Archive: Summer vacation and hiking in Zion National Park
RichC | August 8, 2023
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Tech Friday: An Anker SD and MicroSD cardreader for USB-C
RichC | August 4, 2023
When trying to transfer photos and video from SD cards to a computer, you really need some kind of card reader. I have several that are USB readers, but none that are USB-C and will plug into my MacBook Air M2. So instead of a bulky dongle with extras, I opted for a small Anker […]
Tech Friday: Elon Musk announces Twitter’s bird is now X
RichC | July 28, 2023
Things continue to change over at Twitter, at least as the old is removed and the new is implemented. I’m not sure the switch from the Twitter “bird” to the symbol “X” is all that big of a deal, but it does at least keep people in the tech world talking. Who knows if Elon […]
This is a Twitter API Test post
RichC | July 25, 2023
The API is not accepting updates to MyDesultoryBlog Twitter account. Reset new “keys and tokens” to see if it updates? This will be deleted as it is only a test.
Tech Friday: An update on my USMobile Wireless trial
RichC | July 21, 2023
For those keeping score as to just how frugal Rich can descend when chasing after a wireless plan … “better” (cheaper) than Mint Mobile … “he” may have gone “a bridge too far” in the latest USMobile wireless plan decision (I know, another idiom and a 3rd person reference, but don’t get me started on the whole […]
Tech Friday: Ridgid 9Ah lithium battery claim for failing latch
RichC | July 7, 2023
One of the TWO reasons that I’ve opted for the Ridgid brand of cordless power tools is their LSA … which I’ve used once before on a couple of early batteries. Besides the minor hassle in registering and filing a claim, it seems to be the right way to go considering the problems with tools […]
Reminiscing about a couple of my favorite iPhones #TBT
RichC | July 6, 2023
While finding links for a blog post last week, I stumbled across a couple photos of my iPhone5 while upgrading to my current, but aging, iPhone7plus. Although the bulky protective case on the iPhone7+ did not last long, it was interesting to remember it. I quickly switched to the thinnest case I could find and […]
Tech Friday: Adding a date to the search results
RichC | June 30, 2023
Such a simple fix; why did it take me so long to add a bit of code to the “non-supported” WordPress theme that My Desultory Blog has been using since nearly the beginning in 2005? Ugh, well it is finally good to have a “DATE” listed when using the search box. Also while checking my […]
The Legendary Palm Treo 700p #TBT
RichC | June 29, 2023
While updating a few blog titles that had mis-coded characters on My Desultory Blog, my eye was drawn to an old favorite smartphone post from 2006 — the Palm Treo 700p. See 2006 CAK photo post The photos started me thinking about this making an interesting artificial intelligence assisted ChatGPT Throwback Thursday #TBT post? The […]
Tech Friday: It could be time to upgrade our home network?
RichC | June 23, 2023
A couple of weeks ago, our our mostly flawless fiber service with AltaFiber (was Cincinnati Bell) was upgraded to a faster speed. Our Internet service has been as fast as we have needed and relatively stable for the last couple of years. Personally, nothing needs anything to change … except perhaps a lower monthly price? […]
Tech Friday: Artificial Intelligence photos, video and voice
RichC | June 16, 2023
Technology advancements and AI photo and video editing has been around a few years (FaceApp photos) … but some of the newer fakes or clones are a bit “too” convincing (link to a “human generated” one, but not necessarily convincing). 😉 As a society, there’s no turning back once artificial intelligence abilities are here, but […]
Once upon a time, the Palm Pre was a great pocket phone #TBT
RichC | June 15, 2023
Back in 2009, after years of using Palm OS products like the Palm Pilot, the Handspring Visor, Palm Treo, Palm Centro and my favorite Samsung SPH i500, I eventually ended up with a small pocketable, full-featured smartphone — the Palm Pre. Who knew that only a year later that I would be forced to give […]
Tech Friday: How long before Apple makes an iPhone Flip?
