Technology

NedPC-2019 reborn!

Today, I girded myself for the troubleshooting I’d need to do to figure out what had possibly killed my PC. Here are the steps I took:

  1. Unplugged everything.
  2. Plugged the PC into my old 24″ monitor.
  3. Attached a wired keyboard and mouse.
  4. Turned the PC on.
  5. PC booted up normally, no error messages or anything.

Yes, it acted like nothing had happened. I took it back into the office, reconnected it, and I am currently typing on it. Event Viewer in Windows doesn’t reveal anything particularly revealing to suggest what happened. My best guess is that after I left early in the morning to go birding, something bad happened and since I was out all day, it was unable to resolve itself.

What happened? No idea. Vague theory:

  1. A program or process pegged the CPU at 100% and kept it there indefinitely. This caused the CPU fan to spin up to jet speed and it kept spinning like that.
  2. As the PC grew ever-hotter, it began to shut down applications and functions, until basically the PC was on, but nothing was actually running.
  3. When I got back and shut down the PC, it was too hot to power back up.
  4. Giving it time to cool off allowed it to reboot normally. Since the rogue app or process would have been killed in the process, it started up as if nothing had gone wrong.

Now, I don’t know if this is really what happened, but it feels right, or at least right-ish.

The question is, do I shut down my PC at night and start it up in the morning, or just keep running it 24/7 as per usual and assume the shutdown/freeze was a one-time thing? Decisions!

But at least for now, it is working, and that deserves a cat:

NedPC-2019, RIP 2019-2023

While I like to think I’m being dramatic with the title of this post, it is quite possible my current PC, which I built in the Before Times of April 2019, may, in fact, be dead.

When I went out birding yesterday around 8 a.m. it was working normally. When I returned around 4:30 p.m. I heard a loud fan roaring in the bedroom office. My first thought was the actual Dyson fan, but it was still set to a low speed and barely audible. The noise was coming from the PC. I observed a few things:

  • The displays had switched from the PC (on DisplayPort) to the Mac (on HDMI).
  • The aforementioned high-pitched fan noise.
  • The CTRL keyboard was off–it was still connected to the PC, but the backlight was off, indicating it was getting no power.
  • The CPU’s RGB lighting (a rather ominous-looking red ring) was still on.

I tried turning the PC off using the power switch on the front. No response. I tried the reset button, also no response.

I then hit the power switch on the PSU itself, and this did power the PC off.

It has yet to restart since. It appears to be getting no power at all, so my suspicion is either the PSU died (bad) or the motherboard or some component on it went (worse). I’ll be doing some testing today. I’m sure it will be a delight.

For the moment, though, I am a Mac-only guy1Technically I still have my ThinkPad X1 Carbon, but other than the keyboard, which is a decadent luxury for a laptop keyboard, I don’t really enjoy using it much.

Customer service fun time with Telus

man wearing brown suit jacket mocking on white telephone
No actual yelling on the phone took place. Also, I don’t have nice hair like this guy. Or hair. Photo by Moose Photos on Pexels.com

First, let me start by saying that I worked many years in tech support and have spent a lot of time trying to help people. I know a lot of people suck, but I also know that reps, whether for tech or customer support, are often obligated to stick to scripts, ask certain questions and say certain things.

I get it.

It’s still bloody annoying.

Recently, I decided to make some changes to my Telus Optik TV package. They allow you to make changes to your plan online–I had done so in the past. Now, all I would get when clicking the appropriate link from my online account is an error message. This one:

I tried again today…same error. So I called the 800 number and girded myself. My request was simple: “I don’t watch regular TV, so I would like to cancel my Optik TV package but keep my internet service.”

This is how it went:

  1. I call, and I am put on hold for a few minutes. This is not bad. However, extremely loud hold music plays while I’m waiting. I turn my phone volume down. Remember the olden days when your only option was to hold the receiver away from your ear? Dark ages!
  2. The customer representative (henceforth “rep”) greets me and asks for my account-related info.
  3. Rep audibly gasps when I say I want to cancel my TV service. I don’t know if this is scripted or just a dramatic bonus.
  4. Rep: “Please wait while I check your account” and “I’ll call YOU back if we get disconnected.” I never find out what exactly she was checking for, but I have theories1.
  5. 10 minutes of silence follows. No hold music plays, so I don’t think I’m on actual hold. About eight minutes in, she pops up to assure me it will just be a few more minutes (this is accurate).
  6. Rep moves to next stage: retention/talking me out of cancelling. Rep offers other TV plans/bundles, including one that vaguely sounds like I’d pay less for the internet part (good) but still pay for the TV part (bad). I decline all offers.
  7. Rep switches to offering other services, like security cameras, etc. I decline these.
  8. By now I am visibly annoyed. I tell her to stop trying to upsell me stuff and to just cancel the TV service, or I would ask to speak to a manager.
  9. Rep finally relents and tells me how to return the PVR after I get confirmation by email on the cancellation. She seems unfazed by the whole thing, as if we’d just started the call. Rep tells me service is now cancelled and tells me to have a wonderful day.
  10. Total time: Felt like forever.

