December Daily: Devices

[resonant]

china_shop - Top five devices/appliances/bluetooth thingies/whatever :-)

Am I a thingies person? I guess I am.

5. It is literally unimaginable to me that there was ever a time when I didn't have a smartphone. But I mean it's not that interesting, right? I love my smartphone exactly the same way everybody loves their smartphone. Except that the kidlet tells me I spend more time than average telling it, "No, you may not have that permission, and I guess it's time to go through my preferences and deny permissions that you haven't even asked for yet."

4. I have a red Kitchenaid mixer [cue pause while I reflexively open a new tab and check capitalization, because this is something I do at work and it has become an unbreakable habit) KitchenAid mixer, which I love. For many years I had an off-white one that my parents bought at an auction somewhere, but then I was kneading bread with it and it literally walked itself off the counter and hit the floor so hard that the grounding prong of the plug bent into a curve and couldn't be plugged in any more. It had a more dramatic death than most of my possessions have.

3. A long time ago I was thinking about getting a Bose speaker to play music off my iPod and Consumer Reports said I could save a lot of money by buying an Altec Lansing speaker instead. This was before Bluetooth, so it had a well to prop your iPod in, which contained a connector that would fit into the port of one style of iPod, and then a bag of other connectors to swap in for different styles of iPods -- none of which exist any more. But fortunately the aux cable is forever.

2. This year I bought a two-part keyboard with risers in the middle, so I can set it up so each part tilts outward and rotates outward. My wrists are very happy with this.

1. When they sent us to work from home at the start of the quarantine, I was literally working at my kitchen table, and the closest I could come to an ergonomic setup was to pile a bunch of cushions on the folding chair I sat on to raise me up a bit. Eventually they let us come and bring home our chairs, but the desks were attached to cubicles. I went looking for a work desk with a keyboard tray, and the one I liked best had a motor to raise and lower it. "Oh, that's a silly feature," I thought. "I'll use that once to get the height right and then I'll never touch it again."

Friends, I use that desktop-moving motor multiple times every day. I raise my desktop when work is over so my desk looks out of the way and my living room can stop being an office and go back to being a living room. I adjust it when we're using the laptop + monitor to watch television. I raise my monitor when I have to be in a meeting with the camera on, so I can get that flattering selfie height. (I also roll the desk around so you see my couch and my shelves and my fetching little display of pottery bowls and winter squash, rather than seeing the mess of my table and the door into the hallway where at any moment a newly awakened kidlet may shamble past on their way to the shower.)





Upcoming prompts below the cut.





20 dorinda - Top 5 comfort movies? Or comfort reads, if you'd rather
21 summerstorm - because it puts me in mind of blackjack, do you play any card or board games regularly? Or videogames? top 5 games?
22 summerstorm - top 5 poems?
23 fox - Top five Advent carols, maybe
24 fox - Top five Christmas carols
25 break for Christmas
26 ride_4ever - top 5 dS fanworks other than fic (arts, podfics, vids)
27 azurelunatic - 5 reasons you enjoy a party in the dark times of the year
28 james - Top 5 places in the past you would like to visit. Top 5 places in the present you would like to visit.
29 laurenthemself - Top five snack foods (sorry, the requested date got taken between the time you posted and the time I edited)
30
31 mergatrude - what five complements/encouragements would you give your young self.

Comments

[lunabee34]

Heeeee. You sound like me with my phone.

[resonant]

They're so encroaching.

[celli]

I love your collection of things! And that is a VERY dramatic death. I have a KitchenAid but it lives with my sister because she needs it more often and I just go bake there if I need to. I wanted red but I have chrome, which is also cool.

[resonant]

They come in so many great colors now. I've even seen photos of one with flames, like a muscle car, but it might have been a custom paint job. (Or a Photoshop job.)

[oracne]

I have been pondering an adjustable desk for a while.

[resonant]

I don't know what I'd do without mine. Now if I could just get the cable management under control so that the back of it didn't look like a giant spiderweb.

[panisdead]

Years ago I burned out my KitchenAid by, uh, felting socks in it. Maybe they like drama.

[resonant]

Oh, man, felting socks. You'd think that a machine that could knead bread could handle a little wool.

[china_shop]

Except that the kidlet tells me I spend more time than average telling it, "No, you may not have that permission, and I guess it's time to go through my preferences and deny permissions that you haven't even asked for yet."

Ha, yes. I have uninstalled apps before because they want too much access to my data.

and it literally walked itself off the counter

Oh no! Hee!

And that's very cool about your work desk. It's lovely when technology surprises you with its usefulness. ♥

[resonant]

When I got my first smartphone, I was a little naive about the apps. I was eating lunch with my best friend when I got one of those app permission alerts, and she knocked it out of my hand. "Your contact manager does not need access to your camera!"

[rhi]

:laughing: When we got our newest car, here in the SE of the US, I thought, 'Heated seats are a ridiculous luxury, I'll never use them here.' No. No, we use them and love them. I'm so glad your desk has been equally, surprisingly, useful to you!

[resonant]

Oh, I had the same experience with the heated seats! Now I couldn't live without them.

[jesse_the_k]

I share your caution re phone privacy. I've been using TikTok as my soother recently, and it has SO MANY DARK PATTERNS trying to get my data. It puts up a "notification from a friend" flag and the notification is "you'd hear more from your friends if you only let us have your contacts list." Every day.

Occupational therapists gave us adjustable desks to manage cranky and/or atypical bodies. Universal design is good for all of us!

[resonant]

Oh, that sounds awful -- I'm glad I haven't managed to get drawn into TikTok yet.

Agreed about the universal design! Only makes me mad that I can't raise and lower my couch now.

[norah]

Having the right thingies is absolutely satisfying. It's finding the right thingies that is so tricky! My life is littered with thingies that I thought would be the thingies that would do the things I needed and weren't quite.

[resonant]

I had Thanksgiving at my mom's, and my brother showed up to carve the turkey carrying his own knife, and we bonded over how very dire the knife situation is at Mom's.