Category: Technology

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There’s a real case for eschewing utility companies internet portals

The most recent case in my experience is Golden State Water.

Envelope.jpegNot only are they trying to raise the rates excessively. (What else is new?) But they’ve got this stupid system where you can’t use their web site to change anything except your email address. Oh, and using their website requires that you submit to paperless billing.

Apparently they’re not even in full control of their customer portal. They may have contracted it out, so God only knows to whom. It does explain why the site is kinda screwy.

All of this started because I’m closing one of the two post office boxes. There’s a lot of the mechanics of living that I’m having to alter since the other half died. Thus far I’ve been employing a minimalist approach because honestly I thought I’d be the hell out of California by now. That’s not going to happen, for reasons that I won’t go into.

I’m going to be here until at least Spring of 2024 so I’m having to work through a lot of the fundamentals. Mailing addresses for utilities, I’ll have to pay for 6 more months of Post office Box rental. I need to close the other halfs P.O. Box and all that kind of thing.

But, and this is the trouble spot. Most all of these utilities want you to monkey with their websites, create accounts and such and then… Don’t let you make basic changes to your account. I have one account that won’t let me change the phone number without deleting and re-creating the account. There’s another that won’t let me change the email address. Both of these situations are funny because I know folks who change phone numbers and emails more often than some people change socks.

If you can’t change basic stuff, without having to recreate an account, then the vendor will have loads of zombie accounts on their servers. That’s just as much a security issue. Figure one person might have at minimum 2 accounts, possibly more. If the account database is compromised bad actors would have access to two or more emails and passwords.

I get that there are security issues. I find myself asking if there are such security issues, then perhaps we shouldn’t be conducting business over the internet.

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We got a new IOS and a Speaker of the House

Mikejohnson2 1 3301794256I’m happy about the Speaker because he seems untainted by the rampant corruption in Washington. Time will tell. I do really like the thought of him whipping Congress into working something like real business hours instead of what we’ve been seeing. We’ll never get our money’s worth out of Congress. That’s a given, but maybe this new guy will put an end to Congress sitting around jerking off instead of passing budgets, laws, and finding ways to cut the obscene waste our government finds all too easy to create.

I’ll admit my fingers are crossed that this guy isn’t corrupt. Louisiana has a long and storied history of corruption in politics so I’m taking a “wait & see” position.

I’m hopeful though.

Iphone 15 pro max renderYesterday Apple released a lot of software.

I’m most excited about the new IOS 17.1 release. Because my iPhone and watch having weird glitches was annoying. The weather complications on my watch being blank most of the time, but intermittently working was really annoying.

I spent part of the morning updating everything in the house. Thus far all the goofy crap my watch and phone were doing appears to have been fixed. I’m sure as I move forward with the new IOS I’ll stumble across new bugs. I just hope those new bugs aren’t as plentiful as the bugs I was seeing in IOS 17.0.3.

I’ll admit that the updates went pretty smoothly. You could only appreciate how happy I am about that if you knew how much Apple Iron there is in this house.

While I was waiting for software to download and load, I managed to make a lot of headway on my list of dumb things I have to do. So the time wasn’t wasted.

I used to sit and watch the update process. I don’t anymore. I figure that watching it isn’t going to make it be any more reliable or move along any faster. It’s almost binary now. Either it works or it doesn’t. One path causes me no trouble and I get what I expected. The other path, something has gone horribly wrong and I’ll have to figure out how to fix it.

Either way, there’s little sense in my watching the screen for some cryptic message that won’t mean anything to me or to an ill trained first tier technical support person I reach at Apple.

Sadmac1

I guess that’s me applying the “Don’t worry about it until it happens” philosophy of life.

There is one thing I don’t do. I don’t update everything at exactly the same time. Typically I’ll let the phone finish before I update the iPad, computer, HomePods, AppleTVs, and watch. 

I have this vision in my head that I start the update process on everything at once. Then everything failing and seeing sad Mac faces everywhere. Which would mean I couldn’t even email for assistance.

Remember the Sad Mac?

I had to laugh at myself about the Dynamic Island.

At first I was like “Yeah, So what?” Then yesterday after the updates completed I realized that I’d been seeing the Dynamic Island all along.  True there are only a few apps that I have which make use of the Island while I’m doing other things. But the Dynamic Island is actually there all the time and providing me with useful information. It’s so seamless and honestly I expect useful information to be presented exactly where the Dynamic Island presents it that the island was almost invisible to me.

