Two quick things here...

One, I effed up last night in the last project log. I've already edited it, but I believe in being responsible and calling out people not only for doing bad but for doing good -- and for holding myself to the same standards as everyone else. So I wanted to make sure that I called attention to the error I made last night and explained properly how it'd happened.

I had contacted "budgetsavers" on eBay for a potential upcoming purchase, to do with a project that is in absolutely no way related to this. They've got a small LCD screen up that I'm possibly interested in for a portable computer build. I'd sent them a request for any information not in the listing, because what they'd posted -- while probably fine for 90%+ of the sorts of customers they normally get -- omitted one piece of information that was mission-critical for me. Turns out they don't have that info, and the LCD is very likely one of those throwaway Chinese "brands" that happens because the people at the factory feel like they have to put *something* there, but there's really nothing to put.

The debacle with the seller who *IS* involved, a user with the handle "isellparts2u" (lol) happened prior to the conversation with "budgetsavers". When I was writing up the log last night, I was fairly sleepy, and annoyed not only by "isellparts2u"'s conduct, but by the fact that, although my mobile phone is my only camera right now, which makes picture transfer to anything else kind of a pain -- the SIM card and the MicroSD card are in a little pull-tray and you have to cut the phone off and stick a straight-pin or "mobile phone SIM card tool" in there to get at 'em... and then find your card reader (which always takes forever because I hardly ever use it!) or just email yourself lol but that takes just as long -- so I've actually been composing all of the project logs (this specific one here, that you're reading now, is the sole exception in this project) on my phone and touchscreen typing, to be diplomatic, sucks.

So when I was composing the log, I simply popped into my email and pulled the most recent communication with an eBay seller. I didn't open it, I just looked at the name of the sender (i.e., the seller). That email chain happened to be my communication with "budgetsavers" and I was too ticked off from the earlier debacle, and too sleepy from life in general, to actually notice that I'd screwed up. It was only in reporting the idiot to eBay via Twitter (because eBay won't bother with making the phones work, even though that does NOT require call centers! I had a friend who was struggling so bad she had to do telemarketing once, and she'd gone and gotten a cheap Tracphone for it, they required a second separate line, and she'd get calls pretty much literally whenever -- but it wasn't a call center, it was her and a gas-station-grade mobile phone) that I realized I'd mixed up which seller did what when.

My apologies to "budgetsavers" and to the Hackaday[dot]io community for the mixup. I hope nobody made a decision based on my error.

The other thing I want to mention is that I have a (lousy!) solution to the cable problem. I have the previously-mentioned USB-A-to-C connector adapters, two of them. They're a little hard plastic block with a flush-mount USB-A female connector for USB3.0 (the blue tongue and the extra... 5 pins, I think? at the back) set into one side, and the opposite side has a USB-C male plug sticking out. I also have a burnt-out USB WiFi "card" with a male USB2.0 connector, and several USB-A male half-cables that are bare wires hanging out at the other end for various reasons. I'm going to cut the connector and just a lil bit of PCB off the WiFi adapter and tack on one of the half-cables, and use it with one of the connector adapters to make this all work. It's the sort of hack you do late at night and never tell anyone about out of shame (lol) but it gets the job done so I guess it's okay here.

We'll see where things land after a day's work (or so) on this.

Oy.

We now return to your regularly-unscheduled programming...