RichC | June 9, 2023
How long must I wait and watch in irritation as other manufacturers beside Apple or iOS “cloners” roll out “flip phone” (or even a slider) that at least from a first glance look like exactly what I personally am looking for in a future iPhone? The form and function are exactly what at least some […]
Music Monday: The band America and the song “Here”
RichC | May 29, 2023
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Tech Friday: Testing Magfast Extreme charging an Apple iPad
RichC | May 26, 2023
This test is more for my own curiosity than any kind of controlled tech test, but since I’m often away from convenient 110VAC charging plugs, I would like to be able to recharge iPads and iPhones on the go. A few years back, I preordered a package of products from a startup company called Magfast […]
An ebook is great … but it is not the same thing as reading an ink on paper book shelved at home in ones personal library
RichC | May 20, 2023
An opinion article by Faith Bottum in the Wall Street Journal about ink on paper books, ebook readers and bookshelves spoke to me last week … so I tweeted about it in agreement; I love having books in the home. Perhaps being in printing and publishing established my love for ink on paper, but for […]
Blog update and testing after Linux and WordPress update
RichC | May 19, 2023
The Linux server and WordPress version was updated this afternoon; Comet cache cleared and backups done. Hopefully all is as it should be on MyDesultoryBlog.com. Since I’ve been sitting on this interesting outdoor stove project video for a while, I’ll include it below the break as a test both of the update and autoplay.
Poor business decisions and billing screw-ups at Mint Mobile
RichC | May 17, 2023
We have been happy with Mint Mobile for a couple of years as our MVNO wireless carrier. The service has been good service … prices fair … and it has been perfect for our needs. In April though, I switched my iPhone7-plus to US Mobile for a trial due to less than optimum coverage at […]
Minor issues upgrading Brenda’s iPhone7 to an iPhone14
RichC | May 16, 2023
Something unanticipated happened last weekend when secretly trying to prepare a new iPhone14 to give to Brenda for Mother’s Day … it was likely the busiest time for wireless cellphone towers … especially if on Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). In other words, the day I gave Brenda the new phone to play with was […]
Tech Friday: How about a new iPhone14 for Mother’s Day?
RichC | May 5, 2023
Last month I switched my LTE iPhone 7-plus to USMobile, a budget-friendly wireless carrier, and have been satisfied with the trial. Since I will likely stay with the service after making the cumbersome switch from Mint Mobile, I started to think about switching Brenda’s iPhone7 — ugh! So after a little discussion with her about […]
Google advertising and Gmail, if you believe it (+AI voice)
RichC | April 28, 2023
Do you trust that Google isn’t using your emails to push advertising to you? Personally I’m thinking this might be a “sleight of hand” considering the cookies and the fact you are signed into your Google account and search are used in advertising. Perhaps they aren’t using the content of Gmail to generate advertising, but […]
With ridiculously old IT, where is the IRS spending most of their new $80 BILLION dollar taxpayer funded windfall?
