Saturday, July 23, 2022

Deep-cleaned the dish rack. Ran in place to a YouTube video of John C interviewing Michelle B. In the 1990s my first art purchase was Michelle's roller coaster Holga photo called Helter Skelter which I encountered in a Pioneer Square gallery near 411 First Avenue South where I worked at Aldus Corporation. You can see an image of it by searching Google Images on michelle bates helter skelter. The image spoke to me, reminding me that life has its ups and downs and to remember to have fun. The image's border from the Holga negative is unevenly blurry, then there is the cardboard cutout border around that, then there is the precisely straight metal frame border, and these multiple levels of framing remind me that there is beauty in both randomness and order and that there are multiple ways to simultaneously view or frame things. The interview was fun, and I enjoyed it very much. Medium bowl of oatmeal with milk, flax meal, cacao nibs, and diced half banana; water. Tested a new 50-foot stereo audio cable made by GearIt to replace one that was providing spotty sound at times. It worked, but the jack end was noticably quite too loose, and I feared this would cause us problems later, so I prepped it for return and ordered a similar item from Monoprice. Lunch: Patrick had oatmeal. I had leftovers from Ocean Indian. Water to drink. Patrick took a nap. Installed and configured a new OWC Thunderbolt 4 dock for Patrick's computer to resolve some problems that inconvenienced us and to simplify cabling. Resolved a problem with error message ending in "...because the iPhone disconnected" when backing up to a Mac by turning on airplane mode and low power mode, backing up, then turning off airplane mode and low power mode. Tested AirPlay from Patrick's computer to the television in the living room. It worked, but it was noticeably choppy. The new OWC Thunderbolt 4 dock seems to work perfectly except for the ethernet port, and after some digging I resolved that problem by installing a driver found on Realtek's website in a file called RTUNICv1.0.22_Update4.zip. Confusingly, the file said it was only for Intel chips, but it resolved the problem on our 2022 MacBook Pro with an Apple chip. I migrated network storage and one backups process from the entertainment computer to Patrick's computer, now realizing that perhaps we don't need an entertainment computer anymore. Midafternoon snack: a bowl of cherries, water. Recently I discovered that the acoustic version of Jane Wiedlin's Tangled was missing from our library, so today I restored it and a bunch of other music with artists starting with F, G, H, I, and J from an old hard drive that I had long thought no longer worked. Dinner at home with Patrick: Patrick had leftover braised zucchini and cannellini beans on polenta. I had corn on the cob, leftover corn off the cob, leftover seared sesame tofu over leftover polenta. Water to drink. Dessert: we shared a chocolate mug cake. Afterwards we watched various YouTube videos then The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel s4:e5 on Amazon Prime Video with microwave butter popcorn. Patrick went to bed. Late small meal: one Amy's bean and cheese burrito from frozen, water.