Recent accomplishments

[sonia]

Today I improved a slow bathtub drain by pouring in 1/2 cup of baking soda and a cup of vinegar, and a little later pouring in 7 cups (the max for my electric tea kettle) of boiling water. In the past all I had to do was fish clumps of hair out of the drain, but that wasn't doing it lately.

A couple of days ago I improved my internet speed by logging on to the Comcast site and trying their automatic troubleshooting, even though I have my own modem. Speedtest was giving me 2 mb download speed, and after the troubleshooting, it was back to 70 mb. I *think* it restarted the modem, although I didn't notice my connection being unavailable. I was just resignedly going through those steps before tackling their abysmal phone support, so I was delighted that it resolved the problem. It's been terribly slow for at least a week, and possibly slowly degrading for a while before that. I thought it was all Firefox's fault that sites were loading slowly. Note to self: occasionally restart modem!

I also figured out the Bog Mummy Hairstyle, via kaberett. Longer post here, with picture.

And I made pumpkin coconut custard. Or maybe soup, since it hasn't set up yet. Either way, it's delicious. I will post a recipe later. And I suppose I should take a picture before I dig in, if it sets up. ETA: Recipe posted on gluten-free com. It did set up just fine overnight, and I took a photo, but it doesn't really add anything to the recipe.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Here's me doing that hairstyle, pretty much as diagrammed. I wasn't aware that people were doing so many fancy variations on it.

And hooray for speedier drains and internet!

[sonia]

Cool! The simplified version looks great if I'm in a hurry.

[sanguinity]

I tried the simplified version on Monday (divide the lower hair into two and let the central upper braid become a single part of the lower braid) and found that I didn't like very much the way it (failed to) distribute the weight of my hair. Both versions did great at keeping my hair in control when I took them on the ferry, though. I like to stand right out on the front deck in the wind, which is usually brutal for pulling my hair out of whatever I've done to keep it out of my face. These worked very well in those conditions, though!

[sonia]

Good to know! I like a French braid for keeping the escaped bits to a minimum.

[sanguinity]

Weirdly, this felt more secure than a French braid. Probably because I could capture the hair from around my face more securely/tightly than a French braid allows -- I can get that top braid nice and firm if I'm not continually gathering in new bits. A happy surprise!

Holy moly!

[jesse_the_k]

...the Bog Mummy hairstyle is stunning in itself. The idea of doing it on one's own hair verges on inconceivable.

Our terrible internet provider (Spectrum/Charter) provides a smartphone app which can reboot the modem directly--now that's my first step when troubleshooting.


When our signal was too slow to stream video, I insisted on a physical call. Turns out the wire was installed so long ago it had a physical copy-protection device on the line. This device was 100% full of water: the mechanic was amazed we got any signal at all. Sharing this since you live in a watery place.

Re: Holy moly!

[sonia]

The hard part was taking a picture of the back of my head once I was done!

Wow, copy-protection device full of water! Glad you insisted on getting that sorted out.

I really really didn't want to do business with Comcast, but I needed the high-speed internet for pair programming via video chat for the tech job. It turns out that their customer service is dreadful, but the connection has been fast and reliable. Since 2012 it's only gone down a couple of times, and then there was the recent weirdness, thankfully now resolved.