RichC | April 18, 2023
Yup … ENFORCEMENT. … hundreds of IRS applications have been around for at least 25 years and dozens that have been in existence for more than 50. There were also pieces of software running 15 updates behind the current version. Fifteen! That’s like using a new iPhone with the iOS from the original iPhone … […]
Giving USMobile free SIM card a try on my iPhone 7 Plus
RichC | April 14, 2023
A speed test doesn’t really tell us everything (new USMobile wireless service above), but since I was frustrated with 0.34Mbps upload Xfinity WiFi upload speeds at the condo last weekend (Xfinity WiFi speediest below the break), it was a perfect time to take the risk to port my cellphone number from Mint Mobile to USMobile. There […]
Tech Friday: Bits and piece to the Wyze Cam 2
RichC | April 7, 2023
Last year one of my earlier Wyze Cams failed to update and wasn’t connecting to our mesh wifi (continued to disconnect). Thankfully Wyze politely discounted a newer version to which I happily upgraded. The old one has been sitting on my workbench and before tossing it in the trash, decided to peek under the hood. I […]
ART-ificial Intelligence generated images can be disturbing
RichC | April 2, 2023
There is growing concern over AI from some of the brightest and best “human” minds in our society today. The more realistic the images (like “Puffy Pope”) and the more they fool even those seeing the AI advancements everyday, the more I’m concerned as well. Sure, artificial intelligence is speeding up our writing, generating canned […]
Tech Friday: WordPress 6.2 and testing odrive with MarsEdit
RichC | March 31, 2023
One of the untouched add-ons to my computer life has been the cloud component odrive. It took me a while to add it to my new Apple MacBook Air M2, but while messing with a few upgrades this week, decided it was time to add it. First, WordPress came out with their 6.2 update so […]
Wyze Cam Smoke Alarm notifications and spring has sprung
RichC | March 30, 2023
It may not be pretty with the old mulch, leaves and dirty sidewalks … but spring has sprung in 2023. The old-ish bulbs are up and the buds are on the magnolias and lilacs. On another subject, I’ve contacted Wyze about one of my newer cams triggering a RED “Smoke Alarm” message which definitely caught […]
ChatGPT and Bard AI poetry-writing prowess compared
RichC | March 28, 2023
While experimenting with Google’s Bard last weekend, Katelyn had the AI software write a poem about her husband. Impressive although questionable when it comes to being personal? For the fun of it, I asked Bard to write a poem about my “Wonderful Daughter” and then sent it back to her for the fun of it. […]
Many of us have a love/hate relationship with computers
RichC | March 25, 2023
Much of Friday was spend trying to recover tax oriented data that has been on the Windows virtual drive on my iMac computer. Earlier this year, I started taxes and had been slowly adding data and archiving items in a folder so I could file taxes this year. All the downloads were in place and […]
Modifying my blog and another MacBook Air Desultory update
RichC | March 21, 2023
When working with Bing‘s webmaster tools, I noticed that some search results for MyDesultory Blog.com were missing. After a bit of reading, it looks as if I may have crammed too much into the index HTML page? According to their guidelines (it doesn’t impact other search engines), a heavy index page (+125KB) removes a website […]
Bought an external 1TB SSD for the new MacBook Air M2
RichC | March 18, 2023
Even though the new MacBook Air M2 is cloud connected and semi-backing up (to iCloud, gDrive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc) … it is still uncomfortable to be loading up and using a new notebook computer for traveling without physically backing up files. In particular, setting up the built in Apple TimeMachine software in case the computer needs […]
Tech Friday: A week of tinkering with a new MacBook Air M2
RichC | March 17, 2023
It has been almost a week and I’m slowly getting comfortable with my new “open box” MacBook Air M2. Everything is working as it should, but there are changes for me in getting comfortable with smaller type and less screen real estate. I suspect a second monitor is in my future? I’ve looked at the Apple […]
The Chinese Militarization of the South China Sea
RichC | March 16, 2023
The South China Sea has become a hotly contested region in recent years, with multiple countries claiming various parts of the sea as their own. China, in particular, has been actively asserting its dominance over the region by building military structures and increasing its naval presence in the area. The WSJ published a detailed article […]
Embracing Change: How to Thrive in an Ever-Changing World
RichC | March 12, 2023
This past week my son Taylor and I had a father-son dinner together at Chili’s and enjoyed some “desultory” conversation … from the Ukraine-Russia war to ChatGPT. Eventually he commented, “Dad, you should let the AI system write or rewrite your blog posts.” Hm … how about I just ask the Chatbot to write […]
Tech Friday: Will I regret buying an openbox MacBook Air M2?
