I love the weather here in the Sonoran Desert. We have an abundance of sunshine, I have absolutely no breathing issues from stuffy air, and I find the warm wind, especially in the evening, particularly enjoyable. Granted, I’m not one for being in the sun, but I find my way to enjoy the outdoors and the sunshine safely and without sunburn at the end of the day.
A few folks have spoke about the upcoming monsoon season, and how spectacularly beautiful it is here in Tucson. I’m looking forward to experiencing this. In the meanwhile, he’s a video I found on YouTube, showing the Arizona Monsoon of 2019, in 4K HDR.
Enjoy.
I’m always saying how awesome and beautiful Mother Nature can be. Her mood here in the desert is much different than what I’ve experience all my life up north. I still find her moods completely spectacular.
This is a rather long read but I found it very interesting and worth sharing. This is an essay addressing the increasing insanity in the world. It’s relatable and enlightening.
The vast majority of users of the software we write for work use a Windows computer. Our applications are all web based; the “casual” users tend to use Google Chrome as their web browser, the more technically minded users tend to use something else, mostly Firefox but once in a while we’ll get hit by a one-off like Opera or Microsoft Edge.
Microsoft recently announced the impending end of support for Internet Explorer 11. Our applications haven’t worked on IE 11 in years, it’s just too weird of a browser, but we’ll occasionally get hit by a user that has IE set as their default. They’ll see weird results from our applications if they see the application at all. We usually steer them towards Google Chrome.
Microsoft is going to redirect their IE 11 users to Microsoft Edge, their web browser that is based on the same code base as Google Chrome. For the most part, if it works in Google Chrome, it works on Microsoft Edge.
I develop software on a Mac. Apple wants me to use the built in Safari web browser. While this is a very nice experience, it does not replicate what the typical user experiences. I have Firefox on my work Mac to make sure things I write work well in that arena, but I was hesitant to install Google Chrome on my Mac.
A quick aside, I did install Microsoft Edge but did not perform as well as I had hoped it would.
Brave uses the same codebase as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge to render web pages, so if it works on Chrome, it works on Brave. But the better thing is, Brave is focused on privacy. It has an Ad-blocker built in. It let’s you select your search engine of choose at installation (rather than digging through preferences panes). I always opt to use DuckDuckGo.
So far Brave has performed as expected and then some for my web development and surfing needs at work. If you want something that behaves like Google Chrome but better, I recommend checking out Brave.
Twenty years ago today was the final episode of “Star Trek: Voyager”, the episode “Endgame”.
Captain Janeway has always been my favorite captain in the entire Star Trek experience. “Endgame”, while seemingly cut short at the very end, is probably one of my favorite final episodes of any of the series.
Someone has become very comfortable in our new home. I can’t believe it’s been two months since we moved to Tucson! Truman feels just as comfortable on an end table as he does walking along the ridge that flanks the staircase.
The saga with my newest HomePod Mini continues. After spending over an hour on the phone with Apple Support, and resetting every device within nearly a half mile of my home office, my HomePod Mini still will not complete its setup.
The Apple support technician promised someone from the next tier up would give me a call, but they missed their appointment time and I am having a hard time regaining interest in the endeavor.
There are many things that Apple does well. I maintain that Apple devices are still the safest and most reliable computing devices available to the average consumer. Unfortunately their prices are above average but what’s even more disappointing is there’s too many things that Apple has let slide to the wayside. Home Automation, or “HomeKit” is one of them.
When my HomePod Mini is stuck on “Configuring…” for hours, after taking nearly a dozen attempts to get the thing connected at all, and the HomePod team can’t figure out the problem, the world’s largest technology company needs to step back and take a look at what the heck their doing.
Luckily, we mostly rely on Alexa for home automation. I’m not super comfortable with this scenario, but at this point I want something that works. And while Alexa may be snooping on us, at least she’s doing it with much more reliability.
I admired this refrigerator at Home Depot. The refrigerator at home is probably the weakest link in our otherwise very well appointed kitchen; being the geek I am I would really love to see our kitchen have a state of the art refrigerator with a touchscreen.
The rest of the family is not on board, especially with the extra expense.
What’s the purpose of having a touchscreen in the kitchen? Well, with all of the automated gadgetry we have spread throughout our new home, having a centralized location to control all this stuff, without having to scream at the nearest Alexa or Siri device, or whip out our phone, would be nice. In every incarnation I’ve seen of “fully automated homes of the future”, touchscreens are everywhere. Touchscreens are a natural way to interact with various devices of technology, and with all the open space on a refrigerator door, this location makes sense.
The family is not buying it.
The touchscreen in question is basically a large Android touchpad. I don’t know a lot about it, though I’m planning on doing more research on how well it works, how it operates, and the added cost to the device.
We might end up with touchscreen mirrors instead.
The family is still not buying the idea of a touchscreen in the refrigerator. Yet.
I strive to choose my words carefully. I occasionally choose the wrong words when conveying thoughts; usually for emotional impact or as a result of personal heightened emotion. When using words with a sting, my voice is louder and higher in pitch, even when I’m sharing them via keyboard online.
I’m focused on using better words to help bring down the temperature of dialog. Everywhere. Online, in conversation, it doesn’t matter.
One of the things I most admired about my father was his capacity to keep calm and his discipline around language. I heard my Dad swear. Once. Maybe he just minded his language better around his children. I rarely heard him say something negative about someone. If he did, it was out of frustration.
Dr. Maya Angelou is on absolutely on target; words are “things”. Once we realize this, we understand what we’re putting out into the Universe through communication and language.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
