This place is usually crammed with patients, with lots of confusing background noise - it's an extremely tiring experience. My experience isn't helped by the fact that I'm not a morning person and usually get one of their last appointments for the day.

This time I got stuck with an appointment at 8.15am. That's half an hour before then officially open, but I thought that maybe they used the time to dilate everyone's eyes. And I figured that at least this time I'd be out of the office fairly quickly, instead of having my appointment take a couple hours while they go through the queue.

So I get in this morning, 8.10am on the dot. They say their internet is down and everything is a bit slower as a result. I'm like, that's fine -- and after all, I got one of the first appointments of the day, so I can't be delayed that much, right?

Nope. It's now 9.15, a full hour after my "early" appointment, and I still haven't been called back - though lots of other people have been called back already.

The nice thing is that the waiting room is less chaotic and noisy than usual; the annoying thing is that I have no idea when I'll be called back to do the eye dilation thing, much less when I'll see the actual doctor.

Update: brought in for eye dilation at 9.30, saw the doctor at 9.45 (the bare minimum time for the drops to work). Since I've torn both retinas in the past, they usually spend like ten minutes telling me to look in all sorts of directions; this time it was like "look up. look down. you're fine, bye". Finally left around 10am.

The waiting room was absolutely crammed with people when I left. As I passed some of the folks in standing room only, I mentioned that my appointment was for 8.15, which was met with a collective groan for the wait they were going to have.

I'm glad I had an early appointment, I'm glad I got my eyes checked, I'm ecstatic that they're fine, and I'm delighted to be home in my nice dark bedroom for the rest of the day.

Sid and Marty Krofft spurred my childhood imagination: from H.R. Pufnstuf to The Bugaloos to Land of the Lost, they brought me whimsy and bright colors, and gave me a love of weirdness and fantasy. I'm grateful for their gifts, and wish them joy and happiness in their journeys.

And thank you, Eric!

And thank you, Eric!

More blatant bribery, as she tries to set up a luxury lifestyle after her husband dies

Dozens of people are presumed dead and about 100 injured following a fire at a Swiss Alps bar during a New Year’s celebration.

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Thanksgiving holiday to the next to last Thursday of November, one week earlier than its traditional observance. This change was intended to help boost the economy by providing an extra seven days for Christmas shopping.

Sean Dunn faced single misdemeanor offense after federal grand jurors refused to indict him on the felony charge sought by prosecutors.

Like many others, when the reddit APIcalypse happened, I moved to the fediverse. Like many, I wasn't sure what it really consisted of, how it worked, or what instance to move to. Eventually I decided to sign up with kbin.social. Ernest was welcoming, the instance was friendly with a nice mix of topics, the community was great, having access to both threadiverse and microblogs was great, and I loved it.

And then Ernest started having health issues and the instance became unstable. Eventually I moved to fedia/mbin, which I enjoy a lot, but I just haven't quite felt that same sense of belonging - I don't know, maybe the new job just kept me away a bit too much, or I'm getting old, or just been through too many changes. But I've kept kbin on my launch page, and sometimes I find myself a bit wistful for it.

I poked at the internet, and the kbin.social domain expires in a few days, on 10 September, which I suppose will be a formal end to the project. In memory of kbin, I'd like thank Ernest: wherever you are, I hope you are well and enjoying your life. Thank you for the concepts behind and your work on kbin; I love the bridging of the microblogs and threadiverse. And thank you for making the transition to the fediverse less confusing to this old redditor. I wish you the best in life, and thank you again.

Sorry if I'm in the wrong place. Is there a setting where I can turn off people's ability to PM me? The spamgirl is annoying me, and I'm sure more will follow in her wake.

On other sites with spam issues, I'd turn off the ability for people to PM me and, if they asked on a thread I was on, I'd either re-enable PMs or add them to an approved users list. I thought I'd seen that ability here (I'm on the plain web version of fedia.io), but may well have been confusing it with some other site.

Thank you!

Archive link: https://archive.is/aQYaj

Unsilent Night is happening 6pm Sunday; meet at the Guardhouse at Rittenhouse Square. The music you hear changes on how many people are playing which tracks, where you are in the crowd, and how the environment you're moving through reflects or deadens the sound. It's pretty cool - join us for a (cold) stroll on Sunday evening!

There are five games to play, including a strike-themed take on Wordle.

A Pennsylvania woman whose absentee ballot was returned to her instead of being counted said she flew from Berlin back to her home state to vote in person.

A Pennsylvania woman whose absentee ballot was returned to her instead of being counted said she flew from Berlin back to her home state to vote in person.

Colin Gray, whose son is charged with the slayings of 4 people at Apalachee High School, asked a judge to be separated from other inmates behind bars.