Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas

June 13, 2019

Because I love you guys, even if you don't comment

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June 09, 2019

Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san

Or The Helpful Fox Senko-san.

Is this a healing anime? Kuroto Nakano is a severely overworked Salaryman. No wife, no kids, just the minimal apartment that he barely even gets to sleep in. This has understandably worn him out, and a cloud of gloom is hovering over him. The fox goddess sees this (Apparently there's an ancient connection between his family and the Kitsunes), and Senko volunteers for the duty to help him make his life better and more relaxed, because that gloom isactually a kind of threat.

Now Senko is an adorable little 800-year-old fox spirit, and she's dressed very traditionally in a Kimono and Geta, and her experience with the modern world is minimal. So it takes a little while for her to settle in to things (She cooks for him using her foxfire because she didn't know how to work the gas.) Her battles with the household machinery also attract the attention of the female Mangaka next door, who was used to the silence coming from Nakano's usually empty apartment. But after Senko whips up a meal for her, any thoughts of going to the police evaporate.

Despite all her best efforts, Nakano is still beaten down. But a bit better. He really does enjoy fluffing Senko's tail, and she puts up with that indignity because it does, after all, make him happy.

Senko does, however, have a rival up in heaven. Shiro is a much more modern Kitsune, who wears a high-slit dress, long gloves and thigh highs, and she thinks Senko is not doing nearly enough to reduce Nakano's stress, so she decides to join the party. She is naturally Senko's opposite, where Senko is humble, Shiro is egotistical. Where Senko wants to serve Nakano, Shiro wants him to serve her (All of those who serve her look happy, she explains).

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Quite the pair.

Click to Embiggen

I've only gotten to episode 5 of the 9 out so far from Erai-raws (Wish they'd translate the songs). But it's a cute little inoffensive show. Nobody's going to rage over it like The Rising of the Shield Hero.

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May 15, 2019

Ugh,

FINALLY finished plowing my way through Persona 4. What a slog. I'm still not entirely sure why I did it. Persona 5 came out, and someone posted a segment of it on Twitter that made me curious, and my stupid completist urge made me seek out earlier series. 26 episodes is what it took. A huge number of repetitive episodes introducing each character of the large cast as they confront their innermost urges and gain their powers, a brief and disappointing battle against a false bad guy, a second season crammed FULL of filler, then improbably another false villain, a fake death of a little girl, and the real villain.

Well, I just found Persona 3, seems to be a very different series. Four movies. Maybe I'll eventually get around to the series that piqued my interest.

OTOH, I watch every episode of The Rise of the Shield Hero as it arrives. There is no queue. Very much worth it.

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April 06, 2019

Spring season is starting

What are you all watching?
AnimeChart

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March 24, 2019

Just being silly

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Click to Embiggen

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March 16, 2019

Car Shopping

So I bought a car today.

Actually, I didn't, I ORDERED a car today.

Nearest Subaru dealership has 50 Imprezas. Only 1 Sport model with a manual transmission, and it's white. None of the other dealerships have one, and none in the pipeline. I guess they know the market.

Yeah, I'm getting Red, dammit, and I'm getting a Stick. I don't care if the CVT automatics get slightly better mileage, the main reason I have a 27 year old Loyale is the mechanical simplicity of a manual transmission.

Took it for a brief drive. Like all cars today, it insulates you more from the road. So even the Loyale is a little sportier, but then, I've been driving that one so long it's like a part of me.

Really long throw on the clutch pedal, with very little resistance or feedback. A lot of takeup on it I think. Enough that I was wondering if it could be adjusted.

Since I am not getting the automatic, a lot of the safety features that take control from you aren't available, as well as the remote start function etc. No big deal, I'm an adult.

A lot of the onboard electronics work in concert with a smart phone. Anyone who's seen my phone knows that's not gonna fly. Alas, The Sport model doesn't support navigation, which is a big loss.

The VIP pricing program doesn't save me a whole heck of a lot, maybe $1100. The Tax, my god, tacks on another two grand or so.

So, I'll have bought a new car, in the next up to 60 days.

