Rounding up stuff
Apr. 18th, 2026 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oursinDept rus in urbe: A prickle of hedgehogs and an armada of newts: wildlife settles in at London’s new Queen Elizabeth garden
***
Dept of, why not work with creating opportunities for the mute inglorious already there....? (sigh): Creating Baby Geniuses to Thwart the AI Threat? (Yes, Really.) Honestly, these people.
Possibly relevant here....: State school kids do better at uni
***
The Rise and Fall of Jukeboxes: where are the grooves of yesteryear?
***
Women artists in the Georgian era: a constant, delicate calibration to keep the balance between personal reputation, artistic success and the need to earn a living.
Photo cross-post
Apr. 18th, 2026 11:07 amandrewducker
Today the white flakes on the ground aren't snow they're blossom.
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
Interesting Links for 18-04-2026
Apr. 18th, 2026 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. How EU law hides data centres' environmental impact
- (tags:europe environment Technology ai )
- 2. It seems like nobody knows how the Home Office Vetting system is supposed to work.
- (tags:politics CivilService uk wtf labour )
- 3. Burnout as experienced by autistic people: A systematic review
- (tags:autism mentalhealth )
What IS the point
Apr. 17th, 2026 04:05 pmoursin(Reporting in vaxx-boosted, by the way.)
Have been noting hither and yon stuff about blokes 'looksmaxxing' and 'mogging' (which apparently does not involve cats? is there some reference to tomcats facing off and fluffing out their fur? probably not. Who knows.)
This is yet another of those things That Blokez Do apparently in order to attract the opposite sex and I do not think it is because I am Old, and my tastes were formed in A Different Day, that I feel that there is a significant Failure To Do The Research about What Actually Pulls The Chixx.
Not that this is exactly a new phenomenon, when I was reviewing those books on yoof culture in the 60s/early 70s, I was thinking that various of the paths being pursued by (presumably) cis het men, because Teh Gayz were in separate chapters, did not seem to me necessarily terribly productive - maybe being a great dancer, but not if it was all about him showing off moves, ditto the being A Mod Face.
And after all the idea that women only go for men who look a certain way is to laugh at, cites yet again the instance of The Late Rock Star Historian, who was a scruff who was not perhaps quite at the John Wilkes level of having serious disadvantages in the way of appearance to overcome but was - well, I suppose it depends on the artist you're thinking of and there were painters who would have turned out an excellent oil-painting of him but was hardly of male-model looks. But was if not of universal appeal, considerably popular with the opposite sex.
We are frankly not surprised at reports that young women are eschewing the dating game, because what it turns up is very likely young men blatting on about their self-maintenance regime and probably trying to shill for supplements and peptides.
Am also given to wonder whether the people who follow these creatures are all acolytes of their maxxingmessage, or whether at least some % are treating them as the modern equivalent of the old-style freakshow. (Though for all I know, in the darker reaches of the internet you can find videos of men biting the heads off chickens and so on.)
While I was thinking that it would be preferable for them to contemplate upon the natural world and build bowers for, or offer particularly attractive stones to, the objects of their interest, I also became cynical as to whether female bower birds and penguins are quite so appreciative of these efforts as naturalists would have us suppose. ('Him and his bloody bowers' - 'Not another pebble')
Interesting Links for 17-04-2026
Apr. 17th, 2026 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. The World Bank thinks better of its old free-market absolutism.
- 2. Autonomous robo-taxis now driving themselves on British streets
- (tags:London UK taxi automation driving )
- 3. Europe could run out of jet fuel in 6 weeks
- (tags:Europe fuel oil airplanes doom )
- 4. Europe's Anonymous Online Age Verification App Is Here
- (tags:Europe age apps )
2026/056: The Luminous Dead — Caitlin Starling
Apr. 17th, 2026 08:12 amtamaranth2026/056: The Luminous Dead — Caitlin Starling
“That was the look of somebody resigned to being the monster they knew they were.”
Gyre lives on Cassandra-5, a planet with immense mineral wealth but little else to commend it. She takes a contract to explore a particular cave system -- dangerous, because the caves are often collapsed by native beasts called Tunnellers -- which will pay enough money for her to get off-world and search for her mother. She's been surgically fitted into a life-support suit, and she expects to find a full team supporting her by comms. Instead, she gets a single person: a woman named Em.
