MystikIncarnate

At home, libreNMS. Just SNMP everything.

For work, whatever the tool of the day is from management.

As much as time is a constant thorn in my side, both time and timezones are a necessary evil.

Others have outlined some of the issues regarding time zones and the abolishment of them so I won't get into that. What I will say is that time keeping systems generally don't track time in your local timezone. Technology has long since given up on local time as a measurement. Almost all system clocks for computers, phones, pretty much anything electronic, is almost always stored in UTC, or a time code based on UTC.

And I can hear it now, someone saying " but the time on my $thing is $correctlocaltime, which is not UTC"

Yep, and that's where the magic happens. While the time is stored as UTC, it's displayed as local based on your device's time zone settings. In some cases, like with cellphones, the local timezone is set by GPS. The device gets a very very general idea of where you are from GPS, and sets your timezone appropriately. Windows will do this too based on location awareness, by default. I'm sure os x also does something similar.

When the time is displayed it takes the UTC system time and filters it through the UTC offset based on your timezone, and displays local time, factoring in daylight savings, if applicable.

We've silently converted to a single unified time globally, and nobody realizes it has happened because the user interface shows you what you want to see.

My man.

Aah yes, that's UNII-2 in action. You can't have a radio in the UNII-2 band without some measure of radar detection and avoidance. It's a regulatory standard. Most will simply hop to another frequency and inform connected stations of the move, but shutting down when radar is detected, is valid.

It may be worthwhile to aggregate such reports and see if it's the same few channels each time, then simply exclude those channels from being selected by the system. It could increase the reliability of the connection to the clients and reduce any calls about the wifi going out or kicking people off of it.

Most of the time there's a gap under most internal doors to allow for airflow between spaces. Most rooms also have ventilation and return air, but often a gap under the doors as well.

It's normally not very much, but enough for an ethernet cable. The trick is to get it to sit neatly across the area so it doesn't impede the swing of the door.

I like to use small nails or screws in the frame of the door to hold it against the flooring.

The hardest part for me to remove when departing my previous rental was pulling down the conduit. I didn't use the 3M command strips for it, since it came with mounting tape pre-applied. I pulled off some of the layers of paint on the wall when it came down. It was not a big deal to the superintendent since they repaint regardless. The cup hooks took the longest since you have to untwist each from the wall by hand. They're not fully enclosed, so pulling the cable out was simply a matter of pushing it up and out of the hook.

When done correctly, it should only take about 20 minutes to pull apart and leave little more than paint damage behind.

If that's not appealing, and you have cable TV or some other kind of coaxial lines run between rooms, there's MoCA as an option. It can coexist with most TV signals, and something to consider if you're in a situation where you have the wiring needed. If only phone lines exist, it's entirely possible to buy and use ethernet extenders that use DSL technology to relay the data. They're not as fast as MoCA, and they may not even have as much bandwidth as wireless, depending on the conditions, but they will be far more consistent and reliable than wireless.

There is the option of powerline adapters as well, however, I would only recommend them if you have enough knowledge of the power lines in your home to determine that the plugs that the powerline adapters will be placed into are on the same circuit. If they're not, then the situation can become very complex, or downright guesswork to try to get working. It becomes a huge risk for anyone who isn't an electrician with enough knowledge to determine if the lines will intersect in a productive way. Here in North America where I am, we use split phase power, so if powerline adapters are used here and they end up on different hot lines, the signal essentially has to travel through either the transformer that's delivering the power, or the neutral lines which may be afflicted with all sorts of interference from the ground being bonded to it. So if you're not an electrician, I would say only to use powerline if the plugs you intend to put them on are on the same circuit. If not, you're going to have significant risk for the system not working well, reliably, or possibly even have it not working at all.

I'm certain there are other options I haven't really gotten into, but there's plenty out there to use and try. Ethernet or fiber is generally ideal. If you can't use that, then MoCA, and to a lesser extent DSL. If that's not an option for whatever reason and you are in favorable conditions, maybe powerline. Beyond that, you're stuck with wireless. Ethernet/fiber can run upwards of 100Gbps (SMF) to 10Gbps (MMF/Cat6), or mgig at 5Gbps or 2.5Gbps, and of course 1Gbps. MoCA can do an excess of 1Gbps last I checked, but lacks full duplex operation like most ethernet standards. DSL can be as fast as 250+Mbps with the right equipment, but often trends around 50-150Mbps in the simple point to point configurations you'll find with non-ISP grade solutions. Powerline wildly fluctuates depending on conditions, but can achieve 1Gbps in ideal situations. Wireless, which by its very nature, is half duplex, is by far the most variant, if you're the only person using it in the local area, it can be fantastic, however, such an ideal is extraordinarily rare, it interferes with everything from wireless console controllers, microwave ovens, neighbors and just about everything else made for consumers with a wireless connection. Often, it's the most variant of the bunch and frequently has the longest ping times and jitter.

