I've started setting up Passkeys on sites that support them. With Safari when I go to a site that has Passkeys set up I login with a click -- not really faster than the browser auto-filling in user/pass. The advantage is that on the wire the browser and web site send a one-time token back and forth so you can't intercept then eventually decrypt the password.

When I'm using my Windows partition if a web site has Passkeys I can choose external phone -- I don't have Passkeys set up on my Windows partition -- then the site shows a QR code which I can scan with my phone and then verify with thumbprint (I have an iPhone with TouchID) and it logs in. This is more time than doing it the old way but maintains high security.

On macOS the setup is stored in iCloud so available on all your other devices and at least with Safari and any other browser that uses iCloud Keychain (for example, Chrome supports Passkeys on iCloud Keychain).

Rifts Coalition Wars and a resurrected Rifts Core Mega bundle from Bundle of Holding. There are a lot of Rifts books and the two bundles are like 1/3th or 1/4th of the books. At least the new bundle is fairly focused on a particular campaign though you'd still need the first bundle for the core rules. There's also Savage Worlds Rifts if you'd like to play with a non-class based ruleset.

In any case I'm still too biased against Palladium and I don't really have interest other than their licensed games such as Robotech and TMNT so will skip these bundles.

Rifts Core Mega Bundle ($41)

PAL-800 Rifts Ultimate Edition (2005)
PAL-801 Rifts Sourcebook One: Revised (2007)
PAL-803 Conversion Book One - Revised (2002) - converting Palladium Fantasy and Heroes Unlimited to Rifts
PAL-805 Rifts Sourcebook Two: The Mechanoids (1992)
PAL-811 Conversion Book Two: Pantheons of the Megaverse (2005)
PAL-812 Rifts Sourcebook Three: Mindwerks (1994)
PAL-823 Rifts Index and Adventures Volume One (1996)
PAL-831 Rifts Index and Adventures Volume Two (1997)
PAL-845 Rifts Game Master Guide (2001)
PAL-848 Book of Magic (2001)
PAL-849 Rifts Adventure Guide (2002)
PAL-850 Bionics Sourcebook (2002)
PAL-852 Conversion Book Three: Dark Conversions (2002)
PAL-882 Rifts Black Market (2012)
PAL-884 Rifts Vampires (2013)
PAL-896 Rifts Bestiary Volume One (2019)

Rifts Game Master Kit (2011)

Rifts Coalition Wars Bundle ($39)

PAL-813 Rifts Mercenaries (1994)
PAL-821 Rifts World Book 11: Coalition War Campaign (1996)
PAL-828 Rifts Sourcebook 4: Coalition Navy (1997)
PAL-839 Rifts Siege on Tolkeen 1: Sedition (2000)
PAL-840 Rifts Siege on Tolkeen 2: Coalition Overkill (2000)
PAL-841 Rifts Siege on Tolkeen 3: Sorcerer's Revenge (2000)
PAL-842 Rifts Siege on Tolkeen 4: Cyber-Knights (2000)
PAL-843 Rifts Siege on Tolkeen 5: Shadows of Evil (2001)
PAL-844 Rifts Siege on Tolkeen 6: Final Siege (2001)
PAL-846 Rifts Aftermath (2002)
PAL-863 MercTown (2005)
PAL-865 Merc Ops (2005)
PAL-867 Rifts Adventure Sourcebook: Mercenary Adventures (2005)
PAL-889 Secrets of the Coalition States: Heroes of Humanity (2016)
PAL-894 Rifts Coalition Manhunters (2022)

Sat May 18 2024

Sleep 0300 to 1000 (7 hours)

• Christopher Jr had his first communion today which is an important Catholic event. Marina and kids flew in for the day. Jessica and her kids and mom were here. My mom and dad drove in for the day. There was Mexican food from Chavez Market afterwards.

Sun May 19 2024

Sleep 0200 to 0300, 0900 to 1200, two 30-min naps (5 hours)

• D&D session 13 at W3's house. We got a couple of hours (CJr and Corina not present) then Jonathan wanted to go to the park and we were there for over an hour.
• I had to record the session on my iPhone. Also had two of the Laser Kitten sessions recorded there. Voice Recorder audio is Actually quite good and I don't think it needs Levelator processing.

Mon May 20 2024

Sleep 0200 to 1000 (8 hours)

• Getting sent a replacement ATM card because "a batch of cards were sent with an illegible security code on the back of the card." Sure enough the security code on the back is black on dark blue, though you can read it if you angle the card and reflect light off the back.

