Matt Taibbi question “Where have all the Liberals Gone?”

https://open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/where-have-all-the-liberals-gone

I think it is a valid question, but from my point of view the answer is sinister. Although this is a nice catchy headline, the question Matt is asking might better be stated “Why have Liberals switched to being against freedom of speech?”

My answer is that Liberals have a faith that the government solves problems; that the people in government are good folk doing good works.

Me, I’m a Libertarian, so from my point of view the more honest phrase is “… government are good folk doing good works (with other people’s money)”. Conservatives and Libertarians will donate to the charity of their choice, thank you very much. We trust charities to spend money wisely because their funding is optional, provided by their donors. If they waste money, the donors will leave. But I digress.

Back to the problem: Government has been “regulatory captured” (to use a contemporary phrase) by the deep state, who are more interested in control than good.

I’m sure it is not lost on the deep state that revolutionary forms of communication media cause tumultuous change. Hilter harnessed the power of radio; prior to radio somone wanting to be a leader could only talk at 500 – 1,000 people at a time (at most) in a beer hall or stadium. Slightly more with electricity and amplification. After radio, Hilter could talk at 100,000, then a million, then millions, every week.

So along comes Facebook and Twitter, and of course the deep state wants to control them. To control them is to control the future.

Were people allowed to converse freely, they might question the decision to cede any power to the deep state (which does not run on democratic representation).

Shouldn’t government be completely transparent about who is spending your (taxpayer) money? Who are these people, and why are we funding them? How do we stop them?

I can imagine this leads to a reaction: “Oof. These people are going to destroy everything. Quick! We need bread and circuses! Stat!” And when that isn’t enough, we get this:

From that point of view, Donald Trump was a masterful psy-op. It is still working today.

Although personally I don’t think the deep state is that smart. I think they blundered by thinking that there was zero chance that Donald Trump would actually win; but they misunderstood just how bad Hillary Clinton was as candidate. I could digress some more, but I’ll stop.

Matt Taibbi asks why are Liberals so on-board with suppressing free thought / free speech? My answer is it is because they are listening to the whispers in their ear from their deep state advisors: “If you let the rabble say their terrible things, everything will go to hell. You (we) will lose everything gained. You’ve got to control the narrative – no matter what! (First Ammendment be damned).”

Ultimately, the deep state has successfully convinced Liberals that they should not serve the public: the public should serve them. Only if they can do their work unfettered will they be successful in their good works – so don’t trust the public: rule them.

It’s the deep state way.

Quarterly Inventory 2023 Q2

The time frame is April through June 2023

Dear FutureMe,

Today would be a good day to do a quarterly inventory.

How is your personal life going?

How is your work life going?

How is your volunteer service life going?

Note that apparently I was too busy May 1st to do Quarterly Inventory 2023 Q1

Personal Life:

Not much is happening in my social life. I have friends in my social circle, but they are more like acquaintances, which is okay. I do have a friend who I consider my best friend at the moment, but it’s not a typical friendship. Through that relationship, I know a lot about him and his life, which is fine. However, I don’t really have any close personal friends in my life, and that hasn’t changed. On the bright side, I have a great relationship with my son. We go out for breakfast every couple of weeks, and he’s a wonderful part of my life. He recently purchased a new home, so there are a lot of interesting things happening in his life.

Nothing else has really changed with my other related family.

In an effort to improve my diet and lose weight, I decided to make some changes. I had previously purchased an air fryer toaster oven from Costco, which was a great addition to my kitchen. It allowed me to cook foods without heating up the entire house like a regular oven. It was also faster, so the amount of electricity I burn was reduced. I ended up buying a variety of foods that worked well in the air fryer and were delicious. However, after a few months, I realized that those foods were not suitable for my diet and weight loss goals.

Costco offers frozen pizzas at an affordable price, but consuming a whole pizza was detrimental to my weight. So, I made the decision to change my diet. In the past, I had successfully lost a lot of weight by consuming low-calorie yogurts from Costco, which had replaced sugar with alternative sweeteners. Each large container of yogurt contained only 100 calories, allowing me to have three or six of them a day, totaling 600 calories. This approach was effective in helping me lose weight. On alternate days, I would also have a salad protein bowl from Subway, adding around 600 calories to my daily intake, resulting in a 1200-calorie day alternating with 600-calorie days. I did lose a lot of weight, 35 pounds, in about three months.

