I see that it was colder on this date back in 2019. A benefit of having a blog.
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Phone says that it is 2 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. Baby it's cold outside!
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Got the day off from work due to it being Martin King Luther Jr. day. It's very cold outside so I'll be spending the day indoors.
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Now that we have serious winter temperatures it's time to change the header graphic.
#Dave says, "Every blog should have a nice search engine like mine." I agree. Once upon a time Daytona worked with all Drummer blogs like this one and I enjoyed it very much.
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Dave has created
a new version of Daytona, which is the search engine he created a few years back for Drummer sites. The new iteration only works on Scripting News and I am not sure whether Dave will ever make this available for us few remaining Drummer users.
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Continue to see an increase in disconnects with my remote desktops. Trying some configuration changes.
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The rate of disconnects to my remote desktops has increased during the week to the point that I decided to reboot the Proxmox host, prior to which I decided to update the server. All of that happened as expected and right now I am connected to my debian12 remote desktop via RDP.
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For some reason I don't have the permissions to use MX Package Installer when I connect to MX Linux using VNC.
#Decided I wanted to try out a new remote desktop when I read about
MX Linux, so I have provisioned a VM in my homelab, installed MX Linux and configured TigerVNC Server for remote access. I installed Google Chrome and I am now using this desktop for my work day today. It doesn't benchmark as fast as the LXC containers I normally use but so far browser performance appears to be just fine.
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Manton has created a low cost version the environment I used for my primary blog called
micro.one. I honestly think the $5 per month I pay for
micro.blog is a good deal, but if you want to dip your toes in to blogging and the fediverse then micro.one is a very good way to start.
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For some reason I am getting a lot of RDP disconnects to my remote Debian 12 desktop due to encryption errors. I've had these issues forever and wish I could find a way to resolve it. VNC to my Fedora desktop has shown similar issues.
#Hello world! I am back for another year, although feeling like only a slight variant of myself because I have had COVID since New Year's day. It's my first work day of the year though I confess I am finding it difficult to focus as my brain still feels to be in a fog and I feel like I haven't had enough sleep.
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Remember eating pizza for lunch when I was in high school, and I remember that pizza being in squares, but I don't know whether
this was the recipe, but it's seems probable.
#Yesterday (Christmas day) is the first time that Netflix streamed live NFL games and I was happy to have a sports alternative to the NBA, which historically has been the only professional league playing on Christmas. Netflix's production did not go without a hitch for me using an Apple TV. I went in to the app and selected "Watch Live" which I expected would take me to whatever was the current place of the stream, but instead it started at the beginning of the stream an hour earlier. Worse, for some reason it got to a point where it just kept showing non-stop commercials, like it was stuck in a loop. I was screaming in frustration/anger because I knew the game had started and I was not able to watch it. It then dawned on me to look at the progress indicator at the bottom of the display and I noticed it mostly at the beginning on the left rather than the right, so I tried fast forwarding and that enabled me to catch up. I don't know what happened, I searched to see whether anyone else had the same experience and
I did not find any reports.
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I've decided to give
Obsidian another go. I have paid for one year of Obsidian sync and I have set up sync with my iPad Mini and Pixel 7a. On both devices I excluded sync of my Evernote import and on the phone I also excluded my Readwise import. Sync to the iPad took all night.
#Last work day of the year. I am about to start a period of two weeks of "vacation" and I don't normally take more than one week off at a time. Last night my wife asked if I had a to do list for this time. Some times I do make a list of projects for my time off that I usually don't complete.