Tue May 21 2024

Sleep 0730 to 1130, 1700 to 1900 (6 hours)

• I didn't realize Twitter has a list of what it thinks are your interests. I went through it and so many topics I looked at once years ago. Luckily you can uncheck them one at a time.

Wed May 22 2024

Sleep 0030 to 0900 (8-1/2 hours)

• HOA special meeting where vendor presented a couple of designs for the courtyard. Both are quite nice and better than I expected. For some reason I was expecting a bunch of cardboard cutouts of trees and shrubs but this is a good amount of foliage with benches.

Thu May 23 2024

Sleep 0130 to 0600 (4-1/2 hours)

• Oh, A+ Mailboxes & More moved locations (use them for notary service). It's across the street from my local Safeway. 30m walk instead of 10m. Guess I'll try tomorrow and go grocery shopping.

Fri May 24 2024

Sleep 2200 to 0300, 0800 to 1100 (8 hours)

• One thing I kind of like is that when you buy a product on itch.io you get signed up to a mailing list for that product so you can get notices if the product is updated or very similar. But if you have several products from a company and they want to send out a news blast you get several notices. It'd be nice if itch.io recognized that use case and not send multiple emails... And generically it'd be nice if companies didn't use product mailing lists (e.g. Kickstarter and BackerKit have similar one-email-list-per-product) for general announcements.

Hellboy comics are about Hellboy and even though there may be other characters he's the star. B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) is like a team comic book where Hellboy is one of a team, though I don't recall if he's even in these comics because he retired from the BPRD and then went missing for a few years.

Mike Mignola's BPRD Bundle (archive.org link) is $18 and you can add the first bundle (Hellboy TPBs) for another $12.

I have the first BPRD series and a few of the second in physical TPBs. Still this bundle would be 17 new books for me so well worth it.

 Jan 2003 BPRD v1: Hollow Earth (own)
 Aug 2004 BPRD v2: Soul of Venice (own)
 Feb 2005 BPRD v3: A Plague of Frogs (own)
 Sep 2005 BPRD v4: The Dead (own)
 Jul 2006 BPRD v5: The Black Flame (own)
 Jan 2007 BPRD v6: The Universal Machine (own)
 Jan 2008 BPRD v7: Garden of Souls (own)
 May 2008 BPRD v8: Killing Ground (own)
 Nov 2008 BPRD v9: 1946 (own)
 Apr 2009 BPRD v10: The Warning (own)
 Oct 2009 BPRD v11: The Black Goddess (own)
 Apr 2010 BPRD v12: War on Frogs (own)
 Jul 2010 BPRD v13: 1947 (own)
 Nov 2010 BPRD v14: King of Fear (own)

 Aug 2011 BPRD Hell on Earth v1: New World
 Dec 2011 BPRD: Being Human (own)
 Feb 2012 BPRD Hell on Earth v2: Gods and Monsters (own)
 Aug 2012 BPRD Hell on Earth v3: Russia (own)
 Dec 2012 BPRD Hell on Earth v4: Devil's Engine & Long Death
 Jul 2013 BPRD Hell on Earth v5: The Pickens County Horror
 Aug 2013 BPRD Hell on Earth v6: The Return of the Master (own)
 Sep 2013 BPRD: 1948
 Jan 2014 BPRD Hell on Earth v7: A Cold Day in Hell
 Apr 2014 BPRD Hell on Earth v8: Lake of Fire
 Sep 2014 BPRD Hell on Earth v9: The Reign of the Black Flame
 Mar 2015 BPRD Hell on Earth v10: The Devil's Wings
 Sep 2015 BPRD Hell on Earth v11: Flesh and Stone
 Dec 2015 BPRD Hell on Earth v12: Metamorphosis
 May 2016 BPRD Hell on Earth v13: End of Days
 Sep 2016 BPRD Hell on Earth v14: The Exorcist
 Mar 2017 BPRD Hell on Earth v15: Cometh the Hour
 Feb 2019 BPRD: Vampire 2E

 Apr 2018 BPRD The Devil You Know v1: Messiah
 Feb 2019 BPRD The Devil You Know v2: Pandemonium
 Jul 2019 BPRD The Devil You Know v3: Ragna Rok

2024-06-03: bought the bundle. BPRD Vampire is actually first edition (144 pages vs 160 pages).

The expiration date is coming up so they sent me a new Apple Card. It comes in a CD-sized mailing box and quite sturdy. Also during mailing you get several emails telling you it's on the way, it'll arrive the next day, it'll arrive today, it's arrived.