Neither Gyre nor Em has been wholly honest. ( Read more... )
Panel Interest Survey Still Open
Apr. 16th, 2026 11:23 pmboxofdelights posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
wisconOur panel doors are wide open. Please check out the Panel Interest Survey! Log into your WisCon account at the top left corner of http://wiscon.net and click on Interest Survey. You can tell us which panels you would like to see at WisCon this year, and, if you really want a panel to happen, volunteer to be on it! If we don't have panelists, we can't run that panel!
You can fill out the survey before you register, as long as you have a WisCon account. If you have ever been a WisCon member, you have an account; if you don't remember the password, there's a link to get help.
For more info, there is a blog post here: https://wiscon.net/2026/04/12/panel-interest-survey-open/
You can fill out the survey before you register, as long as you have a WisCon account. If you have ever been a WisCon member, you have an account; if you don't remember the password, there's a link to get help.
For more info, there is a blog post here: https://wiscon.net/2026/04/12/panel-interest-survey-open/
I used to do this sort of thing first thing in the morning and go about my day
Apr. 16th, 2026 04:42 pmoursinOn the other hand, I am thinking of the times when I was dealing with a fairly professional set of meedja people either coming with their gear to interview me in my Former Workplace, or else having me in a studio nicely set up for the purpose.
Not recording a podcast from my own front room on my own computer and having to set up my own headphones and mike and feeling that the instructions about Settings could pertain a little closer to what I find there....
And adjust the curtains so that there was not a glare off the portrait photo of Dame Rebecca and all that sort of thing.
- the fact that the connection to Headphones was no longer saying Headphones might have been a clue that all was not entirely as it should be -
So anyway, when I got connected there was total silence and had to do a certain amount of jiggling around and changing the settings and anyway, did finally get to the stage where I was both audible and able to hear everyone else.
Though when I spoke the effect was, roughly speaking, of a 45 rpm single being played at 33 rpm, no, I have no idea why, they were fairly hopeful this could be sorted in editing.
The actual discussion went okay I think - other person who was there to be Nexpert is old(ish) mate who has just writ a book of relevance which cites me quite a bit.
But lo and behold, had a subsequent email from them expressing concern over the slurring issue in case it was Health Thing and should I see my GP, which was thoughtful, but really, it was TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUE. (I did not respond, hey, your image was looking really blurry and faint, are you feeling well? because I assumed that was their camera.)
Am feeling mildly knackered now, unlike the days when I would jaunt down to Broadcasting House, do my chat on Woman's Hour, and then go and do my normal day's work.
Of course, I was Younger then.
2026/055: The Weaver of the Middle Desert — Victoria Goddard
Apr. 16th, 2026 09:57 amtamaranth2026/055: The Weaver of the Middle Desert — Victoria Goddard
She could weave those falling descants, those trilling calls, those infinitely varied notes into her work. Could she weave sound and silence together, craft a curtain that would keep a tent silent or hold the songs of mourning or merriment within its folds? [loc. 530]
Arzu is the eldest of the three daughters of the Bandit Queen, desert nomads whose world is strongly reminiscent of the Arabian Nights. Her younger sisters, Pali and Sardeet, have each had a novella to themselves (I find that I haven't read Pali's, The Warrior of the Third Veil), so it's Arzu's turn. But she is not as young nor as ambitious as her sisters. She's already happily married to a man of the clan, and her magic is founded on the gentle arts of weaving and threadcraft.
( Read more... )
Wednesday has succeeded in printing out the whole of that manuscript
Apr. 15th, 2026 06:15 pmoursinWhat I read
Finished Never After, I can see that there are good things about it, but it was just not really what I was looking for at this particular time. It's historical novel, rather than romance.
Latest Literary Review.
I then finally got stuck in to Edward St Aubyn, Parallel Lines (2025), but although I did finish it, did not think it came up to Double Blind, found it hard to keep track of the various characters, and was a bit disappointed.
Started SJ Fleet 'The Secret Barrister', The Cut Throat Trial (2025), which is that ?tapestry-style novel of a trial where it gives you the viewpoints of the various parties involved, and even though I could see (or maybe because I could see?) it was not going to turn out as clearcut a case as it looked, could not get involved, gave up.