I got two emails shortly after, one saying I’d been removed from the Optik TV service, and another confirming the cancellation. I checked the TV and verified that, yep, I no longer had access. Fast! In a day or so, I’ll receive another email with a waybill I can print in order to ship the PVR and remote back to them (no charge).

As I said, I appreciate that these people have to follow a script, but the whole process is repellant and a waste of time. A few clicks on their website would have worked, but it’s been broken for months (and I had a long chat with another Telus rep about it; she finally advised me to just call to make changes to my account if the site remained broken. Great show of confidence in your web team! And justified, as it turned out).

  1. Theory 1: Simply hoping I’d get tired of the silence, hang up, and the rep would “forget” to call back, ensuring no cancellation takes place. Unethical and probably illegal, so not very likely. Theory 2: She is checking past bundles and packages I’ve had in preparation for the next part of the phone call: convincing me to not cancel. ↩︎

Keyboard fight

(Mass)Drop CRTL vs. Keychron Q1

Back in 2019 I got the CTRL keyboard. It defaults to a strobing rainbow lighting effect when you first plug it in. This is very dumb, but it’s an otherwise very fine keyboard.

In 2022, I got a Keychron Q1 with knob. It is also a mechanical keyboard, but is in many ways a very different thing altogether. For some time now, I have used both, usually swapping them out after a few weeks or so, but I find myself gravitating to the CTRL more often now. Why is that? Let’s compare!

CTRL keyboard

Type the rainbow!

This is a tenkeyless design, meaning it’s like a regular keyboard, but with the numeric keypad lopped off. It comes with hot swappable keys that are backlit. The backlighting shines directly through the keycaps, which means the keys are actually difficult to read if the lighting is turned off–an issue for a non-touch typist like me. Here are its main features that matter to me:

  • Adjustable backlighting
  • Halo Clear switches (more on these later)
  • Two USB-C ports, one on either end

Pros:

  • I really like Halo Clear switches. They have some of that familiar CLACK you get with blue switches, but it feels softer and smoother.
  • Keys are big enough and spaced in a way to mostly work with my fat-fingered typing style
  • The rainbow lighting (non-strobing variety) eventually grew on me
  • Relatively light, but not so light that it slides around

Cons:

  • The magnetic feet are all but useless, popping off when you stare intently at the keyboard
  • The aforementioned keys pretty much requiring the backlighting to be on. Granted, this could be fixed with different keycaps.
  • No knob or other special features. It’s just a solid tenkeyless keyboard.
  • Default keycaps don’t have media controls listed on them and I can never remember the proper FN-key combos to use them, so I always do it from the software.

Keychron Q1 with knob

This is the same colour as mine, but I have a red ESC key. Also, my desk does not have any mini cowboy hats on it.

I specify “with knob” because you can get the same keyboard with a key in place of the knob. This is also a tenkeyless keyboard, but goes a step further, by lopping off most of the keys that normally sit to the left of the numeric keyboard. You still get arrow keys and a few others. It also has that programmable knob, which I’ve used mostly for adjusting volume.

Features:

  • Adjustable backlighting
  • Gateron G Pro Blue switches
  • One USB-C port

Pros:

  • Built like a tank
  • Gateron G Pro Blue switches are pre-lubed, so have a velvety smooth feel when typing
  • Switches are also relatively quiet for blues
  • The knob adds versatility
  • Convenient switch on back to flip between Mac and Windows keyboard layouts
  • Comes with both Mac and Windows keycaps
  • South-facing backlight means the keys work fine with backlighting turned off

Cons:

  • Doesn’t include silly little removable feet, but also doesn’t include any way to adjust the angle of the keyboard at all, which I think is a mistake
  • The keys feel smaller to me or are arranged more tightly, so I find myself making a lot more errors when typing vs. the CTRL
  • The space bar is noticeably louder than the other keys
  • The keyboard is so heavy you never have to worry about it sliding around the desk, but it’s also so heavy that it’s just plain awkward to pick up and move, even a little
  • I don’t care for most of the backlighting options, and settled for a rather muted green as the least weird-looking choice

Verdict

In the end I find myself sticking mainly to the CTRL, for two reasons stated above:

  • I prefer the Halo Clear switches to Gateron G Pro Blue, though both are very nice. Halo Clears feel more “solid” to me.
  • The size or position of the keys on the Keychron Q1 has consistently confounded my fingers. I try to get used to it, but never quite get there. It occurs to me now (seriously, I just edited this in after publishing this post) that the slightly upright position of the Q1 may be throwing my fingers off. I use the CTRL laying flat on the desk. There’s no way to adjust the angle on the Q1, so I can never adjust it to my liking.

Both keyboards are excellent, but each has its own flaws–at least for me (though I do think the magnetic legs on the CTRL are pretty silly). If someone took away my CTRL keyboard and hid it in a very clever place, I imagine I’d eventually get used to the different keys of the Keychron Q1. But I’d probably spend a few nights having typing-related nightmares along the way. Maybe the ghost of Mavis Beacon would show up.

Vacantly staring (bonus: UI discussion and Mastodon clients)

For the past week or so, my brain has just not been cooperating with this blog. Giving myself permission to write about anything I want here was liberating, but even that freedom hasn’t been enough the past few days. I stare at the blinking cursor, and then I feel my mind drifting off, not to some great blog topic, but just weird little mundane things and thoughts. Nothing that I’d want to share in this space.

I do have a backup–a collection of blog ideas saved in Obsidian. But a lot of the topics I’ve jotted down no longer appeal. A lot of them are Apple kvetching, and I exceeded my quota on that at least 50 years ago.

So I end up doing these meta posts.

Oh, I just thought of a topic: Mastodon clients!

Mastodon is the only social media I use semi-regularly right now and I like it because:

  • No ads
  • No “reels” or other unavoidable short form videos
  • No algorithm–I only see the people/orgs I choose to follow
  • Not overwhelming. I like that I can easily keep up with what I’m following. It feels cozy and approachable.

I also don’t visit Mastodon on mobile. It’s strictly on my Mac or PC. On the Mac, I use the Mona app, which is a one-time purchase (hooray) and works well. On Windows, I use an alternate web version currently in alpha called Elk. It improves on the web interface and is pretty good, with only a few minor shortcomings. Still, I’d rather use a dedicated client, but all the Windows clients seem to have some flaw, the most common of which is they are ugly as butt. Windows apps don’t have to look ugly, but so many do. Every Mastodon client I’ve tried has been butt ugly. So I use Elk.

I don’t know why, exactly, the odds of a Mac app looking better than a Windows app is so high, but I suspect that it has something to do with the Mac GUI always being “good” and remaining fairly consistent over the years, with few dramatic changes. There’s a polished kind of consistency.

With Windows, well, just look at the GUI for different flavours:

  • Windows 1.0. I mean, yikes. But it was also 1985.
  • Windows 3.0. Pretty slick for the time, but crude by today’s standards.
  • Windows 95. Pretty decent, really.
  • Windows XP. Changed pretty much all UI elements in a way some liked, but others didn’t, feeling it was too “cartoony.”
  • Vista. Ignoring the initial quality of the OS, it again completely revamped the look, giving everything a pseudo-3D effect and having a glossy, reflective sheen to it.
  • Windows 8. Another complete change, flattening everything and subbing in garish colours and simplified icons.
  • Windows 10. A hybrid of 7 and 8 that reverses some of 8’s design.
  • Windows 11. A refinement of 10 that again changes the look of many elements, though perhaps not as dramatically as before.

Basically, if everyone followed the design language of Windows 11, apps would look pretty good. But a lot of apps seem to be weird hybrids of older versions of the OS and that’s when you get butts meeting the ugly.

Oh well. In the end, we’re seeing fewer native apps on both Windows and Mac as more devs use tools like Electron to make apps that look and feel the same (and don’t feel particularly native) on all platforms. I guess that’s the future.

The iPad is great until it’s not

Every time I sit down with Jeff to do something on his iPad, I am reminded at how the iPad excels at some things (sketching, reading) and is kind of dreadfully bad at others, especially if you don’t have some kind of pointing device other than your finger.

