Viridian5's House of "...What?"

Now that I've figured out the current iOS's way of making wallpapers, I'm going hogwild. I loved my June one, and I figure on bringing it back at some point, but for now it's this, which turned out interesting.


( screenshots )

Ah, the red and the blue. I also think it's funny that the weather app on the lockscreen is situated over the reflection of a window across the street and looks deliberately done. I'm annoyed though that for some reason the wallpaper's colors aren't as vivid as in the original photo, especially on the home etc. version. (The colors are very vivid in the original photo when seen on my iPhone but less so off it.)

I watched The Vampire Lestat's season premiere episode and I'm somewhat intrigued, though I don't know if I'll be able to handle so much undistilled Lestat through a whole season. Only one way to find out.

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Today I managed to get back to the cellular store 52 miles away near my dad's home that I got my iPhone 17 from six months ago, and they helped me re-sync my phone to my car so it'll link automatically again like it used to. Yay!

While driving home from it, Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" came on, and it's definitive to me that I can't sing that song without at least some of Weird Al Yankovic's "Perform This Way" lyrics sneaking in. Especially the "My mama told me when I was hatched" and "Express yourself!"

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Since I've been taking digital photos on an iPhone for twelve years and keep a lot of my favorites in its Photos app, my iPhone 17 has a lot of contenders to choose from when suggesting lockscreens and homescreens for me. This was one of them, and I'm using it to be festive for June.

( photo/lockscreen image )

It uses part of a photo I took June 30, 2022 of the main branch of the New York public library on Fifth Avenue.

Spring flowers continue in Queens, so I've been doing a spring tromp through my area's cemeteries and started putting some photos up. My knees have been bothering me a bit while picking my way along All Faiths Cemetery's uneven ground, but my podiatrist-mandated sneakers have mostly kept me from turning any ankles.

You can see my photos at my Flickr.

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I enjoyed the Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize set at Coachella, so I bought the album attached to their tour. Then listened to it tonight while driving down the highway in my car, truly the best way. It was sometimes difficult to stay within the speed limit doing it but y'know. Ten out of ten, would bob my head and drive too fast to this a hundred times.

I do wonder if the inclusion of "Heresy" and "The Warning" in this set is a pointed reference to current events. (Hey, proportionally, there are a lot of Year Zero songs reworked in this set, and Year Zero's whole thing was the apocalypse, militarism, weaponized religion, and environmental devastation. Just saying.)

This album brought back to me how much my neck is involved in enjoying and experiencing some music. I don't, can't, headbang, but I do bob and throw my head back a bit sometimes as I'm really feeling it. Makes me glad the doctors didn't fuse my neck as they thought they should maybe do to decrease my pain 20 years ago. But the traction they thought would make me feel wonderful actually greatly increased my pain and dizziness, made me panic and feel like I was dying. Thanks to that, I now understand animals that gnaw their own feet off to get out of a trap because the getitoffgetitoffgetitoffgetitoffGETITOFF I felt....

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For some reason, Sting's music recently came to mind, starting with The Dream of the Blue Turtles, so I've been borrowing his albums from the Queens Library system. For whatever reason, Ten Summoner's Tales has been listed as "In Transit" for over a month, so I got clever and put in an order for another copy of the album a few days ago. And picked it up today. If the other copy ever shows up for pick-up, I'll take care of it. Otherwise, the request will time out in July.

My new iPhone is still screwing up the album cover images on my music, so Ten Summoner's Tales has the cover of Weird Al Yankovic's Mandatory Fun when loaded onto my phone.

I put up some photos from 2019 I rediscovered. They whole batch looks a bit like a fever dream.... Lighting in window displays isn't always consistent from night to night and sometimes result in a "softer focus" look. You can see them at my Flickr.

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More of the original lights that came attached to my Christmas tree just burned out. Barely any still work, and the tree's not that old! I keep buying lights to apply manually.

I went shopping online for replacements for my burnt-out vintage multicolor flower Christmas tree lights, and the prices I'm seeing are nuts. The low end is like $25 after shipping and handling costs. The high is $100-something???

(I don't like the "cold" tone of the colors of new multicolor LED Christmas lights.)