Simply put, wireless is a bad technology. Not because it was/is done poorly, but because it works so well that everyone puts everything onto it and that makes it terrible. There's only so much wireless frequency range given out for unlicensed public use and when everyone has their own wifi, we all end up stepping on eachothers toes.

My motto is, and has been for a while: wire when you can, wireless when you have to. If everyone did that, we would be much better off.

My solution when I lived in an apartment was to buy cup hooks, and white ethernet cable (either riser or plenum), as well as some ethernet wall boxes, and keystones for them. For a bit of flair, I also picked up some white hook&loop (aka velcro).

I added a few lengths of conduit/raceway for vertical runs and what I did was use the cup hooks to create a wiring tray for ethernet cables along the ceiling lines on the wall... Maybe 2 inches from the top, every 18 inches or so, I'd put a cup hook. Then, when they were placed, I ran the raceway up the walls near my network stuff, and used all of that to wire ethernet around the place. Cup hooks are self tapping, you generally don't need any tools for it. I "pre-tapped" the holes with a small nail, just driving it in less than half an inch, then pull it right out... just to give the cup hook somewhere to bite into and set my positioning for it. The larger cup hooks can carry 4-5 ethernet, and I used the velcro to keep everything together and tidy.

On the ends, I terminated the cables to keystones, mounted them in their wall box and stuck it to the wall with 3M command strips, for easy removal later.

For me, the cables went along the base of a wall in one bedroom which we used as a computer room/office, over to the door, around the door hinge at the bottom, up the wall using conduit/raceway, along the ceiling of the hallway, over to the living room where I had two wall-mount dual ethernet boxes for four cables/connectors. I then used standard ethernet cable to run to my TV, a wireless access point, an htpc, etc.

The only other stuff in the living room was phones and other appropriately wireless equipment, the rest of the wired stuff was in the office. The TV we had in the bedroom had a cable that went through the wall to the office. I found that a telephone wiring box on the walls between the rooms was open on both sides, so I just popped the faceplates off and ran the cables.

I know my situation is unique and yours will be different. I'm hoping I can give you some ideas on how to tackle the problem without initiating aggro from either the spouse, family, or landlord.

Vehicle fobs are usually not in the 2.4Ghz range, they're usually in the 300-500mhz range.

But yes, there's a lot of assumptions and usually it's right, but it can be wrong also.

Also, fun fact, microwave ovens use very high power 2.45Ghz. so they can do this by simply rigging a microwave to turn on when the door is open, then pointing it at your house at a safe distance, like across the street.

Most companies that make outdoor stuff generally avoid 5Ghz because it's a regulatory nightmare. Some countries allow it, others only allow certain frequencies, others only allow certain frequencies up to a certain power level, others basically don't allow it at all. So all your fancy door bell/cameras/whatever that you connect outside your home are all going to be limited to 2.4 GHz with is basically universally available internationally (it's an ISM band, while the wifi 5ghz is a UNII band).... So yeah, good luck everybody!

Also wired cameras and such exist, they're a pain to install, but they work well, and the market for other outdoor network connected things is extremely limited.... Things like doorbells.

I hate putting static objects on wifi, even something like my TV, I want it wired simply because it never moves and there's no reason to use it wirelessly. I can run a wire to it once and even if I upgrade the TV, the wire still works. To explain this a little more, I'm an IT administrator and I have a specialty in wireless networking. As tersely as I can: more stuff on the WiFi makes it slow, so if something can be wired, it should be wired. Obviously there are things that are not well suited to it, like cellphones and laptops, but pretty much everything else should be wired. TVs, set top boxes, desktop computers... Basically anything that can be wired, that doesn't regularly move around.... Wired. This extends to cameras, doorbells, gdo's....

This frees up wireless bandwidth for devices that are obligated to use it, like your phone and tablet.

I've seen a lot of network issues resolved by simply plugging in everything that's practical to plug in, even if the device having the issue wasn't one of the things plugged in.

