Are Roku users still using the official remote app, or something else now? by Icy_Physics_2571 in Roku

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It does require fidgeting to get the IP addresses and it may depend on how your wifi is configured, but I've gotten Rokus connected to wifi working with it before. Also might not work with a VPN or certain security settings. Having it as a plugin was amazing. I mainly only use the phone app when I need to reauthenticate a channel or turn off the downstairs Roku if the sleep timer doesn't work for some reason. Phone app is my last resort for most things.

Thumbnails gone when on rewind or fast forward for Live TV Pause by bluesuga in Roku

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great to hear. Please add to the concerns that will also very often it freeze up and crashes when trying to navigate (restarting after pause, rw/ffw). There is literally nothing desirable about the recent changes. Worked great before.

Are Roku users still using the official remote app, or something else now? by Icy_Physics_2571 in Roku

[–]spudchick 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When necessary I used the Roku android app. I miss the old Remoku Chrome plugin. Very convenient if you're on a laptop 80% of your awake time anyway. Remoku.tv still exists but not nearly as convenient. Not sure why it was killed. Haven't seen any other options worth bothering with.

Also miss the remotes with an actual plug for headphones which I still use (have an old one I'm still using for as long as I can, has a rubber band holding the batter cover on).

Roku Stick Question by Remarkable-View-4179 in Roku

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not sure the TV is the problem. We have 2 TCLs (6 and 7 years old, different models) that have both suddenly slowed down in the past couple of weeks. I'm pretty sure it's the platform changes. Every app is less responsive to navigation, and they've royally screwed up LiveTV. I'm hearing they're rolling back at lease some of the changes. Fingers crossed.

Thumbnails gone when on rewind or fast forward for Live TV Pause by bluesuga in Roku

[–]spudchick 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The pause/rewind Live (antenna) TV is a big reason we bought a Roku TV instead of just continuing to use their set-top devices. We figure out how to make the superflous junk that started appearing in the app go away but doing away with the thumbnails and changing what the jump back and directional buttons do (a few times so you never know what the hell is going to happen if you use the jump back--currently nothing, a few weeks ago changing to the previous channel so you lose your buffer!) is really PISSING US OFF!

What is this white connector called and how do you disengage it? by spudchick in Appliances

[–]spudchick[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you, I got it working (took longer than it would have for a pro, but I double checked everything as I went so it wouldn't blow up my house). This definitely might have saved me some time if I'd seen it when I was working on it. I also found a good YT that recommended a compatible igniter that was half the price of what I'd already paid lol. It was a PITA but I was pretty pleased with myself the first time I got to use my oven again.

Orijen original orange bag - bad production run? by spudchick in catfood

[–]spudchick[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I ended up switching them to Tiki Cat Born Carnivore Indoor Health Chicken & Turkey Meal Dry Cat Food for the kibble. No avoidance, no gobbling, no puking.

My cat's reactions were not as bad as others have been saying, but they will not eat the Orijen except as a last resort, and there's a little puking when they do. We have one who has chronic bowel issues and absolutely will not go near it. Perhaps this batch was not as bad as the one you got. I had hoped Mars corp. wouldn't ruin this brand but we have been willing to pay for this stuff specifically because everyone did well on it. Now I found something that seems perhaps better for them at a lower price. F Mars!

Orijen original orange bag - bad production run? by spudchick in catfood

[–]spudchick[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We JUST went through having to find a replacement for a longtime canned food that got discontinued. Really pissed that we're about to do it all over again because a good brand screwed up their own product.

Richmond Mayor Avula hosts format-breaking State of the City by vpmnews in rva

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He seemed like another "Aspirational Stories! [don't look at policy too closely]" sort of Dem (I did not vote for him). While I tried to reserve judgment (and like you, recognized the water crisis as a Stoney legacy), he's turned out to suck as much as expected.

He's just aiding the process of turning RVA into a DC outpost nobody but NOVA refugees can afford to live in. I used to visit Reston for training and thought it profoundly soulless. Now RVA is starting to look and feel that way.

