Wishing everybody (but especially our troops and those who lost loved-ones in the military) a peaceful Memorial Day as we take time to remember soldiers of days passed who died in service of their country.

As you likely already know if you've been reading for a while, I love me the robot floor cleaning robots. And right now I've been really loving the Narwal Flow 2 model which has been cleaning my downstairs (Carl) and upstairs (Joy) floors. I feel beyond fortunate to have these devices which make my life a little easier.

But anyway...

I've had a few questions about the mapping that my robots do, and have been looking to online forums for help. The other day while I was scrolling through one of them, a woman was very, very upset that the Flow 2 she just bought wasn't doing a good job of cleaning her floors. She was cursing the poor robot, the manufacturer, and everybody "lying" about how good the devices are.

And then she posted a photo.

Now, I stopped being a Catholic a long, long time ago. But I involuntarily crossed myself when I saw what her floors looked like. They weren't just a little dirty. They were filthy. The grime was so crusted on them that areas looked like they hadn't been cleaned in decades.

Not wanting to be an asshole, I decided to offer up a bit of help by saying something like "I had problem areas that didn't get cleaned too, so I scrubbed them down and just have the robot maintain my floors by running a couple times a week. It's been working out great."

But the subsequent comments on my comment were not nearly as diplomatic.

People were saying things like "Problem areas? That entire floor needs to be torn out so she can start over!" and "Forget the robot have you tried explosives?" which was quickly followed by "Try filling the robot with battery acid."

Then the woman decided to yell at me before deleting her post.

I guess I should feel lucky that my mom kept a clean house and I learned by example. Though, if I'm being honest, I still haven't finished unpacking my suitcase. It's sitting in the kitchen hallway where it's been for a week now.

But don't worry... thanks to Carl, the area around my suitcase is squeaky clean.

Yesterday one of the most important videos you'll ever see was released.

And I need you to watch it.

It's that important, and here it is...

Okay, that was a ruse. Here's the real deal...

I implore you to watch this. If you have kids then I implore you to watch this then talk with them about AI chatbots. I implore you to share this with people you know... especially if they have kids or are vulnerable in some way.

You could be saving a life...

This is fucking repugnant.

AI is stealing our precious resources like fresh water and electricity.

And now they're coming for the people. Exactly as we knew it would. Because there's money to be made.

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently acquired a brand new Narwal Flow 2 robot mop/vacuum. Here are my notes after a week with "Carl the Fourth" (named after Carl the janitor in Sixteen Candles, as my previous three robot vacuums were).

As I noted yesterday, this is a darn good robot mop/vacuum, and my home has never felt this clean with any other robot before. So let's get into it...

When it comes to mapping out your home, Carl the Fourth is pretty darn smart. Like all devices now, it's got "AI onboard" which means it can "see" objects and obstructions far better than older vacuums. Instead of mucking about by bumping into everything over and over, the Narwal Flow 2 using twin sensors to get a 3-D view of your home...

The initial mapping of my home was shockingly fast because Carl just zoomed around sensing where everything is. From the map he makes, I can see how he is seeing my home...

The AI is smart enough to detect objects like phones, cables, fabric, and shoes. I have two pairs of shoes by my door and they were identified easily (albeit in singular instead of plural form)...

Furniture like beds, couches, tables, and even pet feeders(!) are recognized and marked on the map. The problem is that they are not marked on the map correctly. Here's the map that Carl made of my home...

Let's look closer at my couches...

You can see that the coffee table perfect lines up where Carl cleaned. But the couches? The large couch is shown 2/3 of its length for some reason. But look at the smaller couch. Not only is it drawn massive, it also doesn't reflect the angle of the actual furniture. This is truly bizarre. Why doesn't the map representation match what is actually on the map? Maybe this will get better with updates.

When it comes to creating cleaning zones within your house, it's very difficult. I turn the furniture icons off because they're not remotely accurate. I would use past mopping data, but it doesn't show up. All you get is the sensor map... WHICH FADES AWAY WHEN YOU START DRAWING ZONES?!?? They're barely visible...

