Tech
- File Explorer's simplified right-click context menu where useful file interaction & application extensions, like Box, are hidden under a More button (UGH). Fix by pressing Shift when right clicking. I’m not yet sure if I like the copy/paste buttons. Guess Microsoft wants to turn Windows into Teams and make finding necessary features really difficult.
- Taskbar is glued to the bottom of the screen -- I need it on the left! I have all the display width and not much display height. I don’t like hiding the taskbar.
- Audio system is garbage. I mute system audio but Teams keeps making noise. AirPod sound output is garbled. The mixer interface is a mess and I got applications really mixed up with audio output.
- Named virtual desktops & persistence across reboots.
Comcast/Xfinity Internet Woes
Comcast/Xfinity internet at my home has some kind of network issue that sure feels like throttling. For customer service, it’s literally impossible to get more than a chatbot and a chat-based live support agent. The live support agents are 100% scripted and they do the same troubleshooting flows as a chatbot.
The issue is that my internet is operating at 0-5 Mbps unless I’m on VPN. I’m supposed to get ~1 Gbps and usually get 700 Mbps on Wifi 6E. On VPN, most of the time, our internet is screaming fast. Off VPN, my Sonos cannot stream from Tidal and my Apple TVs cannot stream without repeat buffering. So I’m now quite thankful that Apple TV recently gained VPN support. Meanwhile, speed tests shows full speed when the VPN is off. So I guess I’m being gaslit with some kind of priority network path to speed test servers that avoid the problematic routing. So there must be a routing and/or equipment issue on Comcast’s side, but it’s impossible to talk to anyone that knows anything beyond checking your modem’s signal and rebooting it.
Chat support agents invariably say the signal is fine, and so blame the router. I’ve replaced the modem and router and cables between: same issue! LAN and Wifi exhibit the same issues and as far as I can tell there’s no device spamming the network (which would also cause issues while on VPN). Anyway, I managed to convince the Comcast's chatbot to let me schedule a technician… a week out. So I’ve got as many devices connected to Express VPN as I can to have full speed internet. For now?
Unfortunately, today one of the Express VPN locations and my work VPN started to act like off-VPN speeds.
If this doesn’t get resolved, the only option with barely reasonable speeds, but far better than this experience, would be T-Mobile Home Internet. And that will not be great.
Windows 11 Thoughts
I have Windows 11 on my work PC now.
What does not work for me:
Always end on a good note! So a few things one thing works for me:
Thoughts on Heat Pump Heating
The weather chilled enough that our new Fujitsu 36LMAS heat pump is fully operational transferring outdoor heat into the house (during the cooling season it does the opposite). Our equipment continues to be amazingly quiet, quite unlike the natural gas furnace the heat pump replaced. It’ll be interesting to compare costs with last winter, though heating a house with a fully variable heat pump doesn’t work the same as a single cycle furnace. The heat pump continuously runs but adjusts the pump and fan from heating at full to a trickle of heat to maintain temperatures. So temperatures stay constant, as opposed to a single cycle furnace’s swinging indoor temperatures from chilly to screaming hot (in our case). With the heat pump being so quiet and keeping the house temperature way more even, I’m far more inclined to heat the house more. Which doesn’t bode well for heating costs! But at least there’s no longer a NOx, CO, and CO2 generating machine in the house, right?
So Slate is suddenly increasing their subscription from $59 a year to $119. And I can’t find the cancel button fast enough. Oh wait, it is missing despite the FAQ saying it exists! Poor form, Slate. I’m sure there’s another news org not doing shenanigans to customers.
Used to be ddclient for dynamic DNS updates required
web-skip=’IP Address:’when checking the web for the WAN IP. But uh, seems like that’s been breaking my ddclient updates for a while now. Troubleshooting showed that removing web-skip in ddclient.conf fixes the problem.
There’s a thoughtful post on Fuji X Weekly. After spending several weeks with a X100V, I’m in agreement with the utility and power of Fujifilm Film Simulations. As a hobbyist, it is liberating embracing Fujifilm out-of-camera JPEGs. I barely need the RAW Power app.
I just tried Fastmail’s and 1Password’s Masked email. It’s pretty great especially since it worked with a custom domain on day one!
Because of Safari’s new clearly bad UI changes, I’m not installing the public iOS and MacOS betas. Just listening to people talk about the new UI makes me cringe. I’m super excited about Focus though.
Windows 11 requires UEFI firmware. I use VMWare Fusion 12 Player (free) for Windows 10. Seems only VMWare Fusion 12 Pro can change firmware from BIOS to UEFI. Maybe VMWare will be nice and enable the UEFI option for Windows 11’s reqs. firmware = “efi” works not.
No surprise why I spent today processing raw photos. Cool that Carrot Weather can report on my weather station.
