Welcome to Technology Week at Blogography, where I will be reviewing tech purchases I've made over the last month or so.
UPDATE: This router is expensive garbage. It has almost NO configurable features you need to keep your network safe. Doesn't even have a simple IP blacklist. No way to configure the built-in firewall (assuming one even exists). No Teleport VPN software for Mac or Windows... it's mobile only. The longer I have this router the more I wish I had bought ANYTHING else. You can't even view the log files! I've owned $49 routers that had a better feature set than this pile of $380 shit. Ubiquiti's response is always "This is a consumer product and does not have professional features." SO HOME USERS DON'T NEED TO KEEP THEIR NETWORK SAFE?!? Outrageous. And also keep in mind that if you want a mesh access point added, your only choice is to spend another $380 for a second unit. Trash.
Since I'm doing a lot more working from home these past months, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my fiber internet speed. I'm now at a full 1000mbs download / 100mbs upload. Problem is that I wasn't getting much better results than the 100/10 I had previously. Which meant the extra $24 a month I'm spending was wasted. I could downgrade back to where I was, but I'd have to pay yet another change fee to do that.
So I did that thing I loathe to do... call tech support at my ISP.
I don't know why I dread it. The tech agents taking calls are always friendly and always seem knowledgeable. Perhaps I just don't like asking for help?
After running through a bunch of stuff, the tech support guy ultimately thought the problem was my Google Wifi mesh router system. It just couldn't get me the full bandwidth I was paying for. My reaction to this was "Sure, Jan"... because isn't that what tech support always does? Blame somebody else? But then I decided that they could be right since my Google WiFi setup was the first generation model. I was wanting to purchase a new router anyway (I've been frustrated with the lackluster feature set Google has)... but I wanted to wait until Black Friday so I could (hopefully) get a good deal.
But... $24 out the window each month means I'd blow through $120 before the end of November with nothing to show for it.
And so I Googled to find the fastest possible WiFi 6 compatible router. I kept seeing Ubiquiti's Amplifi Alien pop up, so I searched through my YouTube reviewers to see what they had to say. Chris Majestic really liked it (see video below), so I cleared out my Black Friday fund and ponied up the THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS it costs. Three days later... the Alien has landed...
Introducing the Alien
Ubiquiti's router is a large-ish black cylinder with a thin vertical touch-display on the front. It's cool-looking, even though I haven't found the touch-display to be particularly useful. I'm not about to get up off my comfy couch and walk across the room to see any stats when I can pick up my iPhone and use the Amplifi app to get even more information. There's a cool green glow around the bottom which is distracting to me, so I turned it off. The size seems like overkill, but given the number of WiFi radios that are packed inside, I guess it's not unreasonable. The case doesn't seem to have very good ventilation (just a small series of holes in the back), and I'm pretty sure there's a fan inside to compensate. When I put my hand behind it I can feel the hot air being forced out. This gives me serious concerns as to the operating temperature killing the product's longevity, but I guess we'll see. There are four ethernet ports on the back, but since the router maxes out at 1Gbps connections, its useless for anybody running a multi-gig network (absurd for a router costing THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS... future-proofing be damned!).
Alien Setup
Amplifi claims you will be up-and-running within minutes. That was not the case for me. On top of having to call my ISP and have them register my MAC address, I also ran into issues where the Alien was dropping all connections every five minutes or so. This was hugely frustrating, and resulted in my upgrading the firmware then resetting the unit four times before it would function reliably. I have no idea what that was all about, but it was closer to 30 minutes than a few minutes. I did use the same network name and password as my old router so I didn't have to go update all my devices, so at least that went smoothly.
Alien WiFI 6
The latest and greatest WiFi standard is WiFi 6. It promises better speed, more reliable connectivity, and far better support for having numerous wireless-connected devices. Since my home is a "smart home," that last point was important for me... even though none of my smart devices or cameras support WiFi 6. One day, when I upgrade everything, they likely will and I don't want to have to buy yet another router so they can use it. In the meanwhile my iPhone and my iPad do support it, so that's a start I suppose.
Alien Speed
Thanks to the quad-core 2.2GHz CPU, the Alien is more than able to blaze through tasks with no bottleneck. It easily handles the full speed of my fiber internet, which is all I could hope for...
Not sure if these results include the devices which are connected.