Ugh.

Narwal recommends that you first do a full vacuum-only so that any dirt doesn't interfere with the mopping so I did that. Even though my Roomba had cleaned just two days before, the Narwal Flow 2 came back looking filthy. Which means Carl the Fourth is obviously doing a deeper clean and getting closer to areas which collect dust, cat hair, and cobwebs. This was quite impressive.

I left some cat vomit residue from the previous week because I had gotten a notification that Carl had shipped and was on his way. I wanted to see if he would be able to scrub it up...

The answer is no. Not only did Carl not get them cleaned up, he didn't even identify them as dirty spots so he would attempt to clean them up. In reviews and the sales promotion, I saw video after video of Carl scrubbing spots clean with the "Smart Stain Detection"... but not here. I don't know if it's because my floor is dark wood instead of light wood, but should that really matter when the spots are fully contrasted against the floor? How did all three of these get missed? I sincerely hope that Narwal sends improvements to the Flow 2 in order to upgrade its smarts for stuff like this. I ended up having to wet paper towels and manually wipe them up as usual. Bummer.

The next morning I woke up to find that Jake had tried to hack up a hairball, leaving fresh water vomit dribbled from the dining room to the guest bedroom. So I opened up the Narwal app... drew a box around the area affected... then unleashed Carl and waited to see if the fresh spots would be recognized. Turns out they didn't need to be. He blazed over them without a second glance, obliterating them easily...

And then... yesterday I woke up to find that one of the cats had done a scarf and barf. So here we go. This is why I got Carl in the first place. Will he think that this is poop and avoid it? Or will he recognize this as cat vomit and attempt to clean it up?

Oh heck yeah! Carl noted the stain, then turned his vacuum on highest speed and attacked it. Going over it again and again until it was gone, then he mopped over it until the floor was clean. Great job, buddy! Though this does worry me a bit. I haven't had a chance to look at Carl's undercarriage to find out if there's cat puke smeared on it. And does this mean if my cats end up pooping on the floor for some reason that he will try to clean it? That's a good question.

UPDATE: Carl ran through the vomit and got his wheels messy. Not good. Would probably have been easier to clean the vomit than clean these wheels.

The water in the base station is pre-heated in the tank to 140º, which is supposed to give you a better mopping. The problem is that even fresh off the base station, the water Carl leaves behind is not at all hot. Maybe slightly warmer than ambient room temperature. This is disappointing after reading it so prominently in the promo literature, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Where it likely makes a lot of difference is in cleaning the mop head during/after he's been mopping. Multiple rinses with 140º water is sure to clean the head better than room temperature. For that, I am thrilled, because it addresses one of my biggest problems I had with the Bissell SpinWave robot, which doesn't clean its spinny pads at all. You have to manually toss them in the wash.

There's a bigger problem with the spinny pads and vibrating pads and roller pads on other mopping robots, though. They just smear the dirt around with water, and my floors never felt freshly-mopped. The Narwal Flow 2 doesn't use any of these technologies... Carl instead uses a flat mopping head which has a "rolling track mop" head that rolls around it while constantly being rinsed off and re-wetted. It actually cleans your floors...

Just look at how my SpinWave "cleaned" my floors in comparison...

But here's something else that's cool about the mopping... the head can extend outward from the side to get closer to edges than it would if it just stayed underneath the unit. The technology behind the Narwal Flow 2 alone makes it better than any cleaning robot I've ever had. After mopping, my floors look as clean as if I hauled out a mop and manually scrubbed them. It's so amazing to see. I walk on the floors in my bare feet and they feel great. So good that I could never go back to the spinny pads, vibrating pads, and other stuff I had in my other mopping robots.

Time will tell if the notorious hard water where I live is going to build up inside the robot or the base station and ruin them. I toyed with the idea of using distilled water, but that would get very expensive very fast.

