Google Fiber – Triangle – A Tale of Two Experiences

First, I have to say my personal experience with Google Fiber (GF) since getting it a few years ago has been great. The speed is consistent and, if there is a problem I may not have noticed, it will be reflected as a discount on my monthly bill. My install process was uneventful in part due to my prep work to run a pull string from the back of my home, through the crawl space, up the corner of the garage to my office where I needed the connection. The install team was super appreciative of the pull string and…

Read More

Updated Photography Favorites – Webinar and Motivation

Over the past couple of years and recent shooting for family has resulted in a few additions my favorites category on my PerformancePixel web gallery. This is a portrait made of my niece Raven a couple of weeks before her wedding. Today, I am in a photography webinar with some great talks from Joe McNally, Harold Davis, Chris Knight, David Ulrich, Lindsay Adler, and Chris Orwig to name a few. These are all authors for Rocky Nook publishing. Tomorrow, it will be great to hear from Scott Kelby as well. One thing I find with my photography hobby is self…

Read More

Subjectivity of Senses

This quote from Carl Jung conveys what I believe about the abilities of human senses, especially when applied to human hearing, which should be considered by reviewers before attempting to wax eloquently about audiophile equipment on an empty stomach or desiring of a soothing beverage.      It is not easy to grasp this point. But the point must be grasped if we are to know more about the ways in which the human mind works. Man, as we realize if we reflect for a moment, never perceives anything fully or comprehends anything completely. He can see, hear, touch, and taste;…

Read More

Infragard – What’s missing is yoU! What’s missing is some modicum of membership support.

Many years ago I wrote a SANS paper on Community Policing the Internet (give me a break on the grammar – ChatGPT wasn’t a thing in 2003). In my paper, I tout the the mission of Infragard, a local chapter based community outreach organization fostered by the FBI (to the point the FBI provided background checks on persons wanting to join), for its ability to engage the frontline personnel employed by critical infrastructure sectors. It gave the FBI a means to get their agents in front of these members to start putting names with faces and hopefully trading contact information…

Read More

OpenAi ChatGPT an Interview, of sorts

Bard is out and I was able to ask and compare answers from ChatGPT. Check out this PDF for details. Recent links for the topic:https://news.google.com/search?q=Artificial%20Intelligence%20News&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aenhttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/technology/chatbots-turing-test.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/technology/google-chatgpt-artificial-intelligence.html Below you will find my initial post where I ask a series of questions using the OpenAI ChatGPT web interface. I won’t say the responses were alarming or revealing. They are more of a politicians well rehearsed answers. More recently, I tried the OpenAI Python code generator while completing some exercises in the “Learn to Code By Solving Problems – A Python Programming Primer” by Daniel Zingaro book I am reading. I had already completed…

Read More

Free GeoIP Lookups – Accuracy

My shell script I use to lookup geoip information recently started failing on the json.tool jq portions and instead of trying to fix it I rewrote it in python. The original shell script leveraged api.ipgeolocation.io, which turned out to be fairly inaccurate on the information returned.  Original Shell Script Code (API Key is if you register with the site located in Lahore, PK) #!/bin/shif [ $# -ne 1 ] then echo “Usage: geoip.sh ip_address”exit 1fiAPI_KEY=redactedcurl -sS –request GET \ –url ‘api.ipgeolocation.io/ipgeo?apiKey=’$API_KEY’&ip=’$1 \| python3 -m json.tool | \jq ‘{ip: .ip, isp: .isp, city: .city, state_province: .state_prov, region_code: .region_code, country_name: .country_name, country_code:…

Read More

Western NC Vacation 2022

For a second time we leveraged VRBO to locate a vacation rental. Our first VRBO experience was with a rental in Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia a few years ago. This time, we were headed to the Boone area in North Carolina. Late in in trying to find a place, we booked only a few days before our trip at a home about 20 minutes outside of Boone toward Tennessee in the Cove Creek – Vilas area. This place was amazing with three bedrooms and a bath attached to each one. The kitchen, dinning and living room were open and…

Read More

Strava Activity

Not much riding for me in 2022. I have a left hip issue, torn labrum, that doesn’t need surgery at this point, but had a hernia repair surgery instead. Right now, I am up in Western NC on George’s Gap Rd watching the occasional cyclist come down the road below our VRBO rental. I have to wonder who has the Strava record on this segment. To locate the area on Strava, do Explore then segment search and search for Georges Gap Vilas NC. Linking to a Strava map of the area is no go for some reason, but here is…

Read More

Amazon Music Listening on Linux

From what I can tell, the options to get an Amazon Music player running under Linux is limited with the end of support announcement from Nuvola Player at the end of 2022. Plus, I have not been able to get Nuvola working with Ubuntu 20.04. One quick fix to try in Linux is a user agent switcher. If you are like me, you visit the music.amazon.com site with Firefox only to be told the version is not supported and you need to upgrade to the latest version. The only problem is the latest FF for Linux is installed. Working in…