Alien App
My biggest problem with the Google WiFi app was that it was woefully underpowered, lacking many capabilities I wish it had. I was disappointed to find that the Amplifi app wasn't much better (indeed, in some ways it's worse). Sure it has great features... like being able to create a static IP address for a device with just a click... but so many things I expected from a THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLAR ROUTER are missing. I guess that's because Alien is considered a "consumer" product, but holy shit... is it too much to ask that I be able to see a device's MAC address in the main device list instead of having to click through to a second screen to get to it? This is amateur hour bullshit, and it makes trying to track down and name all your devices a total nightmare. THEY DON'T EVEN DISPLAY THE IP ADDRESS! So of course you can't sort by IP address... or anything else (like bandwidth usage, which is an important thing to be able to sort out when you have a bandwidth-hogging device on your network). The ONLY list sort you get is alphabetical, which is handy for looking up a device when you remember what you named it, but useless as a pile of dog shit for actual practical information you might need...
NO sort options. NO way to display IP or MAC addresses.
This kind of underpowered idiocy is rampant in the app. Information is sparse or requires additional clicks to get to. A lot of settings are dumbed down to a shocking degree, and there's no "pro mode" to fix that. Devices can have "Normal Priority, Streaming Priority, or Video Game Priority" but I have no idea what in the hell any of that means in actual numbers. Streaming Priority is likely higher than Normal Priority, but is Video Game Priority higher than that? Who the fuck knows? And where is Low Priority? That would be handy for devices that I don't give a crap about when my bandwidth load is high! But it doesn't exist because Ubiquiti apparently thinks dumbing everything down is what people what from a THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLAR ROUTER. Insanity. The Amplifi app is also where you can create and configure a guest network with a time limit (nice!) or access Amplifi's "Teleport" service which allows you to tunnel back to your router as if you were back at home (very nice, but iPhone only?!?). I seriously hope that either Amplifi gets off their asses with this bullshit and comes up with a "pro mode" for their app, or some third party company comes up with a new app which fixes this.
Alien Web Interface
Even worse and more incomplete than the app. The device list sort order is apparently completely random this time, which had me glad that at least with the app I have them listed alphabetical. Why did they even bother?
Alien Mesh Network
A smart feature of the Amplifi Alien router is that you can add another Amplifi Alien router to your network and create a mesh network. This is nice, but absurdly expensive at THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS a pop. You'd think that Ubiquiti would have far less expensive mesh nodes you can purchase since this is hella overkill, but that's not the case. At least not yet. But here's where things really start to suck. There is no dedicated mesh backhaul band. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. This means when you create a mesh network, you're cutting into the total network bandwidth, at least as I understand it. And if I am understanding correctly, this is just bonkers. Mesh routers costing far less than THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS each have dedicated 160MHz backhaul channels for exactly this, but for reasons I simply cannot fathom, Ubiquiti didn't include it. You can partition out your various WiFi bands and use the WiFi 6 band as a dedicated backhaul, but then you apparently lose being able to have a WiFi 6 network? Doesn't that like... oh... I dunno... DEFEAT THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF HAVING A WIFI 6 ROUTER?!? Right now I only need the one router, because Alien does a darn good job of saturating my home with decent bandwidth, but the fact that a so-called mesh router is not good for mesh networking is pretty inexcusable. If I am misunderstanding this and somebody wants to set me straight, please do so in the comments. If you are needing a mesh network, I would absolutely look elsewhere.
Alien Band Partitioning
As mentioned above, you can partition out the three bands on the Alien and give them each their own unique SSID, or leave them combined on the same SSID (which is what I did). The three bands are 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi 6 bands plus a 5GHz WiFi 5 band. I had toyed with the idea of separating out a band exclusively for my security cameras, but it ultimately wasn't necessary, as everything works just fine as it came out of the box.
Alien and My Conclusions
In the end I have to say that I'm lukewarm on the Amplif Alien. The shitty, under-powered app was enough to sour me all on its own... but the lack of a dedicated mesh backhaul and total lack of future-proofing just added to my dissatisfaction. I struggled with whether or not I wanted to return it or keep it for a couple weeks... but ultimately kept it because it fit my current and near-future needs just fine and I didn't want to be bothered. If I were starting all over, I would probably seriously look at the Netgear Orbi 6, which seems a bit more powerful and far more future-proof... but I think you have to buy them as a mesh pair, and that's $700 I don't have. If you aren't looking for pro features, don't care about future-proofing, and just want a WiFi 6 router with good coverage and great speeds... and have THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS burning a hole in your pocket, then perhaps the Alien Amplifi by Ubiquiti is for you.
Welcome to Technology Week at Blogography, where I will be reviewing tech purchases I've made over the last month or so.
I have mixed feelings about eh QNAP TS-451+ NAS (Network Attached Storage) unit I bought.
On one hand, it seems capable, reliable, and does a swell job of storing my media and other files. On the other hand, the HDMI video it generates is shit, the software is overly complex, and the thing feels underpowered for the price. The biggest drawback being that it only comes with 2GB of memory. The unit can barely function on 2GB without resorting to swap even if you're just running the bare minimum of apps. If you add any additional apps... like my Plex media server... it's Welcome to Swapsville: Population You.