There is a mail back cardboard envelope to send in your old card for recycling. Be careful since the Apple Cards are identical don't confuse them.

There is a nice colored cardboard greeting card-like foldover that has the Apple Card in an insert. The holder is important as you need to put your iPhone on it (with the Apple Card inside) to activate the card.

Hold your iPhone there and a couple sends later you press Activate and you're done.

In any case I don't bring the physical card with me. I bring a Visa and an AMEX card and use Apple Pay on my phone which defaults to Apple Card.

Sat May 11 2024

Sleep 0330 to 0630, 1045 to 1215, 1830 to 2030 (6-1/2 hours)

• Right foot hurting last night so couldn't sleep. Hope it doesn't swell up.
• Was eating light on meat Thu and Fri but maybe still too much meat on Wed.
• Dave S, Dave W and I played Borderlands 3. It's slightly laggy playing on my Mac. Switching to windows it's fine but the mouse is very sensitive so need to adjust.

Sun May 12 2024

Sleep 0145 to 1100 (9-1/4 hours)

• Foot feels fine this morning.

Mon May 13 2024

Sleep 0800 to 1430 (6-1/2 hours)

• Did not feel sleepy until about 0700.
• Received a letter from County of San Mateo asking for various SSN and income data they need. The letter is dated May 08, I received it today, they want my reply by next Mon May 20. Good thing I checked my mail today since it often takes me a couple of weeks or more.

Tue May 14 2024

Sleep 0745 to 1515 (7-1/2 hours)

• Optum Financial (my HSA account) switched from asking a security question (which is effectively asking for a second password) to text message verification (at least that's a separate communication link). Perhaps someday they'll do authentication app or Passkey.

Wed May 15 2024

Sleep 2245 to 0345, 1330 to 1530 (7 hours)

• VMWare Fusion Pro is now free for personal use. Previously it was Fusion Player that was free but it is now discontinued.
• Broadcom support site is very slow. Don't know if it's just today and everyone downloading Fusion.
• After eating three pieces of chicken yesterday this morning I'm starting to feel it in my right ankle area. So gout is more and more likely.

Thu May 16 2024

Sleep 0115 to 1015 (9 hours)

• New CrossOver 24.0.3 update has fix for macOS explorer.exe hang. So it says.

Fri May 17 2024

Sleep 1115 to 1700 (5-3/4 hours)

• DDO We did The Claw of Vulkoor (H), Fathom the Depths (N) and Reclamation (R3).

These are games only GOG offers sine they're all old and on Mac run via DOSBox. Turns out there are very few Mac-compatible games exclusive to GOG.

Echelon (1988, $1.50, 75% off) - a futuristic flying simulator where you roam an alien planet shooting aliens, finding artifacts, and rescuing people.

Elvira Horror Bundle (1990/91, $8, 20% off) - the only $5-$10 choice. Combination of first-person fantasy dungeon rpg with point and click puzzle solver. Never really read the description but it and the reviews make it seem interesting.

A Kiss For The Petals - Maidens of Michael (2018, $19.25, 45% off) - the only $10+ choice. Yuri visual novel with some nsfw material.

Apple Music is doing a 100 Best Albums list. The first 20 are out with comments on why each was picked.

#100 Robyn: Body Talk - I don't have this album so should check it out.

#96 Lorde: Pure Heroine - I have this one. It's really good.

#89 Lady Gaga: The Fame Monster (Deluxe Edition) - Lady Gag is one of those really popular artists that I've never really listened to. Maybe I should start.

#85 Kacey Musgraves: Golden Hour - Haven't listened to new country music in maybe decades. Not sure this is the one to restart this as it's described as "ethereal country pop".

Sat May 04 2024

Sleep 0530 to 1515 (9-3/4 hours)

• So iCloud.com syncing even with macOS Safari doesn't work. First sync goes through but next one gets stuck "Saving..."

Sun May 05 2024

Sleep 0815 to 1430 (6-1/4 hours)

• Bought the five Ars Magica 5E bundles for $134.

Mon May 06 2024

Sleep 0715 to 1445 (7-1/2 hours)

• Decision tried to charge my CC for Strategy & Tactics subscription but since it's Apple Card and two months later the security code had changed. Guess I'll have to order it online myself.

Tue May 07 2024

Sleep 0200 to 1045 (8-3/4 hours)

• In TV app it's hard to tell which Apple TV+ movies are originals vs temporary content. Going through the list you can kind of tell since the temporary content is mostly famous movies but they're not split up from original films so I use Wikipedia's List of Apple TV+ original films.