As expected for a robot with the advertised suction power, the vacuum is great. But it seems to have a bit of a problem due to the way it sections off your home. Carl understands that the kitchen is a different surface than the dining/living/bedroom area, so it attacks them separately. This is a bit of a problem, because the kitty litter that gets trapped against the transition strip between them doesn't really get vacuumed for some reason...

There's an HD camera on board which allows you to look out the front as cleaning is happening. You see what the robot sees...

You'll note that there's a directional pad in the lower left where you can manually drive the robot. I haven't done this yet. It might be fun from a remote-control car standpoint, but if I have to do that in order to vacuum or mop, I'll just grab my vacuum or mop!

Disclaimer: My home is wall-to-wall hardwood, so I don't know how well it does on carpet.

So... yeah... love this thing. Hope it gets even better. Let's sum this up, shall we...

THE GOOD

• The low profile allows the Flow 2 to easily get underneath tables, beds, and toe-kicks.
• The vacuum is great. Suction power is excellent and the edge spinner brush moves dirt from the right side of the robot towards the vacuum brush. Cat kibble that spilled on the kitchen floor were sucked up without issue.
• The mop is excellent. The technology behind what Narwal is doing is far, far superior to any other mopping robots I've used. The flat surface, constant cleaning, and ability to extend outward to clean everywhere it remarkable.
• The camera system is pretty good for fresh stains. Carl noted the cat vomit and cleaned it up. Not sure what happens if he runs across a hairball or a pile of poop though.
• The battery life is great. My entire floor can be cleaned using only 25%, even though Carl has to run back to the base station half-way through cleaning to get the dirty water swapped out for clean.
• The base station clean/dirty water tanks can get through two full moppings of my home. I was anticipating them needing to be changed out after every mopping, so this was a pleasant surprise.
• Before docking at the end of a clean, Carl will raise himself up and turn on full suction to grab any dirt and debris that was trapped underneath him. Very nice.
• You don't have to manually add the cleaning solution to the water tank and mix it up. There's a separate reservoir for the cleaner that gets injected into the water as the robot is filled up.
• The base station is big, but not comically so. It can handle two full cleanings of my home, so I think it's just the right size (as it starts doing regular cleanings so things aren't as dirty, the sensor may notice it and even go up to 3 or 4 cleanings between tank changes). I wish I could afford buying the tankless model, but I can't afford to have it plumbed into the kitchen. There is a cool LED color light bar which turns colors based on what's going on, but I haven't bothered to learn which colors mean what.
• The mopping pad is not only washed with hot water, it's dried afterwards. The refuse bag is also dried so any bacteria vacuumed up is killed. I have the drying on "quiet mode" which takes quite a while. There's faster modes available but they're (assumably) noisier.
• The operation is shockingly quiet given how powerful the vacuum suction is rated. It's twice as strong as my Roomba, but twice as quiet at the same time? How? Silent? Not at all. But I can easily watch television while it's in operation.
• Supports the Matter Smart Home standard (among others). Robot vacuums are fairly new to Matter, so it's pretty basic. I don't know why you would use it instead of the app, but it's there for your automations and integrations.
• Comes with a 3-Year Warranty. — I've come to expect 9 months to 1 year, so that's nice.

