Post AifLWTYe9LAV1Fucq0 by A_C_McGregor@topspicy.social
(DIR) More posts by A_C_McGregor@topspicy.social
(DIR) Post #AifL0ecfTX3y4NcTgW by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:11:36Z
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we need metacomputers.one of the big features of computers and how they improved productivity was how they let us automate a lot of things that we had to do by hand before.well, most of the things I have to do by hand these days involve badly designed software.
(DIR) Post #AifL0hmLjzadrHAkgy by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:11:47Z
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I don't want to use computers anymore.I want to use metacomputers that use computers for me
(DIR) Post #AifLWTYe9LAV1Fucq0 by A_C_McGregor@topspicy.social
2024-06-06T23:15:54Z
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@foone isn't this just virtual servers?
(DIR) Post #AifLfoWBaaEQdIDKt6 by bhearsum@fosstodon.org
2024-06-06T23:16:29Z
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@foone This is what people want AI to be, I think? :(
(DIR) Post #AifLomJf94a0PSdBYm by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:17:56Z
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@munin fun fact: the software I'm currently subtooting? I manage it using two custom keyboards I designed and a python script doing a lot of screen scraping.
(DIR) Post #AifLyKHgDqkYMkFxey by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:22:45Z
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this isn't about "the cloud" or virtualization or even AI.it's about using UIs to do Your Task that do the thing you want, rather than whatever the person who made the program wanted.
(DIR) Post #AifLyNHn3tcXfxKakS by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:23:19Z
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like you know how there's a lot of programs that are just basically fancy UIs around commandline tools like ffmpeg?that, but instead of wrapping commandline tools, we're wrapping GUI tools
(DIR) Post #AifMCExIpaEHtSMNDE by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:24:26Z
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in the future, everyone will be a GUI program designer for 15 minutes
(DIR) Post #AifMKyEMNoKId1V8PQ by whitequark@mastodon.social
2024-06-06T23:26:31Z
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@foone metaconstructs making metacomputersyeah this checks out
(DIR) Post #AifMRdzS2EONsfi4eG by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:27:17Z
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does anyone make a laptop which has USB-device support and an HDMI capture port? I could just put my laptop down in front of the computer I'm supposed to use, and it could click on things for me and look at the screen for me
(DIR) Post #AifMeyPDRRnQxm7JU8 by GabeMoralesVR@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-06-06T23:27:59Z
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@foone tfw when you use macro programs to click on GUI elements then need to hunt down a program to automatically align windows in the precise location so the event clicks land on the right ui buttons
(DIR) Post #AifMn6Jduqo3oRNyls by Techronic9876@sigmoid.social
2024-06-06T23:28:01Z
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@foone agreed. This is what I interpret Jensen Huangs statement that every pixel will be ai generated
(DIR) Post #AifN3wZLPJh0VSlGBk by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:28:43Z
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This clearly has been misinterpreted by everyone suggesting this is AI or virtualization because frankly I have been feeling like this since 1995 when none of that was on the radar yet
(DIR) Post #AifNBr6FcrAFrPvSVc by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:29:10Z
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@GabeMoralesVR been there, done that, wrote both the macro program and the program to align the windows
(DIR) Post #AifNIMB8zJX9zIJYaO by guffo@topspicy.social
2024-06-06T23:29:59Z
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@foone I’ve been saying for years that I’d love to write a sufficiently complex series of scripts and utilities to do an entire day’s work for me automatically and have it fired off each morning by me pressing a huge button with JOB written on it while I eat breakfast
(DIR) Post #AifNVa1aov7ih89VXk by Farbs@mastodon.social
2024-06-06T23:30:12Z
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@foone I'm pretty sure metacomputers are just programmers.They used to be very expensive, but a lot of big businesses have started throwing them out so you can probably get a second hand one pretty cheap.
(DIR) Post #AifNhzcjTAl3Z0RWhE by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:31:15Z
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@guffo I'm only one very dexterous robot arm away from doing that with my current job
(DIR) Post #AifNoIGF5c5r6TvaQS by EMR@mastodon.sdf.org
2024-06-06T23:32:29Z
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@foone I believe this is called getting promoted into management
(DIR) Post #AifO2QhqUGg3Lla04O by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:34:39Z
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@EMR only if they let me manage robots, not humans. I have less than zero interest in telling humans what to do and will avoid it if at all possible.
(DIR) Post #AifOIGE1DuJ1TdB2um by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:39:37Z
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also, the root cause is that I'm having to use software that doesn't act in predictable user-friendly ways, right? so I want a meta layer that insulates me from that.AI is not the solution to this problem. AI is one of the types of problems this is trying to solve!