It doesn't really matter if I select the notification from the windows notification system, or the one on my android. At most it only takes me to the correct server and channel at most. Unless the message was one of the things said that's still on the screen when discord opens that server and channel, then I won't see the message.

So if I'm fast at clicking the notification as it happens, then it works fine. If there's a delay, fuck me, I guess. Which is especially bad when it comes to busy servers with a lot of chatter.

I've been using that, and bluntly, that's great, but why, when I click on a notification, does it not do the same thing?

My biggest issue with discord is that I'll get pinged, and have no fucking clue what pinged me.

Even if I get to the notification, often I don't get it right away, and often I don't open it right away either. So when I click on it, which, in most chat like apps will take you to that post/mention/whatever, it just takes me to the channel where I was mentioned. I'm left with no earthly idea why I'm in this chat or what was said that prompted the notification.

When I'm actively in discord, this works okay, since the mention which prompted the notification is likely the most recent thing said, or at least, close to it. The problem is, I'm almost never actively in discord.

I find that if I use discord all the time, which is rare, but happens.... Then I don't mind it so much. However, if I don't use discord all the time, then it's less than useless. I get notifications all the time and I just end up dismissing them because by the time I get to it, there's no chance I'll be able to figure out why I got the notification in the first place.

DMs and very very small communities are an exception, since the volume of messages is so low that generally, even if I get to the notification hours later, the message that prompted the notification is still one of the most recent handful of messages.

To this end, my list of pros and cons for discord are: Pros:

• convenient (when in active use)
• good voice chat
• a lot of people use it Cons:
• slow notifications
• bad notification handling

I feel like the people who run any given community, who are centered around discord, don't have problems with it, since they're pretty much always on it. For someone who isn't always plugged into discord, it's a horrendous nightmare of missed messages and notifications that take you somewhere unexpected. Any complaints about this generally falls on deaf ears because the people in charge, who picked that the community should be in discord, use it so much that they don't really have any issues with it.

Compare and contrast with a competing text-chat service like slack. In general slack doesn't do voice, so there's some differences there, but talking strictly about notifications and such: the notifications frequently arrive within seconds or minutes at most, when you select them, it takes you to the channel where the alert came from, scrolled to the post where the mention that prompted the notification is located, with the specific mention highlighted for clarity. From here, you can scroll back to get context, and scroll forward to see other replies. Contrasted with my experience in discord, you select the notification, you're taken to the channel where the notification originated, and scrolled to a random point in the recent history of the channel. Does this section contain the mention? Maybe, but probably not. Nothing is highlighted. Good luck.

Good case of resting jerk face if I've ever seen one. That's just your face. You can't really help it. I'd be amiss to not note that there's probably a nontrivial amount of racism in some of those looks, and bluntly, there's nothing you can do to make a racist more comfortable. IMO, let them be uncomfortable.

As cliche as it is, I'd say, smile more. When you make eye contact with someone, just give them a bit of a smile. Nothing extreme, but try to avoid the kind of smile that might make someone think you're up to something... You know, the head down fake grin while intensely staring at them... Kind of thing. Hold your head high, give them a friendly smile. Not much more. If they still seem to have a problem, ignore it. You can't please everyone, and some people aren't worth the effort to try.

I know smiling isn't always something you want to do, but studies have shown that you actually can improve your own mood when you smile. So do it for yourself.

Alternatively, stop giving a shit what other people think. You look fantastic. You say you were previously obese? I can't tell. Be proud of yourself. You've certainly earned it battling the bulge (as they say).

I'm a white dude, but I've had people uncomfortable with me and my friends during our anti social looking days being goth kids or something like it. Few people wanted to talk to us. Those that did were usually pleasantly surprised that we were friendly. I like to leave that as a treat for anyone willing to engage me in discussion. If anyone else has a problem with how I look now, which is still almost entirely in black, I wouldn't know. I stopped giving any shits about what people think a long time ago. Those that know me know I'm the friendliest person around. That's what matters to me.

Most fruit seems to be a good choice IMO. Even veggies may be a decent option. Grapes maybe?

Fruit is generally waterproof, so it's not like it will taste different in the shower.

I think anything with flour is probably a bad choice. Nobody likes soggy bread/cake/whatever.

I'd also consider any kind of cheeses or cured meat. Maybe a nice meat/cheese/fruit assortment?