Troubleshooting 101: read the manual, repeat as necessary

 Against the advice of my Facebook consultants, I purchased a monitor with a built-in webcam about two years ago this week.  An ASUS BE24E series.  Everyone said that not only is the quality of standalone webcams better but built-in ones tend to break leaving you with useless hardware.  Think TV/VCR combos.

Well, the webcam worked for a while until it didn't.  Sometime in the late fall of 2021, it stopped working.  I'm not 100 % sure when it stopped working because I don't use it every day.  I just remember

testing it out for an interview, it not working, and me going to my box of cords and hardware and using one of the many detached cameras I've come across over the years.

Periodically, I'd try to troubleshoot it but it was never a priority.  This week, however, as I was working on another home project, I came across the manual that came with the monitor.  It's mostly pictorial but I noticed something I hadn't before.  If you are using a VGA connection instead of HDMI (or DVI I suppose) you need to use a USB firewire for the camera to work.

This might be common knowledge among my nerdier tech friends but I apparently forgot this step.  I'm guessing that when I first got the monitor, more detailed instructions came with and I used a firewire.  I must have forgotten it when I moved the computer from the middle bedroom to the office.  

It's nice to have a fully working monitor again.  It would be nice to be fully working myself.  

An unfortunate set of events for New Rigel

My desktop, New Rigel, has finally bit the dust.  it seems like every time we move into a new house, one of my computers breaks a few months later.  Okay, I only have two data sets for this and both machines were already pretty old before moving them around several times.  But I had just sunk a little over $100 into upgrading the memory because it was giving me some performance issues when I tried to work with remote Citrix for my contract gig.  

I ordered a new computer desk in November.  It took two weeks to arrive via some crappy Amazon issues.  I actually had to reorder it but got a $40 credit for my troubles.

After building the desk, I powered down the PC and put everything on the new desk.  I didn't power it back up because it was evening and I didn't need to do anything computer-related.  The next morning it wouldn't turn on.  Something must have happened during the night because the UPS device I keep my PC plugged into was off, and out of backup power.  

As I had to start work, I borrowed Nightingale's laptop and was able to find most of my URLs through the power of Chrome.  This has been a decent short-term solution but Nightingale really wants her laptop back.  

I did some troubleshooting and found that if I removed the ATX CPU cable, the computer would power on, but of course, nothing would boot up.  The next thing to try was the Power Supply.  I ordered one off eBay and there was drama with that because I had my old address in my account and didn't notice until I hit Purchase.  eBay has no mechanism to change an address after an order has been placed, and the seller was less than helpful.  

The new Power Supply didn't make a difference so now the best, and really the only course of action is to get a new computer.  I'm not ready to purchase my next Forever Computer so I'm looking for a cheap but serviceable one.  My current gig goes until January 28th and I don't know when the next gig comes along.  

My dead desktop was pretty robust and it had built-in WiFi.  The cheapies I'm looking at on Woot either don't have WiFi or come with a USB dongle, which isn't ideal but I'm warming up to it. 

I considered buying an exact version of my old desktop off eBay so I would just swap out hard drives and reuse the RAM I just bought.  But as Nightingale pointed out, why would I want an 8-year-old computer?  And as some friends on Facebook pointed out when I bragged about upping the RAM, solid-state drives are where it's at, man!  

There are some cheap refurbished desktops on Woot but many of them do not come with built-in WiFi or optical drives.  Some do not say how much RAM They support.  I think I have found two that might suffice, but I'm torn between going cheap or going for the long haul. 

Lenovo M900 Small Form Factor Desktop, Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core, 16GB DDR3, Solid State Drive, Win10Pro (Your Choice: Model) -$359.99

Lenovo M900 Small Form Factor Desktop, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core, 16GB DDR3, Solid State Drive, WIFI, Win10Pro (Your Choice: Model) - $529.99

Note: I know these links may disappear but I've basically shown them with max price options on Woot.  

The major difference is the processor and each comes with different SSD size options.  Basically, I either buy the i5 with the half-terabyte SSD or I get the i7 with the 1 TB SSD.  none of the options in between are worth it.  I'm hoping that I can reuse my optical drive from New Rigel.

I'm leaning toward the cheaper option.  If it fails, i won't feel as bad knowing that I save $200 which can be used to buy the next desktop, a gaming machine perhaps.  

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My New ASUS BE24E Business Monitor

 I bought a new monitor.  I just wanted a second monitor, but my MIL bought me and Nightingale each a new monitor for Christmas.  Since we share an office and a desk, it didn't make sense to have three monitors especially since my old monitor had to be turned on using a fickle remote control.