THE BAD

• UPDATE: The dirty water tank will start to stink. I mean really stink. The second time I went to empty it, the smell was gag-inducing. Likely from the bacteria breeding in it. So I ended up washing it out real good, then letting it sit open in the garage. Narwal desperately needs to add a UV light or something to keep bacteria odor from accumulating like this.
• The map on the app has to be fixed, because it's awful. The furniture is recognized, but not oriented properly so I turn it off. The mapping data becomes so light when drawing zones to clean that it's almost impossible to draw areas accurately. And even if you could, the zone drawing tool is horrible. Instead of dragging corners you get one corner to resize, then have to drag and re-size over and over until your get it right. And it's tough to do that because the touches aren't registered very well. You also can't draw non-square areas, which is baffling. The app is such a critical feature to get right, but the Narwal blows it utterly.
• Carl seems to get confused when he tries to dock with his base station. He comes up to it, turns around, starts backing in, then stops, comes forward, turns around to look at where he's supposed to park, then turns back around and finally backs in. Not sure what that's all about. Kinda cute though.
• There should be spinny brushes on both sides for a cleaner in this price range.
• As noted, the "Smart Stain Detection" didn't notice my dried-on stains at all. Not even a little bit. Since he will attack new stains, I guess this isn't a big deal? Time will tell.
• The sensors on the robot must be pretty good, because there's minimal bumping into furniture. All my other robots bash into stuff repeatedly no matter how many times they've cleaned my home.
• The retail price of the Narwal Flow 2 is a jaw-dropping $1500. If you bought it during its pre-release/early release, the price was $1100. I don't know that it's worth this cost. If I were pricing the value of it vs. the capabilities it has, I'd say around $850. Even that is really too expensive. But given how helpful it is at performing a task I no longer have to do... and doing that task very, very well... it could be worth it.
• The replacement parts (rollers, bags, fluids, etc.) are pretty expensive. The official Narwal bags are two for $20 on their site. Sure, third-party manufacturers will release cheaper parts, they always do, but why doesn't Narwal have reasonable pricing? Isn't this costing them business? Notable that Flow 2 supplies are very difficult to find on their site right now, and some of the information is not correct yet. Since the product is new, I'm guessing this will be resolved soon.

Ultimately I'm very happy with Carl the Fourth. He's very expensive, but does his job very well. Much better than I do with my quick cleanings on Sundays. Yes, I will still do an occasional deep-clean, but probably not every month. Maybe every-other-month or when company is coming. In-between, Carl will be vacuuming and mopping Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

I just hope that he has a long service life, because when you have built-in obsolescence or planned failure at this level, because if he dies right after the 3-Year Warranty ends, that's too soon.

I've purchased a number of robot mops and vacuums over the years. None of them have been noteworthy. Sure they work, but they don't work well. In the case of mops, they always seem to smear dirt around rather than mop it up... in the case of vacuums, they always seem to lack the ability to suck up dirt efficiently. So, more often than not, I end up mopping and vacuuming manually while my robots sit idle.

The problem is... I have cats.

In addition to year 'round kitty litter getting kicked around, this time of year Jake and Jenny are shedding like crazy. This means fur is everywhere and hacking up hairballs are more frequent. Yuck. Every Spring I toy with the idea of buying new robots to help keep things clean (all my floors are hardwood, so it's very noticeable).

So every Spring I toy with the idea of getting new-and-improved robots. Then I don't because I don't want to spend the money only to be disappointed again.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago and I said something to a friend about cat hair being everywhere and I was presented an option for a too-good-to-be true new robot that was being released on April 20th... the Narwal Flow 2.

So of course I researched all the pre-reviews of the product and did a deep dive into the competition.

The robot I was looking at a couple months ago was the Matic, former Google Nest engineers. The reviews were amazing and its reimagining of floor cleaning seemed a smart take. But it was way too tall. It wouldn't fit under any of my furniture, which means all the cat hair blowing under it would never be touched. So I passed.

I have mixed experiences with Dyson (I find them mostly sub-par) but was told they have been investing loads of their cash into robots, so I looked at some reviews. But their latest and greatest Spot+Scrub was getting terrible reviews.

The previous Narwal models were always in competition with Mova, Roborock, and Dreame, so I investigated their offerings. I had experience with i-Robot and Ecovacs, so I looked into those as well. After exhaustive research, I decided that the models competing with the Narwal Flow 2 weren't much better or worse, so I pushed the button on it because the offer I had was too good, then I hoped for the best.

After living with the robot for a week, I have opinions.

Which I will share tomorrow.

SPOILER ALERT: This is a darn good robot mop/vacuum, and my home has never felt this clean with any other robot before.

