I, for the first time in 11 years, have a new physical address.

There are a lot of stories I could tell about that and the process of getting it, but holy shit I got out of practice. I used to switch addresses every couple years. I guess I forgot how awkward and anxiety-inducing the first few nights alone at a new place are. I don't know any of this background noise yet.

To be clear, I haven't heard anything alarming. It's just, places sound very different even if they're quiet, and I have 11 years of experience telling me dysfunctional home sounds like something else. Now I have to learn what maybe-hopefully-functional home sounds like.

So far so good with the new place. We'll see how I feel in a few months, but as long as we don't deteriorate to management actively gaslighting and deflecting me, it'll be a massive improvement. 😀

And here's me, stupid, thinking this move would be a lot easier because I had more income. It is, but holy hell have things gone to shit since I did this last in 2013.

Like the apartment I'm withdrawing my application from? They don't know if they can or will be able to get me an accessible copy of my 37-page lease. In 2024.

Deleted a much longer, rantier post about the legal shenanigans my partner noticed while she read parts of this inaccessible lease to me. I'll just say they switched a guarantor application to a resident application without my consent to work around a credit score requirement. Yeah, bullet fucking dodged. I did not consent to that individual as a resident, only as a guarantor, and the application we filled out made that very explicit.

If only I hadn't put just about everything I own into storage already. A dumpster fire at the shit show, that's my life right now. Hope yours is better.

Hey !Friendica Support,

Does Friendica not support uploading audio? Tried uploading an MP3 but both times I couldn't find the uploaded file in the posting interface.

I'm also using Windows and noticed I had to select all file types to find my MP3 to upload. So maybe Friendica doesn't disallow non-images but the file selection makes it seem like it might.

Thanks.

Anyone have any recommendations for a good, comprehensive identity theft protection/prevention service?

My poor partner's identity was compromised a few years back, and someone keeps using it to rent apartments in a city 3 hours away, get evicted, then move on.

Please don't send basic identity theft prevention/recovery info. We're filing police reports and all that, but this has gone beyond that in ways I don't want to discuss in a public post.

She has some sort of Experian thing, but it's apparently hot garbage and just a thing she was provided free after a data leak, but her ID was compromised before that.

It's bad enough that a lawyer advised her to change her SSN. We'd obviously like to avoid that if at all possible.

Thanks.

The move is an exhausting slog. Took a week off work, probably taking next as well. Glad for the generous PTO but honestly wish I was at work instead since it's way easier than moving. Even the muscles in my pinky fingers ache from carrying boxes and packing.

But I'm irrationally excited about eventually having my own washer/dryer and dishwasher. Guess that's how you know you're getting older--having your own appliances and not having to rely on a half-broken-down laundromat is thrilling.

I might actually start cooking more adventurously for myself if I can just throw the dishes into the washer afterwards and not have to both cook and clean for every single meal I make. That's a big part of why I joined a co-op in the first place--living in my own place but not having to shoulder every single part of that myself. Nice in theory, but when that breaks down, not so much.

On one hand, I'm glad my company is awesome enough to give me all the PTO I need to move. On the other, holy hell is this exhausting and I wish I was at work instead. This is my first move in almost 11 years and I now remember why I hate it so much.

In related news, water was apparently shut off for several hours yesterday for an "emergency repair." No clue what was up with that but I don't care. Looking forward to how much better my mental health is going to be when my building isn't falling down around me while folks waste time with politics and infighting.

I've never messed with GPUs under Linux. Anyone have tips on how to stress-test one, or otherwise put it through its paces, that aren't gaming or mining crypto?

I realize the latter might be OK if I did it only in the context of a stress test and for a limited time, but aside from wanting to stay away from crypto on principle, this is for work and we have systems actively scanning for and flagging it.

Context is that I'm stress-testing our new GPU offering at work to find bugs. It doesn't necessarily have to be a stress-test, but I'm trying to actively break things in a way that won't trigger our scans but I don't know the first thing about this stuff.

And FWIW we've already generally run LLMs and such, so the lowest hanging fruit is already picked.

With the Zoom H1E, is there a way to pause/resume recording without stopping entirely and starting a new file?

Thinking I might make a recording of me disconnecting more complex appliances like my home theater system when I move. Which is to say, pressing Record, saying "Receiver," pausing, disconnecting a cable, resuming, then describing what cable I just disconnected and from exactly where. That way I don't have to figure out accessible cable labels by sometime next week.

Ugh, the joys of moving blind and mostly on my own. Gonna be great when it's done but now it pretty much sucks.

Today my order of heavy trashbags, Gorilla tape, and scissors arrived.

Please don't add me to any watch lists, I'm just scrambling through an unplanned move. Like 'ya do.

Hey blind Android users, anyone have a favorite more advanced GPS navigation app?

In particular, I'm looking for something that will let me save my own points and navigate back to them, with both directions and bearing/distance for cases where Google Maps tries to do a dumb and take me along small access roads and such when really I just need to hang a left and walk for about 100 feet, but the app doesn't give me that info because it's too busy holding my hand.

Likely moving to a new area next week, there's a lot of cool stuff to walk to, and I'd like to just mark my building entrance so I can return after exploring things. But so many of the apps I'm finding want to hold my hand more than is necessary, and that sucks.

When the upstairs neighbors at your apartment co-op need to learn that reporting huge toilet leaks in a timely manner actually benefits the person below them by not literally dumping their fucking toilet water into their bathroom, is that "trickle down cooperativism?"

In related news, moveout date adjusted downward from late May to imminent. Hoping to be somewhere new in just a couple weeks. I need out but April is the worst month to have to do that for me.

Ooo boy. Moving sucks so much harder when you're blind and can't drive your own damn truck. At least I can throw money at a pod. Still though, going to suck no matter how you slice it.

Another blind person question: any tips on collaborative and accessible document editing?

Alternately, tips on making Google Docs behave better with a screen reader? Working on a thing that's only 11 pages but Docs hangs for 10-15 seconds every time I add another sentence or two, and Chrome reports the tab is using nearly 1G. FWIW I have accessibility and Braille support enabled. Not sure the issue is a11y-related but I can't believe this is choking on 11 pages for sighted people too.

So frustrating because the thing we officially use at work, Slab, seems to only care about accessibility to a point and not much further. I use Docs because Google is supposed to care more about accessibility, but then I'd expect it not to choke on something that's only 11 pages on a fairly stock and updated Chrome. I just want to do my job, not perpetually try to find the tools to do it.

Blind folks (or I guess anyone really): how do you take screenshots accessibly and safely under Windows 11?

By "accessibly" I mean being able to just get image content of the current window easily. There's some sort of snipping tool but based on the name I feel like that's probably based on visually highlighting what you want to screenshot, which is a non-starter. Maybe I'm wrong? I feel like there used to be a "screenshot only this window" hotkey but AFAIK that was replaced with snipping.

By "safely" I mean getting a screenshot of only the current window. I can tightly control what appears in just one window by, e.g. opening an incognito window in Chrome. I can sort of be careful to not capture things I don't want by using a separate desktop but I'd rather just grab a single window if possible.

Ultimately these will probably be shipped off to our content folks anyway, so they can make any edits to the image I request. I'd just rather give them starting material that's as clean as possible.

Thanks.