the mellow tigger's musings

The power at my house blinked off briefly yesterday afternoon. It wasn't just me, because I immediately heard yelling from the house next door. Power returned within a second or three, but my internet service did not resume.

I used my smartphone's cellular network to make a hotspot for my desktop computer, and I connected to a webpage chat with QuantumFiber. They couldn't fix it remotely and scheduled a tech to visit me this morning. The tech was late, which is unfortunate, since I couldn't connect to the work vpn on my hotspot, so I lost some work hours this morning. I expect to recoup that loss by working on Thursday morning instead.

The tech left the house a time or two. One time I thought they said they were going to the "FSAI", whatever that is. Ultimately, they couldn't fix it either. They replaced my modem, which I discovered because they left behind the old one. (I had a photo of its MAC in case it would help me with troubleshooting with QuantumFiber.)

So what open source firmware are the cool kids using these days for their routers? There are more options now than I remember from just a few years ago. I suppose each of them must have a list somewhere of what devices they support. I just need it to work on the C5500XK SmartNID. If I could get this one working, then it would be a great immediate drop-in replacement for whatever the next problem is. Of course, if some hardware failed inside this device, then I just have a doorstop with a pretty flashing blue light.

I've logged into MeWe only once or twice since I moved to Mastodon about half a year ago. I wasn't sure MeWe was still around, but then I saw this recent news that it's incorporating some new blockchain technology from Frequency.

So who here is still on MeWe? Have you noticed anything different lately as part of this programming conversion? I hope Mastodon and Dreamwidth don't follow the blockchain bandwagon. I'm willing to believe that the technology could provide some theoretical utility in specific circumstances, but this MeWe conversion (I am stating without understanding it fully) is nonsense.

furr_a_bruin died a few days ago. He used that ID on Dreamwidth and Livejournal, but he was also known as "Furr Bear" on MeWe and "Grizzly Dabsquatch" on Mastodon. I knew from Mastodon that he was receiving chemotherapy for cancer, but I don't know any details of his death. Furr was one of the people I've known online for over 30 years but never actually met in person. He didn't shy from sharing strongly worded opinions. I can sympathize with the social trouble he could dive into. It did seem to me that during the last year or two he had "calmed" from some of those intense reactions... relatively speaking.

I went looking online to see if I could find when we first met. Google has my messages on soc.motss (like an early form of a Reddit group, for you youngsters out there) archived as far back as 1993, but he wasn't in those threads. Maybe I encountered him on the Bear Mailing List? (The BML doesn't even get a mention on the bear article at Wikipedia. Inconceivable!) Maybe I posted to Usenet under a different university userid than I first searched for? Yes, that's it! He posted here on 1991 March 3 in this thread on soc.motss, a long conversation that resulted from something I wrote and another person on the internet informed me in an intentionally funny way that I was "WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!" to say. *gigglesnort* At least I've lived my life consistently, asking sincere questions that trigger norm-violation panic. :)

Anyway, 1991 is the earliest occasion that we crossed paths that I can document. If we ever met in the late 1980s on Relay, there just wouldn't be any public record of it now. I went looking at MeWe after I heard the news, though, and I found our last private chat message:

2021 June 10
I know you're into PowerShell, but I have no idea if you're aware of - or interested in - this. I was looking for a way for a UPS-connected Windows machine could signal something else to shut down too and stumbled into this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26XHb_cpiAA

If you go searching it's a "LCUS-1 type usb relay" - or -2 if you want the dual relay version - in AliEx search terms.

Furr was good with electronics and homebrew gadgets. We shared an intense distaste for all things "New Trek". We also shared a deep appreciation for Babylon 5 (and Fringe), but he won't be here to enjoy the new B5 television series when it arrives. It makes me a bit sad to lose another gay old timer who experienced the days of the last epidemic under President Reagan. A lot of righteous anger is fading into the forgotten past. I worry that mistakes are waiting to be repeated.