The skimpy memory is a mystery. 8GB is the maximum that QNAP will support (although there are people who have installed 16GB with no problems) and that's cheap. Well, it's cheap unless you're buying your memory from QNAP. The TS-451+ is $362 if you order it with 2GB... it's $599 if you order with 8GB. That's $237 for an additional 6GB of RAM. Which is fucking insane. Purchased from Crucial, a memory brand I trust, I was able to get two 4GB DDR3L SODIMM modules for $55. QNAP, who undoubtedly can buy memory wholesale in bulk for a lot less, wants nearly FOUR AND A HALF TIMES THE MONEY I PAID.
If you buy the memory upgrade direct from QNAP it's $220, so even that route saves you $17 order buying it pre-installed.
I do not in any way understand this bullshit.
Needless to say, I told QNAP to blow it out their ass and I ordered the SODIMM modules direct from Crucial.
The upgrade took about 15 minutes (it would have taken less, but I was exceedingly careful every step of the way because screwing up meant voiding my QNAP warranty). Despite the upgrade not being a cake-walk, it was pretty easy and everything turned out just fine.
And just because I know I'll be getting Google searches from TS-451 owners wanting to upgrade their RAM, here's the tear down. PLEASE NOTE: THIS APPARENTLY VOIDS YOUR WARRANTY! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!...
Here's the QNAP opened up with the cage removed. Don't mind Jake, he's "helping"...
Note how the second memory slot is underneath the lower cage assembly. I absolutely didn't want to start jerking out parts to have clear access, so I just carefully squeezed the SODIMM module underneath and managed to gently press it into place. NOTE ALSO how QNAP runs a red Sharpie marker over the screws so they can more easily tell if you've opened it up. Wankers...
This whole process is pretty stupid.
It's stupid because the memory module placement is more difficult to access than it should be.
It's stupid that QNAP doesn't just make 8GB the standard memory in the unit rather than forcing you to upgrade because you'll find out really quickly that 2GB is not enough if you actually want to DO anything with your NAS.
And it's beyond stupid that even if QNAP doesn't want to have 8GB be the standard memory configuration that they charge such an absurdly stupid price for their "official" bullshit SODIMM upgrade modules.
So... it's buckets of stupid all the way around, but now I've got 8GB installed so I guess I don't care...
Interesting to note that running only the bare QNAP necessities plus Plex Server uses 2GB of memory. Which means that 2GB I initially had in my TS-451+ was barely enough memory to just hold the apps!
Absurd that they even sell a model that only comes with 2GB because it's clearly not enough.
If you want to order up your own upgrade direct from Crucial for the QNAP TS-451+, here's the direct link to the page on their website.
I've written a couple times about my love of GigaPan images. It's a really cool technology which stitches together tons of hi-resolution images to form one massive photo that you can zoom into to ridiculous degrees. Most of the time, GigaPan is used for capturing scenery. You see the scene and then can zoom and zoom and zoom to reveal all kinds of little details.
But you can use GigaPixel for all kinds of things.
A really cool application is artwork.
I've been to Milan, Italy in order to see The Last Supper. It's a magnificent work of art by one of my favorite artists, Leonardo da Vinci...
One of you bitches is going to betray me!
And now Google's Arts & Culture has posted a painting of the painting by one of Leonardo da Vinci's pupils which is presented in GigaPan format...
What's interesting is that you can see how the original masterpiece showed Jesus's feet, which were chopped off when somebody decided to cut a door into the wall of the original.
And since this is GigaPan, you can zoom into the canvas to a crazy degree...
All in all, it's pretty spectacular.
If you want to explore the painting yourself, here's a link for you.
COVID-19 cases may be on the rise because Americans are too selfish and stupid to wear masks and practice social-distancing, but all is not lost... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Lyrical! Before we get to me being a unhinged, profanity-laden rage-machine over frickin' masks and stuff, watch this video. I honestly don't know which is more adorable... this incredible little girl... or the reactions her dad has...
So many adorable videos...
There's more where those came from: The Kabs Family YouTube.
• Taxing So Hard! Hasan just finished up his current cycle of Patriot Act on Netflix, and he ended on a doozy of an episode. It is reprehensible how Intuit and other asshole companies have made billions over charging American citizens for something they should not have to pay a damn thing for. Democrats and Republicans may not agree on how much taxes we should pay... but can easily agree that the way we file our taxes is Fucked. Up.
I see shit like this, and I just marvel that people aren't consumed with outrage. Lobbyists have hopelessly fucked our government, and this is a perfect example of how.