Although this method was successful, I eventually grew tired of the Subway protein bowl salads, not to mention the rising prices due to inflation. To save money, I decided to cook my own meals instead of relying on Subway. I contemplated trying a carnivore diet, as it provides satiety without feeling hungry, and if I enter ketosis, my body would actively burn fat instead of storing it. I recently purchased a considerable amount of steak, finding them not-terribly priced. However, one drawback of buying food from the grocery store butcher is that the packaging can emit a foul smell when disposed of, necessitating more frequent trash bag changes. Additionally, with the arrival of hot weather, going outdoors to empty the trash becomes less desirable. I do live in what would be desert, if not for irrigation: this weekend the high temperature will be 110 °F (43 °C). Moreover, I now have to run the dishwasher every day, and sometimes even twice. That’s some running up of the electric bill I’d rather not do.

Despite these minor inconveniences, I will keep experimenting with a carnivore diet to achieve to lose weight. I didn’t stick to it completely this past week, so I’m unsure if it’s a sustainable long-term solution. Nevertheless, I will continue to give it a try.

I noticed that Monster energy drinks became unreasonably pricey, so I made the decision to stop buying them. However, I realized that completely cutting out energy drinks wasn’t a solution because I was in dire need of a caffeine fix. When I stopped drinking them, my ass was dragging. Terrible. Instead, I found Rockstar energy drinks were available at a more affordable price at Smart and Final. I made a mistake when they were priced at $1 per can – I should have stocked up on as many as possible; shortly after, the price jumped to around $1.30 per can. I do buy only the zero calorie or low calorie versions to help with my diet.

Speaking of inflation, a friend informed me about Southern California Edison’s request for a 23% rate increase, which I find absurd. I wrote a blog post addressing this issue. The rate increase is planned for 2024, and their justification is the need to upgrade their SAP Business Suite Enterprise software, which they claim will cost $35 million. I find this price tag completely unreasonable. No software upgrade should require such an exorbitant amount. Even if Southern California Edison has a large number of servers that need upgrading, there is no way it would justify a $35 million expense. It’s possible that SAP is quoting $30 million for licenses and only allocating $5 million for the actual upgrade, but if that’s the case, Southern California Edison should consider exploring alternatives to SAP. However, their statement simply states the need for $35 million to upgrade SAP, which is shocking. If I were to guess, I would speculate that the person responsible for the upgrades lacks competence and, instead of attempting to do it themselves and risking their job, they approached SAP for assistance. SAP likely saw fool and his money, and since the person isn’t spending the money from his own pocket, he agrees with it. It’s appalling.

There is also a proposal on the table to replace all the smart meters, which seems unnecessary. If they are not malfunctioning, there is no need to fix them. The prudent approach would be to replace them as they actually fail. Additionally, there is a $25 million budget to complete a $180 million project for new buildings, which isn’t great; but, if something is already under construction, it would make sense to finish it.

I suppose the $17 million allocated for wildfire management is the only expenditure I completely agree with. The Paradise Fire was devastating, and if Southern California Edison has neglected their infrastructure, it is essential for them to address and rectify that issue.

Another thing I’ve been enjoying in my personal life is using ChatGPT. It’s been quite fun. It’s quite proficient at reformatting text according to specific requirements. I particularly like using ChatGPT for my volunteer service work. I serve as the recording secretary for a 503(c) nonprofit, and part of my responsibility is to write up meeting minutes. Sometimes, discussions can be lengthy, and ChatGPT has been helpful in summarizing and condensing what’s said. Of course, it’s not flawless, and I still need to review and ensure the accuracy of the meeting minutes generated by ChatGPT. However, it has been helpful and makes my work easier compared to how it was before.

I have noticed that I still hold onto my old biases against Microsoft. It seems like they rarely get things right. However, I must admit that they did manage to do one thing correctly, and I even posted an article on my blog acknowledging their success. So that was a positive development. In another blog post, instead of simply complaining about Microsoft, I made an effort to be helpful. I addressed the issue of WordPress Media Uploads going to the wrong folder and provided a guide on how to import files into the WordPress media library using the command line. I believe this information could be valuable and beneficial to readers.