Posted by: Mauser at 07:16 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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1 My Bimmer does not have navigation either. The reason is, phones progress faster than cars and I don't want to be saddled with obsolete crap, especially for navigation. A year after I bought my house, I had a replacement Lexus while my wife's car was in for an oil change. It still didn't have my street, which was there for years now. Google in my phone knows about it today.
I designed a holder for my phone and printed it on my 3D printer. Voila, navigation!
Car makers try to address it by having modes where car's infotainment serves as a remote desktop for your phone. The trouble is, Google is often lags or missing. BMW only has Apple CarPlay, but no Android Auto. Although, Subaru has both.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at March 16, 2019 08:00 PM (LZ7Bg)

2 However, I have neither an Android nor Apple phone. I DO have a Garmin GPS though.... (And I found some good sites for free Garmin compatible maps).

Posted by: Mauser at March 16, 2019 09:50 PM (Ix1l6)

3 Oh, as for WHY I insist on red.
My first car was a 1978 Chrysler LeBaron, red, So quite obviously it acquired the nickname Le Red LeBaron. I had a lot of adventures in that car. Even drove it onto the Atlantic City boardwalk once. When I moved to Virginia, I got a vanity plate that said "Le Red". (My Honda CB550K got one that read "I Mule" for its name, the Iron Mule - it was too small to be an iron horse).
When it died (Threw a timing chain, but waited until I was safe at a rest area on I-95 before refusing to ever start again), thanks to a friend who worked at the dealership at the parts counter, I got a good price on my 1992 Subaru Loyale, which also worked out be being red. So Mitch dubbed it "Le Red Jr." (His nicknames for things involved a lot of Jrs.)
So when the Impreza comes in, it will be dubbed Le Red 3.

Posted by: Mauser at March 17, 2019 07:56 AM (Ix1l6)

4 Feh, car arrived at the dealer today, but they didn't get all the prep work done. Including some programming or a else there was some other glitch that turned off all the doo-dads like traction control and tire pressure monitoring. Still, took it for a test drive. I was set up better than I was in the white one, but it will take a while to get used to the different torque curves on this one. (one fast pull out from a store parking lot was disastrous.... damn near stalled it!)

Posted by: Mauser at March 23, 2019 05:10 PM (Ix1l6)

5 Careful with the torque curve measuring, bro. Read the manual for the break-in instructions first. The BMW manual said not to exceed 4,000 rpm and 100 m.p.h. for 2,000 miles.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at March 26, 2019 06:17 AM (LZ7Bg)

6 Well, what I meant there is that the Loyale produced peak torque at 2.8K, and peak HP around 7K. but the engine in the Impreza wants to be faster than that or it bogs down at the start. I just need to learn how much faster.
Alas, that may take a while because this particular example came with a bad crankshaft sensor, and they're still working on it. I am annoyed. But then, I haven't actually bought it yet.

But yeah, the Loyale was really happy loping along at 3K rpm for miles and miles. And it was geared such that that was around 55-60 mph.

Posted by: Mauser at March 28, 2019 03:34 PM (Ix1l6)

7 Dealerships is STILL replacing sensors and crap. I have a feeling they're milking Subaru for Warranty work before I even buy the car, to make up for the lost profit from me using the VIP program.

Posted by: Mauser at April 06, 2019 10:10 PM (Ix1l6)

8 And I finally got my car on Wednesday. Drove it to work today and was totally paranoid about door dings all day. But it was fine, until some nimrod in a giant Ford pickup tried to back out of a parking space downtown into a packed, stopped street - i.e. into the spot I was stuck in.
The horn works. Idiocy averted. But it was cose. When I moved forward a bit the guy behind me let the idiot back out, and he STILL nearly clipped me with his front bumper.

Some people should not have big trucks.

Posted by: Mauser at April 12, 2019 07:22 PM (Ix1l6)

9 When I bought the Wrangler, I was entirely unconcerned about the cosmetic damage. Previously, I received a number of fairly long scratches from Nevada sagebrush with my RAV4, which was a little annoying. But a Jeep is made for this. And what's remarkable, it worked perfectly: the inspector thought it was in a good order, scratches and all. Coincidentally, I never received a door ding in 9 years I had the Rubi. But some stupid broad with a Volvo made a dent in the door of RAV on 2nd week, in the parking of Trader Joe. I never bothered to fix it, because it wasn't deep enough. Although, I remember now that I did some damage that needed a repair. I backed into a side of the ditch and smashed the plastic bumper. I didn't expect that to happen because the ground was soft. I replaced that bumper with a take-off that I found on Craigslist.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 19, 2019 07:36 PM (LZ7Bg)