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Kind of a PSA resulted from my own experience....

I've upgraded from the iPhone SE to 17, and it's reacting weirdly to me syncing it into iTunes: it won't show recently played songs in iTunes since I started using the 17 and it randomly mixed up all the cover images of the songs on the phone. The images are properly attached in iTunes but not on my phone anymore! Part of me keeps trying to find a pattern in the image switches but so far keeps running into a wall. Is there a way to fix this? I've synced it many times, and these things remain. (iTunes has all its recent updates.) My music is important to me!

An example of some of the hunh:

"Want" through "Bare" is all the same Cure album, Wild Mood Swings, but with four different incorrect cover arts. "Open," "High," and "Apart" are from the Wish remaster.

My chats with Apple Care--Regarding the issue with my iPhone 17 not syncing up properly with iTunes--didn't go great. I spoke to two people via Chat who couldn't help me, the last one asking me to attempt two solutions that might make other things worse. One thing I definitely will not be doing is paying for a monthly Apple Music subscription just to properly access music I already own. So I scheduled a phone call from a Senior Team member for the evening, hoping that person can create a solution we can all get behind.

Apple called me 12 hours earlier than scheduled and using the wrong phone number, even though I gave them the correct number and time during the chats twice, then sent me an e-mail about how they couldn't contact me. Shocker. I replied to both e-mails with the correct stuff. Then they still didn't call at the correct time, so I instigated and Karen-ed myself into getting a call from Apple senior support immediately.

It was illuminating in some bad ways.

There's a known issue with this in the current iOS: 26.2. (That showed up in my 17 but not the SE, which was also running 26.2 when I traded it in, so I'm thinking there may be some setting or programming stuff also involved we can't figure out? More people have 17s and such than SEs, so a lot of people have to be having this issue.) But since it's "just" about music, it's not something Apple will immediately resolve.

My other problem is that I have a lot of music I burned myself from CDs, so Apple Music might get rid of those if I'm not careful. Because it's third party! Legal issues! (I didn't realize until this phone call that apparently lots of record companies and music business people are suing everybody over rights.) Who knows if I should really have this stuff!

So the senior service guy said he would not suggest I delete the library and create a new one in case stuff I own but Apple doesn't approve of goes missing.

He's a DJ, and he says he pirates stuff himself. He was like, "Yeah, we're all turning into pirates. And I work for Apple." Because people will ask for a song while he's working but it might not be in his internet, legally feasible library. Brave new bullshit, enshittified world stuff.

The senior support guy says he has a ton of songs on hard drives that aren't connected to the internet to keep them safe from getting taken away or changed.

It's funny having an Apple employee saying he prefers flip phones.

Since I prefer to listen to the music I already own, even if the images are wrong, over potentially losing swaths of my songs, I'm sitting put.

I have music burned off CDs from local NYC '90s bands that never got a real record deal, stuff from singles CDs in the '90s, rare bands, rare music, and Apple wouldn't provide me with that kind of stuff even if I were willing to pay to get them over again. I still rip music off CDs into Tunes. I did it one night recently to test the sync problem, and saw that even sending over a single new music file screws up the cover album art image on the 17. (I have a disc drive as part of this laptop, not an external drive.) I have thousands of songs, and some of those CDs I don't have any more.

He commends me on avoiding subscribing to Apple Music, given the conditions I mentioned. With what this guy told me about Apple policing music, I'm not sure I trust them. I'd say 98% of my music is "third party," which means Apple distrusts them and doesn't guarantee they won't be borked and doesn't care if they are. Sorry, Apple, I'm not going to buy all my music from you just so you approve of what's on my phone.

So I'd have to be careful in my choices of what I do.

~snerf~ Here I am, listening to a Cure song on my phone with a Poe album cover on it, angry at everything.

So. Wish we all had a better solution available now. I have a brand new iPhone 17, as part of my family's plan, so switching away from Apple is unfortunately not an option. I had no idea things were reaching this point until this problem led me to contact Apple Care.

I don't know what's been going on with the sunsets lately, but damn.

December 19, a sunset between rainstorms







December 20




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I didn't expect the latest iOS update to make such a huge difference to my CarPlay interface.