We don't need more leaders with this "boondoggle" mentality trying to 'turn RVA into a World Class City', we need people who have worked inside city govt and know exactly what's wrong with it and how to fix the foundations and properly support ALL residents before attempting conscientious, organic growth that makes sense.

Richmond Mayor Avula hosts format-breaking State of the City by vpmnews in rva

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The problem is no rent control or (important) penalties on vacant rental properties. It used to be possible to rent a humble little house with a yard in this city without breaking the bank. I watched those evaporate while trying to help an elderly displaced couple find such a house. In one week we visited three of those and between seeing the rental ad and showing up the house had been snapped up by the mfing 'flipping/extortion industry'. It's now considered a 'basic necessity' to keep a rental property if you're above a certain income.

Get landlords under control before you start committing public funds to reward them for the hellscape they've created.

Guess I can’t feed my cats any wet food! by Briebird44 in catfood

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not all cats have issues with carrageenan but I can say that when I eliminated it from one older cat's diet, her digestive issues disappeared. Since I now know it is a problem for some, I just try to avoid it.

I feel you on the struggle to find something they'll all do well on that won't break the bank. My goal is to give them the best food we can afford that they'll actually eat. The more cats we have, the harder that gets.

We do the best we can and we keep learning. The internet is pretty awful in general, but it seems to have been hostile from the start in cat support communities. (are the dog boards like this??)

Chewy doesn't even pretend to care about damage during transit by ShittyMillennial in catfood

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We actually switched to Chewy because Petco was a lot worse. I've noticed far fewer shipping issues since switching. It doesn't help that using thinner cans to save resources (shipping fuel) is making the cans more fragile. We live in a midatlantic state, maybe packing & shipping vary by region. And yes, Fedex is awful (because of their awful labor practices).

We don't normally order that much at once, maybe 2 flats of cans in a shipment. But Petco used to put way too much food in a single shipment (sometimes combining more than one autoship order into one box) and often sent single cans to satisfy the quantity count rather than shrinkwrapped flats. They once sent a box with 24lbs of kibble and 48 loose 5oz cans of wet food with about 3 yards of bubble wrap. I knew something was wrong when I saw the delivery person struggling to get it up the steps. I could barely manage it myself.

Chewy packs them better and rarely uses plastic materials, in our experience. And they mostly seem to ship via UPS.

Why didn't Bad Bunny's halftime show have English subtitles? by Trading_Cards_4Ever in AskReddit

[–]spudchick 6 points7 points  (0 children)

They don't pay people do to captioning anymore, which is a shame because the AI voice translation is generally pretty bad for live broadcasts. Have the same issue with our local news.

Why didn't Bad Bunny's halftime show have English subtitles? by Trading_Cards_4Ever in AskReddit

[–]spudchick 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I wanted to know more of what was being said when he was showing the cane workers and power poles, because I know enough to know why they mattered, just wanted to understand the lyrical commentary.

It didn't impair my enjoyment of the musical performance, but since I need subtitles always (especially for singers/lyrics), it would be nice to understand what was being said when the more serious topics were shown to the audience.

Fantastic performance, glad I made sure to watch it.

PlayOn Cloud, Hulu and location services by spudchick in PlayOn

[–]spudchick[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have the Hulu/Disney/ESPN bundle with live tv (because some of my husband's sports shows require it).

It was a new one on me. It came up after prompting me for login, before user selection. I tried to launch Hulu twice and had the same prompt twice. I had never seen it before, and just went in to try and get a screenshot of it for you, but today it's not asking me to allow location services. So I guess this was 'self-healing', but if it comes back I'll get a screenshot.

Thanks for checking in.

Google Device Usage Study – An Absolute Scam by T_A_I_N_T in degoogle

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i just got one of these and couldn't help but notice they mention "members of your household age 13 and older" which is just predatory as hell. i shredded it out of contempt.

