Sloothing a college friend, a shoe throwing incident and a seagull

| February 11, 2024

While on vacation and walking the beach, Brenda threatened a bird with her sandal who was boldly getting a little to close to her while we were snacking on a granola bar. I laughed at her as the thought about ONE of the Christmas break trips to Florida with my college and a memory came […]

Tech Friday: Finally improved the Internet at the Condo

| December 1, 2023

After a long and steady battle with the Internet connections at the condo over our Thanksgiving vacation in Florida, the fight is finally over. The pain of returning the hardware Xfinity sent was enough to make me scream (long wait JUST to return something) … but after tossing the Netgear R7000 router and replacing with […]

Tech Friday: It could be time to upgrade our home network?

| 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: The home Internet seems to be sluggish lately?

| 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: What is all this Web3 decentralized internet about?

| May 20, 2022

While discussing the ever-changing way in which we use the “web” with a friend, he shared an “explainer“ video from Harvard Business Review earlier this month on Web3 (Web 3.0). It is also on YouTube and offers a glimpse into what they refer to as “read/write/own” information.

Archive: Enjoyable condo cleaning and NFL playoff football

| January 26, 2022

Brenda and I stretched out a cooler than expected weekend in Florida to get the condo ready for our Canadian renters. It worked out nicely since we had enough sun to start in order to go to the beach and plenty of time over the weekend to clean things up AND watch some excellent NFL […]

The “fuel surcharge model” for TV cable content delivery?

| December 11, 2021

It is a sneaky way to increase what I thought was a customer to Cincinnati Bell “contracted-each-year” cable TV and Internet monthly bill? Nope, according to @CincyBell … after being mislead by customer service that the below increases were “government related fees” and “out of their control” … the increases are negotiated contracts with content […]

Tech Friday: Is there too much of YOU on the Internet?

| December 3, 2021

As years of your personal information accumulates on servers across the Internet, do you ever wonder just how much of your data has evolved from a generic interpreted sketch, to a colorful painting with specific details … to now a high resolution gigabyte sized photo of you and your life? Well it is past due […]

Tech Friday filler: Mobile Internet traffic worldwide

| September 24, 2021

Saved an interesting graphic posted on social media this past week. It is interesting to look at and contemplate how we use our smartphones and tablets … it also works as a Tech Friday filler.

Office project patching update photos and banana bread #TBT

| September 16, 2021

Here are a few leftover project photos from the weekend for Throwback Thursday #TBT to add to the personal archive. Normally we make banana bread in the full-size Bosch oven when our bananas go soft and brown, but  I keep trying to get the convection baking setting correct on our toaster oven – not bad […]

Do you pop the end tabs in before unrolling aluminum foil?

| June 27, 2021

Who doesn’t occasionally need a little advice from the helpful tips, tricks and tidbits floating around the Internet? Here’s one that should be familiar to most of us, but surprisingly catches us off guard once in a while when a roll of aluminum foil pops out of the box and ends up unrolled and dinged […]

Tech Friday: Check the password scheme you are using

| May 21, 2021

It is easy to get complacent in securing your online and computer lives, so use last weeks Colonial Pipeline cyberattack and the Statista image of “The Most Popular Passwords Around the World” as a reminder. Longer nonsensical combinations of characters help, but two-factor authentication when available is better. Oh, and stop using the same password […]

Struggling with Lenovo laptop, router and Internet connections

| May 1, 2021

Either the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router at our condo is glitchy, Xfinity is not giving my any upload speed or my Lenovo laptop is struggling to stay connected. No time to diagnosis, but I may end up chucking the router and switch to the cheaper mesh router sooner than I wanted. It is frustrating. Half […]

Tech Friday: A now rare Internet connectivity issue & speedtest

| April 2, 2021

We have not had many Internet connectivity issues since switching to Cincinnati Bell Fioptic fiber and then added a mesh network instead of traditional router (although the Netgear Nighthawk was pretty good – we move it to the condo). Perhaps a lot has to do with companies building out the infrastructure with fewer buggy devices […]

Just how safe are your passwords and online security measures?

| February 12, 2021

My friend Jeff is a cyber security guy and is regularly interrogating me about “best practices” online. I suspect he sees so much that it nearly frightens him away from putting anything online (which is nearly impossible these days). When I first started working with computers in the early 1980s (prior to being online), a […]

The best part about Inauguration 2021: Memes of Bernie Sanders

| January 22, 2021

Not being an advocate for those advocating bigger government, higher taxes, progressive policies … or most Democrats in general, I was not looking forward to the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States this past week. In fact, I didn’t watch any live coverage and relied on the  news clips […]

Tech Friday: When will 5G be coming to Apple’s iPhone?

