Saw this today. Random.
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Cat weathervane
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fopdoodle – Wiktionary
fopdoodle – Wiktionary
— Read on en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fopdoodle
Word of the day. Apply liberally.
I’m a long time customer and former employee, with an MSEE and ham radio license. I play with SDR for fun – I’m no pro but I’m familiar with radio and cellular. My bonafides explained, this post explains the problem, what I tried and why you lost me today as a customer.
A few months ago we started to have problems. Calls are fine, but data is super slow and my battery was being murdered. With my iPhone 11 Pro, a bit under two years old and 83% battery health, requires two to three charges per day something is wrong.
Second symptom: it works fine out of the home area, very approximately the 92122 zip code. As you can see from the screenshots on Nextdoor, others have the same problems. As the meme says, “I am not a crank.”
I called service and tried to explain. They sent me a new SIM, we reset networks and nothing helped. I wasn’t able to explain that the issue wasn’t me and that others were affected.
So today we’re all onto “Consumer Cellular”. Good price, stellar service so far, and instead of 12mbps I got
So Verizon, I think you’ve got a problem. Could be too many subscribers for the base station, failed antenna lobe, I can’t tell. Apple and the carriers have blocked key diagnostics like SNR so all I can do is speculate. You could sort it out with a test if your mobile coverage and I hope you do. It’s a pity to see the stellar reputation of Verizon Wireless being lost.
Update 12/1/2021 – I reached out to VerizonSupport on Twitter and they are promising to investigate. I spoke to a couple of different reps, one of whom said there was a known outage in the area.
I’m much more in the buy-nothing camp than the Black Friday camp, so I debated posting this. Allow me to explain – like many, I gamed in school, with my office mate and friend introducing me to the fun of network games, particularly FPS such as Quake and variants. For years, the combination of parenting and terrible Mac support has deterred me, but recently I found this Dappered gift guide post in my RSS feed.
I used to be much more of a gamer. I truly enjoy it. And before I bought this for myself, I just hadn’t found as many windows to get back to gaming since becoming a dad. It happens. But the Stadia solves every issue I had with that “time” factor. It’s cloud-based, so my games are ready to go when I turn on my controller, which instantly connects to my TV via the included Chromecast Ultra. I can also play on any computer (pictured above) or on my phone. I’ve been able to fit in dozens upon dozens of hours of gaming because of the take-it-anywhere-ness of Stadia. There are no files to download, no waiting for the console to update after leaving it dormant for a few months, no more does that precious hour window get whittled down to 20 minutes. With Stadia, I pick up the controller and I’m playing in less than a minute. Take that, impossible-to-find PS5!
https://dappered.com/2021/11/the-dappered-gift-guide-for-the-dappered-dad-2021-edition/
That sounds appealing, and $80 bucks isn’t bad. However, right now Google is selling them for $22!
Twenty two bucks! Damn, that’s cheap.
Oddly, extra controllers are $60, so I just ordered two Stadias. I hope to be able to play against a kid or friend.
It could well be that Google will discontinue Stadia, they have a long history of axing projects so there is that risk. Still, for this price I thought it worth sharing and a reasonable risk. Can’t wait to try some games again!
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Wisdom about Covid
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Uhtceare is real
I started this blog with the title taken from very old English, as you can see in the header and About page. I seriously considered naming it ‘uhtceare,’ another old word meaning ‘to wake before dawn and not be able to sleep because you’re worrying about something.’ Today, a modern update from ScienceAlert:
The thoughts are often distressing and punitive. Strikingly, these concerns vaporize in the daylight, proving that the 3am thinking was completely irrational and unproductive.
https://www.sciencealert.com/why-do-we-wake-up-at-3am-and-dwell-on-our-fears-a-psychologist-explains
It’s a good read, with solid reasoning. I like this bit:
The truth is, our mind isn’t really looking for a solution at 3am. We might think we are problem solving by mentally working over issues at this hour, but this isn’t really problem solving; it’s problem solving’s evil twin – worry.
I gravitate towards aggregated measurements. I use words like ‘gravitate’ and ‘aggregated’ when I do it. Sometimes the complaining has been loud, and then someone writes about me in the newspapers…
— Read on jamesheathers.medium.com/the-invisible-plague-c092ab1f7771
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Ditch network solutions
Found this via Hacker News, a screen by screen takedown of all the dark patterns used by Network Solutions.
https://www.coywolf.news/webmaster/network-solutions-dark-patterns-domain-registration-transfers/
Personally, I’ve had phfactor.net since the late 1990s, started back when they were the only game in town, and they’ve frog-boiled me out of a lot of money. Today, I finished the transfer to CloudFlare and urge you to consider a move yourself if you’re still with Network Solutions. Doesn’t need to be Cloudflare, there are plenty of others, but for $8 a year I get caching, DDOS protection plus domain registration and less bullshit in my inbox.
That’s worth sharing.
Postscript – this blog post details how to use your EdgeRouter to update CloudFlare’s dynamic DNS. Nice! That saves me the second no-longer-free DNS service that I used to use from Dyn.com.
Dyn got bought by Oracle, and needless to say I’m not ready to give my credit card to them. I like the simplicity of having Cloudflare do registrar, dns and caching.
But ultimately, some unknown percentage of those 80 million still unvaccinated will dig in and continue refusing vaccinations, even if they have to risk unemployment and other penalties. Some surveys indicate that the defiance is deep-seated, so we should expect a sizable number of marginalized, unvaccinated, unemployed, and profoundly angry Americans. These are the groups who might gravitate to leading or taking part in political violence, as we got a taste of with anti-lockdown protests last year.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-latest-covid-surge-is-just-the-start-of-a-new-nightmare?source=us-news&via=rss
But why would they do that? Let’s turn the microphone to LGM:
The whole key to understanding the anti-vax pro-horse dewormer mentality is that it’s not just this one thing for these people. Admitting that they’ve been wrong about this isn’t like admitting you were wrong about thinking that Willie Mays hit 700 home runs or that Detroit is the capital of Michigan. To admit you were wrong about this thing in particular would be to pull on a thread that could unravel your entire social and political identity. For those in the right wing bubble/base, admitting error on this point basically requires a literal conversion experience. It would be like a former Christian fundamentalist coming to the view that the Bible isn’t actually the inerrant word of God. In other words, that’s not just some random fact, but THE fact, that holds every other part of the person’s world view together.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/09/the-herman-cain-freedom-award
One last, less grim but much more difficult question: How much risk are we willing, as a people, to accept? Who bears that risk?
Will Americans accept the deaths of tens of thousands of people, as they do with the flu, if it means life returning to normal? Can the public tolerate an even higher death toll — akin to the drug overdose crisis, which killed an estimated 94,000 people in 2020 — if that’s what it takes to truly end social distancing and other precautions?
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22651046/covid-19-delta-vaccines-social-distancing-masking-lockdowns
I highly recommend all three essays. I’ve had them swirling around in my head for a few days now.
It’s as good as hoped. Wish it was 38 instead of 41mm but still a delight.
They’ve been intermittently sold out but this isn’t a limited edition so you can eventually get one.
Delightful timekeeping on mine so far – better than chronometer spec, under 2 seconds per day or better. Astonishingly good!
https://www.scurfawatches.com/product/treasure-seeker-white-dial/
ultracrepidarian 