RichC | March 10, 2023
It has been quite a few years that I’ve been struggling with what to do when it comes to purchasing a new “travel” computer and I have contemplated doing something a number of times. The aging Lenovo still works, but I do struggle with not having everything with me that is part of my “Apple […]
Tech Friday: Reading rumors regarding the iPhone 15 and Pro
RichC | February 17, 2023
Since a new iPhone will eventually be in my future, I’m paying a little more attention to the rumors around what is changing. The most obvious seems to be the USB-C port, but according to 9to5mac photos and renderings, the iPhone15Pro could see some bezel changes too. With the iPhone 15 lineup, a USB-C port […]
Markdown and rawhtml on a Hugo static page server
RichC | January 26, 2023
Besides nursing duties and doctor visits with Brenda this past week, I’ve been working with a customer who would like to deploy a non-CMS website and completely forgot to post something on Thursday — making it up today. Although I’m partial to using an inexpensive Linux server with Apache and MySQL, he would like to […]
Contemplating a new Mac for my new office set-up this year
RichC | January 18, 2023
As the great Yogi Berra is credited with saying, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” It is once again time to contemplate my home office computer set-up … something I seem to do every year. The last time I updated my main computer was when I replaced an early Mac Mini with the current 2012 […]
The 3 monkeys have added a 4th. A sign of our times #filler
RichC | January 12, 2023
Viral Social Media image
Tech Friday: Installed Wyze Doorbell and temp probe grilling
RichC | January 6, 2023
It is hard to resist loving gadget gifts and this past year for Christmas I was excited to receive a Wyze Doorbell from Drew (and Katelyn – Thx!) Although the previous year in 2021, I will admit that I was intimidated … and still am … by the fancy double temperature Bluetooth and WiFi Weber […]
Tech Friday: A better way to filter and clean up iOS messages
RichC | December 30, 2022
Prior to 2022, I managed phone numbers and contacts on my iPhone poorly – perhaps “the wrong way.” Every year I created a new A/SPAM list of callers and emailers and self-managed these lists. Of course this didn’t stop callers or text messages from new unknown phone numbers. So I tried a couple of different […]
What to do with an old Amazon Echo Dot? Tear it down.
RichC | December 16, 2022
What “should” a person do when an older piece of tech stops working? Give up? Buy new? Well we have an older first generation Amazon Echo Dot continued to be unreliable in maintaining a WiFi connection to our mesh home network. After several restarts over the last couple of months, full reboots and re-setups, I’ve […]
Tech Friday: Moved my blog to an AMD Premium server while updating the OS to Ubuntu 22.04.1
RichC | December 9, 2022
About this time of year the handful of servers that I maintain need to be looked at a little closer. Often I’m only doing the minimum maintenance, updates and backups … because there are often problems after an update. Pointing being, maintenance on this server have been getting over looked and put on the back […]
Tech Friday: A big screen TV deal and Christmas light flashback
RichC | December 2, 2022
It is hard to believe that watching sports and movies on a 37" television just isn’t satisfactory enough these days? So when I saw a Walmart pre-Black Friday deal on a 65" TCL Roku TV for $228, I could not pass up the deal. It is very impressive for the money and a perfect upgrade […]
Tech Friday: Magfast Life and Extreme charging issues
RichC | November 25, 2022
Part of what was in my long awaited Magfast order arrived earlier this month and after charging the MAGFAST battery packs, I started to test the output plugs. The USB-C worked just fine on my Kindle reader. The Lightning plug worked to charge my iPhone 7 and iPad. The Micro-USB worked (I think) and the […]
Tech Friday: Wyze Cams satisfy my gadget addiction
RichC | November 18, 2022
My older Canary Cams are still working but will eventually be retired as lower priced and higher quality Wyze Cams and Wyze Cam3s have become the “go to” products to fill my gadget addiction. On Wednesday a male cardinal trigger one of my cams and it reminded me to check on my subscription, re-read the […]
The long awaited MAGFAST pre-order has arrived, multiple trailer loads of autumn leaves and watching the 2022 World Series
RichC | November 6, 2022
Although I have yet to open the individual components … the L-O-N-G awaited MagFast “premium charging” kit has finally arrived. The new magnetically connected kit is not yet fully complete as there are still a couple components that will be shipped later. This will probably be the last pre-purchased product I purchase after losing my […]
Tech Friday: New Apple Credit Card and library to Kindle books
RichC | November 4, 2022
Posting this late on Thursday night after watching the Houston Astros win game 5 of the 2022 World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies making the series 3 games to 2; it has been an enjoyable five games so far … especially since I really am not invested in either team. As for the Tech Friday […]
Tech Friday: Apple has new iPads and upping Services pricing
RichC | October 28, 2022
For those using Apple products and subscription services, the monthly cost is going up. The company announced new version of their iPad lineup this week followed by the news that they are hiking fees for Apple Music and Apple TV+ subscription services this week for the very first time. In the U.S., the cost of […]
Tech Friday: The home Internet seems to be sluggish lately?