I've just put up a ton more previously unposted Christmas/holiday windows from 2016 and 2018 at my Flickr. A lot. ~sigh~ It's what I did instead of writing fic.

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I wrote four fics last year, which is sad to me given how fic prolific I used to be. It probably doesn't help that it's been years since I found a new fandom I was compelled to write in or felt myself to be part of a fandom that put out a lot of discourse to read and spark ideas. These days, I'm completely self-generating.

Some of the few comments I get at AO3 do the opposite of inspiring me. I get more and better better comments and conversation at Flickr.


Andromeda/Stargate Atlantis gen: “A Place on Earth”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: Spoilers for Stargate Atlantis’ “Enemy at the Gates” and Andromeda’s “Angel Dark, Demon Bright,” “Harper 2.0,” and “The Heart of the Journey (part 1 and 2).”
SUMMARY: Harper’s experience and impressions of the people of Atlantis and Earth in the 21st century.
NOTES: This fic takes place in 2010, the year I wrote the original “Swap.”
This is a much longer, with more bits, version of a comment I wrote on the AO3 edition of “Show and Tell” about Harper’s experience and impressions of Atlantis and its Earth, along with some ideas of what Atlantis would have to deal with in its current placement on Earth.
3rd in The Alternatives series [@ AO3].

Andromeda slash: “Lost Like Me”   [@ AO3]
RATING: NC-17, Harper/Tyr.
SPOILERS: “Bunker Hill,” “Mad to Be Saved,” “Shadows Cast by a Final Salute,” “Soon the Nearing Vortex,” “The World Turns All Around Her,” “Immaculate Perception,” “Phear Phactor Phenom,” “Chaos and the Stillness of It,” and “The Heart of the Journey Part 2.”
SUMMARY: A freshly kidnapped Harper has to deal with his captor, Tyr, trying to convince him to cooperate and work with him. It doesn't help--or does it?--that you could cut their sexual tension with a knife.
NOTES: Sequel to “All That’s Mine” in the A Lot Like You series.

Saiyuki slash: “Push”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG-13, Hakkai/Gojyo.
SPOILERS: “Burial ‘Gojyo and Hakkai’” and “Be There.”
SUMMARY: Sometimes Hakkai just can’t help himself.

Saiyuki slash: “Interruption”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG-13, Gojyo/Sanzo.
SPOILERS: the “Shot 4: Kouten” arc and chapter 22 of Saiyuki Reload Blast.
SUMMARY: Gojyo looks after people he cares about in his own ways.


I have so many Weiß Kreuz WIPs I haven't finished....

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That said, what fandoms I'm currently reading in are The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, Gotham, and Nimona, with a dip into The Witcher, Loki, and Blue Eye Samurai. It's unfortunate that the fic on AO3 for Blue Eye Samurai mostly isn't hitting the points I'd like to see, but it doesn't make me want to write fic to fill the gap.

I have an idea for a Gotham fic but don't have the access to seeing the episodes I'd need for it. That show had some insane highs but its lost potential....

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The crack in my iPhone's glass has deepened, which is frustrating.

This last week involved some prior plans and assumptions getting disrupted and me being forced to improvise in response, only starting with me taking the Elantra in at 7 a.m. Monday morning because I couldn't get anyone in Hyundai Service to talk to me after four days of calling them. I had a periodontal appointment at my dentist that was supposed to be Wednesday that I'd made a few months ago but Tuesday was rescheduled to Thursday of next week. Then I got a call early Thursday afternoon about a much-needed neurologist appointment meant to be the next day....

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Has anyone else felt that their iPhone battery loses its charge much faster since the newest update to the iOS?

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I bought Coolhaus' Chocolate Molten Cake ice cream today, which is gluten-free, so chocolatey, very rich, and delicious. It's chocolate ice cream with cake truffle pieces and a chocolate frosting swirl.

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This clip always makes me crack up, which Whose Line Is It Anyway? tends to make me do generally but this one is special in how it goes off the rails in the best, hilarious ways. Here, the improv-ers have to create a song on the spot about a random audience member, a common bit, and this time it's for Howard, a wastewater engineer, and has to be done in the style of the Village People. But it's not long before chaos ensues.