• Masked, Man! Washington State governor Jay Inslee (who is roundly hated here in Eastern Washington) finally issued a mandatory mask order. He pretty much had no choice. Businesses were having a horrible time trying to enforce it because too many people are just fucking asshole idiots, and I guess he figured that state-wide enforcement was the only way to keep us safe (seeing how countries like Austria which mandated masks had their infection rates drop 90%). Even with the mandate, this is what you'll still witness...
"Excuse me, masks are required to shop here. I'm happy to get you one if you don't have one."
"I DON'T BELIEVE IN THAT!!! STOP INFRINGING ON MY FREEDOM!"
Well, I have news for you... it doesn't matter what you believe or don't believe. THIS IS WHAT'S REQUIRED TO SHOP IN A STORE NOW... SO STOP BEING A TOTAL FUCKING ASSHOLE TO SOMEBODY WHO IS JUST TRYING TO DO THEIR JOB! THIS CASHIER DOESN'T SET THE POLICY, AND YOU'RE A PIECE OF SHIT FOR HASSLING A MINIMUM WAGE WORKER OVER SOMETHING THEY DON'T CONTROL! Go ahead and "don't believe" in masks because you're an ignorant dumbass... don't wear one if you're garbage who doesn't care about others... whatever... BUT DON'T TAKE IT OUT ON SOMEBODY JUST TRYING TO MAKE A LIVING BY DOING THE JOB THEY'RE TOLD TO DO! You can wear a mask for ten fucking minutes in a store even if you're too stupid to "believe in it"... because some retail clerk following the rules doesn't deserve your bullshit.
Fortunately, some good sometimes comes out of abhorrent behavior like this.
• Citizens Arrest The Devil! And then...
There's stupid, and then there's whatever trip this fucking nut-job piece of shit is on. Fuck you. Get your own ass to a psych ward, you crazy asshole. Doctors and nurses are risking their lives every damn day to save lives in the middle of a pandemic and ignorant fucks like you are mocking their sacrifice. If you don't want to give a shit about putting your fellow Americans in danger, go live in a cave somewhere.
• Oxygen! Here's a human with a respiratory system...
It doesn't matter how many videos like this are released, there are still dumbfucks who will not be swayed.
• Statehood! If you watched HBO's Watchmen, you know the American flag was different because in Watchmen's reality, Vietnam was made the 51st state. It's a pretty cool detail in a very cool television show...
And while we're on adding states... I 100% support Washington D.C. becoming our 51st state... and I also support territories we govern who don't have a voice in government be granted statehood if they wish it. We literally became a country because of taxation without representation. Will it take another revolution to make things right? Despite passing The House, probably. And, yes, Puerto Rico does pay taxes to the US Treasury... $3.5 billion in 2016.
• Cheerio! As anybody here likely knows, I have been on a crusade again Western Digital for the shitty, underhanded way that they have been sneaking cheap, shitty SMR drives into their NAS line of Red drives... NAS being an application where they are totally inapropriate. Well, after enough outrage by their customer base (and former customers like myself), Western Digital finally relented and has said that they will from now on label the "good" kind of NAS drives "Red+" and keep sneaking the shitty, totally inappropriate SMR drives in their original "Red" lineup. Something I interpret like this...
Now that we've been caught shitting in your Cheerios, we promise to let you know which boxes of Cheerios have shit in them... NOT by labeling them as "Cheerios with Shit"... but instead by labeling the shit-free version as "Cheerios+"... thanks to our customers for letting us know they want to know when there's shit in their Cheerios! — Love, Western Digital
Yeah. No. Fuck you. The correct move would be to say that you learned your lesson and will immediately be removing SMR drives from your entire lineup since it is promoted for NAS but wholly wrong for NAS. Instead you just continue shitting in our Cheerios. I won't be buying WD again.
Until next Sunday... enjoy your pandemic.
If I were a religiously superstitious man, I'd say that a Bullet Sunday associated with The Mark of the Beast is strangely apt given the times we live, and yet there's no need to go fearing the apocalypse just yet... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia! There are some people in the world who would have skipped right over a blog post numbered "666" out of fear that this number invokes the devil. This fear is known as "hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia." Quite a mouthful. My fear of satan has long since dissipated because we've got hell on earth happening all around us. Who needs the devil?
