The good news post-reinstalls on the gaming laptop? No more driver issues! Weird issues in Windows Security are resolved. The best part about re-installing Windows and then Steam and downloading a 128+ GB game? None of the Cloud Synced saves for Baldurs Gate 3 will successfully load. And yes, have spent hours going through posts and solutions, etc. I had eight mods loaded in BG3 (managed with BGMM, script extender, all updated from...
Continue reading...Tech
Fix one driver error leads to fun times
I periodically forget how much of a pain Windows is. Most of the time, I’m using macOS for work and for my personal laptop. However, my gaming machine runs Windows because most games don’t run on (or don’t run well) on macOS. I also got tired of using Windows emulators like Wine and Crossover. My MSI laptop was having stuttering issues with the nVidia 3070 graphics card. (Yes, did lots of research, tried...
Continue reading...SystemUpdates by Zzte on Axon 7
My secondary phone line (used for work) is on a ZTE Axon 7 running Android 7.1.1. A little while ago, I found an app that was running called SystemUpdates by Zzte. The app can not be uninstalled nor easily disabled. (You can use Settings > Apps > Show system apps > System Updates > disable, but this has other repercussions like no longer being able to perform system updates.) The reviews of this...
Continue reading...Kindle Keyboard
I originally purchased a Bear Kindle keyboard case for my Kindle Fire 8.9″ tablet. They keyboard was rather like typing on a chicklet keyboard and was unresponsive. I am a touch typist and very picky about the touch on the keyboards that I use. I never used the keyboard case because it felt too bulky and was frustrating to type on. I hit more incorrect keys than correct ones. After reading some reviews,...
Continue reading...Post-update Ubuntu woes
I posted too soon. We had the system doing updates (including kernel updates). Nick pointed out that the kernel update might delete the driver so we held our breaths and waited. The system rebooted and gave me a login prompt. And then a pretty cursor and then nothing but a black screen. Nick, luckily, was still here and was able to help. We did some research and found things that might have been...
Continue reading...Little cuteness has Ubuntu
After many many hours of trying to install Linux Mint on the Acer Aspire V5-122p, I enlisted the Linux Mint expert at work. (Wave at Nick!) We spent additional hours after work trying to get Mint to work and failed. Horribly. He was as perplexed as I was as to why we couldn’t get Mint to work. (Maybe it had something to do with secure boot or EFI?) So… we tried Ubuntu 13.04...
Continue reading...New little cuteness
I took the little Acer Aspire One D150 to gaming on Saturday night. I had spent hours on Friday night trying to figure out what was wrong with the computer and concluded that it wasn’t able to charge any more from the power cord. So. Several of the guys at the gaming group are sys admins, so I let them look at the D150 too. They concluded that it was dead as well....
Continue reading...Little netbook is dead
My little Acer Aspire One D150 has officially died. Can’t get it to boot and not sure what’s wrong with it. It’s dead dead dead. I’ll have to pull the hard drive and RAM and reformat it to remove any old data. I’m just glad that I don’t use anything local. It’s all backed up on cloud storage. I’m kinda annoyed because I spent a lot of quality time with it lately. Once...
Continue reading...Government surveillance of Verizon’s customers
If you haven’t heard, the NSA obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court allowing them to collect data every day from Verizon cell phone customers. This data can include phone numbers, IP addresses, location data, unique identifiers, etc., but supposedly not the content of calls. The British news source The Guardian has some of the best coverage of this case: The document shows for the first time that under the...
Continue reading...Random reboots fixed?
For the past several months, I’ve had a disconcerting issue with my iMac. The iMac randomly tries to log me out. My old Mac Mini, which has been retired to the household media server, never had this problem. Googling the symptoms resulted in a mixed bag of possible causes: failing hard drive, faulty memory chips, logic board problems, etc. I looked on the Application > Utilities > Console application for any log files...
Continue reading...Well-behaved Note 2
A few weeks ago, I traded in my old Note 2 for a new one due to issues with the micro SD card and not receiving phone calls. Kinda hard to have a phone that doesn’t function as a phone. It’s been right about three weeks since I traded in the other phone and everything seems to be going fine. I haven’t had any issues with the memory card and all of my...
Continue reading...Strange SD card behavior on the Note 2
I was dressed for the gym and went to load Zombies Run. The playlist option was missing half of the play lists. WinAmp showed only two locally saved playlists and no music. A few days ago, the phone was randomly mounting and unmounting the microSD card. The vibration notice going off on Friday morning was enough to unmount the SD card. Tonight, the storage menu showed that there wasn’t an SD card mounted....
Continue reading...Replaced the Note 2
So, during the day, the phone repeated the same issues I’d had earlier with wifi calling. Even after doing a hard reset, I didn’t get any calls. I tested the wifi calling during work today by attempting to send text messages. None of the text messages went through. I tried calling my desktop phone at different times. I tried calling myself once an hour or more during the day from my work phone...
Continue reading...Follow up on Samsung Galaxy Note 2
I went to the T-Mobile store tonight to ask for some any support options on the Note 2. The staff at the story didn’t have a wifi network to use to test the phone, so they let me use the store phone to call T-Mo tech support. When you call tech support for a cell phone, you aren’t supposed to call using the phone you need to troubleshoot. Since I only have my...
Continue reading...Wifi calling issue on Note 2
Searching for articles on problems with using T-Mobile’s wifi calling on the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Note 2 returns multiple results, including an enlightening good discussion on the XDA forum. The phone doesn’t keep a consistent connection to the wifi calling service. I get an ERR Connection Refused, invalid certificate, and other errors. Some times the phone has trouble staying on the wifi network even though the phone is sitting on my desk....
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