(no subject)

the latest round of eBay purchases arrived:

- an Olfa rotary cutter because the rotary cutter that came free with my bias tape makers is a two-bit low-end piece of crap that I do not think would be improved at all by replacing the blade
- an Olfa rotary cutter mat because the back of my biggest sketch pad is not a good thing to lean on when cutting
- a roll of Oly Fun polypropylene craft material because polypropylene is the material they make surgical mask filters out of, and while Oly Fun is the brand name for the public version which is not as highly filtering as the surgical version (more porous, I think) it is still hydrophobic and does the electrostatic charge differential thing that is important to filtering out droplets, and also because chiffon leaves teeny polyester bits EVERYFREAKINGWHERE when I try to cut it, so I'm going to combine the Oly Fun with a 600 thread count inner liner and a standard cotton outer layer and work from there
- a fat quarter of dark green quilter's cotton printed with shiny gold snowflakes because I wanted something vaguely seasonal and pretty goddammit for the outside of a mask for myself (Dad is getting his mask made from leftover musical note fabric I bought for my nephew)
- Yes, Prime Minister on DVD, because Netflix didn't have the series any more and because completely unrelated purchases can arrive on the same day sometimes

(no subject)

A question came up in an Ask a Manager post some time ago about the use of phrases like 'friendly reminder'. I don't know how old the post was, I do archive trawls fairly regularly there... anyway, I know there was a lot of discussion about it, and that I realized after some consideration my brain was doing some auto-correct on the phrases, probably due to their use in a lot of Internet posts, particularly on Tumblr.

"Friendly reminder" autocorrects to "Condescending reminder, because you're too stupid and/or too unenlightened to have any clue about this important thing, you stupid unenlightened person"

"Gentle reminder" autocorrects to "Patronizing reminder, because it's not your fault that you don't realize this important thing; the person sending this reminder privately thinks you're stupid but doesn't actually want to make you feel bad about how stupid you are, so they're trying to be nice"

"Reminder" does not have enough inflection to it to autocorrect

It, uh. Makes things kind of uncomfortable when people outside of Tumblr and internet discussion boards use those phrases in things like business correspondence.

(no subject)

I saw a closeup of NOAA's 'Kermit' hurricane hunter P3 Orion aircraft yesterday, and for the first time in I do not remember how long, suddenly wanted to fly a multi-engine fixed wing aircraft. It was probably the most I had ever wanted to fly one.

And then, about five minutes later, the record was instantly surpassed, because I found out that the discovery of water on the Moon's sunlit side was made from NASA's SOFIA telescope, and SOFIA is a two-meter telescope mounted in a specially modified Boeing 747, and I wanted to LEARN TO FLY THAT THING RIGHT THE HELL NOW.

Man, I haven't been in the cockpit since 2019. It's getting to me.

(no subject)

Mask one for my father. Design is Made by Barb’s N95 style, but I forgot that it was supposed to be worked up differently and turned it inside out rather than binding the edges with bias tape. Hopefully the fit is still okay.

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Quilter’s cotton, Oly Fun polypropylene, and 600 thread count cotton sheeting. I sewed the strip from a coffee bag into the bridge of the nose for shaping it close to the face, and then sewed a plastic cable tie/ziptie across the inside of the lining layer as boning.