low quaility (stupid) | David's Blog

Gavin Newsom resents Californians?

I don’t know what else would explain choosing Dianne Feinstein’s replacement from Maryland. Maryland now gets 3 Senators and California gets 1.

I understand that the original design of two houses, with Senators versus Representatives was so that the big states with lots of representatives couldn’t bully the smaller states around. But that doesn’t mean that a large state should simply cede its power away. We should get an equal seat at the table.

Yes, the new senator from Maryland has spent her entire career as (essentially) a (under funded) lobbyist, so is deeply embeded in Washington DC politics.

But nothing about that helps Californians.

Microsoft added AI to Bing (fail)

For the first time ever for me, today MS Edge gave me a search result that automatically sent me to their AI chatbot. Of course, the result wasn’t helpful – I needed information about how to do the task with PowerShell, not interactively. So I clicked the button to copy the AI chatbot prompt, did new search, typed in “powershell” and pasted the original query in. It came back with results.

The results were wrong. Completely wrong. But they looked like they might be right.

If I were some new sysadmin trying to figure out something I was unfamiliar with, this would have so fouled me over.

I just have to laugh at Microsoft being so incompetent.

I mean, I know I have a chip on my shoulder about Microsoft. But man they keep shooting themselves in the foot. It’s hilarious.

Microsoft’s company motto appears to be “Quality is Job Secondhundredandthirteenth”.

Microsoft moving their documentation to GitHub – What could go wrong?

I’m not a Windows expert: as much as I dislike Microsoft for their lack of ethics, this should be no surprise. So when I do need to do Microsofty-sorts-of-things, I need to RTFM – which I’m fine with. They took the time to write the manual so I wouldn’t waste valuable people’s time with basic questions. I should Read The Friendly Manual.

I also know that things people link to might change behind the scenes. There’s no way for the changer to know that something else on the planet links here, so yes dead links happen. It should be a temporary problem; and as soon as someone who knows where the page moved to can supply the answer, the dead link can be fixed.

Recently I got a 404 This is not the web page you are looking for on Github. The source document is on Microsoft’s GitHub for PowerShell. Specifically the paragraph that said “Install PowerShell using Winget (recommended)”. That contained the sentence “Note: see the winget documentation for install instructions.”

I’ve never dealt with Winget before, so yes, please, let me read how to install it.

As of this moment, if you were to click on the link winget documentation you get 404 This is not the web page you are looking for.

Okay, this can happen. I have zero idea of what the actual link should be; but, I can let someone know there is a problem. I opened an issue in GitHub.

And it was closed, with the comment “The URL is correct on the published docs site. The links in the markdown source files are relative to the docs site, not to Github”

Well that’s nice. Between that and 404 pennies, I can get a coffee at Starbucks.

Was somewhat forced into Ubuntu Snapper, and now kernel stuff is broken

I wasn’t fond of the idea using Snap, but I recognize that might be my dislike of change speaking. I needed to add a domain name to my Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, and all signs said to install the Snap version of Certbot. Okay, maybe I’m in the wrong, and should just get with the program.

And now since adding Snapper to my Ubuntu machine, every time I go to update packages to keep things up-to-date security-wise, I get a kernel upgrade warning that always fails to install. Thank you, Snapper folk, for breaking my system. I so very much appreciate adding your stuff and creating trouble in my life. Don’t know where I’d be without you.

All that really happens is that after every update, I get “Pending kernel upgrade” “Newer kernel available”

“The currently running kernel version is 6.1.10-x86_64-linode159 which is not the expected kernel version 5.15.0-73-generic.”

“Restarting the system to load the new kernel will not be handled automatically, so you should consider rebooting.” Thank you. Do you have any more ideas that don’t work? I’ll try those too.

I suspect that because the running kernel is newer, it’s just some entry somewhere that says I’ve got an older version installed. Nothing I easily found told me where to fix that though.