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- I have a reflexive reaction to hypocrisy and that reflex is often triggered by Major League Baseball. Ever since Sammy Sosa left the Cubs in 2004 he has been not welcomed by the Chicago Cubs, mostly because of ownership's "holier than thou" attitude toward Sammy's use of performance enhancing drugs. Sammy's place in Cubs history and his alumni status were not to be recognized until he apologized. The hypocrisy is that every part of MLB, from ownership, the commissioner, the media, and the players knew who was taking PEDs and looked the other way for sake of all the money rolling in from the coverage of Sammy and Mark McGwire's season home run race in 1998. The fact that race re-engaged a pissed off fan base due to the players strike during 1994-95, which lead to millions of more dollars for all involved, seems lost on everyone.#
- So, Ricketts got his apology yesterday, and so all is forgiven and they look forward to seeing Sammy at the upcoming Cubs convention. Sure they would, like the "incident" itself, Sammy's participation in that convention will result in more money for all involved. Question, when is Mr. Ricketts going to apologize to Cubs fans for the poor product he has been putting on the field the last seven years? #
- As a fellow human being, Sammy Sosa deserves forgiveness and grace given to him for mistakes he made in the past, but is forgiveness only "given" upon condition truly forgiveness? Sosa, McGwire, Bonds and all the others could have been "better" humans, but like so many of us they gave in to the temptations and expectations put upon them. But, all of these players were and are being scapegoated by a corrupted system that wants our attention on them while the powers of the system put more money in their pocket. #
- Let's see an apology from the MLB baseball commissioner on behalf of the league and ownership for the culture they nurtured during the "PED era." As reconciliation, they can figure out how the hall of fame can recognize the good and the bad of these players as well as what was done to them. Further, a league that has gone all in on gambling really has no high ground to keep Pete Rose out of the hall of fame. #
Generations of people in the United States have
grown up under the thumb of institutions that they believe are corrupt. The only solution now, these people believe, is to blow up the institutions. The focus is on the destruction of the institutions with little thought about what comes next. Who decides what comes next and why? This is the opportunity the billionaire class sees for themselves, which is why people like Elon Musk are willing to "donate" their time go the new U.S. Presidential administration.
#Now that Android has a setting to stop charging after it reaches 80% I am using the Pixel Stand more and now I wish it had more features. Like, while the Phone is in the stand it would be cool if I could access Favorites in Google Home. And why should the phone be locked when it's in the stand? There is actually a Bluetooth connection between the stand and the phone.
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The season is truly upon us as the Manheim Christmas has come up on the music rotation.
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I have long believed that
health insurance should not be tied to one's employment, because that creates problems whenever some is let go or quits. A public marketplace like that provided under the Affordable Care Act that can provided group discounted rates is the only one that makes sense if you don't provide a government program like Medicare for all.
#Did the Pixel 7a charging status always show the time by which charging would be complete?
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Last night when I turned on the TV the set top box that Xfinity provides would not turn on. The chatbot in the Xfinity app guided me through some simple troubleshooting, tried a remote reset, and then scheduled a technician to come when it could not resolve the issue. Not sure why a technical needs to be dispatched, I would think Xfinity would simply send me a replacement set to box.
#Installed the
Android 15 QPR 1 update on my Pixel 7a yesterday. The most important new feature for me is the 80% limit on recharging the phone. Information I've seen about phone battery life suggests that continually charging the phones up to 100% has a big impact on battery life. I think that problem is made worse by wireless charging that makes it simple to just recharge the phone whenever it is not in my pocket. For example, I have the
Pixel Stand that really seems intended to be the resting space for my phone when I am at my desk, but before yesterday I had to be sure to not leave it on the stand once the battery reached 80% or so of charge. Now I (hopefully) no longer have to worry about that.
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Was seeing a problem of a pause while
my now page is rendering. Looking at the browser console, there appeared to be a problem reading my glossary.opml, which doesn't work with pagePark. At one time I added the glossary variable to the OPML headers of that file, but I have now deleted that and that appears to have resolved the issue.
#BTW, it would be really cool if the glossary did work with
pagePark.
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A few weeks back I started using
Arc as my default browser on the Macbook, I have to admit that I am enjoying the experience very much. I am probably just scratching the surface of the features. I can see why people have been praising it for so long.
#It's cold outside, windchill is driving the feels like temperature to 3 degrees, due to 16 mph sustained wins and gusts up to 38 mph. Snow squalls were all around us overnight but I think we got an inch of snow, at most.
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Isn't a chatbot nothing more than a command line interface? In some ways AI is taking us back to the future.
#AdventureLog is a self hosted travel log, and there is a Proxmox helper script to run it in an LXC container.
