I got out of the shower and my wife said “I got bad news, the TV turns off every time I try to watch anything.” Did the usual like restart, unplug all HDMI cables, unplug it from power etc and it still kept turning off. I started thinking the worst but the internet (TBH Reddit) saved me.

Guy had the same problem and even bought a new TV only discover the actual problem was a flaky AppleTV remote sending IR signals. Reset my ATV remote and problem solved!👍🏼 It is a good Christmas eve after all.

Ever since getting a satin PEI sheet for my Prusa printer it has stayed on 24/7 for both PLA and PETG. But I’m printing a 3rd party model of many parts and I was fighting bed adhesion and kept having to add brims (which I avoid with my own models). It finally dawned on me to switch to a smooth PEI sheet and voila no brims needed. Lesson learned.

Tech frustration of the day: the flimsy micro SD card holder on one of my Raspberry Pi 4s broke 😭

Unwelcome pre-Christmas news. Heard a minor bang when I opened our garage door this morning. But it wasn’t a spring snapping. Turns out something hit the door from the outside and snapped one of the cross supports. There is no practical fix other than a new door which is $$$.

Note I couldn’t see anyone or anything in our driveway videos for the past few days. The whole thing is a mystery. 😞☹️

In yesterday’s FOSS activity I switched our Pi-Hole from a Pi Zero W to a Pi Zero W 2. I noticed recently the original was throwing some CPU alerts and generally CPU and memory usage were high. Since the change CPU and memory usage are quite low. The Teleporter worked well moving my config over. This also reminded me to donate to Pi-Hole again.👍🏼

Our daughter told me of WiFi dropouts and slow speed on her gaming PC. I replaced the WiFi adapter and dropouts ended but I saw speeds were only ~80Mbps and should be much higher. After rebooting mesh nodes and fiddling settings to no avail I discovered even some Ethernet connections were only 80Mbps.

Long story short there was a flaky Ethernet cable in my study which somehow caused all this. After replacing it even the AppleTV is getting download speeds over 900Mbps. No comprende.😖

An Update on Twitch in Korea blog.twitch.tv/en/2023/12/05/a

Twitch exiting S Korea seems like a pretty big deal. There are a lot of serious steamers there so I would imagine this will give a basis for some other providers to expand. I wonder if a Korean company would have better luck fighting/reducing the tax?

Our 19 y/o daughter wanted a new computer desk. Her old one is nearly as old as her and doesn’t suit the purpose. Her new desk (kit) arrived today and, since she works tonight, my job tomorrow will be to disassemble the old one, get the pieces downstairs, and then carry up the pieces and build the new one.

Or if she is full of energy after work I could make a late night of it. The life of dad.

Today’s productivity killer: tire going flat due to a nail leading to a visit to the tire shop and 4 new tires. They were about due to be changed but the timing is ‘unfortunate’.

I sure hope my Subaru likes his new shoes. 🛞 🛞 🛞 🛞

I got my replacement Ambient Weather station and as I feared it wasn’t compatible with my WeeWX setup. Had to shiver because getting WeeWX to work with my old station was brutal. Searching for a solution I found some crazy solutions like poisoning DNS to grab packets. Thanks to the Kagi search engine’s “Programming” recipe I quickly found a FOSS solution on github that was a trivial plug and play. Very cool.👍🏼

My son and I have played a number of EXIT games and enjoy the challenge. We recently learned they have one based on an Advent calendar so naturally we did day 1’s riddle today. It was a fun start - 23 more to go!

Last night the display for our commercial weather station started making a fan noise. The thing is it has no fan. I couldn’t fix it so I ordered a replacement.

Though the station is COTS I run FOSS software called WeeWX which grabs the data in real time and stores it in a database on a BMAX running Linux Mint. The BMAX then serves up weather data to other displays I built for use around the house.

WeeWX: weewx.com/

Feeling rather stupid. Mashed my thumb down on freshly extruded hot glue from my heavy duty gun. Peeled a couple of layers of skin off.

So today’s PSA is be careful with glue guns and don’t try to pull the glue off. 😩

My top genres per Apple Music. Yes, this is me. 🎶
* Dance
* Electronic
* Pop
* Dubstep
* House

I switched from a 27” iMac to a M2 Mac mini freeing a ton of desk space. Taking the theme further I decided to put my Prusa MK4 to work so I could mount the M2 to the side of a bookshelf with the cable side up. I like the result.
N.B. I ended up mounting a BMAX, gigabit switch, antenna switch and DC power distribution block to my bespoke bookshelf as well.

https://www.printables.com/model/664261-wa

Paws, really?

WTH are chicken paws?

First time seeing them called paws instead of feet. Is this supposed to be a marketing trick?

I’ve mostly transitioned from my 27” iMac to the Mac mini. I had forgotten what a monster the 27” iMac was sitting on my desk. Not going to miss that…

It’s been a productive day post-Thanksgiving. Finished almost all of our Christmas gift shopping (online), decorated the downstairs for Christmas, and started preparation for my move to the Mac mini. I’ll use the mini with an old $100 Dell monitor until Christmas when I’ll get a 4K model. The mini only cost me $200 after my trade-in and Apple’s Black Friday deal.

TIL about all the different kinds/classes of cables with USB-C connectors🤕.

Next week I’ll switch from an Intel iMac to a Mac mini M2. I’m a bit torn over using Migration Assistant. It would be convenient but starting afresh might feel kinda good. Only downside is losing a ton of preferences and other associated items and probably having to tweak every single app I have (152 in my Applications folder). Hmm.

Because of 2 different CPU architectures I lean against using Migration Assistant.

Thanksgiving

Exactly one year ago, right after we finished cleaning up after Thanksgiving dinner, I was hit with unbearable pain. Because it was a holiday I hung on for a couple of hours but had to cave in and go to the ER. Then into the hospital. Right before recovering I was losing 2 pounds a day.

There has been no recurrence so hip hip hooray! I’m extra thankful this year.👍🏼

I’ve been contemplating getting a M2 Mac mini to replace my 27” iMac with a discrete graphics card and tons of memory. I thought I’d probably have to add a lot of memory to the mini but I decided to test some CAD apps on my son’s M1 MacBookAir with 8GB memory. The M1 kicks my iMac’s ass so I guess I don’t have to worry about that any more. Dear Santa…🎅

I escaped the courthouse, hooray! It was a civil trial needing only 6 jurors (I was #21 out of 24). Apparently my previous experience as a juror in a murder trail was a point of interest. Not sure why but glad I get to launch into Thanksgiving prep now.

Brought an old friend to keep me company at the courthouse.

I’m just not seeing Black Friday love for the Mac mini. It’s all MacBook this and iPad that 😔

Quite a surprise to see a pink balloon floating through the courthouse!