Unfortunately, I sold my old monitor before I realized that the new ones didn't have speakers.  Although they looked like they did and had the appropriate inputs.  I suspect that is because it is easier to use one Form Factor for your monitor design and simply enable/disable at the control board or driver level than to manufacture two completely different monitor housings.  

As usual, I crowdsourced on Facebook and got some advice.  

Okay Facebook hive, crowdsourcing time.   I need a new monitor for my computer.  I don’t need state-of-the-art, but I do want as much future proof as possible.  I’m thinking built in speakers and webcam.  Is wanting touch screen too much?

Anyone recently buy a monitor they are happy with, or have some thoughts on this?

My usual experience when I Crowd Source Question is that many of my friends can ask their FB collective for advice and get legit, sound recommendations.  Whenever I do it, I get people working on their Second City Comedy routine, snark, and maybe one useful comment in the bunch.  This time around, I got mostly post focused responses.

The summary is that many pointed out that touch screens are nonessential and you can get better speaker and webcam addons than built-in.  

Most of the advice came from people my age who are established and have enough disposable income to buy a kickass multipurpose monitor.  I could do that too, even though I'm unemployed at the moment.  

Ultimately I decided to buck my usual future proof algorithm and went with the monitor I need today instead of the monitor I might need tomorrow.  I did forgo the touch screen but did get a monitor with a built-in webcam and speakers.  To be fair, it's hard to find all of these in one monitor with the appropriate inputs for an older computer desktop.  

The ASUS BE24E suits my needs for the moment.  I wish the camera was adjustable but the monitor itself is so perhaps that is all I will need.  Perhaps by the time I'm employed again and/or we are in a new house, technology will make a leap and I can have a wall-sized monitor that works as a work screen, TV, and communications source.  

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Might I recommend a couple of Low-Cost Tech items

Might I recommend a couple of low cost tech items.   

• QFX WiFi/Bluetooth Speaker 
• Dayton WiFi Audio Adapter

You can connect to the speaker with Bluetooth but also to your WiFi which should have a farther range and theoretically better quality audio.  Admittedly, this one is a bit of a challenge to set up, especially if you have several of them like I do, but you cannot beat the price.

In our next house I may spring for a stereo receiver with WiFi, but for now I'm using the Dayton Audio Adaptor, which does the trick.

I cannot get celestial radio or CDs into the into my speakers but I can play Spotify et al on the speakers the previous owner put into the kitchen ceiling.  The dongle also works with the QFX speakers so it's a PoorTechDudes solution to full home streaming.

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Easy and Expensive versus Cheap and Complicated

Every since we moved into our house, I've wanted to figure out a way to get music to play throughout the house.  The previous owner did run some speaker wire from the basement to the first floor and he also installed speakers in the kitchen that connect to an old school receiver which is located in a cabinet above the fridge.   [Note: the asshole actually left us a broken CD player but my buddy gave me his old school receiver.]

I can play celestial radio through it, but I'd like to be able to connect other speakers to this system and stream it throughout the house (well most likely just the living room, basement and perhaps back deck and maybe even the garage).  I hoped I would be able to buy some sound bars for the respective TVs and use those as wireless speakers when not watching television.

I'd also like to be able to stream Spotify as well as the music on my PC and even the CDs we still own.  Lastly, I want to do this as inexpensively as possible and don't want to fish wires to connect speakers back to the main receiver. 

So far my limited research (a trip to Best Buy and reading through the audio Forum at Tom's Hardware) indicates there are a couple of ways to do it, with the trade-off being between getting everything I want and the setup costs.

Upgrade the Receiver:  I could get a more modern receiver with Bluetooth and/or WiFi which would allow me to stream content over the kitchen speakers.  The drawback is that unless I buy the speakers that go with that brand of receiver, there is no guarantee they will all play nicely with one another.  And I would not be able to take advantage of the most of the receiver's output jacks because it has to be located in the kitchen cabinet and there is no practical way to connect any peripherals to it.

Connect an Audio Adapter: there are various adapters that connect to your old school receiver which just bring the WiFi piece.  I haven't found one that also includes bluetooth so you are limited in wireless speakers and sound bars.

It seems SONOS is the Platinum Standard out there, though there are cheaper solutions out there.

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Introducing our new router

In spite of the fact that our cable modem/router worked perfectly fine, I opted to invest in a fancier model that has a few more bells and whistles.  

With all the iPhones and iPads and other smart devices in addition to the standard laptop and PC I need to connect to the Internet I decided it was time to buy a more robust router based on positive testimony from a friend.  

