9-1-20 Update: I got an eero mesh router with 3 nodes for the house and it’s great :-)
My single-router hopes are dashed: I got a pretty good one (TP-Link Archer A7) but the kitchen appliances block the far side of the house no matter what I do. I thought about rewiring stuff in the crawlspace to relocate the router but I’d rather just pay money to fix the problem.
I’ve got a 2-day old powerline wifi adapter sitting on my desk. the trouble is, none of my computing devices are nailed down. Mannually switching networks every time I go into or out of my music room is a terrible option!
In the living room, I have a great signal on my laptop on my router. When I bring my laptop into the music room, I’ve got a crappy signal to the router and a great signal on the wifi extender. But my computer doesn’t switch over to the extender, it suffers it’s way through my refrigerator.
We are thinking about getting a Little Free Library. I wrote to a neighbor with one about their experience and got a really great response. If you’re thinking of getting one, read on:
I wrote, “Hi, we saw that you have a Little Free Library. We live just down the road and were wondering how it has worked out for you. Any tips? We’re thinking of getting one for our front yard. :-)”
Their response:
Hi Lee and Megan- 4 households in a row put up the LFL. I am the steward of it. Surprisingly, it has been slow during COVID. We keep it filled though. And I wipe it down with disinfectant every day. I see people looking at it regularly and people donate as well. People leave boxes of books on my front porch. I cull from my own collection. What we are low in are children’s picture books.
During precovid we had BART commuters checking it out so that was good. Our library has been swept a couple of times (that’s when someone comes and takes all of them). Nothing we can really do about that. But if they were going for a group in need that would be ok. But these sweepers I think take them and try to sell them.
Joining the group on Facebook or getting the LFL email gives some good info.
The object to me is get people reading.
Let me know if you have any other questions. Hope you do it! L S / Junction LFL
When you need to watch a website for changes, VisualPing.io it my go-to. You get enough free credits to watch one page daily, and watching more pages is inexpensive. I’ve been watching my daughter’s after-school program’s website for updates during the pandemic and VisualPing has been helpful.
Do you want a power rack or other home gym equipment? (and COVID making it both nessesary and hard to get?) A good friend and professional fabricator will be building and selling a set of about 10 power racks and other equipment in the Bay Area. He’s aiming for it to be competitively priced and (of course) local pickup/delivery.
If you need to download a video on Youtube or Vimeo or wherever, this process will often do it for you, fer free and without downloading some likely-spammy-scammy software.
The key is: most video online is HTML5. VLC can play any HTML5 video… and get you the link to download it. (via)
From 2003 to 2005 I ran my own business fixing computers and such. I called it The Computer Guy,
I had just finished fixing a client’s broken email program (Outlook) and was packing up. I watched as he shut off his Windows laptop by simply holding down the power button until the computer died. My stomach lurched at the sight of it! I grit my teeth, and let out a breath to calm myself. I gently asked him if that was always how he turned off his computer. “Yes, it’s easier than finding that other way. I’ve never had any trouble.” I thought about the reason I was hired, to fix his mysteriously broken email program and told him there was a good chance it broke because of his bullet-to-the-head shutdown style. Then I started showing him how to shut down safely. He didn’t want to hear it, repeating how his current method was working just find. I redoubled my calm and told him, “Shutting down your computer that way is just fine ninety-nine times out of a hundred. That last time will break things but good. You’ve got my number.” Part of me wanted to shake him and make him do it right, instead I gave him a friendly smile, my business card, and left.
100 days later, like exactly 100 days later, I got a call! The computer wouldn’t boot. After I fixed everything, he was quite open to learning how to push the little “shut down” button instead of murdering his computer on a daily basis. When we were done, he gave me a very hearty handshake!
These are from when I was working as a QA (quality assurance) engineer around 2000 at Wavexpress.
The most important checks are the most basic. Our company created a big program for signing up for our beta program via a telephone number. I was not on this project and it was most certainly “not my job”, but I went and called the phone number on the flyer. It hadn’t been set up! I told the right people and the problem was fixed quickly. But the entire program would have been a bust AND given the company a black eye had I not checked the basics.
There was this nice guy who stayed late every Friday to swap tapes for the backup system. I liked him and wondered if the system actually worked so I put a file on my computer, waited 2 weeks, “accidentally” deleted it and asked IT for help. A day goes by and they hadn’t recovered my file so I check in. Another day. And a third. Finally, they admit to me that they had checked all the tapes and they were all blank! There were no backups at our software company! The most important checks are the most basic!
It is vital to end every meeting with an action plan. At the end of every meeting, I would always ask two simple questions, “Can I try to summarize what we talked about? [say it]” and “Ok, so what is the plan?” This was a tip I learned from some business guide. At first I was embarrassed to ask all these professionals such silly questions. If we’re leaving the meeting, “of course” we have a plan. But more often than not, (yes, like 60% of the time!) that final conversation ends up being the most important part of the meeting! That question has cleared up innumerable vagueries and misinterpretations since I started using it in 2000! I think this was the guide I read! Though I neglected to cited the original source!
Bread baking friends, celebrate with me the videos made by the Proof Bread company in Phoenix! I’m linking to the video that got me hooked but the whole channel is a wonderment.
I took some hints from the videos and came up with this:
Cuts on the top were supposed to look like wheat, but they were pretty nonetheless.I put a cookie sheet on the shelf under the pan to shield the bottom from heat. It worked well, making the bottom only a tiny bit crisper than the top instead of burnt.
1 1/2 cups of white flour, 1/8 cup whole wheat, 475 for 30 minutes covered, 12 minutes uncovered. Made a nice sandwich bread with a crackling crust :-)
