Movie As I wrapped up my Friday debugging, Claire and her beau came over. We opted to go for a family Chinese Dinner together – always a good call because it’s an affordable way to eat “family buffet style”. And the table we usually get (due to family size) is a larger round table away from most background noise, which makes for easier conversations and less distraction. When we got back, we watched “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil”: ...

I’m waking up and digging into a light breakfast and decided to write about another small project of 2020: my experiences with the Pinebook Pro. In a nutshell it’s an inexpensive, ARM-based, Linux laptop. Inexpensive? $200. ARM-based? That’s the type of CPU that’s in your mobile phones, tablets, and usually smart watches. Linux? It’s the operating system that powers the internet, Android, TiVo’s, and much more. But no, it’s not Windows10 or MacOS. ...

This morning marked the end of my relaxing four day holiday weekend. Like many Americans, I had last Friday off in observance of Independence day. I also had Monday off as a special Qualcomm celebration of the 35th anniversary of their founding. Last night Daniel helped me drop off the minivan for repair. It is 10 years old and holding up well for its age. Honda, like Toyota, makes quality, solid vehicles. I’d noticed that the air conditioning was getting sporadic. Sometimes it could function and other times it just blew outside air. My suspicion was confirmed late this morning: the relays that control its activation were flakey. ...

Where have you been? Somewhere around 1998, someone created a tool which I wish I’d known about: sitecopy. And it does what I’d been doing a decade ago for bilikfamily.com but in a different manner. When I was writing entries at my site, I’d usually create it all on my local computer, preview it, and when happy with it, “deploy” it (i.e. upload it) to my web server. This is one common approach with smaller sites that aren’t Amazon, Facebook, etc. It has an upside of being faster loading, much easier on the server, and far more secure against internet exploits. If you don’t touch your website for a week, you need not worry that hackers might find some code exploit and takeover your website. ...

When it rains, it pours. Or as Roseanne Roseannadanna liked to say, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another. But it’s always something.” (Example from YouTube) Saturday morning I went to get groceries and noticed that the key fob (aka the van remote) couldn’t do anything. Upon further examination, I found that the unlock button had seized. After unloading the groceries Timothy and I worked to open up the fob layer by layer. Sure enough, the little microswitch under the unlock button would not “click” anymore. WD-40 didn’t free it. I think the spring/metal stamping inside the switch broke. ...