#yqr — Public Fediverse posts

And that would be why.

#thunder #lightning #thunderstorm #YQR #SK #weather

I was completely unprepared and had a lot of trouble operating my camera in pitch blackness, but here's tonight's lunar eclipse as seen from my backyard in southern #Saskatchewan.

#LunarEclipse #moon #eclipse #astronomy #Canada #SK #YQR #occultation

Brilliant. The city of #Regina has replaced its in-house map of current road closures and restrictions due to construction etc with an embedded Waze map.

Which doesn't show anything other than the bare map to me, in Firefox *or* in Vivaldi.

Well done, lads. Well done. In addition to sending visitors' locations to a US company who then resells it, you've actually stopped it from doing anything useful at all.

#SlowClap #incompetence #YQR #SK #Waze #privacy #DoesntWork

Today was this month's Repair Cafe in my city. I think it also marks a full year I've been volunteering at them. I enjoy it a lot.

After last months good results - everything brought to me successfully fixed *except* one item - I got exactly the same result today. A bunch of successes, and one failure. And it's a weird and annoying coincidence - they are basically the same thing, #Sony all-in-one bookshelf #stereo systems. You know the type, they're on the order of a cubic foot and look like a small stack of stereo equipment units, but it's just a cosmetic look. Inside, the tuner, preamp, amp, CD player / changer, tape deck are all one thing. #Boombox in a suit, basically.

Both times, I figured out what was wrong - but I couldn't get to the bits I needed to actually fix them. I got stumped trying to take the front #fascia off the chassis. There's usually a few screws to take the back and/or top off, and then some #clips holding the front fascia to the (usually) one-piece sheet metal sides and bottom. Taking a #spudger to them releases all along the top and sides, but at the bottom of the fascia, it doesn't release - there's something weird about the clips I can't see, and I don't see any #screws responsible, inside or out. I don't want to force it more than I have because it will break.

Any Sony-heads out there know the secret with these things? They're from the 80s and 90s, at least the ones brought into me.

#RepairCafe #YQR #repair #fix #FixDontReplace

We've had some warm temperatures here on the prairies the last couple of days, and it's mostly looking like above-freezing during the day for the foreseeable future [1]. So today I pulled the snow tires off the cars and put the "all-season" [2] ones on.

Please join me tomorrow in celebrating the semi-annual festival of Oh My Gawd Why Are My Knees On Fire And I Didn't Even Know I Had Muscles In That Part Of My Thigh.

[1] To be fair, this is about 5-6 days max. They don't bother to even try forecasting further out than that here.

[2] Really "three-season", if you live anywhere where it gets more than a handful of degrees below freezing.

#Canada #prairies #SK #YQR #weather #warm #spring #snow #tires #SnowTires #AllSeason #knees #thighs #pain #sore #MiddleAge

#Parking in #Regina, part 3...

I submitted a "service request" about paying for #parking meters downtown, because they're going "app-only", and I have no mobile phone.

I got a #contemptuous email telling me I'd said I was "not comfortable with technology". Fuck you, I'm a software engineer of nearly 3 decades. I responded to say a) I didn't say I wasn't comfortable with tech, and b) it was insulting.

So I got a second reply today, including this fantastic line:

> We apologize for the stress caused to you due to the transition of paying
> for the parking #meters.

Somebody at City Hall is feeling awfully passive-aggressive.

Then, today, I got a phone call. This person tried to convince me that this isn't a problem for me, and tried to offer "solutions" which I had already explained were not applicable in my original request:

1. Park off-street in a private lot. No: it's more expensive, I have no income, and the nearest ones are multiple blocks away from where I need to go. Not practical for someone with #mobility issues, and there are lots of us out here.

2. Buy a special "park for free at meters" pass. Cost: $1040 plus taxes. This is a giant "up yours" suggestion.

3. JK, there are no other solutions.

So I said, "Is it the city's official position that I'm #screwed and can't park downtown to receive medical treatments?" and she said yes.

I'm fucking tired of #bureaucrats making decisions without caring how it affects #residents.

#YQR #SK #fauxpology #CityHall