Oof. Upgrading from the 4.0 line of Mastodon to the 4.2 line did not go well. Oulipo.social will probably be down until tomorrow while I try to roll it back to the way it was before that attempt.

I put a can of anchovies in the bowl with the mixed candy for trick or treaters, and I'm pretty sure it was one of the first things to go. The kids are ok.

The DEAI&D coordinator invites us to an event and says he doesn't have time to include a hybrid option for those of us working remotely. Some of us have disability reasons for working remotely, but apparently the "A" stands for "Access" now, not "Accessibility". I don't know WTF "access" means but it apparently doesn't include making events accessible.

Today's event had a load-in 30 minutes before the first talk was scheduled to start (and that was the first time I'd seen the space or what equipment they had for me to work with), and they have to be out of the room at the time the last talk is scheduled to end. I think I need to pack up my gear while the final speaker is presenting. That could be awkward. Maybe a little more buffer next time, guys.

An older visitor in the elevator at work just now said to me "that's a skookum mask". And it is! It's a half-face elastomeric P100 respirator. I just ... I haven't heard anyone call something skookum in normal conversation in, I don't know, thirty years? She's definitely from around here. And I should start using that more; it's a great word.

https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-day/skookum-2022-01-11/

Ahh, I misread one word in the alt text. They're talking about the same per-gram caloric density in #2, not "gross" caloric density.

An ongoing conversation on the whiteboard in the Ornithology collection space at work, about what Dwayne Johnson would have to eat if he were a hummingbird.

Baffled by a network policy at work.

I have a machine which needs an IPv6 address. It is currently on a vlan which contains both a RFC1918 IPv4 subnet and a public IPv4 subnet, and I have given it an RFC1918 address because I do not want it reachable from the outside world.

NetOps are telling me that they won't assign a quasi-private IPv6 subnet (behind a firewall which allows all outgoing but only established incoming) to a vlan which has a public IPv4 subnet on it already.

Surely it should be the other way, right? If I've got a private IPv4 address, I don't want to unexpectedly get a public IPv6 address and be exposed. But if I've got a public IPv4 address, the worst that happens if a private IPv6 address is assigned is that the outside world has to continue connecting via IPv4.

Am I missing something? What threat are they defending against with this policy?

TL;DR: it's expensive to be poor.

I saw a toot just now from someone looking at food prices and wondering how anyone can afford to eat. I'm not replying to them, because they weren't asking for advice or tips, and also because I'm doing fine. I don't have to worry about whether I can afford to eat enough, these days.

But.

This falls squarely into the Sam Vimes "Boots" theory of economic unfairness, but if you can scrape together the money up front, buying from restaurant supply stores is often the way to go. The cheapest dry black beans are $2/lb at Safeway, $1.50/lb at Grocery Outlet, and 96¢/lb at Chef'Store. Cheapest rice is $1/lb at Safeway, 80¢/lb at Grocery Outlet, and 56¢/lb at Chef'Store. But you have to buy 50lb bags at Chef'Store. It's $4/lb vs $8/lb for pepper jack cheese (5lb at a time). That and some spices (also cheap in bulk) makes a _lot_ of hearty meals. I can eat that many days in a row without getting sick of it, and have.

It's like Costco, with much less selection and no membership fees.