• IMDB That Shit! How my mind works... "What was that series I wanted to watch that has General Hux from Star Wars and Zoey from Nurse Jackie? Was it called "Escape?" And it was on Netflix, wasn't it? No... I saw it advertised before Last Week Tonight a few weeks ago so it must have been HBO? Or was it before Upload on Amazon Prime? Surely it's not one of those Apple TV+ shows is it? No, pretty sure it was HBO. Ugh... so many shows... what was the name... what was the name... what was the name... dang. Guess I'm going to IMDB. The guy was definitely in that amazing time travel movie with Bill Nighy and Rachel McAdams that Richard Curtis made... what was it? Oh yeah! It was About Time! Man I loved that movie. I should remember to watch that again. Hmmm... guess I'll look up About Time on IMDB and... WAIT! I remember, it's DOMHNALL GLEASON! Hard to forget an Irish name like that after he discussed how the M and the H are just there to confuse Americans! Domhnall Gleason. Boy, he's an amazing actor, isn't he? That's why I have to watch this new series. But it's not "Escape." Oh wait... it's Run! The name of the show I want is Run! Sweet! I didn't need IMDB after all because I'm just that smart! SUCK IT IMDB! Huh... wasn't the woman who played Zoey in Nurse Jackie also in The Walking Dead? =sigh= I guess I need to IMDB that shit.
• Whoa! I totally missed this. Or forgot I saw it. Or something. This is a "faithful, word-for-word recreation of one colorful day in the American court system" as recreated by Rick and Morty...
Because American justice sometimes perfectly resembles a cartoon. And Rick and Morty is the perfect cartoon to do it. Insanity.
• Damn, Daniel! This is faked, of course, but still hilarious...
I ended up watching this video five times in a row so I could look at everybody's reactions. Thank heavens all my Zooms are on my iPad and I physically close it when I leave the call (which disconnects everything).
• Alexaaaaaa! A slice of life in 2020...
ALEXA: "From Amazon Product Ratings: Three months ago, you purchased 9 Inch Bread Banneton Proofing Basket. How would you rate this product from one to five stars?"
ME: "What the fuck? Alexa, stop bothering me with this shit!"
ALEXA: "Okay. I'll stop asking you for product reviews for a while."
ME: "A WHILE?!? WHY NOT PERMANENTLY?!?"
This is how it starts, doesn't it? Technology slowly creeps into your life and eventually just takes over. It's not like The Terminator didn't warn us this would happen.
• Not-So-Foxy! Lately FOX "News" has been caught Photoshopping images to support their idiotic narrative as to what's happening in Seattle... to being so desperate for news on what's actually happening in Seattle that they fall for absurd Monty Python parody posts. I guess the truth about what's really happening in the tiny little 6-block section of Seattle which has sectioned itself off as an autonomous zone is just too boring? Better lie and bias it up then. Seems to make no difference to their viewers.
And now back to our regularly-scheduled hell on earth.
Now that I have enough hard drive space in my NAS (Network Attached Storage), I need to transfer the tens of thousands of photos I've collected from my hard disk photo archive to the NAS. That way I can access them anywhere at any time.
Problem is that I couldn't connect them together because I didn't have a cable to do it... despite having dozens of fucking cables piled up in my cupboard. My photo archive drive is Thunderbolt only. My NAS is USB-A only. Which means half of the problem is that support for Thunderbolt has been dropped. The other half is that USB ports keep changing. So even though I was dragging out various old drives to use as "hubs" in the hope that I could find a port/cable combination which would work, nothing ever did. After an hour I finally just gave up.
I finally had to borrow a drive enclosure from work so I could put my photo archive drives inside and get it hooked up to my NAS. I'll get on that tonight and see if everything will copy while I sleep.
At this point I should just come out and say it... the way USB keeps changing? It fucking sucks. There are a ridiculous number of USB port variations, and I have devices which use most of them. And why? Why are there so many?
JUST LOOK AT THIS SHIT...
And it doesn't stop there. All our prayers were supposed to be answered now that we've got USB-C... right?
Um, no. Turns out it's as bad as ever...
And so I guess I can just give up now.
Perhaps what I have to do is throw out absolutely everything everywhere that I own and start over. For every old drive I've got I buy a new drive, transfer the data over, then just burn all the old drives in a massive bonfire.
If anybody wants to give me the hundreds of dollars needed to make that happen...
UPDATE: And it didn't work. Apparently Wester Digital changed the proprietary RAID software they use between my older RAID enclosure and my work's newer RAID enclosure. The drives are incompatible. Instead I managed to find an old Thuderbolt-to-Ethernet dongle. Since my old laptop has two Thunderbolt ports and no ethernet port, that's what I had to use so that I could make the transfer via gigabyte ethernet from my Thunderbolt photo archive RAID to the NAS. Holy shit what a horrific mess.
SONOS released their new OS, called S2, today and I was excited to see what's new.