Also started and gave up, Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing (2023), because I was getting vibes of a kind of narrative I have been there and done that many times over the years and this was not bringing the over and above that would have kept me reading.
Decided that I wanted to read some more Arnold Bennett and found that I had Mr Prohack (1922) on the ereader and not sure I'd ever read it. Not by any means one of the top Bennetts but still quite acceptable.
On the go
Project Gutenberg have only just released Naomi Royde-Smith's The Tortoiseshell Cat (1925). I have been wanting to read something, anything, by Royde-Smith for ages, and this is showing very promising. Our protag starts out as teacher in a girls' school with rather more ambitions than those in which D Richardson's Miriam finds herself, but has just been fired.
Up next
No idea. What do Tiggers eat?
News on a lot of Fronts!
Apr. 15th, 2026 11:33 amlydamorehouse First, I feel that I'll be accused of burying the lead (alternately lede, if you are old school) if I don't start with this: I got the library job out in Anoka County!!
This is exciting!
And also a hassle!
As I may have mentioned in my previous post about this, there were two jobs available to the candidates. I was sincere when I told the interviewers that I did not care which one I got, if I got one. It is, of course, easiest to say that when actually landing the job seems like a distant prospect. The job I ended up with has, what is quite obviously, the more terrible schedule of the two options. Library work always requires evening and weekend work, but I will be working both Saturdays and Sundays every other week. This is particularly rough for me, as someone who often hopes to attend SFF conventions on the weekends. I am unclear how friendly this workplace will be to me announcing that I can not work some assigned shifts? I won't have to test this until July, when Convergence is going to slam headlong into a "week 2" of my schedule, aka my weekend hours. (I am also GoH, as mentioned many times now, at Quantum Con, but as CHANCE WOULD HAVE IT, that weekend falls on my "week 1" week and thus is not a week I am expected to work weekends.)
So, it's going to be interesting to work all that out. For the moment, I am excited to be taking on some extra work, especially since the nice thing about this particular schedule is that I will only be expected to work two four hour shifts, every work week. The way everything actually works out, given that week 1 begins on a Tuesday for me, there will, in fact be weeks where I will have worked the previous weekend and then also have to work into the evenings of both Tuesday and Thursday. But then I'll get this weidly long gap before I have to do it again.
I can see why this position was open? I can only imagine people want out of it ASAP.
Given that we are a one car family, this is also just... a lot of logistics for us. We have solutions to all of that in the works already, however.
Second, since a lot of you got very invested in my phone problems yesterday, I am happy to report that I am already in possession of a brandnew phone. I have not yet moved everything over to it, but that will probably happen tonight. (I may need my wife at home to hold my hand, as Tracfone can be notoriously annoying when activating and switching to a new phone. At least my previous/current phone is still in my possession and I can access it. The worst is when you've lost or totally bricked your previous phone.) In the meantime, the gods have chosen to laugh at me. Yesterday, after spending the day (and notably my patrol) with my phone OUT LOUD sans earphones,* I dropped it. I didn't think anything of it until, without thinking, I went to turn it on with my headphone jack and VIOLA. It suddenly decided to work again. This was, of course, about two second after Shawn had hit the "buy it" button at Best Buy.
Ah well.
Otherwise, today is Wednesday and I have managed to read almost nothing the entire week. I have a zillion books out from the Ramsey County Library right now. They're even manga, something that I am known to consume at ligthning speeds. For whatever reason, I have just not picked them up. I'm going to renew them one more time, but, obviously, if I can't get through them after that, I'll just have to give up. The same has been happening with my audiobooks. I did start to listen to Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon, but I just couldn't get into it. What I have on audio right now is:
Sunbirth by An Yu
Audition by Katie Kitamura
The King Must Die by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
If anyone has a recommendation of which I should try next, please let me know!
I just hopped over to Instagram and it looks like my mutual aid folks are up and in operation today. I still need to have a little bit of something to eat for lunch, but I might wander over there in a bit and give them some of my time. Also, I am curious AF if Colin actually got enough money to fully fund "distro" or if we're going to be sending out sad little bags of beans and a couple of apples or what. Curiosity and drama. It's what my end of this resistance runs on.