Furthermore, I reached a point of frustration with the Orbit B-Hyve sprinkler controller and decided to replace it with a Hunter Industries Hydrawise Pro-HC 6-Station Indoor Wi-Fi Irrigation Controller. This new controller has an on-screen display that allows me to search for available Wi-Fi networks, choose from the list, and enter the password. The experience with the Hunter controller has far surpassed my experience with the Orbit B-Hyve. Although I have yet to confirm if the lawn is being watered as intended, I believe I have correctly configured the new controller, but I’m not entirely certain. It has a mode where it can run for a few minutes and then pause to let the water soak in. I don’t know if this runs in parallel or serial on the watering zones.

Every year on Father’s Day, I enjoy shopping for affordable dress shirts. This year, I found a great deal at Costco where I purchased them for only $13 each. I ended up buying 10 shirts, so now I have two shirts in my daily pool. Initially, I wasn’t impressed with the material as it seemed prone to wrinkling. However, after washing them again with ample fabric softener, I noticed that they didn’t wrinkle as much. Additionally, there was a noticeable reduction in static electricity when I put the shirt on. Based on this, I have decided to keep them.

I recently switched from OpenSuSE Leap to OpenSuSE Tumbleweed, although I must admit I haven’t been particularly thrilled with OpenSuSE lately. Ubuntu made things even worse by implementing a policy where core packages are upgraded for free, but a subscription is required for other packages, which I find quite disappointing.

The issue with OpenSuSE Leap is that while it’s stable and most things work, the software packages are outdated. I needed to use Audacity for filtering background noise, but the Audacity 2.2 version available in OpenSuSE Leap didn’t have that feature. Thankfully, upgrading to OpenSuSE Tumbleweed resolved the Audacity problem and even fixed a few other issues that were present in Leap. However, I’m a bit concerned because in the past, being on the bleeding edge with Tumbleweed has caused some trouble. So, while I’ve made the move, I’m cautiously waiting for any potential issues to arise.

Some users in the OpenSuSE forums suggest using Flatpak or Snap images as alternatives. However, when I tried using Ubuntu Snapper, it caused complications with my website for audio recordings in my volunteer service work. Although it didn’t completely break the website, it repeatedly notifies me that the Linux system version firmware is out of date whenever I attempt a software upgrade. This issue only started happening after I installed Snapper, which was initially done to facilitate certificate renewals with Acme Certbot. Snapper: I don’t like it.

Work Life:

There haven’t been many changes in my work life. I have one direct report who is proactive and does a great job with the assigned tasks, which is definitely a positive. However, he will be on vacation for a significant number of days next month, so I’ll be the only one available to handle the litigation hold work. It will be fine.

Recently, a colleague who had been with the County longer than I have, retired. I had the opportunity to attend his retirement lunch. It sparked my curiosity about employee numbers and their correlation to the start of County service. Lower employee numbers indicate longer tenure, and by that measure, I am in the top 1% of County employees. However, it’s important to note that I spent a significant period in the private sector and cashed out my retirement credit upon leaving the public sector. I am currently in the process of buying back those years of service, and once I make the final payment, I will overnight gain an additional 6.1 years of service credit. This detail is interesting to me because there will be a recognition event for individuals with 15 years of continuous service, and I have been invited to attend. It’s a bit annoying that despite “doing computers” for the County since 1988 (a total of 34 years), I will only be recognized for 15 years of service.

Overall, my work life remains uneventful, and if given the chance, I would retire tomorrow if I had $60,000 unexpectedly come my way to pay off my mortgage and complete the process of buying back my retirement service credit.

Volunteer Service Life:

I have taken on a new service commitment starting tomorrow as the secretary of the Sunday morning meeting.

In other news, the previous office manager at central office sadly passed away. A year or two before his passing, we had acquired a new computer for him, as the previous one had been purchased way back in 2012. It was never disposed of. A few weeks ago, during a storage room cleanup, I was asked if I wanted to take the old computer. I took the offer, as I’m interested in learning how to modify a page format using Filemaker Pro, which is still installed on that hard drive. It has become a new project for me. My plan is to familiarize myself with Filemaker Pro, make necessary edits to the production format used at the central office, and then decide whether to wipe and restore the machine to its original state or install Linux on it.

