

What am I paying all this carbon for, if not that?!

my understanding is that vs resistive heating you’re not paying carbon, since gas furnaces are extremely efficient. heat pumps can change this equation, yeah

My furnace is from 1990. I doubt it’s very efficient; it should, however, give pretty accurate results regarding “what things were like in the late 90s”.

We had a 16-hour power outage in late December a few years back, and it got pretty cold in the house. (Though the downward slope over time was shallower than I would have expected: I guess our insulation is better than I thought.)

I’m not sure what you mean about not paying carbon relative to–oh, are you assuming the electricity is *also* produced by burning gas? We’re mostly nuclear and hydro around here, though with a minority of natural gas.

—

>>maybe the kerosene space heater people are right after all

I’ve thought about it, but I’d rather not risk it. My current plan for extended cold-weather power outages is to set up a family-sized tent in my kitchen (the only large enough open space for it) and pile on the insulation.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #domesticity #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

rustingbridges:

ime one of the upsides of gas is that as long as you have gas or electric your home has heat and cooking capability

also I’ve never had a gas outage. presumably they run those underground? whereas I’ve lived in places where you were, at some point, definitely going to have the electric out for hours

…how is your heat set up? Is that from having a gas stove?

I have an electric stove and a gas furnace (also a gas dryer and water heater), and I would have said the exact opposite: one of the *downsides* of gas is that your heat needs *both* gas and electricity to work, and fails if either is missing.

(Not that gas has ever been missing, true, but “works when electricity is out” is like the *one* major advantage combustion-based heating can have, and it can’t even fucking do *that*. It had one job! What am I paying all this carbon for, if not that?!)

(I can*not* fucking wait to get a heat pump and some hybrid solar.)

Tags:

#disappointed permanent resident of The Future #reply via reblog #domesticity #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

etirabys:

One sensory superpower I think most humans have is that of being able to tell, without looking, whether a water glass they are filling is almost at the limit. Because the pitch changes. Isn’t that amazing?

Tags:

#I love doing that #domesticity #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

swankyjami:

huffylemon:

ead346175c9030e1fc8b466216a672d56ab02eab

This is what happens when you’re still on tumblr as an adult, you start reblogging shit like this

Tags:

#what do you mean ”as an adult” #as a kid we went around at 2 AM and changed them together #as a teenager Dad *sometimes* did them and I–the earliest riser–went around in the morning and caught the ones he’d missed #(he tended to miss the thermostat) #these days it *is* entirely my job though #don’t forget the microwave! #Daylight Savings Time #domesticity

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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openamenta:

@sojournthemoon

The most popularly mentioned symptom of hypersensitivity is thinking or feeling that things are polluted when they aren’t.  But it’s not the only one.  Many hypersensitives also have “obstructed melioration”, where – especially if something is actually polluted or actually has something on it – they are so paralyzed by their feelings of disgust that they can’t take actions to clean.

You can be diagnosed with some forms of hypersensitivity even if you never make a mistake on a test of pollution identification.  If you can’t touch the dishes so you can’t wash the dishes; if you can’t stand the smell of dust so you never jack up the couch to sweep it up; if something spilled in your fridge last month and you haven’t been able to open it since then even though it was only ketchup at the time, so now it’s a mold ecosystem you’d need to go after with bleach?  If you have a meltdown every time you visit the bathroom and spend two hours sitting there panicking and procrastinating on cleaning up because that would mean thinking about it?  If you can’t wash your hands because you’d notice the slightly less clean water rinsing off them?  If you haven’t shampooed in six weeks because whenever you wash your hair it accumulates in the drain catch and then you’d have to pick it out?  If you have any trouble explaining what needs doing to a professional cleaner because the words taste bad?  Then you’re (insofar as you can be diagnosed online) hypersensitive.

If something is so gross that you can’t clean it – not because there aren’t enough gloves and masks and chemicals, just because you can’t stand to think about it that hard, engage with the existence of a mess that needs to be cleaned up – then that’s hypersensitivity, and it’s a disability.

Anyway, how do you all feel about cleaning reds?

#unreality cw? #yet also‚ at the same time‚ very true #I think about this post every fucking time I flinch away from cleaning my fridge #(today’s reblog brought to you by my brother finally throwing out the ~month-old corn that was‚ in his words‚ “no longer yellow”) #(I soaked the bowl with lots of soap for a day or so and managed to clean it after that) #(…now I just need to clean the *other* moldy food container‚ currently sitting beside the sink with its lid on) #(……maybe I will wash the other dishes first)

Update:

About twelve days later, my brother came home with a takeout container from his workplace. He mentioned he was planning to recycle it once he was done with it, because “we already have enough containers”.