(DIR) Post #AifOIJSfBunpVv3Heq by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:41:24Z
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it's also not "the cloud" either because one of the major problems I want my metasoftware to work around is HAVING TO WAIT ON CLOUD SERVERS.
(DIR) Post #AifOIKq64H8pmt1Vp2 by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:43:00Z
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Computers are great at waiting! They can just sit there in a loop waiting for a response, periodically trying again if needed.Computers are great at waiting, but I, a (presumed) human with ADHD, am very shit at it. That's why I write software to wait for me, so I can do other stuff while the cloud is being slow
(DIR) Post #AifOklJ5FvHHz28XdA by camstonefaux@furry.engineer
2024-06-06T23:44:58Z
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@foone Based on what I’ve seen, I don’t think there is one with a native HDMI captive port, and the HDMI capture USB (3.0) dongles are all pretty crappy (elgato is supposedly “ok”, but I don’t think it’s that good.) Probably better building a SFF PC and using a low profile PCIe capture card.
(DIR) Post #AifOqnjFAEQZETFiKW by niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be
2024-06-06T23:41:08.434Z
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@foone@digipres.club It's called AutoHotkey
(DIR) Post #AifOqoXa94h3kanunA by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:44:54Z
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@niconiconi If AutoHotkey is a knife, I want an A-10 Warthog or an aircraft carrier.
(DIR) Post #AifOyjbSO2XKknORV2 by ducksauz@snug.town
2024-06-06T23:49:29Z
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@foone @munin The lead provisioning engineer at an MSSP I worked at in the aughts automated most of the device provisioning for the security devices we managed for our customers with a metric crapton of AutoHotKey scripts. I found it simultaneously glorious and horrifying.
(DIR) Post #AifP5vTkdDNVc3DaPQ by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:50:56Z
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To be clear, the context here is that I am a professional computer automation engineer: my last two jobs have primarily focused on controlling GUI applications for testing or performance reasons. I've been releasing software to do this very thing for like 20 years: this is not just someone complaining that software is "too hard" and needing to be told about AutoHotkey.
(DIR) Post #AifPRjG0kfiq4xBhhI by bersl2@furry.engineer
2024-06-06T23:53:51Z
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@foone Nobody knows when to write a library, when to write a CLI, when to write a GUI, when to provide a network service, or when to provide a website. It is a goddamn mystery, and no matter what is chosen, what is written will always suck.
(DIR) Post #AifPYUdvUAoYmSbDe4 by GabeMoralesVR@mastodon.gamedev.place
2024-06-06T23:56:17Z
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@foone Oh ya I've been down that rabbit hole too lol
(DIR) Post #AifPfybUUUZDjH1pGi by FrostyFoxTeals@grimgreenfo.rest
2024-06-06T23:55:39.338Z
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@foone@digipres.club when you're bored so you make an entire video game to pass the time
(DIR) Post #AifPfzT1HTNwPI4Zhg by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-06T23:59:13Z
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@FrostyFoxTeals I've written video games in car trips before! my ability to get bored is EXCEPTIONAL
(DIR) Post #AifR2av2odI0t4WW4e by ali1234@mastodon.social
2024-06-07T00:03:39Z
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@foone With USB C you could in theory build all this into a cable with a small box in the middle but unfortunately nobody has that I know of. All the individual pieces exist, it just needs 6 or 7 cables. :(
(DIR) Post #AifRCm6C6W8aSNapYe by alexhammy@hachyderm.io
2024-06-07T00:04:08Z
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@foone ya I was gonna be like "Selenium" but I figure you've heard about it once or twice
(DIR) Post #AifRLC9R7stVZb7n5E by abrasive@digipres.club
2024-06-07T00:04:17Z
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@foone oh my lord this is such a glorious idea - since apparently we will never solve criminally bad UI/UX :'(the thing is I'd still use it even if it took me way longer to configure and debug than the time it would have taken to do by hand! apparently that is more acceptable to my adhd's frustration limits
(DIR) Post #AifRefKqqQCfaWkRwu by blami@mastodon.online
2024-06-07T00:07:10Z
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@foone I had this abandoned project to build a simple GUI toolkit for my toy OS where everything user can somehow interact with has public API so that also script or program can interact with it in sane way without external tools.
