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tech rants at Easter time
April 01, 2018, 8:25 P.M.

I've been screwing around with this (fucking) phone for a month, trying various solutions to cure the problem of LG suddenly decided we didn't need an app drawer anymore. I finally managed to come up with a solution that worked for me, but only after I had downloaded several different app launcher apps, and hated them all.

I also gave LG's own solution a try--once I found it. It was well hidden, non-intuitive, and I found no reference to it at all in my online searches. Pretty much stumbled on it by systematically trying every possible selection in settings. It was, BTW, to use the home screen setting called "home with separate apps list"...yeah no. THAT didn't give me what I wanted, either.

Finally, it hit me. Just shove everything I don't want showing on screen into one folder, NAME the folder "app drawer", and put the shortcut in the spot where the app drawer icon was on my old phone.

Easy, once you know how. Still not quite as aesthetically pleasing as my G3 home screen, but as close as I can come. Functionally, it does what I want. Even better, in a way. The new folder only contains the icons I don't want to see on my home screens, instead of everything I have.

Further technology rants:
Google finally succeeded in making their core function unusable for me. I henceforth refuse to utilize the Google search function from my Android devices.

Here's the thing: I do not want anything to do with Google Assistant. I do not want Google Location Services turned on. I am perfectly capable of including the area I'm concerned with in my search terms.

So if you insist on interrupting every search by asking me if I want turn on location, well...that's a parting of the ways. I'm not gonna cave, you're not gonna let up. Done. All permissions revoked, app disabled.

Of course, my phone will mysteriously (or not so mysteriously; they tell you when you disable it that they are going to fuck you up for trying to circumvent their bullshit) stop working as it should. I think I'm past caring. There can only be one of two reactions to their bullying--either I cave and let the Borg assimilate me, or I put down the phone and walk away.

I'm feeling pretty over the smartphone thing at this point, so I think it won't be as hard as I I'd feared.


The last few holidays have really brought home to me the futility of "celebrating" holidays if you are an atheist, especially if you are separated/estranged from family. And especially especially if your spouse has to work.

I've made sure I appeared to be appropriately festive on social media, not because I'm a closeted atheist, but because I'm a known depressive, and if I try to blow off holidays, some people worry.

But I really don't feel it. And I find myself questioning my own reasons for that, because in my life, it is never cut & dried. There's always a multiple choice answer to how I feel. The really complicated kind of multiple choice, where it could be A and C, or even E: all of the above. So is it the atheism? The lack of family with whom to share a celebration? Maybe I AM depressed (likely).

Sigh. I over-think this stuff.
I didn't really have an awful week/weekend, though. I took the afternoon off on Wednesday, so Spouse and I could do our traditional run down to Niles to go to the cemetery where his maternal grandparents are buried, and go to the Polish deli & bakery and get the delicacies that make Easter for him.

He drove me to work, then picked me up and we drove down to Glenview so we could stop at the Jewel for kosher Coke, and then headed over to Maryhill and tidied up the graves. Spouse noticed something that he had never noticed in all the years he's been visiting his grandma's grave--her birth year is wrong on the headstone! Should be 1910, but it is marked as 1912--the same as her brother who is buried next to her.

Then we went to the deli/bakery and picked up kielbasa, Polish rye bread, kolachki and Kruschiki (pastries). He was disappointed that they no longer make their own pierogi--all they had was factory-made, pre-packaged, frozen dumplings, so he didn't get any.

We stopped at Al's Number 1 for lunch, Italian beefs and their fresh homemade fries. Delish!

And we even got back to town early enough to stop at a couple of furniture stores and look at new chairs for the living room. We didn't really find anything we liked, but at least we had the chance to look, while we had time together for once. It was really nice having some quality time with him when we weren't too tired to enjoy each other's company.
Skipping ahead to Friday, when I got home from work, I boiled and dyed Easter eggs, because that is something I just have to do. With him, it's Poilsh food. But if I'M gonna go through the Easter motions, there's going to be hard-boiled, dyed eggs and Brach's Classic Jelly Bird Eggs jelly beans.
My big effort of the weekend, really would be Saturday. In addition to getting all the laundry done, as usual, I went the extra mile for my hubby.

I surprised Spouse with homemade potato pierogi when be came home from work on Saturday, and that was a lot of fun, and a big success. Well, after we got past the part where he called me a liar, anyway. (He had some initial trouble believing I made them myself, and expressed that rather gracelessly.) But once I convinced him, he apologized.

And he gobbled them up, so I know he enjoyed them. He does not fake it with food, to spare anyone's feelings. If he didn't find them to be what he likes in a pierogi, they would have stayed on the plate. Saturday dinner was a big Easter Saturday traditional thing for him--the kielbasa, hard-boiled eggs, the pierogi, and rye bread with butter. (Vegetable? What's a vegetable?) Just like his mom used to fling in front of them in her-half-assed way.
Sunday, (today) my stomach was upset so I had a lazy day. Aside from running the vacuum, making dinner, and writing this post, I didn't do much of anything. (Yes, for me that's a very lazy day.)

For Easter Dinner, I baked a ham with a pineapple-rum glaze, roasted carrots in olive oil, herbs, and shallots, and made mashed potatoes. It all came out really good, so I was pleased.

The glaze was something new I was trying, and boy, I really liked it. Pineapple preserves, a little dry mustard, a tiny bit of ground cloves, splash of orange juice, some brown sugar, and a healthy tot of dark rum. I had a piece of cherry-berry pie for dessert, he had kolachki from the Polish bakery. We didn't go overboard, since there's just the two of us, and we both have to work on Mondays.
Yeah, that. New hours, and me all by myself tomorrow? Not really looking forward to it.

I got a new (very cheap, but nice looking!) fountain pen for Easter, and I don't even feel like messing with it. Usually I'd be all excited to take it with me and use it at work, but even a new pen can't get me jazzed up about having to deal with that utter shithole.




Reading: I've been leafing through House & Garden Magazines from 1912, just enjoying the ads and the articles. I also have "Lady Betty Across the Water" (1906), by C.N. and A.M. Williamson standing by for a re-read, and I just downloaded a book I found in one of the advertisements--"The Lovers of Sanna" (1912), by Mary Stewart Cutting. Haven't started it yet.

Listening: I don't really listen to music on the weekends.

Inked Up: Bexley 10th Anniversary with custom italic nib/R&K Blu Mare, Conklin Duragraph fine nib/Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Brown, Sheaffer Javelin medium nib/Sheaffer Skrip Emerald Green, and the new one: a Wordsworth & Bläck (cheap, fake luxe item off of Amazon) medium point, decent writer. I wanted to give it every chance, so I inked it with R&K Solferino. That is an ink that is so well-behaved for me that actually has changed my mind on a pen--more than once.

recede - proceed

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