My Mac made me aware of the new S2 app when I loaded their old app this evening. So I downloaded the new app... only to be told that no S2 compatible devices were found. Since my One speakers are fairly new, I was pissed that they even told me about the update. Maybe my SONOS PlayBar is too old? Then I Googled it and found that apparently you have to upgrade the hardward with the new SONOS iPhone app. So I got that, performed an upgrade to everything, then my Mac S2 app recognized my S2 gear. Why the hell they didn't just allow the Mac app to do the upgrade is a mystery. What if you don't own a smart phone?
Anyway... now my stuff is all running S2. No clue what that does for me, as everything looks and acts the exact same. When I Googled that I found that apparently the only device to make use of the new S2 OS features is the Sonos Arc television bar. An $800 product which adds Dolby Atmos capabilities to your setup.
Soooo... S2 is just a big load of crap for anybody except those who throw out their old gear. Got it.
The sad news is that eventually I will have to replace my PlayBar anyway. It only accepts audio over optical digital, and newer televisions don't really support that. I could get an adapter, but it would be senseless since so few audio codecs can be sent to the speakers that way. It's only dumb luck that the television I bought sends Dolby Surround over optical. Most contemporary sets don't.
My disgust over the disposable society we live in continues. I can only hope that eventually SONOS or some third party releases an upgrade module so the old PlayBar can receive audio over HDMI. Even if it's only Dolby Surround and not Dolby Atmos, it would at least allow me to keep using my pricey investment in SONOS gear.
Tech obsolescence is inevitable. I get that. But sometimes it really doesn't have to be. Like with frickin' speakers. Being able to modify old gear to have new life should be a thing. But it's not, because that's not where the money is.
Confirmation can be found in your local landfill.
My drama with my home NAS (Network Attached Storage) is ongoing.
Last December I took money I had saved for a trip with my mom to the fjords of Normway (our next vacation destination after our Africa trip that wasn't to be) and sunk it into a QNAP NAS on which I would store all my photos, music, and other media files. That way I could access them anywhere yet still have them under my control. As I noted in the above link I wasn't terribly happy with the QNAP unit I bought, finding that it provided crap media services that look like shit when connected directly to my television. Instead I had to abandon all the pricey QNAP media extras I paid for and install Plex, a brilliant media organization server app for which I immediately bought a lifetime subscription. It's amazing, and allows my QNAP NAS to do all the things I wanted it to do.
Along with the NAS, I purchased two Western Digital Red 8TB drives to go inside.
Almost immediately after I got everything running, I found out that Western Digital, a company I had loved and patronized faithfully for decades, had started sneaking chaep-ass SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) drives into their popular "Red" line of NAS drives. As explained in this video, SMR is a pile of fucking bullshit that should never be used in NAS applications...
Western Digital has been all over the map with responding to customer enquiries. At one point they said that the 8TB drives I bought didn't use SMR, but who knows? They later retracted and said they refuse disclose that information.
Well fuck that, and definitely fuck them. I will never buy another Western Digital product until they start disclosing critical information that people need to know in order to make informed purchasing decisions. Or maybe I will never buy another Western Digital product again even if they do. Right now I hate that fucking company so badly that I don't plan on spending a single dollar more on their crap.
So now that I've saved up a couple hundred bucks to purchase a second set of drives for all my photos, I decided to go with Seagate IronWolf drives since Seagate has categorically denied using SMR in them. Furthermore, Seagate went on to say that they don't recommend SMR for NAS applications and won't saddle their customers with a shitty, inapropriate product. Good enough for me. I will be switching to IronWolf for any future drive purchases... including the one I just made.
It's a strange feeling... being so loyal to a company that you wouldn't even consider using a different brand... then all of a sudden have to switch gears and go with something else because you got shitted on. Same thing happened with Panasonic. I had bought Panasonic gear for years and loved it... until I bought one of their shitty recording DVD players and could never get it to work. They refused to take responsibility, blamed everything on me despite my following along with their step-by-step instructions over six support calls, then said they would only repair it if I paid for shipping both ways. Rather than continue to sink money into a worthless piece of shit, I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Nothing happened. But I haven't bought a single piece of Panasonic gear since, that's for damn sure.
As word continues to spread about Western Digital's duplicitous behavior and reprehensible response to some serious allegations, I can't help but wonder if they have really screwed themselves. Sure consumer demand might stay steady since home-users won't know... or possibly won't care... that WD is a deceitful company, but IT professionals? Yikes. The pro NAS market is some serious bread and butter to lose en masse.
Oh well. You roll the dice, you take your chances.
But how Western Digital thought people wouldn't notice just boggles the mind. It's as if Coca-Cola switched to New Coke but never bothered to advertise it. They just thought people wouldn't care.