There was also a domestic tranquility element involved.   

 This is the speed result from some point far from the router

 

My New Atron Vision AVF240 Gaming Monitor

Ever since I bought my HP desktop and connected two monitors to it, I've had this issue where the monitor would crash if I loaded a YouTube video or other graphic intensive element that ate up CPU and didn't play nicely with the monitor drivers.

I tried troubleshooting it but the registry hack was unsuccessful and there were no driver updates available that would resolve it.

So naturally the only solution left was to buy a new monitor.  I waited until my financial situation improved and then bought a gaming monitor.

Atron Vision AVF240 24-Inch 144 Hz FHD Gaming Monitor with Built-in Speakers.

To be honest, it's okay.  It seems that you can only turn it on using the remote control which seems pointless.  

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Some Technology we could use

Email Classification:  I don't know if this technology already exists but I want to be able to mark or classify an email message to expire after a certain amount of time.  I get tons of emails for sales on running shoes or discounts on races or invitations to events...I want to be able to mark the message somehow such that whenever the relevant date passes, the email deletes itself.

Government Fee organization:  I want an easier system for our City Sticker and License Plate sticker.  Cars should come with some type of bar code that can be scanned to show if those two items are up to date and when they expire.  In the World Today its kinda of a game: if you find my car and it doesn't have one of these, you get to issue me a ticket.  My system would allow Municipalities to track when a car was up for renewal.  You could then mail a notice to the car owner and if they don't provide proof that they live in the city/state anymore, you could then issue them the ticket electronically.

Smart Door locks:  Next...I want a door lock with a keypad.  The keypad allows me to program an entry code that only works during a set day and time.  This would be good for nannies, house keepers and other people you need to allow access to your home but don't want to give them unrestricted access.

Facebook Features we can use: Finally, I would like the following Facebook Feature.  I run some type of program or report and it shows me a list of all my friends and our interactions, or lack thereof.  I envision it would look something like:

In the last 12 months

    Joe Epstein has liked 204 of your status, has commented 113 times on your status, invited you to 23 events, asked for your help on Farmville and wished you a happy birthday.

The ideal application would allow me to filter by criteria.  Where I'm going with this is I have a ton of friends who I don't interact with. I get that not everyone is in everyone's Top 10 and some people are just casual connections that you met one time at a dinner party or event and you're keeping it real. But there are others who seem to just have a FB account so that they can tell world what they are doing without the cost of having to pay attention to what others are doing.  That's what a blog is for!  I'd probably want to de-friend those people or at least filter them so they don't show up in my news feed.

My WiFi Hardware

We have a Zoom 5350 Cable Modem/Router in the attic which provides enough internet for email

and web surfing provided we are either in the bedroom or not too far from the attic.

Here's what I have to take it to the next level:

•  NETGEAR FVS318 ProSafe VPN Firewall 8 with 8-Port 10/100 Switch
•  Hawking HWREN1 Hi-Gain Wireless-300N Range Extender
•  NETGEAR Powerline 200Mbps Nano Adapter - Starter Kit (XAVB2101)
•  NETGEAR XWNB5201 Powerline 500Mbps to N300 Wi-Fi Access Point
• Apple Airport Express

 I've been working on various configurations to try and extend the range and the strength of our broadband connection. The report in the lower left was run from my iPad connected to the various WiFi Networks  I have running.  My Zoom Modem produces the weakest signal which sort of makes sense since its traveling from the attic two floors down.  The Hawking HWREN1extender in the Kitchen does well to repeat this signal and if I am to believe the speed test, my download speed is double than what it is straight off the Zoom.

In theory I can plug one of the Nano Adapters into a wall outlet and run a LAN cable from it to the HWREN1 for a stronger signal.  Unfortunately, this doesn't work.  all it does it jam our network so we cannot connect, I suspect the problem being an IP conflict.

I ran out of time to fully troubleshoot and since I'm likely to move a few components around I didn't make the effort to physically connect to each device and reconfigure it.

My full inbox is lonely, the demise of Email

I wrote a semi-formal post about The End of Email on ChicagoNow.  This is gonna be a more down to earth follow up post. 

I was a relatively early adopter of email. Having gotten free access to a unix based account in college, I loved the ability to send a message to a friend in another city without having to find a stamp, an envelope and their snail mail address. And getting a response the same day instead of a week later was very addictive.