If people want, I can also give you an anti-ICE resistance update at some point. The short of it is that last Friday I was on a live call while on foot patrol near a local mosque and listened to a commuter attempt to stop an abduction here in St. Paul. According to what I heard on school bus patrol yesterday, there was also another person stolen from their family and their home extra-legally the day before (Monday, also in Saint Paul). The bastards are still doing their grab and go of human beings, many of whom are attempting to follow the legal process of immigration. (And even if they aren't? Masked men randomly hauling a person away isn't how this is supposed to happen.) We, the Resistance, are generally low on commuters and patrolers "post surge," so that isn't helping matters. If we don't get recordings of these events, ICE can lie about them more easily and/or act like they never happened. Luckily, I know for a fact that during the Friday's kidnapping, our commuter was able to get the name of the person ICE abducted. Thanks to being there and his quick thinking, that meant we could follow-up. While I listened, I heard reports of people returning to the scene to try to find family, friends or other contacts to make sure that the abductee's family knew they had been taken and try to get them legal aid, anything else they might need right away.
I can't even imagine what it must be like. To say goodbye to a loved one or your parent or your child as they (or you) head to work in the morning and then.... they just never come home. And you don't know where they went or if they're okay. And by the time you find out, if you ever do, they might be in another state or another country, all alone. If that happened to Shawn I wouldn't even know what to do, how to go on. To think that my neighbors face this every day is just heartbreaking.
And this is why I pray some of us will never stop fighting.
==
*The live call I join is unvetted and everyone involved knows that they could be overheard. Everyone is very circumspect about locations and events.
This is exciting!
And also a hassle!
As I may have mentioned in my previous post about this, there were two jobs available to the candidates. I was sincere when I told the interviewers that I did not care which one I got, if I got one. It is, of course, easiest to say that when actually landing the job seems like a distant prospect. The job I ended up with has, what is quite obviously, the more terrible schedule of the two options. Library work always requires evening and weekend work, but I will be working both Saturdays and Sundays every other week. This is particularly rough for me, as someone who often hopes to attend SFF conventions on the weekends. I am unclear how friendly this workplace will be to me announcing that I can not work some assigned shifts? I won't have to test this until July, when Convergence is going to slam headlong into a "week 2" of my schedule, aka my weekend hours. (I am also GoH, as mentioned many times now, at Quantum Con, but as CHANCE WOULD HAVE IT, that weekend falls on my "week 1" week and thus is not a week I am expected to work weekends.)
So, it's going to be interesting to work all that out. For the moment, I am excited to be taking on some extra work, especially since the nice thing about this particular schedule is that I will only be expected to work two four hour shifts, every work week. The way everything actually works out, given that week 1 begins on a Tuesday for me, there will, in fact be weeks where I will have worked the previous weekend and then also have to work into the evenings of both Tuesday and Thursday. But then I'll get this weidly long gap before I have to do it again.
I can see why this position was open? I can only imagine people want out of it ASAP.
Given that we are a one car family, this is also just... a lot of logistics for us. We have solutions to all of that in the works already, however.
Second, since a lot of you got very invested in my phone problems yesterday, I am happy to report that I am already in possession of a brandnew phone. I have not yet moved everything over to it, but that will probably happen tonight. (I may need my wife at home to hold my hand, as Tracfone can be notoriously annoying when activating and switching to a new phone. At least my previous/current phone is still in my possession and I can access it. The worst is when you've lost or totally bricked your previous phone.) In the meantime, the gods have chosen to laugh at me. Yesterday, after spending the day (and notably my patrol) with my phone OUT LOUD sans earphones,* I dropped it. I didn't think anything of it until, without thinking, I went to turn it on with my headphone jack and VIOLA. It suddenly decided to work again. This was, of course, about two second after Shawn had hit the "buy it" button at Best Buy.
Ah well.
Otherwise, today is Wednesday and I have managed to read almost nothing the entire week. I have a zillion books out from the Ramsey County Library right now. They're even manga, something that I am known to consume at ligthning speeds. For whatever reason, I have just not picked them up. I'm going to renew them one more time, but, obviously, if I can't get through them after that, I'll just have to give up. The same has been happening with my audiobooks. I did start to listen to Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon, but I just couldn't get into it. What I have on audio right now is:
Sunbirth by An Yu
Audition by Katie Kitamura
The King Must Die by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
If anyone has a recommendation of which I should try next, please let me know!
