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How to Almost Build a High-end PC in 2020

By on Nov 21, 2020 in Hardware | 0 comments

In a past life, I was Network Administrator for a public school division. There, and later as the owner of an IT company, I purchased millions of dollars of tech hardware; everything from desktops to servers to routers and custom networking appliances. I’ve never had a more difficult time finding a company to take money for computer equipment than I’ve had this week trying to build a single workstation for myself in late 2020. My current PC, first built in early 2016, is showing its age. The 16GB of RAM is getting maxed out by Chrome. The CPU is running at 100% on all cores far too often. It’s not snappy, and it’s time to move on. I did my research and chose to wait for the new Ryzen 9 5900X processor from AMD. It was touted as being best-in-class at an affordable price, and the reviews have affirmed that promise. I was getting excited. I seriously considered...

Synology DSM918+ Review: Something So Simple, Yet So Unbelievably Frustrating

By on Feb 1, 2019 in Hardware | 0 comments

The promise of the Synology DS918+ is that it’s a simple way to setup a powerful network attached storage (NAS) solution. This language is featured prominently in the description on Amazon: High-speed scalable storage serverFeaturing a powerful quad-core CPU, Synology DiskStation is perfect for home users or small businesses looking for a compact and reliable shared storage solution to process intensive workloads. After a few weeks of near-daily struggle with the DS918+ and Synology’s shockingly poor support, I thought it time to share my experience. Let’s Start With The Basics: Setting up the DS918+ This part was simple enough. I installed my three new 8TB Seagate IronWolf drives and ran through the basic setup, configuring them in a RAID 5 array. The DS918+ installed the available updates and I teamed the 1GB network cards for some added speed. I connected them...

Why Can’t The MLB Stop Spoiling Games For Fans?

By on Jun 18, 2018 in Software |

Baseball is the only sport I care about in the slightest, and I’ve been a Cubs fan for most of my 36 years. There was a brief time before I knew what baseball was that I wasn’t technically bleeding Cubs blue and I had to take a short break in the 2000’s in order to decide if I can handle any more disappointment, but other than that, big fan. Over the past few years, I’ve consumed all of my baseball through the MLB’s various streaming services. This has generally consisted of web browser based video players, the Roku app, and the MLB At Bat mobile app. None of these has ever been perfect. Audio issues, low quality, and massive buffering have all been frequent. However, in 2018 things have taken a severe turn for the worse, and MLB support seems completely unable to help. I work a lot, so I rarely get to stream games live. That means I don’t...

How Three Massive Companies Fail To Get VoIP Right

By on Jan 1, 2018 in Blog Posts, Internet, Software | 0 comments

For years I’ve been using Skype for my business telephone system. Although it’s never been perfect – the admin interface is atrocious and reliability is a problem – Skype is simple, cheap, and has all of the features I need. Well, it did have everything, until they inexplicably decided to axe custom voicemail greetings. Without the ability to have professional voicemail greetings for when customers can’t reach someone, Skype can’t really be considered a proper solution for businesses. I did a bit of research and asked around for better solutions. My needs are simple: I’m looking for a good softphone, an easy to use admin interface, the ability to import my contacts from Skype, and I need to be able to port my phone number. I came up with three companies that seemed to meet my requirements: Vonage, Jive, and 8×8. Although they all advertise...

How to Export ALL of Your Skype Contacts

By on Nov 5, 2017 in Software | 0 comments

It’s been a while since I made the move to Skype for handling all of my business calls. There have always been problems with Skype for business use, including confusing billing and an abysmal management interface, but the removal of custom voicemail greetings was the last straw. Tomorrow my number is being ported to Vonage. The most important thing to migrate over from Skype is my contacts. I’ve got years of phone numbers saved that I don’t want to have to re-enter. One would think this would be an easy process. After all, Skype does include the ability to backup contacts to a file, but this ended up exporting less than half of my contacts. When people call my phone number, which is setup through Skype, I see their number in caller ID. Then I rename it to their personal or company name for future use. Apparently, Skype doesn’t consider these to be...

Incompetency Run Amok: Why I’ll Never Fly British Airways Again

By on Jun 25, 2017 in Blog Posts |

A trip overseas is never easy. You plan for months, making sure everything is in order. Passports have to be issued. Presents ordered. Bags packed and re-packed. Airline tickets monitored for months to get the best seats and price possible on a reliable airline. Alona and I, with of our 15-month-old son, Roman, set out for Ukraine flying British Airways (BA) so he could meet her family for the first time. BA’s ticket pricing was stellar. We spent $1,800 in April to purchase two adult economy fares with one infant in the lap. It was $200 less expensive than our 2015 fare with Delta/KLM which didn’t include the infant fare. Over the years I had heard good things about British Airways. They regularly outrank all American-based airlines in ratings and I seem to recall flying with them once or twice in years past and having no issues. Back in late March BA had a massive global...

Review: Dell XPS 13 9365 2-in-1

By on Feb 12, 2017 in Blog Posts, Hardware | 0 comments

Back in 2012 I got my first Dell XPS 13 and it was the best laptop I’d ever had. It was svelte, fast, and just what I needed in a mobile computer. I used it for years before I got a Chromebook Pixel which was (and still is) a better device. Since then Alona has taken over ownership of the 2012 XPS 13 and has used it daily. While it’s still a solid device, it’s starting to show its age. Windows 10 never worked perfectly on it (neither did Windows 8), with a number of minor nagging issues and a serious bug with the display driver that we were never able to resolve. So, it was time for an upgrade. Alona needs a Windows laptop because she has to run Windows-only apps, so that meant no Chromebooks. In the end, we opted for the brand new Dell XPS 9365 2-in-1. Although the name leaves a lot to be desired, the device itself is dripping with sex appeal. It’s fanless,...

How to Get a Static URL For Shopify Files

By on Dec 14, 2016 in Internet | 1 comment

Ran into an issue today where a Shopify app named Findify needed to be able to link directly to a CSS file hosted on the store it was connected to. For some reason Findify doesn’t inherit styles from your theme and you can’t simply override the styling using a typical stylesheet in your Shopify theme and you can’t make a lot of changes via the external Findify management interface and adding tags to their custom box doesn’t work, so you’re left with using the external CSS link. Findify support was…less than helpful with this. I was left to my own devices. Trouble is, Shopify doesn’t provide static external links to assets in your theme’s folders. For example, let’s say you add a new CSS asset to your theme in the standard way using the theme customizer. You’d think you could access it at www.domain.com/custom.css or maybe...