The Easter Bunny may be coming to town, but I'm goofing around on the internet ... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Work Chums! I've seen this several times, but I don't think I've shared it before...

If you've dealt with insurance before, you get it.

   
• Smartest Phone! Kit-Kat drama aside, this was my favorite April Fool's joke I saw...

Makes me want to actually buy a Bluey Phone!

   
• Geography! Washington is weird, y'all...

If you're not from here, you don't know how weird though.

   
• NEWSFLASH: MS. NOEM IS DEVASTATED. THE FAMILY WAS BLINDSIDED BY THIS, AND THEY ASK FOR PRIVACY AND PRAYERS AT THE TIME. And I'm asking you to fuck off with your bullshit. You used your position to utterly destroy lives without any regard to their privacy... and you certainly didn't pray on their behalf. Yet you have the absolute gall to ask for "privacy and prayers?" I do wonder if she was fired for this because the White House had advanced notice. They're already neck-deep in scandal, so it makes sense they would want to get this as far away from them as possible. I'd try to feel sorry for Bryon Noem getting attacked over something that was his own private business... but he knew what he married into and what she was. It's no surprise this is blowing up because of his own doing.

   
• Turn It Off and Back On Again! What's delicious about living in the digital age is that assholes can get internet detectives crawling up their ass with a microscope after they do something shitty. Take for instance this judge, who was a heinous douche to an IT worker helping him out. Many judges think they are gods, and when you show them that they're not, they react badly...

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dale Flournoy (@nsgdale)

And now the internet has been digging up everything from his bankruptcies to other asshole behaviors and publishing them for the whole word to see. Good. That's what the internet should be used for.

   
• How is The Dow? In honor of the puss-filled piece of shit who used her position to protect sexual predators getting fired, I am re-posting the only good thing that came out of her tenure...

Now you can fuck off and just go away until somebody drags your ass in front of The Hague. And, God-willing, your former boss will be there with you. Speaking of which, here's the only good thing to come out of his tenure...

Any guesses as to who's next on the administration firings distraction BINGO card?

   
And on that note, Happy Easter to all who celebrate.

We are constantly under assault from those who wish to steal from us, harm us, or otherwise make our lives miserable. From telemarketers to spam emails, fuckers are everywhere.

And now there's AI. As with so many applications of this new technology, it's making our lives demonstratively worse. Then today I saw this...

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by NaveedUllah (@naveed_ullah600)

Soon enough, AI will be too smart for tricks like this.

And then we're even more fucked than we are now.

I may be fucked up because the fucking clocks were fucking changed again, which is fucking rough because I'm hard at work on this fine Sunday, but don't worry about bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• For the Love of God, Make the Stupid STOP! Look, more people want us to go on permanent Daylight Saving Time than don't. Some of us are so fucking desperate to stop dicking around with the clocks that we're even considering permanent Standard Time (which is not a better option, but it is the only one you can make happen without getting the fucking dumbasses in Congress to ACTUALLY FUCKING DO SOMETHING). This is all so stupid. Just do it. Just make Daylight Time permanent and fucking MOVE ON FROM THIS BULLSHIT.

   
• Nacho! One of my favorite chefs is Saúl Montiel, who appears on Epicurious often. He's entertaining and a genius in the kitchen. Even when he's cooking with meat, I learn new things that I can then adapt into a vegetarian recipes. Yesterday I found that he recently made Perfect Nachos that are vegetarian from the jump. They look incredible...

Damn that looks delicious. No clump of stuff dumped on top of the chips, and when you grab one chip you don't take the entire plate of cheese as you would with cheddar. My next grocery order is going to include the ingredients for this bad boy. Best cooking tip you'll ever get from me... go to the Epicurious page and search "Saúl Montiel" to get more awesome tips than you can shake a spatula at.

   
• YOU FOLD IT IN! After Catherine O'Hara's passing, I'm seeing a non-stop parade of clips with her in them. But this is the first time I've seen her in LEGO. It's one of her most classic scenes...

Oh how I miss Schitt's Creek.