(DIR) Post #AifRmHan0JPGGdpqK0 by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-07T00:07:32Z
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@abrasive yeah exactly! ADHD just makes this worse because it's infinitely better to spend hours and hours building automation than to spend minutes doing it manually
(DIR) Post #AifRxJ8Pbt80Ehoq3M by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-07T00:07:42Z
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@blami that sounds like a wonderful idea
(DIR) Post #AifS3dH9dh2aRKvM6S by Specialist_Being_677@hachyderm.io
2024-06-07T00:10:03Z
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@foone you just want your role to take over the world 😅
(DIR) Post #AifSAfiAytie1Ov5km by abrasive@digipres.club
2024-06-07T00:15:23Z
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@foone I reckon you could fit an MS2130 HDMI-USB3 chip and a little OTG micro into a Framework expansion card? might have to use micro-HDMI butobviously the logical conclusion of this is to have a camera and a keyboard-poking arm on the back of the laptop screen
(DIR) Post #AifSI7jDDL3mwOxRVg by plaidtron3000@jorts.horse
2024-06-07T00:18:03Z
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@foone I hear you but what happens if the window moves or changes dimensions? Any sufficiently advanced visual recognizer is either AI or indistinguishable from AI. let’s consider instead Microsoft’s position on apps and Powershell. To paraphrase “In Unix, everything is a file, in Windows everything is an API.” So most of the administrative and mgmt features of windows are (or have) APIs that care hooked directly or indirectly through powershell.
(DIR) Post #AifSI9O137IG5F3XkW by plaidtron3000@jorts.horse
2024-06-07T00:18:03Z
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@foone if every app was written with documented and exposed APIs so you could use them directly through a series of scripts or you own hand rolled UIs, is that what you’re asking for?
(DIR) Post #AifSIAq3eLJoaVBS64 by plaidtron3000@jorts.horse
2024-06-07T00:18:03Z
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@foone Or remember the early ish days of X windows, when most of the window state was exposed across all apps so you could automate interactions? An app could move the mouse, hook another windows’s widget, scrape another window’s text box etc. Of course this wasn’t very secure.
(DIR) Post #AifSICJABcC793oD6O by plaidtron3000@jorts.horse
2024-06-07T00:18:36Z
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@foone And shit what about the old Component Object Model? Crufty? Absolutely. Old and busted? Sure. But maybe someone smarter than me could reimplement the best ideas there in something new. There were object oriented data-first implementations, where you interacted with the document, instead of the application. The OS exposed the correct UI for the type of data you were editing.
(DIR) Post #AifSIDWfesaqvF8VnM by plaidtron3000@jorts.horse
2024-06-07T00:18:36Z
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@foone Fuck it. Let’s convince everyone to write in smalltalk, expose their APIs, and run everything on Plan 9 or Apollo Domain
(DIR) Post #AifTlLjoJ0Eck8jmgy by plaidtron3000@jorts.horse
2024-06-07T00:24:20Z
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@foone well youve probably got the vision problem solved then, forget I said anything about that.
(DIR) Post #AifTxJwumVbIfeZj8K by ZiggyTheHamster@ruby.social
2024-06-07T00:31:03Z
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@foone so kinda like if you could use AppleScript on every computing system that has ever existed and could perform every function possible through the UI?
(DIR) Post #AifU5Ka4JjdOwii01Y by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-07T00:39:51Z
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@ZiggyTheHamster right
(DIR) Post #AifUD1AMNtUl37Lhg0 by kevinriggle@ioc.exchange
2024-06-07T00:40:28Z
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@foone arguably you already are (APIs). Clearly the answer is another level of abstraction
(DIR) Post #AifUXW9Eu6nwvhbFtA by sebbs@dotnet.social
2024-06-07T00:48:26Z
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@foone I know Selenium has been mentioned already, but there's also Power Automate Desktop on Windows
(DIR) Post #AifUegaYU6TJKznL6m by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-07T00:45:37Z
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@kevinriggle You can solve every problem in computer science by adding a layer of abstraction! except for the problem of having too many layers of abstraction, of course
(DIR) Post #AifUzaqf1PPncFIV8q by jlargentaye@mas.to
2024-06-07T01:02:31Z
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@foone This is why I prefer the CLI over the GUI. The CLI is composable and automatable (scriptable) in a way that a GUI cannot be.
(DIR) Post #AifV9a72c1JiEIip72 by 1nd33d@www.1nd33d.social
2024-06-07T01:03:35Z
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@foone @kevinriggle In enterprise solutions you'll just abstract that away.