Wed May 08 2024

Sleep 0715 to 1400 (6-3/4 hours)

• Dinner at C3's. Delivery from Avenida (Philippine food). It was alright but too pricey.

Thu May 09 2024

Sleep 0030 to 0315, 1000 to 1400 (6-3/4 hours)

• DDO Astral Traveler's Coffer is the third such offering. Each maxes at 8k DDO points (approximately $40 if you buy DDO points in bulk). I bought all three because I have a lot of spare DDO points and really want the 30 extra shared storage slot each offering provides. I may buy the next coffer to get my account to 400 shared storage slots and at that point I'll have 18k DDO points which I should save just in case.

Fri May 10 2024

Sleep 2330 to 0100, 0615 to 1045, 1700 to 1800. (7 hours)

• Dave S, Dave W and I played DDO, finishing Threnal at R2.

Tesla M3 with 82 kWh battery. At $0.686 per kWh Tier 2 usage it's $57.63 to recharge battery / 341 mile range = $0.169 per mile.

Toyota Camry Hybrid 2007 city driving I'm getting about 35 mpg at $5.45 per gallon (my local Chevron) = $0.156 per mile.

So an EV wouldn't necessarily save me much. Low usage outside of the four months of Summer (so I stay at Tier 1 electricity usage) it would be $0.140 per mile. My electricity usage is such that I can do two full recharges and stay at Tier 1 so that's 12.7 miles per day of driving.

Really more of an advantage if you have solar panels and a house battery. EV maintenance cost is less (though replacing parts is quite expensive for a Tesla).

After today's announcement of new iPad Air and iPad Pro these are my current thoughts.

Airport Time Capsule --> AmpliFi Alien Router ($380 for router only)

Used to be Linksys Velop AX4200 WiFi 6 Mesh System ($250 for 1 unit). I like that AmpliFi has a screen so you can see status and it has a built-in VPN. Lack of USB port for printer doesn't matter since my current printer uses WiFi. Neither router supports WiFi 6e.

Drobo 5c --> None

Now that I stopped using my Drobo I don't really miss it. Instead of plugging in one device to access all my external media I plug in one HD at a time but the way I have it setup my main data is on one 14-TB HD and the other 14-TB HD is for archival stuff I rarely read. I then do weekly syncs to backup 14-TB HDs -- I don't really need immediate sync that a RAID system provides.

iPhone SE 3rd gen (128 GB) --> same ($480)

I'm still paying off my iPhone SE so don't expect to replace it for a few years.

Apple Watch s7 (44mm) --> Apple Watch SE (44mm) ($280)

Remains the same. Again I hope not to need replacing for a few years.

iPad Pro 10.5" (256 GB) --> iPad Air 11-inch (M2, 256 GB, Wi-Fi) ($700)

Used to be iPad mini (256 GB, Wi-Fi) ($650) but that's 2-1/2 years old so until there's a new iPad mini my emergency replacement is the just-released iPad Air. My iPad Pro is 6-1/2 years old and still works fine so don't expect to replace it any time soon.

MacBook Pro --> MBP 14-inch (M3 Pro, 11-core CPU, 14-core GPU, 36 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD) ($3200)

Previously it was configurations that came to max $2500 with tax so now I'm upping it to $3300 with tax. But this is a faster configuration (strangely 36 GB RAM is max but that should be as good as my current 64 GB RAM Intel MBP) and 2 TB SSD is minimum (1 TB for Mac, 1 TB for Windows).

My current MBP is 4 years old and works fine. I do use 4 TB space on my Mac partition but I think I can offload most of it if I had to.

Mac mini --> upgrade MBP

I think at this point the expectation is that if the Mac mini dies I should replace my MBP and use the old one as a server. My Mac mini is 6 years old (and a 2014 design) but still works fine for my modest server needs.

Sat Apr 27 2024

Sleep 0445 to 1315 (8-1/2 hours)

• Looks like DriveThruRPG classic UI is dead as I can't seem to switch back to it.

Sun Apr 28 2024

Sleep 0800 to 1100 (3 hours)

• Humble Bundle - Fallout RPG and 2D Miniatures Encore. Most of this $18 bundle is the Wasteland Warfare miniatures game with almost half being STL files. A few RPG items: Wasteland Warfare RPG and two adventures. Not worth buying for me.