   
• Libarry! Every time I see the Obama Presidential Library in the news, I wonder what in the hell they were thinking...

I detest this design. It looks like a brutalist nightmare... lacking warmth, beauty, elegance, or architectural fluidity. It could have been so much more. I often wonder what type of statement these oppressive-looking monuments are supposed to be making. Whatever it is, this one feels opposite of the presidency it is supposed to be representing.

   
• Lanterns! It's interesting how James Gunn is trying his best to differentiate all the DC projects so they're not merging into sameness. And while I can't say that the concept for a cosmic-spanning character like Green Lantern to be trapped in a distinctly earth-bound scenario, I do appreciate that Lanterns is striving to be something different...

And then there's the rumor that Gunn wants to bail from his contract a year early because he feels at odds with his studio's new Paramount overlords. And wouldn't it be interesting if he returned to Marvel? Seems like Paramount would do just about anything to avoid that.

   
• NEWSFLASH: LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy. For better or worse, I put my name on the shit I say. My name is at the top of the sidebar of every entry on Blogography. And my real name is used on all my social media as well. And, believe me, I struggled with whether or not I wanted to go that route. In The Beginning Times, it felt like more people were using a pseudonym than their real names, but I ultimately decided to skip past that. Who cares what I say? And then I got a reader showing up where I live, and figured I may have made a mistake (the threats were also having me re-think things). But now, decades later, it turns out that staying anonymous is a thing of the past. AI can unmask you with "surprising accuracy." I wonder if this will cut down on the number of people making "anonymous" threats? One can only hope.

   
• Frod! I think I shared this years ago. I bears re-sharing....

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dazza (@unknowndazza)

I do the same thing... for my cats.

   
• Denial Isn't Just a River In Egypt! Every time washed up, bargain basement Hercules homophobe Kevin Sorbo opens his mouth... it's either to say something shitty. Or work in movies like Meet the Spartans so he can kiss dudes...

That's it, Sorbo, put your back into it! Such a hypocrite. Lord what a piece of shit.

   
And now I'm going back to work. Feel sad for me since my circadian rhythm is fucked.

WARNING: This entry contains technical stuff most people won't care about!

Once I had finally saved enough money to replace my aging QNAP NAS (Network Attached Storage) system with shiny new UGREEN devices, I was dismayed to find that some of the apps I relied on were not available in their app repository. "ZOMG! WHERE'S PLEX?!?!" I screamed. "HOW CAN YOU SELL A NAS THAT DOESN'T HAVE PLEX?!?" Sure QNAP was always late to the table with updates to their apps, but at least they had apps.

Enter Docker...

"Docker is an open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications. Docker enables you to separate your applications from your infrastructure so you can deliver software quickly. Docker provides the ability to package and run an application in a loosely isolated environment called a container. The isolation and security let you run many containers simultaneously on a given host. Containers are lightweight and contain everything needed to run the application, so you don't need to rely on what's installed on the host."

Or, to put it another way, Docker lets you run the apps that aren't in your NAS's app repository.

Now, before I dig into it, there is something I've learned about Docker. Primary of which is that a lot of people are moving away from it because it's gotten bloated and resource hungry. There are even lighter alternatives being developed which do the same thing more efficiently. But none of them are in the UGREEN app repository like Docker is, and I don't want to take the time to learn how to manually install them. So here I am running Docker.

Not that Docker is easy, mind you.

Things can get very tricky when trying to install apps, even when you are following a step-by-step guide you found on the internet. You're still going to have to deal with SSH and config files (called "compose.yml") and other stuff that ain't a point-and-click process. You will have to get your hands dirty and that can be frustrating. I can say that the more you use Docker, the easier it gets.

The important thing to note is that despite some difficulties, I do have my apps up-and-running on my NAS now. I'm going to drop those apps here in case I ever need to refer back...