The thing I really appreciated though was the fact that I didn't have to hand write a letter. Since my handwriting and even my printing is atrocious – top Egyptologists can’t decipher some of it – I have used a computer to write letters to my friends since word processors became more prevalent. I thought it was cool because I could not only edit and re-write a letter more efficiently than with a typewriter, but I could also save a copy so I knew what I wrote them when they finally wrote back and referred to some forgotten comment I made in the previous letter.

Unfortunately not all my friends jumped on the email bandwagon even after it had been around for decades beyond the AOL form. Some just would forward jokes. Others just wouldn't email back at all, not even to acknowledge that they got your last message.

Chalk it up to a combination of some people were busier than me, or didn't have the ADD thing I have or didn't sit in front of a computer most of the time. Some people didn't discover email until they got a work account and didn't like mixing work life and personal life. I couldn't understand what was so hard about hitting the reply key and saying "got your email, I'm still alive, still working at my mind numbing job which doesn't afford me much time to write emails all day."

It took me a while to realize that these people just weren't built that way. They didn't hate email, they just weren't designed to stay in touch. In the physical letter era, they liked getting mail but didn't didn't like the obligation of having to return the favor hanging over their head.  Even though e-mail made the process easier, the resistance to effort was still there.  If there were a technology that would take the thoughts from their head, put it in a note and send it instantly and effortlessly, they still wouldn't do it.

These days I don't get very many personal emails.  Most of my emails are retailer mailings, newsletters, blog subscriptions and the like.  Most people use FB-mail for email which I absolutely abhor because it is so user unfriendly.  What you gain in speed, you sacrifice in functionality. 

Texting has replaced email for the most part.  I have some friends who insist on only using text messages and I just give up when something needs to be communicated beyond the 140 character limit.  Ironically these same people have smart phones that get their email too. 

A rather boring post about my home computers

So I bought a new desktop PC off Woot.com back in October.  It was a HP desktop suitable enough for my needs.  I didn't like that it came with Window 8 but also recognized that is the leading-edge OS in the Windows world and I might as well join the avant-garde party.  I could have got a Windows 7 if I had jumped on one quickly enough but by the time I ran it past my fellow geeks the option that gave me the best hardware for cheapest price was gone.  All in all, I'm quite happy with the $400 savings on this one then the custom one I might have built on the HP website.

Before this new PC arrived, I had three desktop PCs that I used for the following purposes. 

• My main desktop, a dell PowerEdge 400SC class PC which I got for $20 at a yard sale in 2009.  I got it to replace the dinosaur Dell (named Orion) that I had been using since 1999.  I threw a copy of XP on it and added the data drive from Orion.   I really only used it for storing emails, some web surfing and blogging. 
• PC that I built in 2007 that was supposed to be an Application Server but I changed jobs and it ended up really being just a glorified storage drive.  I had plans to use it as a NAS but never got around to it.  When Nightingale and I merged households, one of my many time wasting tasks was going through a box of 3.5 inch diskettes and seeing if there was anything of value worth saving.  A few got copied to this machines hard drive.  Alas, somewhere between all the moves, the HD got fried and it won't even spin so I've lost whatever was on it.  I do have redundant copies of most of it, but there's always a chance one file was missed over.  You know, the one with the next great American novel on it, about a vampire who loves a zombie and they go to wizard school or something like that.
   
• A Windows Media Center PC that my in-laws gave us.  It took me a couple days to get all the
  
  malware, spyware and other junk off it and convert it into a clean poor man's Roku that we used at the condo so we could watch a few things online since we didn't have cable.

Anyway, when they were all working they were fine machines and I had geek-visions of re-purposing the machines as media storage, surveillance camera servers, firewall and whatnot.  Alas, it's too much work and we aren't there yet.  Hence the new PC -- this is probably the last traditional desktop I will ever buy because the leading-edge trend is to go tablet.  

So over the last month I've been slowly migrating the data from the old pcs to the new one.   I decided I'd get rid of the App Server and the SBS machines.  I'm keeping the Media Center one because it still a pretty good piece of hardware and it can support my XP apps that I don't want to upgrade.  I put the outlook archive on it.  The only potential issue is that the hard drive makes a lot of noise when it spins.  I don't know if this is because of its age or from all the moving I put the PC through in the last year (condo to new house, basement to attic, to first floor, now to office.)

The final two

On the new HP, I just have my current email on Outlook 2013 -- I was fortunate to be able to purchase Office 2013 for $10 as an additional benefit of my current employer and the fact that Micosoft is ready to move on to Office 365.

I figure another month or so and I will be confident that I can drop these machines -- stripped of their hard drives of course -- off at the recycle center.