The Dell Inspiron from 2012 that I got is equipped with an Intel Core i5 processor, specifically a third-generation i5. Although we are currently on the twelfth generation, back when this computer was purchased, it was likely a top-of-the-line machine. I have used it briefly, and it appears to be functioning well. However, I believe upgrading from a traditional hard drive to a solid-state disk would significantly improve its performance.

Although it started with last quarter, this quarter I went live with a web site to host audio recordings from speaker meetings. The web site isn’t bad, but I’m still learning how best to make the audio recordings using a Sony ICD-UX570 Digital Voice Recorder. But I also learned that WordPress is good at the one very narrow thing it does. As soon as you want to go beyond that however, it is terrible. All I wanted to do was forms with workflow, man. Apparently it is too much to create a data entry input form and post something with a file attachment.

Medical Life:

I’m waiting for the results of a medical test to find out more about a potential condition. In about two weeks, the doctor will give me a report based on a genetic test. The doctor mentioned that these test results are highly accurate. I do want to get a clearer understanding of my situation.

Father’s Day Sale: dress shirts

I find that the best prices for dress shirts happen on Father’s Day. Here’s a list. If you don’t get them today / this weekend, plan ahead for next year.

Macy’s has a long sleeve shirt for $18 each. It’s a nice looking shirt, but I’m not shopping for long sleeve shirts.

JC Penny has a long sleeve Super Slim shirt for $17.50 (but it is ugly, in my opinion). They also have some clearance items in the $7.50 and $17 range JF J.Ferrar Mens Spread Collar Long Sleeve Stretch Fabric Dress Shirt. In my opinion, these look better, but I don’t really want long sleeve shirts. Also, I don’t fit in the “regular” size; I’m fatter than that. Van Heusen Stain Shield Mens Spread Collar Long Sleeve Stretch Fabric Wrinkle Free Dress Shirt for $14 – but again, for regular to slim fit. The blue one looks pretty good to me. JF J. Ferrar Mens Stretch Short Sleeve Broadcloth Slim Dress Shirt for $17 – nice that it’s short sleeve, but I’m not a slim fit.

Kohl’s has the Men’s Apt. 9® Untucked Button-Down Shirt for $17 (or perhaps $14.44 with a discount code). They do have XXL size, and six colors. So far, this is the best deal for me. Note free shipping if you buy $50 or more. The only thing I’m not really a fan of is that these shirts are 100% plastic; I prefer some cotton in my shirts. Then there are clearance items: Men’s Sonoma Goods For Life® Flannel Button-Down Shirt for $12.60 (or perhaps $10.71 with a discount code). If I lived up north, these would be great. But I live down in the desert (essentially) so I don’t need a Flannel shirt. Lastly, another clearance item: Men’s Sonoma Goods For Life® Perfect-Length Button-Down Shirt for $18 (or perhaps $15.30 with a discount code). Only one in my size, and I’m not looking for long sleeve shirts.

Joseph A. Banks – nothing less than $40 per shirt.

Nordstrom Rack – nothing less than $30 per shirt.

Perry Ellis – Untucked Roll Sleeve Linen Blend Tri-Color Stripe Shirt for $20. The color is nice, the fabric is nice, the price is not bad at all. It’s a little unusual cut of looking like a long sleeve but … it’s not. Then there is Untucked Total Stretch Slim Fit Solid Shirt for $20 (but it’s just the one color).

Dillards has Gold Label Roundtree & Yorke Non-Iron Slim-Fit Point Collar Solid Dress Shirt for $15. Long sleeve, and only available in black or white, but still not a bad deal.

Walmart has George Men’s Poplin Shirt with Short Sleeves for $13.50. Looking like a good deal: mostly cotton, short sleeves, large size, a variety of prints. There’s one that I do like. I think this bumps Kohl’s out of number one spot for me.

Costco has a sale on shirts – Tailor Vintage Men’s Short Sleeve Woven Shirt for $10. This is might even be better than the Walmart shirt. The print on the shirt doesn’t do much for me, but the price is right, and the material is mostly cotton. Then there is the Sierra Design Men’s Short Sleeve Woven Shirt for $13. TWO pockets – that might be handy. Same good material, and not bad colors. Lastly, Pacific Trail Men’s Long Sleeve Woven Shirt for $10. Great deal, and two pockets. Nice bright blue, but long sleeves.