It bothers me how so many classic rock radio stations do programming that's a total sausage fest, as if bands featuring women can't rock. My local one is all male aside from an occasional airing of "Barracuda." Heart deserves so much better!



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I've been distracted and restless like a lot of folks have been for the last two and a half months, but I'm happy that I've managed to clear and at least neaten up some of the clutter in my bedroom. I'll take the victories I can get.

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I usually time taking my night time medication with the airing of The Daily Show, which is okay much of the time but becomes a problem when The Daily Show isn't on, like this week when they're on vacation, and without it, I often lose track and then can't remember whether I took it or not. I've now set a nightly alarm on my smartphone for it, and tonight's the first time I used it.

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Thursday afternoon I got a human being on the phone for Medicaid with the 888 number; he seemed surprised about it too since he said it’s taken weeks of effort for some people.

I’m a bit confused by what he said, which is that I shouldn’t worry about my coverage ending in June but also that I should mail Medicaid a new copy of my renewal paperwork, to a more direct address he gave me, by June 3. (I made a copy of my documents before sending them out May 1 because... it’s Medicaid.) I think he meant that without the renewal form I have six months of coverage because of covid-19 but with the paperwork processed I have the standard year.

I made a copy of my copy and mailed it out at the post office Friday afternoon. I hope it helps, and I’ll let you know if it does.

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I've heard that some businesses in parts of the US will refuse to serve customers who are wearing masks. I'm all for signs saying that on those businesses, because it lets me know where I'm not safe, where the owners don't care about the health of their customers, and people I wouldn't want to ever give any of my money to, now and in the future. Fortunately, most people in my city are better than this.

Today when I dropped my iPhone outside--not even face down, and with nothing touching the screen--the impact caused three small "pops" and one larger one in the phone's screen glass that can be felt through the screen protector sheet. I literally bought this new protective case just two weeks ago, and on its first fall it failed. Or the new supposedly-authentic Apple glass wasn't quite as strong? I don't even know. I just had the screen replaced.

I'm going to just live with this. As far as I know, it's just a cosmetic issue and they don't constantly command my attention, it doesn't hurt my fingers to run over the small bumps, and they're on the left-hand side. The last screen damage cut my fingers and the glass was damaged enough at the top right that it was steadily cracking and crumbling with usage. That needed replacing. I can't spend more money on this. The case has a limited one-year warranty, which can mean anything, but I sent their customer service department an e-mail to see if they're willing to do... anything.

I'm so upset with myself over this.

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The West Village's Tea & Sympathy shop--and its related fish and chips shop A Salt and Battery--are facing closure so it's made a GoFundMe page to try to stay afloat. It's a great place and it inspired my due South fic "Tea & Insanity" back when so I really hope they survive. Too many unique small NYC businesses are getting killed off by high, rising rents and escalating costs.

Getting the screen on my iPhone replaced has somehow resulted in a major color shift that the technician doesn't even admit to and I can't figure out how to fix it. The screen looks darker and grayer and the colors are "colder." I don't have any pure whites or primary red anymore. It's harder for me to read. The repair tech swears he didn't use tinted glass. Somehow, the process also turned off the sound and music on my text messaging and app games.

I didn't go to Apple because without a warranty getting an iPhone's screen replaced is $129; I went to a local repair shop based off things I saw and considerably smaller quotes on Yelp. This place had good reviews.

I didn't like how the colors and brightness looked in the shop, but the repair tech convinced me it was the store's lighting. Then I got home and saw the same thing under different lighting and with my roommate agreeing with me. I returned to the shop a little over an hour before it closed, but the repair tech was already gone for the day. I'll have to return Sunday or Monday because I already have longstanding plans for Saturday I'm not cancelling over this fuckery.

On my own, I dialed screen brightness up to maximum in two places and it's still dim. I've played with color things like tint in the Accessibility section in General under Settings without a good result. I also checked out Notifications on my games and texting in Settings and everything still seems to be clicked properly to give me sound. I can hear phone calls and videos on YouTube. I turned the phone off completely and turned it back on but no.

Like I needed another reason to kick myself for dropping my phone Tuesday.

Why is it that things never work out properly? Why is it always a struggle?

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to address these phone problems?