• Portainer. This is an app which let's you more easily manage apps with Docker. Something which is very much welcome. Half the tutorials I've found on the internet to install, alter, and maintain Docker apps use Portainer, so it should be the first thing you install.
• Watchtower. Updating your Docker apps can be a challenge, because you have to remember to log into your NAS often so you can see what needs to be updated. Watchtower handles this for you, grabbing the latest versions and installing them automatically.
• Pi-Hole. This is a "DNS sinkhole" that also allows you to do nice things like block ads on websites. Though I've found more and more websites are finding ways around being blocked by coding ads as if they're a part of the page, so it's not as useful as it once was.
• TailScale. This wholly remarkable app allows you to create a VPN (Virtual Private Network) between all your devices. This means you can securely access them as if you're sitting at home. I've installed it on everything from phone to laptop to tablet to every desktop I use, and it's fantastic. No more setting up wacky holes in your network to access stuff remotely. Lock everything down and let TailScale handle it! Whether I'm using Apple Screen Sharing to control my work computer from home... or feeding data to my iPhone from some service I have installed on my NAS, it's all just... there.
• Plex. The main reason I installed Docker was for Plex, the app I use to catalog and serve all my media (from videos to photos to music). It wasn't the easiest thing to get set up but, once I did, I just added the TailScale address for my NAS to Plex and everything works seamlessly. Far, far better than using the flakey remote access offered by Plex itself.
• Paperless-NGX. This is just too handy. It's like a repository for all the stuff you collect on the internet (or even Real Life). From recipes to notes to receipts... whatever. Just drop it into Paperless and it gets stored, cataloged, and converted to searchable text (if it's an image file). I've collected hundreds of vegetarian and vegan recipes over the years in all kinds of different formats from text files to screen captures to PDFs. They're all in Paperless now, and I've got them tagged for easy searches. Scenarios like "What was in that drink that I had in Hawaii?" used to be a mess because all I had was a photo I took of a menu at a bar. But now that the photo is cataloged in Paperless and tagged as "alcohol" and "Hawaii," it takes two seconds to find it instead of endless digging through files.
• Immich. This is a photo cataloging app that's very, very good. Far better than Apple's own Photos app (and UGREEN's Photos app too... maybe even Google's app!). And it's constantly being improved and updated with great new features. Since all my photos are already in my Plex folder, I just pointed Immich to it and that was it. Now I have all the cool Immich tools without having to re-catalog everything. So nice. And, just like Plex, I just enter my TailScale address into the apps on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, and I can get to my library wherever I am.
• IT-Tools. Over 50 tools that handle everything from temperature and date & time conversion to math evaluation. I do wish it included more useful every day conversions (like weight and measurements) but hopefully we'll get that eventually too.

Since discovering the joys of Docker, I'm sure there are several other apps out there that I will be installing. And there's a lot of apps out there.

So... my initial panic of UGREEN not having many apps has been resolved. About the only UGREEN apps I use now are Docker and Sync & Backup (I have a secondary cheaper UGREEN NAS in a separate location which regularly pulls all my data off my home NAS via TailScale so I have an off-site backup). Everything else is on Docker. Which has changed the way that I use my devices and store my data.

In a good way.

Back when I used to travel constantly, I took my laptop and had all my work files on Dropbox so they were accessible no matter where I was at.

But my personal files back at home were problematic. I'd go to look at some of my photos while on the road and the Plex server would glitch. I'd be on vacation somewhere and find that I couldn't reach my files back home. It was a serious problem, because sometimes the files or documents I needed were urgent. I once had to have a friend run to my house, print out a document, take a photo of it, and send it to me while I was rushing around an airport. Not fun at all.

So when I traded in my old NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive for a new one, a priority was figuring out how to have a clean tunnel back to my house for whatever I needed to do.

I was about ready to give up when I saw TailScale mentioned in a NAS forum. For personal use it's free, so I really had nothing to lose.

It took some doing to get everything working on my NAS (it's not a click-and-install deliverable, so you have to learn how to run it as a Docker container), but once you get things running? You have your own personal network between all your devices! Just install the client app on your computers and phones and whatever via a VPN, then point your apps to the private address assigned to them, and you're done!