I went with the Costco short sleeve Sierra Design shirts for $13 each. And yes, I ordered ten of them.

Southern California Edison wants a rate increase of 23%

If you want to file a public comment regarding this Southern California Edison (SCE) application, the link is here

This is regarding their application A2305010: the initial applications is here. The 23% increase number is shown on page 5.

Essentially, they are saying that they need to:

  • Upgrade their SAP Business Suite Enterprise Resource software, and that will cost $35 million.
  • Replace all the smart meters they installed 15 years ago that are getting old. If there is a dollar amount assigned to that, it didn’t jump out at me.
  • Finish their Service Center Modernization Projects: apparently new buildings. The document says “Please see Exhibit SCE-06, Volume 07, Enterprise Operations, for more information on the various service center modernization projects.” Where that document is, I cannot find. I did find a company that says it helped SCE design new service centers in a $180 million program. This application, A2305010, says it’s asking for $25 million.
  • Wildfire Management at $17 million. This is probably the only one I agree with. The Paradise fire a few years back was devastating, and indeed it came from negligence on the part of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) letting their transmission lines go unmaintained.

There is a lot in that application, including that they are paying about 10% on debt, and that medical / dental / optical benefits to employees is growing.

I don’t know about you, but my electric bill has already jumped up way too high; and an increase of 23% would be terrible to me.

AND ANOTHER THING: I’m submitting my public comment now. This isn’t a gripe at SCE but rather at the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission). I happen to run my own email server, so I can create as many email addresses I want, for free. If I want to filter incoming items, I can use the recipient email address for that filtering. So why wouldn’t I create an email address like california-public-utilities-commission-subscription-service@example.com ?

I did successfully subscribe to several of their daily digest notifications about various CPUC motions. I clicked on the link to verify the account. Everything is working fine.

And … the CPUC public comment form field has a maximum limit on the email address size. It is barking at me that the email address is invalid. It is not invalid: you just have a programmer who didn’t size the form field correctly. The SMTP spec says an email address must not exceed 254 characters, and mine has 71. Now I have to create a new email address alias to comply with your dumb programmer’s code.

The more I use OpenSuSE, the more I wish I was on something else

I recently did an “upgrade” from OpenSuSE Leap 15.3 to 15.4. As expected, it did not go well.

I ended up doing a manual install (as if the disk were new, except for /home), and then re-installing every application I need. Thankfully, there aren’t that many I need.

But I didn’t add any weird repositories. Today I happen to need to use Audacity. Hmmm. The version on this machine is 2.2.2 The current version is 3.3. Well that would explain why the Noise Gate plugin isn’t present.

I did add some weird repository to get the latest version (there appear to be seven of the them). Nope. Doesn’t work.

I happen to be running NextCloud. Every time I start the machine, it warns me that the desktop client is out of date. Okay, I’d like to add a repo please. Nope. Only manual installs, like the uncivilized practice, are what is done here.

I suspect that repositories are considered difficult, so the decicion was to do away with them over time: let programmers define flatpaks and snaps, instead. I kinda hate flatpaks and snaps; but, what I’ve got here isn’t working, either.

Another new irritating thing is that I use “focus follow mouse”. Every time I’m on a Windows machine (one day a week), I’m reminded how nice it is to wave the mouse over the screen I want to work on, and that’s the window with current focus. Lately, however, this stops working after a while. Time to reboot. What is this, MS Windows?

Did I mention that about four times in the last three weeks (out of multiple times a day), the power down function doesn’t? It appears to go mostly down, but leaves the motherboard running. I’m trying to save electricity here, since rates went way up, and if I’m not using the machine, there is zero good reason to be burning electricity wastefully. Power up takes less than 20 seconds, so why not?

Well, because sometimes the machine doesn’t go fully down. I later want to power it up, but it’s locked up in the mostly-down state. I have to go to the back of the machine and flip the switch on the power supply. That could just be a Linux thing instead of OpenSuSE thing, though.

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

Expedia Untrustworthy: my frustrating encounter at a Holiday Inn Express in Gridley, California

My stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Gridley (Oroville Lake) wasn’t particularly terrible. However, during the checkout process, something incredibly bothersome occurred: they adamantly refused to provide a printed receipt (folio). The counter agent simply refused, conveniently attributing it to management’s decision.