(DIR) Post #AifWP3TnoANlblJJui by yomimono@wandering.shop
2024-06-07T01:19:53Z
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@foone @ZiggyTheHamster applescript is the only bit of apple special sauce that i’m mad about having missed out on. It seems so useful and magical and I think it’s a huge failure that we don’t have a good equivalent in any free OS or desktop environment(it would be so cool if this summoned a ton of people telling me exactly how i’m wrong)
(DIR) Post #AifXEzzi0nAjrB0Gh6 by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-07T01:29:02Z
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@silvermoon82 It's a good start but frankly I consider Accessibility APIs as part of the enemy I am fighting. I don't want permission to be able to automate: I am going to automate, no matter what the software developer chooses to do
(DIR) Post #AifXaGmAoT4Vz9oaDg by Gustodon@mas.to
2024-06-07T01:33:02Z
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@foone 🏆
(DIR) Post #AifYP4c9myjb2HM3w8 by ZiggyTheHamster@ruby.social
2024-06-07T01:42:47Z
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@foone honestly I’d extend this to reality tootell appliance refrigerator to identify item “kimchi” end tell
(DIR) Post #AifZiSsFurrBjRhAae by SvenGeier@mathstodon.xyz
2024-06-07T01:57:29Z
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@foone The VNC protocol basically lets you do just that...
(DIR) Post #AifZz8ckSVpxqmONyS by zulc22@lethallava.land
2024-06-07T01:40:05.988Z
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@foone@digipres.club i remember i kinda did that with an old Win7 laptop to make Papa's Pizzeria Bad Apple because I don't know a reasonable way to directly make Flash think that I'm using the mouse a certain way, so I just fudged it with AHK and ran it on that machine for, a few weeks or something, however long it took to do every frame
(DIR) Post #AifZz9mMAH7JQrtZaa by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-07T01:59:29Z
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@zulc22 nice!
(DIR) Post #AifbT93ZVyVhpkoLhI by wrosecrans@mstdn.social
2024-06-07T02:17:16Z
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@foone It's one of the many things that has gotten way worse about using a computer over the last 30 years.Basically, you want AppleScript from the early 90's. It worked pretty well for automating GUI apps for like ten minutes, then everything was web apps and half-baked cross platform toolkits and Apple stopped caring about automation and moved to focus on walled gardens.We have strayed so far from the light.
(DIR) Post #AifdozbDYc1QmW5tU8 by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-07T02:43:19Z
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@LionsPhil I see what you mean.but what if "fixing the existing one" is not an option. What do you do? Do you fix it? or do you give up on ever using that program ever again, even if it's required for your job?
(DIR) Post #AifhdKfnmLFGTzvxTc by markjustmark@aus.social
2024-06-07T03:26:04Z
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@foone kinda sounds like you want a KVM that works over the network. You got the screen as a digital image, and can send key and mouse events (with a bit of hacking)
(DIR) Post #Aifpv5wU5O5JdpiYHg by foone@digipres.club
2024-06-07T04:59:20Z
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@UntaggedTransmitter Yeh, that sort of stuff is my job and my hobby
(DIR) Post #Aifqghbzqhiu58psBs by harshad@mastodon.sharma.io
2024-06-07T05:06:12Z
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@foone agree on the whole thread, I too enjoy building automation for the reasons you've already mentioned. And you're right, AI is not a solution.
(DIR) Post #AifurBlL0JZ2IySciW by mastazi@mastodon.social
2024-06-07T05:54:27Z
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@foone these are two solutions that I know of:1. the GPD Pocket 3 when equipped with the KVM module https://gpd.hk/gpdpocket32. any laptop with an Openterface mini-KVM
(DIR) Post #Aig9uZ4MIyWglrQR60 by mansr@society.oftrolls.com
2024-06-07T08:43:09Z
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@foone Like a VCR watches TV for you?
(DIR) Post #AigHQr8XMjgVkfizK4 by kalleboo@bitbang.social
2024-06-07T10:07:17Z
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@foone That was the vision behind AppleScript/AppleEvents. You’d write GUI software using an AppleEvents-based framework, and then it would automatically be 100% scriptable and even have the actions be recordable for people who didn’t want to code.Of course, nobody wanted to rewrite their software from scratch, and “early 90’s object oriented frameworks” were a massive PITA to use, so in the end it was just another “what the coder could be bothered to allow” macro language
(DIR) Post #AigK3A2niTM3IxQzya by defrenz@mastodon.social
2024-06-07T10:36:36Z
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@foone is this kinda the idea behind Apple Shortcuts? (Assuming apps do support it)
(DIR) Post #AiiLQa8rL9e5Ayv680 by ppxl@social.tchncs.de
2024-06-08T10:00:10Z
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@foone I'll say! Waiting is the wooorrrrsssttt. I hate it to my bones. Maybe bcs ADHD but still it winds me up until I explode when t happens too often