Mon Apr 29 2024

Sleep 0000 to 0130, 0800 to 1445 (8-1/4 hours)

• (Windows) Microsoft Edge new tab shows so much content. Even after you disable it all there is still a search box that uses Bing, which you can't change. You can set the default search if you type in the address bar and you can make search box use address bar (i.e. when you type in search box the cursor and typing goes to address bar) and that's the closest you can get. A little weird that you start typing in one place and it automatically types somewhere else.
• (Windows) Trying to use iCloud Notes. It loads data fine. When you edit a note it wants to sync changes up fairly often but only the first sync works so I can read the note on my iPad and see the first word or two inserted; if I paste in a paragraph as my first edit then it'll sync the whole paragraph. It's done this with Edge and Duck Duck Go (which turns out uses system web framework so on Windows it's basically Edge engine), Brave, and Chrome so at this point would be using iCloud Notes as mostly read-only.

Tue Apr 30 2024

Sleep 0030 to 0530, 1130 to 1330 (7 hours)

• (Windows) Installed Steam DDO. DDO wants some DirectX 9.0c libraries (otherwise it doesn't run) and I'm using Windows 10 with DirectX 12. If you web search for "microsoft directx 9.0c download" the first hit is for DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer which installs older DirectX libraries used by legacy applications. Once installed DDO ran fine.

Wed May 01 2024

Sleep 2330 to 0900 (9-1/2 hours)

• This weekend all MLS games are free so will be aggressively watching them since there'll probably only be free for a few days after broadcast.

Thu May 02 2024

Sleep 0030 to 0130 , 0700 to 0900, 1530 to 1830 (6 hours)

• There's been tree trimming of two trees that are leaning towards the next building. There is one apartment between me and the trimming and it's pretty loud. AirPods Pro help a little but certainly the AirPods Max were great at noise cancellation.

Fri May 03 2024

Sleep 0045 to 0445, 0700 to 1030 (7-1/2 hours)

• Didn't see the SPF record that Dave added. Did it myself with help of his notes and seems to work.

We use Gmail as our mail servers but that's a different domain than tgd-inc.com. A few days ago I got a bounce since our domain doesn't have a DNS SPF record, which basically says that for our domain mail from these servers are fine.

I sent an email to my Yahoo account and the header has:

Return-Path: 
Received-SPF: none (domain of tgd-inc.com does not designate permitted sender hosts)
Authentication-Results: atlas315.free.mail.ne1.yahoo.com;
 dkim=pass header.i=@tgd-inc-com.20230601.gappssmtp.com header.s=20230601;
 spf=none smtp.mailfrom=tgd-inc.com;
 dmarc=unknown header.from=tgd-inc.com;

I did an nslookup to see what Google has set up (v=spf1 is the line we want).

% nslookup -type=txt google.com 
;; Truncated, retrying in TCP mode.
Server:		8.8.8.8
Address:	8.8.8.8#53

Non-authoritative answer:
google.com	text = "facebook-domain-verification=22rm551cu4k0ab0bxsw536tlds4h95"
google.com	text = "docusign=05958488-4752-4ef2-95eb-aa7ba8a3bd0e"
google.com	text = "onetrust-domain-verification=de01ed21f2fa4d8781cbc3ffb89cf4ef"
google.com	text = "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all"
google.com	text = "docusign=1b0a6754-49b1-4db5-8540-d2c12664b289"
google.com	text = "webexdomainverification.8YX6G=6e6922db-e3e6-4a36-904e-a805c28087fa"
google.com	text = "apple-domain-verification=30afIBcvSuDV2PLX"
google.com	text = "google-site-verification=wD8N7i1JTNTkezJ49swvWW48f8_9xveREV4oB-0Hf5o"
google.com	text = "globalsign-smime-dv=CDYX+XFHUw2wml6/Gb8+59BsH31KzUr6c1l2BPvqKX8="
google.com	text = "MS=E4A68B9AB2BB9670BCE15412F62916164C0B20BB"
google.com	text = "google-site-verification=TV9-DBe4R80X4v0M4U_bd_J9cpOJM0nikft0jAgjmsQ"

I added a tgd-inc.com DNS TXT record with "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all" then tried a test email. This is also what Google Workspace Admin Help says for SPF record and I guess that's how Dave has our stuff setup with Google.

Sent email to my Yahoo account and header looks good:Return-Path: 
Received-SPF: pass (domain of tgd-inc.com designates 209.85.210.178 as permitted sender)
Authentication-Results: atlas220.free.mail.ne1.yahoo.com;
 dkim=pass header.i=@tgd-inc-com.20230601.gappssmtp.com header.s=20230601;
 spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=tgd-inc.com;
 dmarc=unknown header.from=tgd-inc.com;

Here 209.85.210.178 is mail-pf1-f178.google.com.