Now I can watch my videos streaming from my Plex server with zero issues (this is something that has always been problematic via Plex itself). I can use my iPhone to look at all my photos being indexed and served from Immich with ease. My personal document library is available anywhere I have internet. And Tailscale is blazingly fast about it, which is so nice.

If you're wanting to have a private network where all your devices can talk to each other securely, then Tailscale might be for you. All the information you need is on their website. And if you're looking for a VPN solution for your work, then Tailscale seems reasonably priced.

More tech drama. Have I mentioned how much I loathe Apple HomeKit HomeShit?

If I haven't (let's be real, I definitely have) then you should probably know that my hatred is very real, and has now reached such depths as to send me into a rage just thinking about it. As I wrote yesterday I awoke to find that on the first day in this Year of Our Lord, 2026, 3/4 of my "smart" home devices were offline and half my Automations were missing. Now, when this happens I can usually get most of those devices to come back online if I power-cycle all my hubs (nothing can be done to bring back the automations). It's for this reason that I have non-HomeShit power plugs on all my iPod minis and AppleTVs.

And so, before I left on an errand I had to run before work, I sat in my car to power off all the hubs. Then, when I finished my errand and made it to the office, I turned them all back on. Three hours later as I ate lunch, I pulled up Apple's HomeShit app on my iPhone... and... there were stil six devices which hadn't recovered. Which means I'm going to waste time removing them then resetting them so I can re-add them before re-writing the Automations that got trashed somehow.

Easy.

Just time-consuming.

And here's a new wrinkle... the re-written automations do not work!

No idea why. I can test them. They test as expected. But they don't work.

For exmaple... I have it so when one of the lights in the guest bathroom is turned on, the other light turns on too. Turn one off, they both turn off. It's incredibly basic, but important because otherwise it's not light enough in there.

Absolutely no idea what I do now. After dinner I'll delete them all and try re-writing one more time. If that doesn't work, I guess I have to try removing devices and re-adding them. If that doesn't work, then I guess I have to completely reset absolutely everything and start over from scratch.

If that ends up being the case, I can say goodbye to my weekend.

Which brings me to a decision I have to make...

1. Waste two days resetting everything and hope it works.
2. Give up on HomeShit and save my money to replace it with something that actually works.
3. Give up on having a "smart" home completely, and go back to the dark ages of having a dumb home.

I gotta tell you... Option #3 is looking very appealing to me. If I waste two days and the shit is still broken, I'm going to be angry and never get over it. If I trash HomeShit and start over with something else which ends up broken, I'm going to be angry and never get over it. If I just end up giving up completely on having a "smart" home, I'm totally going to be angry.

But I'll get over it.

I just have to go back to remembering where all the light switches are and figure out and possible have to re-think some lighting in a few places. Like the guest bathroom.

In other tech drama, I'm slowly getting all my data transfered from my QNAP NAS to my UGREEN NAS.

This is taking a while because I have a metric shit-ton of photos to copy. I always took a lot of photos when I traveled. Then when the charity closed and I wasn't traveling as much, I ended up with Jake and Jenny and started taking a metric shit-ton of cat photos. You know how it goes.

My problem is (and always has been) that I don't sort through photos after I take them. I snap! snap! snap! snap! take them with the intent of keeping the best images and tossing the rest. Except I never have time to do that. Maybe I'll commit to sorting through 50 photos every morning when I wake up and see if I can whittle down the number of photos in my archive by half. Or, if I get serious about it, whittle down to a quarter of what I'm sitting on. Which should be easy because there's just so many pictures that are practically identical. There's AI software which is supposed to make the task easier, but I've not looked into it. And maybe I should.

In the meanwhile, I guess I save my money for a new pair of hard drives, given the ones I have are all older and probably not very reliable. They will likely be giving up the ghost soon.

Like myself.

Or like my patience with HomeShit, which has now evaporated.