RichC | September 30, 2022
Our Cincinnati Bell Fioptics Internet service has been acquired by Altafiber. I’m not sure there has been much more than a logo change in service “so far,” but whenever our cable TV isn’t quite right or the Internet acts up, the blame is now on AltaFiber. Speed has been a problem this week and “might” […]
Tech Friday: A Versa 2 smartwatch and setting up Fitbit Pay
RichC | September 23, 2022
It has taken me a while, but after updating my Fitbit Versa smartwatch a couple weeks ago, I couldn’t be happier with the “at the time” difficult decision. Once before, my original was replaced under warranty (free) but with the same Versa (1) smartwatch which really did serve me well. Lesson: Watches and gadgets do not […]
Apple Event introduces products including iPhone14 Pro
RichC | September 7, 2022
Considering our current iPhones are seven generations behind (iPhone 7), today’s Apple Event was watched with interest, as usual. The new iPhone14 Pro is particularly interesting and carries a higher price point … although well worth the money considering what I once spent on new computers. Still, the pre-order date of 9/9/2022 will not likely […]
Penny-pinching my Amazon Prime membership in 2022
RichC | September 1, 2022
Some days I over-think things … today was one of those days. Like a lot of people, we have had an Amazon Prime membership for a long time. It has its pluses and minus, but continues to provide value and has become a habit and part of our daily lives. We use Alexa and I […]
Tech Friday: Campaign to fix the Apple iMessaging problem
RichC | August 19, 2022
Google and their Android mobile OS platform has a social media campaign running to hopefully get Apple to fix their widely used text messaging app called iMessage. For years now, sending messages between Apple iPhones and other iDevices has frustrated many a users trying to communicate with friends and family. Google would like Apple to […]
Fitbit: What does COVID do to your resting heart rate?
RichC | August 16, 2022
Since I wear a Fitbit and monitor a few things like heartrate, exercise and daily step count, I was concerned when my resting heartrate (graph left) seemed to be rising? After talking with my daughter about it, she mentioned that it sure seemed to correspond to my COVID diagnosis. Hm??? Hopefully it will return to […]
Tech Friday: Amazon Drive cloud storage to be phased out
RichC | August 5, 2022
Not that I use Amazon Cloud Drive for all that much (using AWS S3), but it will be disappointing for those who adopted Amazon for their backups and cloud storage needs … other than Photos (they will still support). Dear Amazon Drive Customer, Over the last 11 years, Amazon Drive has served as a secure […]
Tech Friday: A delay for Google phasing out invasive cookies
RichC | July 29, 2022
A couple of years ago, Google announced that its Chrome Browser would start phasing out their support for “third party tracking cookies.” Users concerned about privacy and data tracking from their web browsing have tried over the years to use add-ons and extensions to block or prevent Chrome from using them. Some of us switch […]
Tech Friday: Just a low-cost data serving test post #video
RichC | July 1, 2022
For Tech Friday today, here’s an impressive slow-motion video used more for an internal streaming test than for the actual content. In my quest for low-cost minimalist data storage and serving, this is just a tiny computer test. (EDIT: It failed, but will include the video from my normal server anyway.)
What was I thinking about the iPhone 15 years ago?
RichC | June 29, 2022
After nearly 40 years of buying and using Apple products, it is kind of embarrassing that I doubted Steve Jobs and the iPhone publicly on my blog on June 29, 2007. Happy Anniversary iPhone! Check out this post from 15 years ago.
Music Monday: Radio Margaritaville and Jimmy Buffett singing “Slack Tide” from “Life on the Flip Side” while mowing
RichC | June 27, 2022
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Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee
- lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
- digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.