| March 27, 2020

If Daniel Ives of Wedbush is right, the new 5G capable Apple iPhone release seems "extremely unlikely" for the normal September or October release this year. Most iPhone iOS users have been anticipating or even holding off on an upgrade thinking they might want the new 5G promise data. Personally, I’m relatively satisfied with my […]

Protecting privacy with a web browser – a BRAVE new world

| March 6, 2020

My buddy Jeff Pitts, who has recently moved from IT to  a job focused exclusively on cybersecurity for a worldwide company, tends to error on the side of caution when it comes to privacy practices. He has moved entirely to the Mac (we used to have a  fun debate when he was a 100% PC […]

TechFriday: VPN yay or VPN nay? Free or paid? Which service?

| February 21, 2020

If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time (post from 2007), you have likely used, or been marketed VPN services, as a way to secure your Wi-Fi connection (especially public hotspots) away from the office or home network. I’ve pitched them as a security precaution to my customers and use them when […]

New Windshield … but the Facebook advertising is too timely

| December 15, 2019

I’ve often questioned just how much data is being collected by Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc … but considering I’m a relatively light user of FB … getting push timely advertising is a bit creepy. I called my insurance company last week for a windshield repair/replacement for our 2010 BMW X5 35d and handled the entire […]

Our new home Internet Mesh network is up and running

| August 14, 2019

Our current NetGear Nighthawk R7000 router has been exceptionally stable considering the issues I’ve had with cheaper routers and networked devices in the past. I’m pretty happy with it, but in order to get solid coverage, had to add a WiFi Range Extender to cover the detached garage and poolhouse (and yet still have weak […]

Call me paranoid, but it feels impossible to secure computers

| June 16, 2019

My good friend Jeff Pitts, a network and IT expert, and most recently IT cybersecurity expert, constantly update me with the latest threats to computer servers. He manages the computers and networks for a Cincinnati-based international company that is constantly under bombardment from hackers. Most of the attacks are directly from China and according to […]

Internet connectivity issues are challenging to diagnose

| May 16, 2019

After struggling to keep our network and Internet connection alive earlier this month, I started to question my relatively expensive Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router and “way too many” devices were the problem? After resetting everything several times, calling Cincinnati Bell Fioptics (our ISP) and shrugging my shoulders, I left town and instructed Brenda on how […]

Tech Friday: The business practices of telecommunication, cable and Internet providers are ripe for disruptive innovation

| March 29, 2019

It has been a year since I’ve checked my Internet speed since we have not had any problems, but I doubted we were getting the advertised 500Mbps speeds , but then that my internal network problem. Speed aside, there hasn’t been any reason to question Cincinnati Bell’s service (our TV and internet service provider). They […]

Tech Friday: The Wayback Machine and Cincinnati Style Chili

| March 1, 2019

This is an unusual Tech Friday post, but after being frustrated this week in clicking a dead link to an article that disappeared after a website was updated, I decided there must be a better way to ensure information, links and websites remained useful … WITHOUT having to archive them entirely on my computers, servers […]

Tech Friday: What is all the 5G buzz about?

| December 14, 2018

"Hey Rich, should I wait for a 5G phone … and by the way, what is 5G?" One of these days I’m just going to say, "I don’t know," but until then, I bump along pretending I know more than I do … that is until I get in too deep to walk away. This […]

Tech Friday: Chrome desktop browser welcomed change

| April 20, 2018

Google today launched Chrome 66 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The desktop release includes autoplaying content muted by default, security improvements, and new developer features. You can update to the latest version now using the browser’s built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome.With over 1 billion users, Chrome is both a browser […]

Avoid fly by night services, plugins and linking when blogging

| March 23, 2018

Here’s some advice from someone who as blogged daily since 2005 — AVOID using data, photos, video, etc archived on other services. Over the years, I have been frustrated by “what seemed great at the time” using services offered by companies who specialize in hosting data for users. A little history: It started for me […]

Internet Speeds continue to rise – 100 then 300 now 500 Mbps

| March 14, 2018

After switching from TWC/Spectrum one year ago, Cincinnati Bell’s Fioptics (Fiber) delivered television video and Internet to our house as been excellent. Their Internet speed continues to rise (currently checking with DSLReports/speedtest). Last year I was happy to have my speed increase to 100Mbps down when switching to CincinnatiBell, but then after losing promotional perks […]

Once again disgusted with my cable and Internet provider

| January 12, 2018

Last spring I was so disgusted with the Time Warner to Spectrum change for cable and Internet along with their price increase that I switched to Cincinnati Bell Fioptics. The painful rewiring and equipment switch worked to my favor and lower the bill with the help of a representative that handled everything as if he […]