All I’m really doing is complaining that I didn’t have this problem prior to installing Snapper to support the Let’s Encrypt certbot.

2024-08-10 – I finally got this fixed a couple of weeks ago. Looks like I did:

dpkg uname -a
grep ^deb /etc/apt/sources.list
cat /etc/*release
sudo apt -s install linux-generic-hwe-22.04
sudo apt install linux-generic-hwe-22.04
sudo apt -s purge ?config-files
uname -a
reboot now

Man I hate the Orbit B-Hyve sprinkler controller

A while ago, I reconfigured my network, and I got an email from Orbit that they hadn’t seen my device check in with them in a while. Yes, it was going to need to be reconnected to WiFi. Today, the weather is getting warm, and I need to connect the thing up. It won’t connect.

I vaguely remember that it was super difficult to connect the first time, too.

Later, I wanted to change my email address, and I called their technical support number and talked with a guy: how do I change my email address? You don’t. They don’t have a way to allow someone to change their email address. I could create a new account at the new email address, but then I’d have to re-do the setup all over again.

My experience with Apple is that you can never actually delete an app with old data. They store it in their cloud, and the reinstall always brings back the old data. I had even called Apple technical support, and a very nice lady remembered that once-upon-a-time apps could be deleted from a person’s account in the cloud. She checked with a developer, and sure enough, they removed that ability a couple iOS versions back.

So now I have this fear that if I were to delete the Orbit B-Hyve app, I wouldn’t actually be able to delete it and it’s data. I’d try to reinstall, but it would bring back the bad data Apple has stored in their cloud. Remember kids, Apple app data becomes a part of your permanent record….

I have zero faith that the Orbit people can code up an app that deals with this situation. I mean, they can’t even code up an email address change….

The Orbit device is super frustrating because their stupid instructional video acts as if everything is going to Just Work. It doesn’t, and that’s the end of their knowledge. Of course I went searching on the Internet, and Reddit has some people with similar problems, and

Technical support is stupid and can only ever tell their customers to uninstall and reinstall the app. Anything more than that, and they have to RMA the unit. I’ve had the unit long enough, it’s no longer under warranty.
Apparently, some people got the connection to work by turning on location services on their smartphone. Orbit technical support didn’t know that was something that had to be done. In my case, location services are already turned on, but I don’t see the Orbit B-Hyve app in the list of apps that request location services. I am loathe to delete the app and start over because of the iCloud behavior mentioned above.
The instructions do make clear that the sprinkler controller can only do 802.11b (1999) and 802.11g (2003). Well, that’s a stupid design choice, but should not be a problem for me because the WiFi router I’m hooking it up to is one of those. No good reason to waste an otherwise okay router; it’s not like IoT devices need a lot of bandwidth.

Problem is: I’ve got to connect to the controller with my “modern” iPhone. The iPhone seems to intensely dislike the old WiFi. That may be a reflection on Apple for not playing nice with others.

Still, I’m in a situation where stuff doen’t work. If Orbit hadn’t built a box with ridiculously old technology, -or- built firmware updating into the box, these problems could be solved.

What is so frustrating is that the Orbit instructions say that once the box is in WiFi pairing mode, it will stay there for an hour. Reality is that the SSID shows up for about 15 seconds and then vanishes. It takes a whole system reset (clear CMOS) to get it to go into pairing mode again.

Even when I do get my iPhone to connect to the Orbit SSID, it doesn’t stay connected long enough for the app to see the device.

The iPhone does warn me that the WiFi connection is in plain text / unencrypted. Because the Orbit only powered up a few seconds ago, I’m sure the date is 2015-01-01. I don’t know if the iPhone is okay with that or going to “protect me” from connecting to such a wide open network. The iPhone keeps advancing with updates in security standards; I’m pretty sure the Orbit never will.

All I really know is that my lawn and shrubbery are going to start dying in the heat unless I can get this sprinkler controller connected.

Nothing gives me hope that it will connect easily, if at all.