10 Oh, and congrats.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 19, 2019 07:37 PM (LZ7Bg)

11 Thanks. It's still taking some getting used to. (Hmmm, the clutch smells like someone lighting matches...). There are some really stupid issues I have with how they implemented the audio system vis. playing off a USB stick. (Plays tracks in alphabetical order. Switches to the Radio between the time you shut off the engine until you open the door). But the heater REALLY works, plus the seats are heated too. Still learning how close I can get to things. The visual cues are different from the Loyale, even though they're basically the same size. And the back seat is remarkably roomy. Not that I carry passengers - ever.

Posted by: Mauser at April 19, 2019 08:05 PM (Ix1l6)

12 I have a separate directory for the MP3 stick. I inherited that from the days when I used real CDs. There's no other way but play in alpabetic order, if you think about it.... The only thing an audio system can do is to walk folders. However, the problem is that on ISO CDs the names are still in 8.3 format in listings, even when you have RR extensions. Therefore, I have a bunch of subdirectories in that directory, and all the files are named "i001.mp3", "i002.mp3", etc. It was the only way to do it. Maybe still is!

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 21, 2019 05:13 PM (LZ7Bg)

13 Well, okay. A smart enough audio system could also pick some playlists from .xmms or .mpl files. But without those it's alphabetical or die.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 21, 2019 05:14 PM (LZ7Bg)

14 Thing is, it's smart enough to pick out the album names, and to index by artist, title or album, and even display a thumbnail of the cover if one is available (I basically duplicated my Clementine music folder onto the stick). So I think it must be reading the MP3 file info, but it's not checking the track number.

It also stays stuck in one folder at a time, instead of going to the next one.
Ah well, perhaps they can eventually update.

Posted by: Mauser at April 21, 2019 06:42 PM (Ix1l6)

15 My BMW does a little better by going through folders in order. But it does not list folders (Jeep did).
At this point I think the only option left is Android Auto.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 22, 2019 05:26 PM (LZ7Bg)

16 Yeah, I wanted to try Android Auto on the little tablet I bought, but since it's not actually a phone, Google won't let me do it.

Still need to get used to this different clutch. I guess 27 years in the Loyale made shifting it second nature, but I'm getting a lot of clutch odor just getting out of my uphill driveway. Or maybe that's part of breaking it in, with less than 500 miles. I think I'm generally shifting late.

Oddly, now that I'm driving the Impreza, the Loyale feels like it has a lot of rolling resistance.

Posted by: Mauser at April 23, 2019 06:00 PM (Ix1l6)

17 I don't think the clutch burn is normal. I only had it happen once, when parking for Russian Consulate General in SF.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 29, 2019 11:56 AM (LZ7Bg)

18 Well, it's getting less and less, so I imagine it's part break-in (We're still under 500 miles) and part me learning. The clutch force feedback is virtually nil. You can't tell the initial slack, from the engagement range to the overtravel. The spring is very light, so it's a bit harder to control. the Loyale was a lot heavier, and I think the engagement was a longer part of the stroke.

The thing coasts like mad though. Last time I drove the Loyale I was wondering if the parking brake was still on....

Posted by: Mauser at April 29, 2019 06:52 PM (Ix1l6)

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March 10, 2019

What I've been watching this season

The Rise of the Shield Hero.

Magical Girl Special Ops Asuka

And I've been DLing but haven't really gotten around to watching:
The second season of 3D no Kanojo

the Umpteenth episode of Gegege no Kitaro.

Frankly, I had no idea that last one was going to go on so long when I started it. I have a bunch of images uploaded here for the last write-up I was going to do about it that got lost in an inadvertant click. And now so much more has come in that most of that is obsolete.

Someone was recommending "My Roommate is a cat" if you really wanna get socked in the feels.

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February 17, 2019

Watch for the Duck

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February 04, 2019

Not at Duckberg levels, but still...

... it Snew.

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Think I'll stay home today, we have mountains, and drivers who can't even cope with our regular rain.

Update: Still coming down.

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January 31, 2019

New post on my writing blog

"Message Received" on a particularly arch example of message fiction and why SJWs are attracted to such.

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