I have high expectations of software. So I’ll have to say to Apple “Good Job”. 

Now let’s have a look at other apps both Apple and third party to see if Dynamic Island integration can be useful.

I’m also liking having the always on display on the new phone. I didn’t think I’d like it but I do. Now I want to get a magsafe stand for the bedside table. So I can use the whole standby functionality thing. I haven’t had a bedside clock for years. It’s weird that my bedside clock became my phone, wand now my phone is morphing back into a bedside clock. 

Apparently I’m not the only person who’s thinking this way. MagSafe stands, particularly the one from TwelveSouth are backordered all over the place.

Well, off to continue the sorting and tossing of crap out of the house.

I hope everyone has a really nice day.

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I love early morning Heart Attacks!

Digital manufacturingThis morning I got up as usual. I let the dog out, got a cup of coffee, and woke the computer to check email.

Up to this point everything is normal. I’m not feeling all that great, and I was thinking that it would be nice to take the laptop out to the living room where there’s some cuddle space and the dog would likely curl up beside me. 

Before doing that, I checked the backupstatus, because I’ve got the laptop plugged into a hub that provides an ethernet connection. If you disconnect, it makes the next backup have to clean up the files that were interrupted and it doesn’t take that long to let the machine finish its task.

That’s when I discovered that there hadn’t been any backup since yesterday at 4PM. Then, since inquiring minds want to know, I asked why. The computer said there’s no backup disk.

Hmm. I know there is a backup disk so somebody’s got some splaining to do. 

I go check on the NAS device in the closet. It’s running, but the drive indications are all wrong. There’s no error or warning per se, but the NAS is hammering on 2 drives and not responding to commands. The NAS is also not appearing at the address that it’s supposed to for me to access its control interface. 

I try a “soft” power down the NAS appears to accept that command but never completes the execution of the command. I do a hard power down. Knowing full well that whatever is going on is probably bad.

I power the NAS back up and now I’m greeted with all the drives being normal but there’s a little flashing status light. That light is usually solid. I go back to the computer and find that the NAS is still not at the address it’s supposed to be, nor is it broadcasting that it’s available. After scanning a bit I found an IP address that appeared to be the NAS. I logged in to the control console only to find that the NAS thought I’d moved drives from another NAS, and that I would have to update the NAS software to accomplish this.

Ahh I’m beginning to see the likely problem. The NAS tried to update its software and the update went horribly wrong. I guess I’m lucky that the machine still had some clue what it was, but what about my 10TB of data? What about the Porn?!?

Well there’s no path around, I must go forward. I tell the NAS that the 5 drives contain data and they are to be preserved. Then I tell the NAS it can update to the latest version of software. I didn’t want to do this… I’ve been holding off on updating to the latest (read that as completely redesigned) version of the NAS software because I just didn’t feel like working my way through the headache.

I’ve got data from the other half on that NAS that I’m still sorting through and there is no need to complicate matters with a completely different NAS operating system where I’ll have to rework permissions, connections, and applications.

My plan was to do this update when I was done with the other halfs business. 

However, since I have no choice, I click “Proceed” 

The next screen from the NAS says, “Formatting system volume” OH SHIT!!!!!

Does that mean the area that the NAS uses to store the OS, OR did I just flush all my data?

Well the helpful countdown to completion said I’d know in 9 minutes.

For the next 9 very long minutes I used the time honored prayer of IT workers everywhere.

“SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK!”

After 10 minutes the NAS came back online with a brand new OS and as an added bonus all the user accounts and been wiped. Yea! But the data appears to have remained intact.

So apparently my IT Prayer was heard, and answered, by a benevolent AI somewhere.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that I get to reconfigure the NAS and work my way through a new operating system where everything is moved and some features are gone entirely.

Yea! 

I’ve fired up a set of utilities designed to ensure drive integrity to make sure my data is in good shape. I’ll have to configure around the utilities doing their job to reconnect my NonAdmin account to the data. Oh look, the User Accounts, Groups, and Permissions controls are all different… Greeaaattt!

I have a headache that would stop Godzilla, I think I’ve got some sinus thing happening and I really may not have the patience for this…