I should have bought a unit from Hunter or Rachio. Way more expensive though. Who would have thought that you get what you pay for?

Dang it Microsoft: can’t you even follow your own instructions?

This morning, Outlook popped up “Allow this website to configure mailbox@domain server settings?” No, I don’t want to, because it messes things up. The website mentioned is the autodiscover.xml serving web site. The dialog box says “Your account was redirected to this website for settings. You should only allow settings from sources you know and trust”

I click the checkbox “Don’t ask me about this website again”.

Then I click the Cancel button. The other button is “Allow” which is specifically what I don’t want to do, ever again.

That’s the combo: “Don’t ask me about this website again” plus “Don’t allow the change”. That’s what the dialog box prompts for, and that’s what I choose, and the dialog box goes away.

And of course it’s nagging me with the same prompt an hour later. It will continue to nag me for all eternity if I have the fortitude to resist it’s nagging.

I have to wonder if somewhere in the souce code commments, someone had to add above the “Don’t ask me about this website again” checkbox “Just kidding. We don’t record or care if the user doesn’t want to be asked again. Stupid user.”

It was Microsoft who presented the checkbox. I’m just asking them to implement what they presented. But apparently they aren’t competent to do that.

I probably ought to write a WinBatch to wait for that dialog box to pop up, and automatically close it with the options I want. And having thought that, I expect that at some time soon Microsoft will offer to sell me a Windows Copilot skill, for the low low price of $1 per month, to auto-dismiss the nag they implemented. Ain’t Microsoft grand?

Apple HomePod is still a fail

I’ve got two devices which tell me that the HomePod is on the wrong Wi-Fi network. Yes, I can believe that. Care to help a fellow out and fix it? Apparently that’s not a thing they had to program.

Extra points to Apple that the electric power plug cannot be disconnected at the device; but requires me to crawl under my desk and unplug it from the wall. I have no idea if a hard reboot by unplugging the power will help, but that appears to be the only option.

At least the Amazon Echo devices had particular button sequences for various levels of reset. Also, the power cord detached at the device, too.

But Apple is too cool for buttons and plugs. You dimwits.

Anyone can whine; how about a solution, David? Sure. It’s stupid, but it works:

Switch your iPhone / iPad to the correct Wi-Fi
- Why do you even have more than one Wi-Fi network, David? The answer is Three Dumb Routers.
- Remember: the S in IoT stands for Security.
Exit the HomePod app on your phone
- I don’t know for certain that this step is required. But I do know that when it comes time to reach out to the HomePod, the act of opening the app will trigger an inventory to be taken. Probably there is some sort of polling cycle that tells the app to inventory this IoT device: but why leave that to chance?
Unplug the router providing the wrong Wi-Fi the HomePod is clinging to.
- The stupid HomePod won’t be able connect to a Wi-Fi network that is off.
Unplug the HomePod
- Leave it off for 15 seconds or more.
  - Decades ago in electrical engineering class, one of the professors gave us an extra credit math problem to calculate the amount of signal left in circuits as the capacitors drained. The clock crystal is still running; signals are still generated. Generally speaking, for computer circuits, it took about five seconds for the capacitors to drain. Best practice in engineering is to triple anything safety related – so: 15 seconds. This is safety related because you don’t want some weird random signal triggering some logic just because a capacitor wasn’t fully discharged: you could fry something and then the magic smoke escapes.
Plug the HomePod back in
Visit the HomePod in Apple Home app
- It will whine that the HomePod is on the wrong network; but this time it will do something about it.
Plug your main router + Wi-Fi back in
- Thank goodness the Apple programmers didn’t program the HomePod to have affinity to the previous Wi-Fi just because it returned to existence.
- Since it was my secure devices Wi-Fi, I do actually want that network to work.
- If I had a family here, I would have needed to blast out prior warning that the network was going away. Good times.

I don’t know. Maybe the people at Apple never thought people ought to secure their home with more than one Wi-Fi network?