Category: Uncategorized

Hey Verizon, you’ve got a problem in 92122

On By Paul HubbardIn Radio, Random, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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.

It just discharges too fast

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.

Immigration Enforcement and the Afterlife of the Slave Ship | Boston Review

On By Paul HubbardIn essays, Politics, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Immigration Enforcement and the Afterlife of the Slave Ship from Boston Review. Coast Guard techniques for blocking Haitian asylum seekers have their roots in the slave trade. Understanding these connections can help us disentangle immigration policy from white nationalism.
— Read on bostonreview.net/race/ryan-fontanilla-immigration-enforcement-and-afterlife-slave-ship

Damn. I had literally no idea.

Internet speed tests

On By Paul HubbardIn recommendations, UncategorizedLeave a comment

So you’re online and you wonder how your network is doing. How do you measure it? I’m here for you.

  • (Updated 11/2021) Ubiquiti’s oddly named http://wifiman.com is my new standby – cleanest UI, most consistent at measuring up to gigabit.
  • Fast.com is my go-to for quick checks. It measures using only Netflix connections so bypasses some ISP fuckery with DPI and slowdowns. Elegant UI.
  • Speed.cloudflare.com is excellent. Detailed and capable of saturating my 1 gigabit downlink. Lots of details.
  • Testmy.net is decent but uglier.
  • Speedtest.net is ad laden.
  • Sourceforge.net/speedtest is ok and used to be my favorite. Lots of ads now.

As explained in my series of gigabit posts, making a fast, reliable network takes time and effort, and these sites don’t magically make it happen. However, having a way to measure your changes is super helpful, and I probably use these weekly.

I got an email 11/28/2021 – if you’re having WiFi speed issues, sometimes you need to change the frequency or band used by your access point/router, and Bill Hess wrote this nice how-to here, for both Mac and Windows.

First ebike ride

On By Paul HubbardIn EVlife, recommendations, UncategorizedLeave a comment

My neighbor is in our COVID-19 pod and kindly let me try out his Specialized Turbo Vado. It’s his commute bike.

I just finished a 16.4 mile ride with 1,300 feet of vertical and I feel great. This would have left me mostly dead if not for the motor.

Torrey Pines State beach

I’ve been wanting the Luna bikes Enduro X-1, mostly based on this review as well as this one by a man who’s nearly my height at 6’9”. Sold out now but I am feeling the want. It’s magical to blast up hills again. At 3 to 5 thousand for a nice one, they’re expensive but as I said, I’m a convert.