I proposed that we instead recycle the moldy one and wash the new one, and everyone with a stake in the matter agreed. (That is to say, I did not bother to ask Dad because I knew he wouldn’t care.)

All’s well that ends well.

(In my defence, I’ve been covering a *lot* of shifts at work the past few weeks (especially those couple weeks), and had a lot less time and skin-HP [link] for dishwashing than usual. At no point during those twelve days was I caught up on all other dishes.)

Tags:

#oh look an update #reply via reblog #(ish) #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia #domesticity #in which Brin has a job #food #unsanitary cw #Amenta RP #unreality cw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

prokopetz:

celestialyearning:

prokopetz:

It’s funny how whenever a major media site publishes a bloviating thinkpiece about The Rise and Fall of Tumblr, their elaborately justified list of things about Tumblr that modern social media users hate just happens to be perfectly, one-to-one identical with a list of things about Tumblr that make it difficult for advertisers to harvest personally identifying information about individual users. Like, exactly who do y’all think you’re fooling, buddy?

“Tumblr died because people just hate websites that don’t have intrusive advertising built into the platform!”

I especially like the ones that frame arguments to the effect of “having no functional ability to curate your user experience is actually a good thing because people are inherently lazy and content recommendation algorithms can be trusted to act in everyone’s best interests“.

Tags:

#Tumblr: a User’s Guide #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #the number of robot-vacuum reviewers who think ”not cloud-dependent” is a *downside* is… #…I guess not ”boggling” because see above‚ but it’s *displeasing* #I will instead go with the recommendation of paranoiacs on Reddit†‚ who are much more reasonable #(although I am not sure yet if I will be buying one in the foreseeable future) #(Mom has expressed interest in the idea too‚ so I might frame it as a present for her) #(maybe for the big six-oh) #((in addition to my traditional birthday gift to her of a fancy quiche)) #(((I mean‚ the decision may not end up being mine to make with all the supply-chain shit‚ but at the moment it *does* seem to be in stock))) #†Eufy RoboVac 11S #tag rambles #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #domesticity

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

openamenta:

@sojournthemoon

The most popularly mentioned symptom of hypersensitivity is thinking or feeling that things are polluted when they aren’t.  But it’s not the only one.  Many hypersensitives also have “obstructed melioration”, where – especially if something is actually polluted or actually has something on it – they are so paralyzed by their feelings of disgust that they can’t take actions to clean.

You can be diagnosed with some forms of hypersensitivity even if you never make a mistake on a test of pollution identification.  If you can’t touch the dishes so you can’t wash the dishes; if you can’t stand the smell of dust so you never jack up the couch to sweep it up; if something spilled in your fridge last month and you haven’t been able to open it since then even though it was only ketchup at the time, so now it’s a mold ecosystem you’d need to go after with bleach?  If you have a meltdown every time you visit the bathroom and spend two hours sitting there panicking and procrastinating on cleaning up because that would mean thinking about it?  If you can’t wash your hands because you’d notice the slightly less clean water rinsing off them?  If you haven’t shampooed in six weeks because whenever you wash your hair it accumulates in the drain catch and then you’d have to pick it out?  If you have any trouble explaining what needs doing to a professional cleaner because the words taste bad?  Then you’re (insofar as you can be diagnosed online) hypersensitive.

If something is so gross that you can’t clean it – not because there aren’t enough gloves and masks and chemicals, just because you can’t stand to think about it that hard, engage with the existence of a mess that needs to be cleaned up – then that’s hypersensitivity, and it’s a disability.

Anyway, how do you all feel about cleaning reds?

Tags:

#Amenta RP #unreality cw? #yet also‚ at the same time‚ very true #I think about this post every fucking time I flinch away from cleaning my fridge #(today’s reblog brought to you by my brother finally throwing out the ~month-old corn that was‚ in his words‚ ”no longer yellow”) #(I soaked the bowl with lots of soap for a day or so and managed to clean it after that) #(…now I just need to clean the *other* moldy food container‚ currently sitting beside the sink with its lid on) #(……maybe I will wash the other dishes first) #unsanitary cw #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia #domesticity

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