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Followed
these steps and the Utilities extension is enabled in Gemini on my Pixel 7a. With this extension it looks like Gemini has taken over much of the functions from Google Assistant.
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I've created a new wiki page for the
Macbook Pro M4. I need to make updates in the wiki and move it to a new server.
#Back to work after a nice four day weekend that happened to include Thanksgiving, plenty of food, Packers and Lions wins,
a movie, and the completion of
another book. I also packed up and shipped out the Pixel Watch and
Macbook Air.
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The Pixel Watch 3 has the same 41 mm size as the original
Pixel Watch but it has smaller bezels and that makes the display area larger. You don't notice the difference right away, but after some time I can now say that I appreciate the additional amount that I scan see on the screen.
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- Every now and then I have an experience that reminds me of just how much technology, in this case smartphones and their cameras, have changed our lives.#
- I have a La-Z-Boy recliner that is the center of my "man cave." The man cave is the basement of our condo, which also happens to be my home office during work days. Sunday night I sat down on the recliner and started falling backward, if I hadn't reacted I probably would have flipped myself and the chair over. Obviously, something broke, and my diagnosis found a part that looks like a clamp that attaches to a rod that runs across both sides of the chair had "ripped" and thus disconnecting what I assume looks like an arm that holds up the right back of the recliner when it's not reclined. When reclined the chair is perfectly stable.#
- Yesterday I called the service department of the La-Z-Boy store from which we bought the chair seven years ago. Yes, they service chairs, and it would cost $160 for the first hour they are at my home. Another option, she said, was that I could schedule a virtual visit with a technician for free, which I went ahead and scheduled. #
- At the appointed time today I got a text message with a URL link to a web page with an embedded video camera. I did have to figure out how to switch the settings from the default for microphone and audio to speaker phone, but then was good to go. A switch of the camera to the rear facing one, a flip of the chair and pointing of the camera to the part I saw broken confirmed my diagnosis. All was left was to snap a picture of the label on the bottom of the chair and the replacement part will be ordered. #
- I now wait for another text to schedule the technician to come to the house to make the repair, once they have the replacement part, but right now I do not know how long we will have to wait. The virtual visit saved me the expense to have a technician come and diagnose the problem but not be able to fix it due to not having the correct part. I will still end up paying $160 to get the chair fixed, but I now am insured it will be fixed.#
My biggest issue with the
Macbook Air has been that I found the 13-inch screen too small, so I am really happy that the 14-inch screen of this Macbook Pro is noticeably better. At one point I considered buying the 15-inch screen version of the
Macbook Air, but now I am thinking that screen might actually be too large. I definitely was not going to get another 13-inch screen, which is why the price points between the two options I was considering were not too great. I think in the long run I am going to be really happy with my decision.
#I continue to be amazed by the experience I've had in moving all of my apps and data from the
Macbook Air to the Macbook Pro, it very effective and effortless. The transfer did take a couple of hours via the direct WiFi connection between the two computers, which makes me wonder how that transfer would have worked if I had decided to pick up the Macbook Pro from the local Best Buy and trade in the
Macbook Air at the store. Perhaps a direct cable transfer is faster? Otherwise I imagine I would have had to leave the computers with the Best Buy folks while I went home for a few hours.
