man, this tablet project.
so it stopped charging. it was at 23%, I charge it for a couple hours, still 23%
I turn it off and leave it on the charger for 23%, confirm it's charging, and 8 hours later... 21%

so I get on the internet and order a replacement battery.
in the two days it takes it to arrive, the tablet somehow charges to 100%?
it arrives and I'm like "eh, fuck it. I have the battery here, that one is old, I might as well swap 'em.
I try to open up the tablet, following the instructions, and... the digitizer cracks.
it turns out the fact I had to replace the digitizer before meant that the new one wasn't glued in as well as it should be, so when I pried it open, the wrong part came off. Whoops.
that's okay, because of an amazon mix-up long ago, I actually have a spare digitizer on hand for this tablet! I can just replace that after the battery.
so I finish taking out the old battery, start inserting the new battery, screw it in, and... the power connector won't attach. Odd.
Maybe they sent me the wrong battery?
The old battery connector looks like this in my microscope.
and the new one looks like... oh shit.
so I go back to amazon and tell them "THIS BATTERY IS DOA REPLACE IT" and they're like "sure. just drop off the bad one at a drop-off place"
so I put the tablet mostly back together so it won't get damaged while I wait for the new battery to arrive, and...
oh. it's not just the digitizer. the screen cracked too. motherfucker
so I get on ebay and find the replacement screen and order that. I put the battery to be replaced back in the packaging and put it by my bedroom door, and go to sleep
I wake up in the morning and I'm like "I'm gonna go get coffee and drop off that amazon box!"

the box isn't there.
apparently while I was asleep, my lovely wife cleaned up some boxes in the room, and thought the box-in-a-box was empty. so she put it outside our room, in the hallway, to be taken to the trash/recycling. uh-oh
so I go out there and... it's not there either.

oh goody. my roommate was nice and proactive and didn't procrastinate on cleaning up boxes for trash/recycling and... it's gone.
and today is the day the truck comes and empties out the trash & recycling.
but good news:
it turns out she took it out AFTER the truck came!
I go out to the trash bins and it's sitting there, on the bottom of the recycling bin.
see it turns out that it being after the truck came makes it harder to get: if the truck hadn't come, it would have been sitting on top of a big pile of recycling.
since the truck did come, it's now on the bottom of the recycling bin.
6 feet (2 meters) away
so I go get my grabby arm thing and grab the outer box, and... it falls over. throwing the battery box out of it.

so now I can't grab the small box.
so I go back in and grab a pole I had handy and shove the battery over to the lower end of the recycling bin and FINALLY I GET IT
so now I can return it to amazon, and the recycler isn't going to get a Spicy Exploding Surprise
this is how far the story goes at the moment.

The drop-off point is less than a mile from my apartment, but at this point I half-expect that I'm going to make it halfway there and my car will get hit my a train
there's not a traintrack I'm going to cross to get there, but that's just how this project is going
anyway the replacement screen is on the way too.
it's probably going to arrive folded in half
also I'm pretty sure I passed the point where it would have been cheaper to just buy a new tablet like 8 steps back
anyway I haven't because of the Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
I can always afford a 20-30$ replacement part. I can't afford a 400$ tablet
anyway bring this fact up reminded me that a family member sent me a cheque for chrimbas, and I haven't cashed it yet. I should do that now!

and my bank's mobile app (which can cash cheques) is down.
I would normally take a screenshot of this to show you, but it turns out my phone just goes "image is null" when I try to take a screenshot. I think that's because my bank app uses that security protocol thing to disable screenshots.
normally when I run into this problem I just take a picture of my phone's screen using another device.

usually that's my tablet. *sigh*
I could use my webcam, but it turns out my webcam isn't working.
(I had a major USB Crisis the other day and disconnected a lot of USB hubs and shit to diagnose it, and haven't yet reconnected them all)
there we go, got it to work. sorta.

good to know it's on their end.
god, I bet they turned off the fucking backend servers (running cobol) for the christmas-new-year break.
just because they don't have any techs in-office to refill the punchcard bins
I say that like it hasn't been under like 8 hours since I was last researching building my own punchcard machinery.
an amusing related thing about banks and history:
I noticed that the #1 time I am most likely to brainfart and use my birth name is signing cheques.
You'd think that might make sense: I've had my current name for like a decade, cheques are getting less common, so most of my cheque-signing was naturally back in the Dark Ages of the 90s and early 2000s, when I had my boring name.
and it seems to make sense, for about 10 seconds, then you remember I'm ME.
I live in the 1990s PROFESSIONALLY.
I have like 3 Win95 machines within reach. There's actually almost a dozen pentium computers sitting on my bed right now!
but I'm never making an account on a BBS using a real dial-up modem and think "oh I'll just type in my old name here!"
it's only cheques.

More from foone

More from Tech

I could create an entire twitter feed of things Facebook has tried to cover up since 2015. Where do you want to start, Mark and Sheryl? https://t.co/1trgupQEH9


Ok, here. Just one of the 236 mentions of Facebook in the under read but incredibly important interim report from Parliament. ht @CommonsCMS
https://t.co/gfhHCrOLeU


Let’s do another, this one to Senate Intel. Question: “Were you or CEO Mark Zuckerberg aware of the hiring of Joseph Chancellor?"
Answer "Facebook has over 30,000 employees. Senior management does not participate in day-today hiring decisions."


Or to @CommonsCMS: Question: "When did Mark Zuckerberg know about Cambridge Analytica?"
Answer: "He did not become aware of allegations CA may not have deleted data about FB users obtained through Dr. Kogan's app until March of 2018, when
these issues were raised in the media."


If you prefer visuals, watch this short clip after @IanCLucas rightly expresses concern about a Facebook exec failing to disclose info.

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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
**Thread on Bravery of Sikhs**
(I am forced to do this due to continuous hounding of Sikh Extremists since yesterday)

Rani Jindan Kaur, wife of Maharaja Ranjit Singh had illegitimate relations with Lal Singh (PM of Ranjit Singh). Along with Lal Singh, she attacked Jammu, burnt - https://t.co/EfjAq59AyI


Hindu villages of Jasrota, caused rebellion in Jammu, attacked Kishtwar.

Ancestors of Raja Ranjit Singh, The Sansi Tribe used to give daughters as concubines to Jahangir.


The Ludhiana Political Agency (Later NW Fronties Prov) was formed by less than 4000 British soldiers who advanced from Delhi and reached Ludhiana, receiving submissions of all sikh chiefs along the way. The submission of the troops of Raja of Lahore (Ranjit Singh) at Ambala.

Dabistan a contemporary book on Sikh History tells us that Guru Hargobind broke Naina devi Idol Same source describes Guru Hargobind serving a eunuch
YarKhan. (ref was proudly shared by a sikh on twitter)
Gobind Singh followed Bahadur Shah to Deccan to fight for him.


In Zafarnama, Guru Gobind Singh states that the reason he was in conflict with the Hill Rajas was that while they were worshiping idols, while he was an idol-breaker.

And idiot Hindus place him along Maharana, Prithviraj and Shivaji as saviours of Dharma.