Read More

Thinking Out Loud on a Global Stage

I have recently read two Op-Ed pieces concerning the lead up to the Putin war to re-assimilate Ukraine, one by Thomas L. Friedman and another piece by Robert Gates expounding his thoughts on future of threats from China and Russia and a return to military buildup by the U.S. and bringing back aid programs. The first piece I read talked about how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) probably helped to push Putin into a corner from which he now fights to regain former Soviet states in a new Russian empire where America and NATO could share the blame. That…

Read More

Topping DX3 Pro+ DAC

I was trying to locate something more than a headphone amp for listening to my CD-Player (old Cambridge Audio DVD89), my laptop via USB for high-res streams and other devices I might connect digitally to the inputs. The Topping DX3 Pro+ has a good number of inputs. The least used for me is the Bluetooth, but it’s a nice convenience when I am not concerned about audio quality. I finally figured out how to get sound from the unit when I make a Bluetooth connection from my stereo receiver which is sending LDAC. The Sony receiver’s Bluetooth TX works with…

Read More

Audio Snake Oil – /ˈsnāk ˌoil/

Snake Oil/ˈsnāk ˌoil/noun informal•North American noun: snake oil; noun: snakeoil – a substance with no real medicinal value sold as a remedy for all diseases. – a product, policy, etc. of little real worth or value that is promoted as the solution to a problem. “the new tax plan was denounced as snake oil” Over the past few years I have looked at updating and upgrading my headphones, audio devices and getting back into to listening to music with a more critical ear. As I started on this journey, I found there were either cheap, inexpensive, budget conscious, expensive or…

Read More

Dell XPS 8930 Woes

As much as I would like to say my experience with the new Dell XPS 8930 tower computer has been uneventful, I can’t say that and regret this purchase after my experience with Dell support and their attempted repair. The issue started at the end of May when the built-in SD Card reader quit working. I had just used it the week before to inventory a bunch of cards I had lying around. And better to know I can reformat them in the camera without worry I that had not yet imported them into Lightroom. The only updates applied to…

Read More

Down for the count

Lost the VM that ran this server. This new server is slowly being reconstituted with old content based on the number of requests for the old post. Thanks to the Wayback Machine/Internet Archive captures for making it a little easier. If you have a specific post you want back, let me know.

OUYI Electronic Commerce Chinese Scammers – Paypal to the Rescue

I was recently presented an ad offering me an early access deal to a portable laser engraver for the super low price of $19.99.  That in itself should have been the clue that this was one of those offers that was too good to be true.  But already having a larger non-portable laser engraver, I thought $20 was  cheap enough that if it wasn’t a great laser system, I would not be out that much money.  So, I placed my order which totaled $29.98 after the $9.99 shipping fee was tacked on.  Here is the ad for the item from…

Read More

My Path into Information Security

Let me be the first to say that I appreciate the path I took to get into the Information Security field.  Today, the more common name for the field is Cybersecurity, which I will short hand as cyber for the rest of this post.  I know there are purists that totally hate the short form, but they are not typing this, I am.  A recent effort by my nephew to consider a career change to move from a sales rep into cyber got me thinking about my path into the field. First, I was on the leading edge of the…

Read More

Fixing Broken Mazda 5 Sliding Door Power Locks

I guess faulty power locks are in my blood.  After dealing the issue multiple times with my 2004 Pontiac Vibe (see blog posts), the same issue started with my 2012 Mazda 5 about six months ago.  This time the front door power locks are working fine.  The problem child is the driver side sliding rear door.  For a while it was hit miss and sometimes it would lock and other times not.  Finally, it just quit doing anything when either the key fob lock and unlock  or the internal front door lock and unlock buttons where hit.  While I would…

Read More

2004 Pontiac Vibe Power Door Locks, Blower Fan and Fresh Air Damper

One of my popular posts continues to be the problems I have experienced with my power door locks on my 2004 Pontiac Vibe I purchased from hertz car sales in 2006.  As the car has aged, more electrical issues show up that are just plain annoying.  The latest two, in addition to the power door locks, are the heater blower motor not spinning up without banging under the dash and the servo actuator for the damper for fresh or recirculating air. The damper would go over to fresh air and just start clicking every second.  Some Google searches turned up…

Read More

Pontiac Vibe Power Locks

Update: 12/16/2011: I tore down the latch/lock actuator to bare bones and reassembled it paying close attention to making sure all electrical contacts were kept clean.  Here is the new post on this problem. Update 8/6/2009: Since my last update below, the driver’s side door had to be opened up and re-lubed again; the rear driver’s side door did as well, and the front passenger door has quit working all together even after re-lubing it.  Based on the number of hits this blog entry gets on a daily basis, this has to be a defect.  Too bad this car gets…

Read More