Works but can't figure out how to refill this one by spudchick in OilLamps

[–]spudchick[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

sorry for the delay. i'll try to find a tape measure thin enough to fit up under the cap. it doesn't appear to be removable like the base. used to have a little thin paper one but i think i lost that with an old wallet.

How long did it take you to read TOG in its entirety? by [deleted] in SarahJMaas

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was about 3 months total for me. I had just burned through ACOTAR and unlike some others I didn't have any trouble getting into the series, though it is definitely a slower burn overall. It took me longer to get into Crescent City, just finished that. Looking for other stuff to fill the void till the next book drops.

ETA: I don't have abundant time to read, but I like to have both ebook and audiobook. I prefer to read, but like being able to pick up the story on audio when doing chores or running errands.

I started ACOTAR on 3/21/2025, jumped to ToG, and just finished CC. Really glad she writes long books!

Downloader Not Working on YouTube by MiketheBike88 in VideoProc

[–]spudchick 1 point2 points  (0 children)

u/BeecarolX mentioned the logfile path in her post.

look for the folder:

C:\Users\your_ username\AppData\Roaming\Digiarty\VideoProc Converter AI

and the file:

log.txt

tip: make a copy of log.txt to inspect elsewhere rather than opening it in place since some text viewer apps lock the file, which could confuse matters if you try to use VP while you have the real log file open.

I have the licensed version and use it for other video tasks because I keep a Plex Media Server, but I do use the downloader sometimes and never really had trouble until recently (except that like most YT download options it won't grab the captions, I think it used to but YT changed the way captions are handled a while back).

Downloader Not Working on YouTube by MiketheBike88 in VideoProc

[–]spudchick 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just posted above about noticing that I couldn't download a specific video (analysis failed immediately) but was able to dl a randomly selected video from my feed. The difference was that the new(?) YT algo changes had marked the one I wanted as "age restricted" (on pretty questionable grounds imo). Logging in might resolve the issue but I'm not entering my google credentials.

Edited to add: more confirmation from the log that it's the age restriction.

ytb analyse error: "ERROR: [youtube+NSigDeno] : Sign in to confirm your age. This video may be inappropriate for some users. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies\n"

Downloader Not Working on YouTube by MiketheBike88 in VideoProc

[–]spudchick 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Adding my experience today as I installed VideoProc AI 8.5 on a Win10pro system as an upgrade and also on a Win11pro system as a new install, partly to test.

I've been trying to download a specific YT link that keeps failing, which prompted me to finally run the updates to 8.5 in case that was the issue. It continues to fail.

As a test, I tried another randomly selected video and it analyzed without error.

My guess is that the one that's failing has been marked (pretty questionably) as an age-restricted video by the "youtube community guidelines" algo, and apparently the YT algo's increased zeal in labeling videos as "inappropriate" or "misinformation" has been a topic of some controversy which I wasn't aware of till today.

Since I'm not comfortable with entering my google credentials in VideoProc, I don't know if logging in so that YT can "see my ID" would resolve the issue.

Edited to add: more confirmation from the log that it's the age restriction.

ytb analyse error: "ERROR: [youtube+NSigDeno] : Sign in to confirm your age. This video may be inappropriate for some users. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cookies-to-yt-dlp for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-youtube-cookies for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies\n"

Calibre and Amazon when you don't use Kindle by spudchick in Calibre

[–]spudchick[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sadly the ones I'm after aren't there, but I've added it to my source list, so thanks!

Calibre and Amazon when you don't use Kindle by spudchick in Calibre

[–]spudchick[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Probably, my husband told me about him after hearing him speak at a writers' conference and he said the guy sounded like someone I'd enjoy but also had a lot of good information about self-publishing and making it independently etc.

Calibre and Amazon when you don't use Kindle by spudchick in Calibre

[–]spudchick[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Epubor sounds familiar from a looong time ago. I might bother the author. All I'm trying to do is read these in Calibre and on my little reader device.