Yeah, we're all still in isolation quarantine, but there's a bright spot in the darkness... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Cool! I've been to the Space Needle dozens of times over the years. They have cut-away images you can look at, so I already know what's inside and how it works, but this
One of the most famous features of the structure has been the "Sky City Revolving Restaurant" which closed back in 2017 when they rennovated everything. I assumed that it would be open again by now, but I just checked and there's still no revolving restaurant to be found. Instead the space is still "The Loupe" which is a revolving platform with a glass floor. I guess that's more of a draw because more people can enjoy it? The restaurant was always so expensive that I've only ever been there once.
• Stuck! Lately I've had a hard time getting the song Adore You by Harry Styles out of my head. For the past week I've been playing it several times a day...
I wish I knew why certain songs stick with me at certain times. I mean, I liked Adore You when it was released, but now I addicted to it or something. I'm trying to replace it with the latest by Pet Shop Boys, but it isn't working so far...
Amazing how the boys are still able to kill it after all these years. Their music is always good.
• Driven! I bought Western Digital drives for my NAS because my past experience with them has been excellent. Now I find out that the pricey new drives I bought for my NAS may be low-quality pieces of shit that will likely fail sooner than expected because the way I use the data on my NAS is incongruent with the way the drive technology WD employs was designed to be used. I have 8TB drives which WD says are using the correct technology... but the part number has the "EFAX" suffix which designates cheap-ass shit, so who knows?
I am so sick and tired of companies like this not giving a shit about their customers. And yet this is the way businesses are run now. They sneak in low-quality shit, charge the same price as usual-quality shit, and the customer never need know they've been screwed until their data is lost. And at that point it's like "Oh... too bad... so sorry... if you're in warranty, we'll send you a replacement shitty drive... if you're not under warranty, go fuck yourself!" Because in today's disposible society, it's cheaper to replace shit with more shit until the warranty runs out than to actually make good quality shit in the first place.
• Flight Attendants in Quarantine! Ha!
Make no mistake, flight attendants have a really tough job. Trapped on a plane at work with a bunch of people... some of which treat them badly. Hopefully they can laugh along with the rest of us at something like this.
• In Control! Every time I start up Netflix there's a new show being shoved on me called Too Hot To Handle and I IMMEDIATELY start singing "Too hot to handle, too cold to hold, they're called the Ghostbusters and they're in control!" Say what you like about Bobby Brown, but the guy knows how to sing a hook that gets stuck in your head!
No idea what Too Hot To Handle is about. Looks like it's yet another show like Temptation Island where you win by not giving into temptation of all the sexy people prancing around? Whatever. Really not interested enough to investigate.
• Foxy! Aren't foxes the most amazing animals?
I will never admit how many times I've watched this.
• After! I loved the first season of Ricky Gervais's After Life and remember feeling a bit lost when it ended because it was only six episodes. Now, at long last, Netflix has released another six episodes for the second season (NSFW trailer follows)...
Even better than the first season. A shoe-in for my "Best of Television 2020" list. It's all at once hysterically funny and agonizingly sad. Postman Pat is one of my favorite television characters ever. Which is next-level funny if you know that Postman Pat is a British cartoon with an unrelated character with the same name from the 1980's...
Compare this charming cartoon to the character from the show and it's a bit disturbing... but in the best possible way.
And now I guess I'll go back to doing as much nothing as possible before work tomorrow.
As I mentioned when I reviewed the cool and capable little $25 "Wyze Band" fitness wearable, I would be reviewing the new "Wyze Scale" later. Well, it's now later.
I am not somebody who has ever really struggled with their weight. When I was a kid I was impossibly skinny no matter what I did or how much I ate. As I've gotten older I've definitely managed to fill out but, as I discovered when I had to go on a carb-restricted diet for a while, the weight can fall of scarily easily. I remember crying on the bathroom scale because every day I was losing weight with no end in sight. I did not want to go back to that skinny kid I was in high school. Eventually I was able to eat carbs again and quickly put on too much weight. Oh well.
Even so, I'm a big fan of Wyze products and decided to buy their $20 "smart scale" despite the fact that I never really use a scale...
And why did I part with $20 for something I haven't historically had much use for?
Two reasons...
First of all, it does more than just weigh you. It also sends low-level electricity through your body for a "Bio-electric Impedance Analysis" of your physical make-up. Because of the way that electricity flows through muscle and fat, the resulting measurement gives you a fairly accurate body fat percentage. This is used to calculate your Body Mass Index (BMI), Lean Body Mass (LBM), Muscle Mass, Body Water Percentage, Protein Percentage, Visceral Fat, Bone Mass, Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), and Metabolic Age. I have no idea what half that stuff is, but...
Second of all, it integrates with Apple Health right out of the box. Which means all those calculations I don't understand can be available to my doctor if he ever needs them because I have Apple Health syncing with my medical chart.
