speaking the truth

[ A long sheet of barely off-white paper has been tacked to wall joists by flat metal tacks; a faery home decor piece hangs from a pushpin a few inches down from the top tack. ]

I’ve been using my wooden book stand to take pictures of smaller things since sometime in December, I think, or possibly January, & it’s been working really well, & I like it. But it’s not big enough for most of my faery home decor pieces, & even some of the pixy home decor pieces are too big.

I had an idea today, though, & it was a nice simple one: I tacked some paper to the wall.

It looks okay, but the light is wrong with the window just beside it. It’s okay, I have a mirror!

[ A small round hand mirror sits on the table under the window, along with a small scraggly-looking aloe plant in a purple pot. ]

That worked pretty well, casting a nice semi-adjustable extra bit of natural light more-or-less where I wanted it, with a bonus of not using any extra power. But! Still not really enough light. It’s okay, I have a desk lamp!

[ In the immediate foreground on the left side is the head of an adjustable desk lamp; the other end is clamped to the book stand on the side of the desk next to the wall. There’s a bunch more light on the faery home decor piece, now. ]

But wait, I also have that camera tripod I bought & haven’t used yet! So I got that set up quick, wedged my camera into the holder, got the bluetooth remote set up, but neither the desk nor the table is in a good spot to hold it. It’s okay, I have a slide out work surface!

[ Almost the same picture as the last, but now a camera tripod with bendy legs is sitting on a board pulled out from its slot in the desk. My phone screen has an image of the faery home decor piece. ]

But how to take a picture of my camera? It’s okay, I’ve got a roommate!

(picture of Jasper’s phone taking a picture of my phone omitted because asking to borrow Morgyn’s camera to take that picture might have gotten me duct-taped to something)

(instead, here’s a picture of the lil remote)

[ It’s a tiny little pod-shaped thing, in black, with a handle to put it on your keychain or something, and a large, friendly button labeled camera with a camera icon on it. ]

It works! & it works nicely! I’ve got a proper desk lamp on the way, so I don’t have to keep stealing the one above my comfy chair, but for now, this will do!

originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!

[ A screenshot with a bunch of text on it. The text is in columns: the first saying things like country, city, and name of organization; the second with answers to these, many of which have been redacted out. The vital part, for purposes of this post, will come in the description for the second image, because I am a butthead. ]

A week or so back I hadda renew the SSL for this site. For those of you with no idea what the hell I’m talking about, that’s fine; what you need to know is SSL is basically the thing that ecommerce sites sign up for that keeps your credit card info safe on our sites. SLIGHTLY important. Your credit card information is safe with me! Because I Did the Thing!

Part of the process is I gotta fill out a form, send it in, & get a thing back. Filled out things like country, city, state, name of organization, then got to ‘organizational unit’, by which they mean ‘what division of the already-named company is this for?’.

Being in An Mood, & tired of assumptions people make about small businesses (I have little more in common with a ‘small business’ with fifty employees than I do with GM, frex), I filled that in as follows:

“look it’s a small business, we’ve got nine employees & four of them are cats”

Fifteen minutes later, I got back the thing I needed, whipped out a quick thank-you email, & went on with life.

THEN I actually LOOKED at the thing.

[ It’s the same chunk of text except that the answer to Organizational Unit, instead of being redacted, now says 4 cats. Also that’s been roughly circled in red, just to make sure. ]

Why YES I completely lost my shit.

Like. That’s not ‘the code barfed & happened to put in the part that would be funny’.

That was ‘I made the dude snortlaugh & he decided to return the favor’.

I immediately sent him another email, in which I thanked him & also promised if the company ever DOES get big enough to have divisions, one of them will be named ‘4 cats’.

Bonus? RIght after I sent THAT I got a ‘rate your customer service rep’ email. Didn’t tell them what the dude did, lest it get him in trouble, but I did give him the highest possible score & request they give him a massive bonus.

Will he get a massive bonus? Probably not. But at least he got a good laugh.

originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!