TechFriday: Home Internet improvements over the years

| September 8, 2017

Accessing the Internet with broadband speeds has definitely improved this past year or so in our area. I remember connecting via modem at 300 baud, improving to 1200, then 56K and making the expensive big move to a twin pair of 128K ISDN lines giving me 256K of bandwidth in the 1990s. Eventually I jumped […]

Cut the cord — and then added a few channels back

| March 4, 2017

Well … so much for cutting the cord as I mentioned in February and contemplating using the Sony Playstation Vue streaming service for the few channels ($30/mo) we wanted to receive that are unavailable over-the-air. We never really got to that point since the local antenna channels seemed way too slow in changing and somewhat […]

Testing an inexpensive OTA antenna before cutting the cord

| February 28, 2017

Television habits, elimination of a landlines and much faster Internet speeds have changed the way most of us use and think about connectivity nowadays … and I’m not the first to once again contemplate "cutting the cable cord." The first step is likely knowing what is available over the air and IF an affordable high […]

For inexpensive whole house wireless try a WiFi Range Extender

| February 24, 2017

Previous efforts at using older wireless access points and routers have all been a disappointment when extending WiFi out to our detached garage/poolhouse/workshop, so when Amazon had an AC750 Netgear WiFi Range Extender (Model EX3700) on a "Prime Daily Deals" sale, I was skeptical. Still frustrated with the lack of a good Internet connection further […]

Tech Friday – Ordered an IOT connected Particle Photon device

| February 17, 2017

While talking with my IT friend Jeff about controlling relays with my Pine64 and Raspberry Pi computers, he thought developing with the Arduino or Particle Photon might be a better idea. I did a little bit more reading as to what an Internet Of Things device might be good for, and decided my relay switching […]

Denial of Services impacting Internet access for much of the U.S.

| October 21, 2016

Twitter status above illustrating second attack shutting down services. The cyber threat continues … as  a second wave cripples some of the biggest domain names through Dyn (Manchester, NH), a company that provide DNS services for connecting domain names to IP addresses. Dyn said it had resolved one attack, which disrupted operations for about two […]

TechFriday: Tim Berners Lee — The Double Slash

| October 21, 2016

Given what Sir Tim did for all of us when he developed HTML and created the World Wide Web, he’s got a fair amount of credit in the bank. If he did have any major regrets about the web, we wouldn’t find it too difficult to forgive him, but his mea culpa relates to only […]

Quickly spun up a new server and volume with Digital Ocean

| August 10, 2016

One of the great things about working with Digital Ocean is the ability to spin up a new droplet server based on a previously saved image/backups within a few minutes. Due to recent improvement of adding volumes in order to expand storage, currently only a couple of their data centers, I opted to image an […]

Safeguarding Chrome from quantum computers

| July 8, 2016

Will Internet transactions be secure when relatively affordable quantum computers show up? Google is not taking chances and is working on their Chrome browser now (according to The Verge). Google is working on safeguarding Chrome against the potential threat of quantum computers, the company announced today. It’s doing so by implementing post-quantum cryptography in an […]

Updating TWC Internet and the iMac virtual to Windows 10

| December 18, 2015

A couple improvement to our Internet connectivity at the house this past week as I quarreled with Time Warner Cable yet again about our service and our bill. Of course they once again wanted to schedule a tech to come out and look at things to determine why our paid for turbo speed was only […]

TechFriday: High priced Internet domains in 2015

| September 18, 2015

As someone who has sold a handful of domain names over the past 20 years, it is interesting to see what prices are being generated (my highest sale was $10,000). In 2015 there are a few less impressive high dollar dot-com transfers (overseas) … due to them being “two-letters” I assume… yet they still garnering […]

Pandora celebrates 10 years with an ad free day on 9/9/2015

| September 4, 2015

Pandora has announced that it will celebrate it’s 10th anniversary on Wednesday September 9th and will offer those who are non-paying listeners with an ad free day. According to a Forbes article, free listeners still make up 95% of Pandoras’ active users and maybe hoping that a sample of what the premium paid-subscriber tier is […]

TechFriday: If you use the Firefox browser, be sure to update

| August 7, 2015

If you are a Firefox browser user, be sure to select the “About” menu and apply the latest update. Yesterday morning, August 5, a Firefox user informed us that an advertisement on a news site in Russia was serving a Firefox exploit that searched for sensitive files and uploaded them to a server that appears […]

Consumers are not satisfied with their cable companies

| June 6, 2015

In a 2015 look at cable companies, very few customers are happy with their providers, in fact the report indicates a couple of the biggest have lost ground (chart below). Barely half of Mediacom Communications, Time Warner Cable and Comcast customers indicate that they are satisfied with service … and the latter two above have […]

What will the new FCC Internet regulations cost the taxpayer?

| February 27, 2015

A debate over controlling free and open access to the “pipes of the Internet” is not as simple (or probably as inexpensive) as it sounds. While the Federal Communications Commission considered views for and against regulating the Internet on Thursday, called “net neutrality,” the commission voted in favor by 3-2. In comments, FCC chairman Tom […]

Finding some new music – both streaming and recorded

| May 16, 2014

This content is restricted.