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- I took advantage of two Black Friday sales: Best Buy's $200 off the Macbook Pro and Google's $70 off the Pixel Watch 3. The Macbook arrived yesterday and the Pixel Watch arrived this morning. I stayed with the 41mm version but in Obsidian (black) with the black active band. Google has finally improved the Out Of Box experience for people who are replacing an old Pixel watch by providing the ability to restore from the backup of that watch. All the apps and settings of my Pixel Watch were properly restored to the Watch 3, whereas in the past I had to re-install of the apps.#
- Not much differences exist between the Pixel Watch and the Pixel Watch 3. The bezel is slightly smaller, and that is slightly noticable but I honestly don't read much of the watch screen so I didn't find the old watch display too small. My only complaint so far is that the adaptive brightness is too dim in dark settings, but I am hoping that improves in time.#
- Fortunately, the watch was delivered to the correct address. My past experiences with the Google Store have been bad in that what I ordered was delivered to the wrong address in the condominium complex I live in. I know that is more the fault of Google's shipper, FedEx, but after having both the Pixelbook and Pixel Phone 4a delivered wrong, I have been avoiding purchases Google. I bought the Pixel Watch from Best Buy.#
- I had some reservation in buying this watch from the Google store, but Best Buy was not willing to provide the $50 trade-in value that Google is providing for the Pixel Watch, so I went ahead with the purchase. I felt a bit more comfortable during the order process when I was provided the option to specify whether I wanted signature required for delivery, and I selected that option. The problem is, while my request of signature required appeared in the confirmation of the order, that request did not transfer to FedEx as the watch was delivered without my signature! Fortunately, I received notification on my iPad that the watch was delivered so that I could immediately get it from the front door. In short, the ordering/delivery process from the Google store is still not correct, and so I continue to discourage its use. #
So far all of the apps that I transferred to the new MacBook Pro are working exactly as expected.
#I've received my new
Macbook Pro M4 and I used the Migration Assistant to move all my applications and data from the
Macbook Air. Right now I am checking out the apps that I use to see what transferred. So far I've had to re-enter passwords for Mail, but my Drummer account transferred right over with the browser.
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Signed up for Pixelfed yesterday and configured micro.blog to cross post but the test post I wrote was not posted to Pixelfed. For that matter, that post didn't get posted to Bluesky or Mastodon either, so perhaps a glitch. It might be that only posts with pictures go to Pixelfed, which would make sense, so I created
a new post with a picture. It was time to add a picture any way.
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Yesterday I noted that I've been seeing my Pixel Watch randomly reboot, and I speculated that there may be a relationship to my switching watch faces. Ever since I reverted back to the face that I had been using I've not seen any reboots. Ingteresting.
#I
created an account on Pixelfed, which I think is intended to be an alternative to Instagram. I've configured cross posting from my micro.blog and I've installed the beta Android app.
#Woke up to a light accumulation of snow on the grass and shrubs this morning. Technically I guess that is our first snow fall of the year, but hardly seems justified. It will be gone by the evening.
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I've been seeing frequent occurrences of my Pixel Watch randomly rebooting during the day. It seems to coincide with the installation of the November, 2024 Wear OS Security update, but I also switched watch faces, from Adventure to Digital Informer and I am wondering whether the Digital Informer is the problem, so I have reverted back to Adventure. So far, no reboots today.
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Is
bankruptcy the biggest instance of welfare in the United States?
#If Trump were really smart he would make Social Security solvent forever. Doing so would eliminate a political weapon in the manner of how Democrats and Republicans used abortion as a political weapon. I doubt Trump will do this because Republicans like using the threat to Social Security to the same extent as Democrats. Protecting Social Security would be extremely popular and would tremendously improve Trump's legacy.
#I am considering replacing my
Macbook Air with an Apple computer that has an M4 processor. While the M1 processor in my current
Macbook Air is fast enough for most tasks, I know that it's processor and memory are limiting for LLM processing. The election of Donald Trump increases the probability that the price for all computers will increase starting next year, so that accelerates my thinking.
#Besides the M1 processor, other things that I dislike about my Macbook is that its 13-inch screen is too small and all of it's ports are on one side of the computer. Consequently, if I stick with the Air line then I am only interested in the 15-inch model and any computer that I will buy will not have less than a 512 GB SSD, so that translates to the $1,499 M3
Macbook Air with 15-inch screen and 512 GB SSD. Most likely the M4 variant of that model Air will the same price. The 14-inch Macbook Pro with an M4 processor and 512 GB SSD is $1,599 and probably Black Friday deals will decrease that price to at or near the $1,499 mark. Even without a discount I think the better display and extra ports of the Pro is worth the extra $100.
#I think the 2024 holiday shopping season could be one of the biggest ever, because smart U.S. consumers will expect prices to rise next year due to Trump's tariffs. Many will get richer in the next six months, but soon after reality will kick in with a recession that likely becomes a depression. The Republicans in office now and those to come in are no smarter than the ones in 1929.
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