I figure if I don't come across it in a month,  I won't likely need it at all.  Yes, I do have a a backup of the HD on an external Maxtor drive, but I'm not convinced everything got copied.  The problem is that I'm using a maxtor that is already very full with other backups so I cannot simply select the copy the entire drive option and for some reason I cannot select or even see certain folders.  I could trouble shoot it but I rally don't want to invest that much effort and energy.   

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Tried to resist but fell in love with a Roku

So we've had our Roku 3 for a little over a week and I have to say, I love it.  I am of course reserving complete judgement until enough time and usage has accumulated such that I can comfortably say that I am not experiencing any of the issues that many of the Amazon reviewers have sited.

Background:  while we always knew in the back of our minds, Nightingale and I recently realized that we can watch a lot of movies and television shows On-Demand through her Amazon Prime account.  We configured it on the Wii in our basement and were enjoying catching up on many of the movies we missed when they were out in the theater.

The drawbacks are 1) the Wii was designed as a gaming system first and a Streaming device as an afterthought and 2) the wireless in the basement is good but not great.  We could watch a movie fine but it certainly wasn't HD or at least not 1080 HD and rewinding or pausing often interrupted the streaming such that you sometimes had to start the movie all over again.

Hooked up to an Apple Express, Oh the Horror!

Whenever it comes to a piece of new technology (iPad, phone, dishwasher, etc) my MO is to wait until the first couple of iterations for the bugs to get worked out, then I buy the best available that I can afford and I make it last as long as possible.  So I was a little hesitant to get the Roku 3 because of the aforementioned issues.  However, since I was able to buy it using points on Amazon, it was essentially free (Amazon even refunded me the $8 price difference when it dropped the price the other day though I did have to contact them to get the ball rolling).  I figured if it worked out great, if it didn't, I plan to buy a Smart TV at some point in the future (probably once I finish paying for the Flood).

I suspect that enough people complained about the Roku issues that Roku found a way to fix it through the automatic updates that the device downloads and also probably by quietly modifying the devices in the factory or lab or farm or wherever these puppies are built.

The quality of the picture on the Roku as well as the menu interface is far superior to that of the Wii.  Again I suspect it has to do with a more update device (our Wii is 4-5 years old?) and we use it on the upstairs TV which is physically closer to the wireless router.  Eventually I will run some hardwired connections throughout the house but for now, we can get Internet in every room we need it and also on the front porch, the back deck and even in the garage in case I want to watch a YouTube video on how to fix a lawn mower.

Update:  Last night we did experience our first glitch.  While watching a show, our connectivity was apparently too unstable for streaming even though all our other i-devices worked fine.  I believe this was the internet connection and not anything to do with the Roku per se.   We were able to watch the rest of our show on the iPad and I will work on getting a stronger internet connection to the Roku.

So many questions for Electric Cars

In the 2006 movie? Documentary?  Who Killed the Electric Car, Filmmaker Chris Payne explores the many factors that played into the ultimate failure of the electric car to catch on with consumers, even as gas prices began to skyrocket.  

The thing about conspiracy theories is that many of them are just plausible enough to believe.  Others require more suspension of belief than the average Hollywood Action Adventure.  Do I think the oil industry and other institutions influenced or sped up the demise of the E1?  Yes.  Do I think it would have gone to any lengths to stop it from achieving success?  Of that, I'm not yet convinced.  I do believe that Big Auto killed the Electric Street Car so it isn't too much of a stretch.  It certainly is suspicious that they wouldn't let those hundred owners who begged, pleaded to keep their electric E1 vehicles and ended up destroying the majority of them. 

I like the idea of an electric car and am somewhat surprised that they don't exist in abundance today.  Growing up watching the Jetsons, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before the electric flying car replaced the ground-limited fossil fuel polluter.

From a practical point of view, it isn't quite economical to invest in today's current fleet of electric or hybrid vehicles.  The cost is too high, especially when factoring in the extra effort required to charge the vehicles and the travel limitations.  According to some reports, the E1 was to have an improved battery that would increase its range to 300 miles.  So maybe they did engineer something too good that would have eventually ended our dependence on fossil fuel.

A year ago we were looking for a car for me.  I had my heart set on a Honda Element and we found one.  Nightingale wants something a little different.  I do think it would be cool to have an electric car since she really needs to just get from our home to Northwestern and back, and with rush hour traffic, she isn't going much faster than 30 mph on average anyway. 

I suspect there will come a day when we do have electric cars (or cars run on some other fuel source) and I also suspect that Nightingale and I will witness it at the front end with all its quirks and limitations (think pre-smartphone cell phones) and our children will experience the benefit of those early beta models.
   

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