I just hopped over to Instagram and it looks like my mutual aid folks are up and in operation today. I still need to have a little bit of something to eat for lunch, but I might wander over there in a bit and give them some of my time. Also, I am curious AF if Colin actually got enough money to fully fund "distro" or if we're going to be sending out sad little bags of beans and a couple of apples or what. Curiosity and drama. It's what my end of this resistance runs on.
If people want, I can also give you an anti-ICE resistance update at some point. The short of it is that last Friday I was on a live call while on foot patrol near a local mosque and listened to a commuter attempt to stop an abduction here in St. Paul. According to what I heard on school bus patrol yesterday, there was also another person stolen from their family and their home extra-legally the day before (Monday, also in Saint Paul). The bastards are still doing their grab and go of human beings, many of whom are attempting to follow the legal process of immigration. (And even if they aren't? Masked men randomly hauling a person away isn't how this is supposed to happen.) We, the Resistance, are generally low on commuters and patrolers "post surge," so that isn't helping matters. If we don't get recordings of these events, ICE can lie about them more easily and/or act like they never happened. Luckily, I know for a fact that during the Friday's kidnapping, our commuter was able to get the name of the person ICE abducted. Thanks to being there and his quick thinking, that meant we could follow-up. While I listened, I heard reports of people returning to the scene to try to find family, friends or other contacts to make sure that the abductee's family knew they had been taken and try to get them legal aid, anything else they might need right away.
I can't even imagine what it must be like. To say goodbye to a loved one or your parent or your child as they (or you) head to work in the morning and then.... they just never come home. And you don't know where they went or if they're okay. And by the time you find out, if you ever do, they might be in another state or another country, all alone. If that happened to Shawn I wouldn't even know what to do, how to go on. To think that my neighbors face this every day is just heartbreaking.
And this is why I pray some of us will never stop fighting.
==
*The live call I join is unvetted and everyone involved knows that they could be overheard. Everyone is very circumspect about locations and events.
Interesting Links for 15-04-2026
Apr. 15th, 2026 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Why don't humans have a penis bone?
- (tags:evolution sex penis bone badgers ViaDrCross )
- 2. For the First Time in the U.S., Renewables Generate More Power Than Natural Gas
- (tags:renewables GoodNews USA )
- 3. YouTube Now Worlds Largest Media Company, Topping Disney
- (tags:YouTube business )
- 4. Anti-SLAPP law: how litigation is silencing UK journalists
- (tags:UK law censorship )
- 5. Takeaway cup recycling made easier in Edinburgh
- (tags:recycling edinburgh coffee )
- 6. Projected warming will exceed the long-term thermal limits of rice cultivation
- (tags:globalwarming rice food farming doom )
2026/054: Zennor in Darkness — Helen Dunmore
Apr. 15th, 2026 08:09 amtamaranth2026/054: Zennor in Darkness — Helen Dunmore
... he will cry out against Frieda if she dances in the wind with her scarf flying above her like a banner. She dances for pure joy, but the war does not recognize that kind of dancing. It knows that she’s twirling her scarf in a prearranged signal to the U-boats lying out offshore, waiting. [p.128]
This was Helen Dunmore's first novel, and some of her tropes and traits are visible: sexual tension within the family, arresting images of the natural world, the inexorable force of gossip and rumour. The setting is Cornwall in 1917, a village near Zennor: D H Lawrence and his German wife Frieda have taken a cottage there, and Lawrence is trying to farm, and to maintain his anti-war stance.
The focal character, though, is Clare Coyne, only daughter of Francis Coyne: she keeps house for her widowed father, paints illustrations for his book on wild flowers, and spends what time she can spare with her friends Hannah and Peggy. As the novel opens, the three girls are eagerly awaiting the return of John William, Hannah's brother and Clare's cousin, who's on leave from the trenches because he's going to be made an officer. ( Read more... )
There's no knowledge but I knows it
Apr. 14th, 2026 08:09 pmoursinHave just out of the blue had an email from a meedja person about what a cause of death on early C20th certificate MEANS, a colleague of theirs contacted me - what must have been in days of yore - and I was really helpful. I think that may have been a case in which Sid was involved, this was not, but we do our best in posing as a Nexpert.