TechFriday: Use a VPN on Internet wifi hotspots

| March 21, 2014

Before I renew my current VPN service it is time to keep them honest when it comes to their subscription pricing. I’m testing the lower cost AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield Elite using their trial program before renewing my more expensive, but easy to use VPN service just to see if there is any difference. So far […]

Freedompop LTE hotspot is better than Time Warner at home

| March 14, 2014

Just another plug for Freedompop’s LTE wireless access; it is  providing better wifi access than public hotspots and even Time Warner Cable at home.

Time Warner Cable: long term mistakes for short term gains

| February 1, 2014

The Wall Street Journal reported that customers are fleeing Time Warner Cable to the tune of 825,000 TV users in 2013. There is an increase in competition and a change in viewing habits as younger subscribers cut the cord choosing to watch over the air digital (free) TV or just Internet TV on-demand. What’s TWC’s […]

Time Warner Cable and Internet woes

| October 29, 2013

Between being locked out of my WordPress site and having my admin password compromised and dealing with Time Warner cable and Internet issues at home, I’m ready to cut the cord and do away with technology today. Since I was talking with TW customer service about a billing issue and complaining about my home Internet […]

Security: Switching passwords to passphrases and beyond

| November 27, 2012

The topic of computer and Internet security came up this past holiday weekend as several family members wanted access to our home Wi-Fi. My son, having an “open attitude” when in rental houses on his college campus, complained about my “passphrase” security method when trying to help each of his cousins connect their computers and […]

Tell congress how you feel about SOPA and PIPA-for or against

| January 18, 2012

Against my inner voice telling me not to bother, I wrote to my congressmen yesterday regarding the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). There are areas that I agree with and understand, but also way too many areas that will impact what most of us appreciate about the Internet. As written, […]

Internet privacy and security

| June 26, 2011

Although I’ve not been overly concerned with “my personal” Internet browsing and how my habits are being watched, I am conscious that more and more of online habits are being tracked and marketed to interested parties. It does seem a bit intrusive. After reading a few more articles on the subject the use of https […]

Nissan Computer vs Nissan Motor domain name struggle

| November 7, 2010

Perhaps I’ve been living in a cave or something … but just recently heard about the legal battle over the Nissan.com domain while talking with a client this week. He mentioned the story I’m sharing below after we talked about a minor frustration I was having over domain name – all ended well. I told […]

Twitter Email to Twitpic photo posting problem

| August 9, 2010

I’ve been having problems emailing photos from my Palm Pre (or computer) to Twitpic since last week, which is photo sharing service tied to my Twitter account … not that it’s all that important … but the digging turn up just how rapid the growth has been. Pretty rapid: In the couple of years since […]

Bookmarking & collaborating on web research with iCyte.com

| April 23, 2010

At some point in collecting and bookmarking websites for research and the organizational complexity that comes with doing it can be daunting. My XMarks synced bookmarks have become so unwieldy that I don’t even use them anymore – same for those I’ve archived with Delicious.com. I’ve turned to use an Instapaper’s “ReadLater” bookmarklet, a PDFit […]

Time Warner cable upgrade and associated rat’s nest

| April 1, 2010

Time Warner notified me that they needed to upgrade the existing cable cards in my Series 3 Tivo box with a multi-stream card AND install another piece of hardware in order to continue receiving their content (some sort of 2-way frequency sharing box or something). After they added some new wires and stacked the odd […]

Happy Thanksgiving and searching Internet TV with Clicker.com

| November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving and safe travel to my friends and family on the road. We are enjoying a day of turkey and tasty food at my brother and sister-in-law’s house today, which is becoming a tradition.  Although I don’t say it often, I couldn’t ask for a better brother and if ask what I’m thankful for […]

Twitter: 110 is the new 120 was the new 140

| February 11, 2009

While reading Kara Swisher‘s AllThingsDigital’s “Boomtown,” I came across a quote she posted in the side bar of her blog pulled from Brian Solis … … 120 is the new 140. Retweeting is one of the most valuable currencies in the Twitter economy. Leave room in your tweets to make it easier for someone to […]

Speed improvement to Firefox — give it a try

| January 29, 2009

If you are a Firefox user and enjoyed the speed improvements “once upon a time” that was evident, you might be experiencing a “fattening up” and slowing down of this excellent browser. In fact for me, I’ve found myself popping open Chrome for a quicker web look or even to check email or Google Docs. […]

Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
My Desultory Blog