Did iOS and WatchOS 9 updates earlier today. MacOS Ventura says 12.03 GB? Downloading now and will be for a while, apparently

Just ordered two Lego kits from the mother ship. Because Harry Potter universe.

Listening to Crystal Method, again. I go long stretches without, and then something reminds me how much I love them.

Neurodivergent Monday:

1. It’s Tuesday
2. Forgot coffee
3. Forgot reading glasses
4. Forgot watch

Made it to my first two appointments on time. Have coffee at work. Carry a spare pair of glasses in my work bag. Watch is sure nice but I will live without it. Not bad, overall.

Am I the only one who resents LG for using In The Air Tonight in a commercial for a cordless vaccuum? Gen Xer here tired of seeing his youth further commercialized and used against him.

I continue to be amazed by the breadth and depth of the archeological coverage in The Explorator. Published weekly—I consume it via RSS. Many of their sources also offer RSS.

The watch says “Good morning!”

The phone says “Good morning!”

The dogs say “Good morning!”

Okay!

Okay.

I’m up.

My wife saw this picture and said “Full-on Lorax”

I and my beard are in the middle

Pizza and cider with an old friend

Setting up iCloud on one Windows laptop actually went smoothly. Every tool did exactly what it was supposed to do. This, even though I have combined my vanity email domain with iCloud.

To be fair, I actually send email from my personal account only slightly more often than I phone people from my personal number, which is close to (but not quite) never.

On a desktop, this did not happen. Even with Office365 installed, the iCloud tool only synced calendars and contacts. The Apple installer told me if I need iCloud email, to set up an address online.

I also could not use my primary email address, which matches my AppleID, to set up my mailbox in Outlook. I had to use the original icloud.com email address, and set up an application password through my AppleID, in order to set up the service.

Possibly related, in the past I have used Google to host my vanity domain. Whenever the Outlook email setup wizard walked me through account setup, it wanted me to authenticate to Google. I don’t know if that is residual in Microsoft365, or if there is something in DNS that is making Microsoft go there. I really thought I had cleaned house at my provider.

In the end, I can monitor my mailbox from a second Windows PC. That is what I needed. But the process took the better part of 2 hours of experimentation, including waiting several times on a “We’re getting things ready” message from Outlook while nothing happenned in the GUI.

None of the Apple machines ever have trouble, and I was aware that doing iCloud on Windows could present challenges. But when things actually behaved well on one Windows 11 machine, I had hope it might go equally well on another.

All of this to avoid the security hoops signing into iCloud through a web browser, or simply checking email on my phone. I want to avoid transcribing password reset links or login links. Even NVidia nags for a login for video drivers, holding some software functions hostage to it.

As in all things technological, some days it’s deeply challenging to make software do the thing it is meant to do. I blame both companies for making me use wizards, and not giving me the option to set things manually. Even with the mailbox established, I cannot dig into Outlook to see what settings the software is using to connect (server names, ports, security protocols)

So, if you can’t set up your iCloud mailbox in Outlook via the iCloud application, use the original icloud.com email address (me.com didn’t work for me) to set up an IMAP account. Use an application password that you will generate at appleid.apple.com for the password. Nothing I found online says it exactly that way, especially for those of us who have the vanity email domain.

Lastly? You will be sending as your iCloud address, or via your default account in Outlook. I can theoretically use a reply-to address, but I think that looks sketchy.

Passwords are a bear—I have to change every 90 days at work. Mandatory password change yesterday afternoon left me stumped this morning. In the process of recovery, I came back to what my password is. It helps me to use a phrase that sets intent. Because of intent, I got it back.

I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but on the face of it I support Minnesota Governor Walz' decision to support a person’s right to choose. I support self-determination, and I support anything that supports people where they are, as they are.

Is it wierd or to be expected? Had a flickering screen issue on my built-in MacBook Air display. Fix was to turn off auto-adjusting brightness and True Tone, then restart. Sorta concerned about turning either back on.

Taking out the trash today meant also picking up a squirrel whose last moments were spent next to my trash can. I wonder what happened?

Irritated. I paid for an album, for the second time, to get a 40th anniversary remaster. I downloaded it to my device and pressed play. I was greeted with the message that I have the stereo mix. If I want to hear Atmos, I need to remove the album from my device and stream it.

Thank you, SyFy Network, for reminding me how far back in history my childhood was.

That feeling when you’re at work late because of, um, fixing a clerical error, when the quick thing you need to do on your laptop is thwarted by the statement “Updates are in progress.”

There was an old man, who swallowed a moth:

“I didn’t plan to swallow a moth. It made me cough!”

Technology Frustration: Enterprise class laptops that only support a single external display, learning the hard way in front of clients that this is so.

Technology frustration: Sometimes my phone will not connect to Car Play in my car. Rebooting phone or turning off car don’t make a difference. Waiting to plug in until after car is started, etc. And then the next time I go to drive, it works normally.

Technology frustration: My daughter wanted to play Minecraft this morning. It wouldn’t launch. It wouldn’t reinstall. A half hour later I note my daughter is playing Minecraft because it just worked.

That Midnight M2 MacBook Air is looking pretty fine

Watching videos on MTV, because Gen X.

Old videos reminding me of a few minutes of my life when I believed I might be cool.

Yeah. Music is just as likely to bring tears to my eyes as anything, anymore

My dad was emphatically not a Prince fan. But I had friends who had albums which I surreptitiously borrowed and dubbed to tape. Then I used my little portable deck and phones and carried the music with me.