I was able to flash a bit more relevant knowledge in the question portion of online seminar this pm (even though I dozed off, did not sleep well last night, during part of the actual seminar).
Have got off my desk and conscience something that has been hanging over me, to wit, second review of article I did a previous review of some weeks ago. Was somewhat prejudiced about it (it is actually not at all bad doing what it does) because it rather glances over the amount of work that went into getting the archive used into usable condition (personal interest there noted) and role of archivists in between the creators of the records and the end-users.
Think I mentioned some while ago possibility that longtime academic friend and self may be editing for publication Important Work on Significant and Highly Relevant Subject of friend of ours who died very unexpectedly last year. We have now received the draft manuscript and it seems more of a manuscript (rather than notes and materials) than we had feared.
Still have review that has been hanging over me and keeping getting put off to do.
Have podcast to record later this week.
Also must begin to turn my thoughts to being instructive yet entertaining on the history of ye baudruche (and finding illos, fortunately I already have quite a few).
Wish Me Luck
Apr. 14th, 2026 10:42 amlydamorehouse For months now, I've been turning my phone on by plugging my earphones into the jack. Some time around last August (I remember because it first happened when I was one of the GoHs at Diversicon,) my on/off button just stopped working consistantly. If someone texted/called me or if I lucked out, I could sometimes turn it on.Eventually, it fully failed. I discovered that the screen would turn on when it registered a device being plugged in, so I just carried around a zillion pair of earphones so I could always turn it on as needed.
I've been skating by on that for... well, I mean what is that? Almost six months?
Last night the earphone jack gave up the ghost. It accepts no plug into that jack as anything real. If I'm listening to a podcast, everyone gets to hear that I'm into "Betwixt the Sheets" and other sex history podcasts. That is, when I can turn it on. Right now, the only thing my phone will still recognize as a device is its charging cord--but only when active, as in plugged in. In essence it's a landline now, which is not what I need and, as it happens, I still have a landline.
I found a place on University that supposedly will deal with ancient technology like my Samsung, so, hopefully, they'll be able to fix one or both of the phone's problems. It'd be cool if I could actually turn it on the normal way again, but I'd settle for a working earphone jack.
Before you yell at me, yes. The plan *is* to buy a new phone. They're not that expensive. This will be an "in the meantime" as we wait for it to arrive solution. And, yeah, I'm aware that it's possible that the repair person will tell me that the cost of fixing it is more than the price of a new phone (keeping in mind that my family buys cheap-ass phones from Tracfone.) In which case, I'll figure something out. I can keep a charging cord in my car and so maybe before I go out on school patrol I can plug it in and just make sure I am always tapping the screen so I don't lose the ability to go on mic or, you know, hang up. I'll still be without headphones, which would suck, but you know, needs must.
My appointment at the shop is for noon. I'm hoping for something simple and cheap.
Wish me luck.
I've been skating by on that for... well, I mean what is that? Almost six months?
Last night the earphone jack gave up the ghost. It accepts no plug into that jack as anything real. If I'm listening to a podcast, everyone gets to hear that I'm into "Betwixt the Sheets" and other sex history podcasts. That is, when I can turn it on. Right now, the only thing my phone will still recognize as a device is its charging cord--but only when active, as in plugged in. In essence it's a landline now, which is not what I need and, as it happens, I still have a landline.
I found a place on University that supposedly will deal with ancient technology like my Samsung, so, hopefully, they'll be able to fix one or both of the phone's problems. It'd be cool if I could actually turn it on the normal way again, but I'd settle for a working earphone jack.
Before you yell at me, yes. The plan *is* to buy a new phone. They're not that expensive. This will be an "in the meantime" as we wait for it to arrive solution. And, yeah, I'm aware that it's possible that the repair person will tell me that the cost of fixing it is more than the price of a new phone (keeping in mind that my family buys cheap-ass phones from Tracfone.) In which case, I'll figure something out. I can keep a charging cord in my car and so maybe before I go out on school patrol I can plug it in and just make sure I am always tapping the screen so I don't lose the ability to go on mic or, you know, hang up. I'll still be without headphones, which would suck, but you know, needs must.
My appointment at the shop is for noon. I'm hoping for something simple and cheap.
Wish me luck.