All of these can be a nightmare of fiddly misses, accidental taps and wasted time:

  • Selecting text
  • Positioning the cursor
  • Moving files
  • Flipping between apps and watching as they have to reload everything
  • Using “sharing” for the most basic functionality
  • Did I mention selecting text?

If you add a keyboard and mouse or trackpad, some of this is mitigated, but it still never feels as smooth to me as on a desktop computer or laptop. In a way, I think Apple would have been better off just making a Mac tablet–looks and feels like an iPad, but functions like an actual Mac. Sort of like what Microsoft did with the Surface (Pro), but better. The iPad, even 13 years after its introduction, still feels hamstrung by the design decisions made leading up to its introduction in 2010, and further back still to when the iPhone was being created in 2006.

Everything we worked on tonight would have been a lot easier on a laptop–even a Windows PC. In fact, since we were using OneDrive, it would have been better on a Windows PC than even a MacBook, which gets second-rate OneDrive support.

Oh well. I just wanted to vent a wee bit tonight, so here we are!

Exciting site update?

WordPress 6.3 adds footnotes and the ability to style captions. Let’s see how they work!

Here is a sentence that ends in as footnote1. And here’s another using the Modern Footnotes plugin1I prefer footnotes that are inline that you can click, read, then dismiss, as they don’t interrupt the flow (man).

And now a photo with a styled caption:

This is the worst shot of a pigeon I’ve ever taken. I mean, the most artsy.

Aw, it appears I can’t do the one thing I actually wanted–change the size of the caption text. Boo.

In conclusion: I’ll probably never use these features, but someone will and it’s good they are here now, for those people.

  1. These appear to be traditional footnote types that only appear at the bottom of a post. I prefer the inline notes. ↩︎

When the spelling checker fails and makes you question everything

I use a spelling checker (specifically LanguageTool) in Firefox because I type like a caveman and make a lot of typos. But sometimes, whether it’s LanguageTool or the spelling checker in some other program, the checking just…stops. I type a word I know is spelled wrong, but it doesn’t get flagged or highlighted in any way.

I then wonder how many typos I’ve been churning out and will now have to find on my own, unaided by technology (the horror). And then for a little while, I no longer trust the software to work correctly, always questioning what exactly it might or might not be doing.

And I think, you’d have to be a real jerk to deliberately build these unpredictable malfunctions into your software. But I could totally see some people doing it for the laffs.

Remember, Bad Software comes from Bad People. This has been your Trust No One PSA for today.

(Also, the spelling checker1Or spell checker, if you prefer. Both are valid, because English makes its own rules. Then breaks them, Then repeats. worked fine for this post.)

When the system knows you shouldn’t read the comments

Ars Technica has a story on how Linux has now surpassed the Mac on Steam, thanks to the popularity of the Steam Deck, which uses Linux as its OS. The race between Linux and Mac is close, but compared to Windows, it’s like a 100-meter dash where the first runner finishes in 10 seconds and the other two cross the finish line an hour later1Windows:: 96.21%, Linux: 1.96%, Mac: 1.84%.

But this post is about that old internet maxim, “Never read the comments.” On Ars, you can vote a post up or down. Too many down votes and the post gets hidden (though you can always click to see it). You know you’re in for a fun ride when the first four posts in a comment thread are hidden:

The first post was a benign but contentless “Ok…”, the second post a comic that Wheels of Confusion points out may have gotten the order of the panels wrong (and for proper comic effect/ting, he is right). The third post was the word “green” (presumably a suggestion for the colour of the dragon, another content-free contribution), while the fourth was the following insightful reflection on the first post: “Sensing pissy Mac fan boy. Could be wrong, could be right.”

It’s actually not nearly as bad as I would have guessed!

For context, here is WoC’s post, which includes the comic in question, in case you are lazy, like me, and don’t want to click links and stuff:

I have to admit, when I started this post, I hadn’t looked at the comments and thought they’d be particularly dumb/juicy. Instead, they’re just kind of lame. This will teach me to look for blog gold in a pile of…stuff that isn’t gold.

Installer dialogues that make you go, “hmm…”

Since I “reset” Windows, I’ve been re-installing apps as I need them, and the time came today to re-install Affinity Designer 2. It presented this dialogue:

Uses all system resources? At least leave enough free so I can use IRC1I’m kidding, I haven’t used IRC in years. I’m not kidding about not using all resources, though. That just seems greedy..

Also, I installed a font today, and it wanted me to restart my PC after. Welcome to the future.