If there were a third thing, it would be that Wyze Scale can also measure your heart rate. Something my Wyze Band already does.
I have two other scales. One is a classic physical spring model, the other is a cheap digital scale. Both of which my mom bought and I inherited. Comparing my weight on all three, the Wyze scale and spring scale were almost identical. The cheap digital scale had me almost a pound heavier. Given that it is a cheap digital scale, I'm just going to say that the Wyze Scale is accurate since it matches up with the my "tried-and-true" original spring scale.
I have no way of knowing if the "Bio-electric Impedance Analysis" measurements and calculations are accurate. My guess is that they are not perfect compared to what you'd get at the doctor's office, but they are likely accurate enough to get a general picture of what those readings might be.
Wyze Scale syncs with the Wyze App when you open it via Bluetooth. I put the scale in my personal bathroom which is two rooms down from my bedroom and the app had no problem reading it from there. I couldn't get a reading downstairs, but Bluetooth does have its limits, of course.
And then we get to the Wyze app for Wyze Scale... which is abysmally bad. Parts of it are even worse than the abysmally bad Wyze Band app, if you can believe it. Once again Wyze has decided to dumb down and spread out the information as if you were viewing it on a tiny watch face instead of a frickin' phone and it's infuriating. I mean, at a glance, the home screen is fine. Kinda. Well, no, not actually...
Just look at all that wasted space! Holy crap! They could have easily put everything on one screen, but nope. Once again we get this idiotic tiny-watch-face-screen mentality that plagued the app for Wyze Band!
I mean just look at THIS...
Wyze could have listed every damn reading that the scale calculates in that massive blank space. But instead we get ONE reading floating in the middle of a blank screen? You have to swipe to get to all the others! And that's not even the worst part... see where you have to click "See More" because the text explaining the reading is cut-off? There must be a book's worth of text left to display, right? Nope!
Five lines were truncated. Five lines! and they displayed them NOT in a link to another page... BUT ON THE SAME DAMN PAGE! Seriously, Wyze, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!? Why in the hell didn't they just display the full text on the original page? And it's not just this "Muscle Mass" page... IT'S EVERY FUCKING PAGE!
Good Lord. Just display ALL the information on the home screen. There's plenty of room for it. And then have people click on each reading if they want more information. That's like APP DESIGN 101, isn't it? Are users really going to need to read this every fucking time they want to know their reading? I'm betting not. Unless they have 24-hour amnesia or something. And where is a graph of my data over time like you gave me for my weight? This is senseless.
But here's the real kicker. How the fuck do I know what a Muscle Mass of 130.2 even means? Oh... that's right... I'm not a doctor, so I don't! Wyze couldn't even be bothered to say what a "normal" range for me would be. I had to Google that shit. And even then I had to pull out the calculator, because the way that everybody else on earth calculates Muscle Mass is to display it as a percentage! Wyze gives it to you as a weight. When I divide it by my weight, I get 71%. The desirable muscle mass for men my age is 73% to 86%. And so... I need more muscle or I am going to die, I guess? Who knows. But holy crap. Wyze just drops the ball here badly with their app. It's so bad that I'm dangerously close to saying their $20 scale is a bad buy. Hopefully Wyze takes a seriously hard look at their app and figures out how the hell to make something useful out of it. Because right now? Horrifically bad.
As I get older and have to deal with the inevitable host of problems that come with age, I am more and more interested in using available technology to keep track of what's happening with my body and (hopefully) give me a health picture so I can stave off potential problems. With Wyze Scale (and, alas, Google), for example, I now know that my muscle mass is below where it should be and maybe I should do something about that while I am still able. It's just such a shame that Wyze makes it so damn difficult to use the data that Wyze Scale and Wyze Band are collecting. Technology should be making my life easier, not harder.
In the end, my experience with Wyze has me appreciating all the more how Apple is approaching the same idea to their products. They are all about collecting data for your health then simplifying it and explaining it so you can make positive changes to improve your life. Wyze just collects the data, spits it out at you in difficult, confusing, and inexplicable ways, and leaves it to you to figure out what in the hell to do with it.
But, hey, Wyze Scale is $20. Wyze Band is $25. Apple is considerably more expensive, so bravo to Wyze for at least trying to make the tech affordable... if not understandable. But man is it disappointing that the app for their cameras shows so much pollish when the newer apps are just so bad. Surely they are working on improving things, right? I sure hope so.
If Wyze Band and Wyze Scale has done nothing else for me, they've made me really want to get to the point that I can wear an Apple Watch. I look at the amazing things it can do to help me manage my health and it's almost a no-brainer. Except for that "I hate wearing watches" thing. And the price tag, of course.
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