It’s possible that this nonsensical decision stemmed from misguided management. I don’t hold the agent responsible for following instructions. Nonetheless, two aspects make this situation particularly irksome:

Firstly, I understand why financial departments require receipts: scammers exist. Secondly, they lied about sending me an email receipt.

Anyone can make a reservation, receive the email confirmation, print it out, present it to the finance department for reimbursement, and then cancel the reservation. Financial departments are aware of this, which is why they rightfully demand proof of actual hotel stays. The receipt (folio) contains the final charges and the checkout date.

The Holiday Inn Express in Gridley, California, flat out refused to provide me with the receipt/folio: all because someone wanted to save a penny on a piece of paper.

This would have been less troublesome if they had actually sent me the email receipt as promised. However, they failed to do so. I highly doubt that the agent knew for sure—she was probably instructed to inform customers that they would receive an email.

To clarify, the email receipt did not end up in my junk mail folder. I’ve been an email administrator for twenty years. I ought to be able to figure that out, no?

This ordeal frustrated me to the point that I decided to leave a negative review on Expedia. That’s when I discovered that Expedia allows property owners to censor the reviews they display. Each time I submitted a review, I received a rejection message claiming it was unacceptable. I tried toning it down and making it friendlier, but it still didn’t meet their standards. Only after significantly revising it did they finally accept it.

The most valuable lesson I learned from this experience is that Expedia’s review system is untrustworthy. I have no intention of ever using their service again.

Microsoft did something good in Windows 11

I know that I dislike Microsoft because they cheat. But if I’m going to have at least a little bit of integrity, I need to admit it when Microsoft does something good. Yes, they did something good in Windows 11, even if it took them 30+ years to copy the idea.

In Windows 11, you can select a file and right-click on it, and the popup menu lets you copy the path of the file to the clipboard.

If you didn’t know about this, and you start using it, you may be surprised at just how useful this is. I’m not, because I’ve had that functionality all along these last 30 years in WinBatch. For 30 years, I’ve had an easier time of it than you, because I’ve always had right-click clipboard tricks at my fingertips.

And I do have some sympathy for Microsoft taking so long to implement this feature. Microsoft had been caught stealing ideas from software vendors who sold (or wanted to sell) Windows utilities. Wilson WindowWare, the publisher of WinBatch, made Windows better by providing a macro recorder for Windows. It was kind of a sham though, because playing back the same mouse and keystrokes – without the ability to edit the macro – was more teaser to buy a product than helpful.

But if you bought the product, it was magical.

And Microsoft decided (this time) to not stab their partner in the back by implementing the partner’s idea themselves.

I did buy WinBatch. I bought it for my personal use. And in fact, I conviced my employer to buy the compiler, at $500 per year. What that gave me was an unlimited site license to run as many WinBatch scripts as I wanted on every machine in my environment. The compiler embedded the scripts inside a .exe much like the Perl PAR modules do, so you get a Windows .exe that runs your Perl script. The interpreter is embedded, the DLLs are embedded, and the script is embedded, and it all launches from the .exe

At work, I put the runtime DLLs on the public folder of every NetWare server where users log in. I compiled scripts to the small .exe option, and then copied the .exe to the file servers. Well, I didn’t copy them, I had a WinBatch copy them for me. Then I edited the Novell login script to launch the WinBatch exes.

Did I need to take an inventory of every drive letter mapping on a machine? Yes. Could I do that for 2,500 machines and write the results to a shared drive? Yes. Oh, and by the way, how about listing which printers were installed too? This was reasonably competent tech for 2005. WinBatch had a set of Windows Registry search-and-replace calls, so I could launch from a login script a utility that changed registry keys on your machine after we migrated you to a new server.

Anyway, I loved WinBatch, and used it daily. And it came with clipboard tricks: any file, any folder, mulitple files and folders: you could right-click and copy either the name(s) or the full path (including file names) to the Windows clipboard.

So when I saw that Windows 11 added right-click copy path to clipboard I was impressed. Microsoft finally did something good.

Now technically, this feature has been in Windows for a decade or more, but you needed to know to shift+right-click to get the menu option. With Windows 11, they finally just made it available without any weird key combinations. Good job, Microsoft.

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?