We purchased our first “robotic” vacuum cleaner back in 2005 (the Roomba Red) and since then we’ve owned two more, the last being the 589 Core (which was a warranty replacement for our 530 in February 2014). I had replaced the battery a few times already in the 589, so when it stopped holding a charge again we decided to get a whole new unit and bought the iRobot Roomba i7+ with Clean Base.
Facing the Focal Fossa
Time for the spring sports update! Oh, wait … there aren’t any spring sports (or any sports) right now! 🙁 I’m glad I at least got out to Arizona to see some spring training baseball before everything shut down due to COVID-19. And there’s always the NFL Draft tonight which ought to be interesting with everyone staying safe-at-home.
At least, despite all the other craziness going on in the world right now, we can still depend on April having a new Ubuntu release: 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa was released today!
The do-release-upgrade was going smoothly until, after I selected “d” to perform a diff on an affected configuration file, the screen process terminated, leaving the dpkg upgrade process orphaned! I had to kill the dpkg process and then issue a dpkg --configure -a to finish it. After re-applying my changes to the necessary configuration files and rebooting, I only had two minor post-upgrade issues, thanks to the new version of PHP, so:
- I had to disable the php7.3 plugin for Apache and enable php7.4
- I had to install the php-xml package for php7.4
Other than those hiccups, everything else went fine.
Oddly, I can’t find what the code name for 20.10 in October will be. I guess like the US economy, that’s on hold for now too. 😮 Hopefully by then the world is back to normal. I probably won’t be talking about playoff baseball, but I’ll take what I can get!
Working from home tech
Like a lot of other people in the world right now, I just finished my first week of working from home due to COVID-19. I’m a little luckier than most in that I’ve already had a lot of experience working from home, and my job as a systems administrator lends itself to working remotely easily. I also already had a home office area and relatively robust home network. Still, working from home every now and then is a lot different than doing it for (at least) three weeks straight during this time of “social distancing” and “sheltering in place.” I’m not supposed to return to the office until April 6, so what technology am I using to stay connected and keep doing my job?
Spring Training 2020: Home and Recap
I groggily awoke as we landed at the CLT airport around 6:10am. As luck would have it, my connection was just two gates away so I grabbed breakfast at Starbucks and did a little walking to get my step count up before boarding the flight to Tampa. By 10:30am I was back home, Cactus League Spring Training Trip #10 in the books.
It’s March 1 and my annual spring training is just ending (that’s just not right!). The Indians come to Tampa early in the season too this year (April). So after that, unless I go to the odd Rays game, that’s the end of live baseball for me in 2020! And having seen all Indians losses this trip, I hope to see a victory over the Rays when I go next month.
Another weird thing about going early: no NCAA basketball. That’s usually a staple for us, watching tournament games while out in the desert. But I don’t care about that because my #4 Dayton Flyers are undefeated in the Atlantic 10 and no doubt will be dancing later this month! Go Flyers!!
The Vegas side trip was a lot of run. Sure, it was a 485mi drive from Phoenix, but getting to check off another spring training ballpark and doing some hiking was worth it, despite our run-in with the LVPD on Friday night! 😀
Looking forward to the regular season now …
Spring Training 2020: Day 3
Leap Day baseball!
We thought we would end up sleeping in this morning, with nothing to do until the baseball game at 1:05pm. But we were both up at 7:45am so I did some quick research and realized that Red Rock Canyon was only 20 minutes away. I had hiked in the canyon during my first trip to Vegas back in 2015 with college friends and since our annual spring training normally involves hiking and we hadn’t had a chance to do it back in Phoenix, we decided to drive out there before the game. We had breakfast at the hotel around 9:30am and checked on my brother’s progress in the Mississippi Blues Marathon (which is why he couldn’t come with us on the trip this year), and my niece’s solo and ensemble competition (which my other sister had flow back overnight for) before checking out of the hotel and getting back in the car.
Spring Training 2020: Day 2
Normally Day 2 would start with a morning hike one on the valley’s mountain trails, but our traditional routine is a little compressed this year due to my one sister’s short stay with us. Instead, we got up early (around 7:30am), had breakfast at the hotel (including leftover cowboy frybread from dinner last night, yum!), checked out, and drove to Goodyear to see the Indians’ morning practice.
Spring Training 2020: Day 1
It’s March February … time for baseball! After going to Arizona for my annual trip out to the Cactus League late in the spring training season for the past two years, this time I’m going early. The trip includes a Leap Day game in Las Vegas! New tech since my last trip includes a nice pair of noise-cancelling over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones and my Canon PowerShot SX740.
Despite growing fears around the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), including a case in Phoenix, I flew out to Sky Harbor airport early (5:30am) and lucked out that the only empty seat on the place was the middle seat next to me, nice! I landed at 9:45am MST and met my sisters who had both arrived earlier. This is my one sister’s first trip out with us so we’re looking forward to having her share in this annual tradition.
Amazon Fire TV Stick
This month, I cut the cord, cancelled my Spectrum cable TV service, and switched to YouTube TV, which meant I needed a way to watch YTTV on, well, my TVs! There’s a dizzying array of devices for the cord-cutter (Roku, Apple TV, smart TV apps, and more), but since I’m already an Amazon Prime subscriber, I choose the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K.
Switching to YouTube TV (farewell, TiVo!)
I’ve been an avid TiVo user ever since I got my first Series2 DVR back in 2003. I’ve owned almost every model and it’s been a staple in my household for the past 17 years. Recently, however, while analyzing our monthly bills, I realized just how much cable TV from Spectrum was costing us. That got me to thinking about TiVo over the past few years:
- the sale to Rovi in 2016
- my older TiVo Minis crash while running the Amazon Prime Video app
- ads in the Guide
- upcoming pre-roll ads before playing recordings
Plus, when I purchased my last TiVo (the Bolt back in 2016), I didn’t get Lifetime service so I’ve been paying $149/year for it. When I added that into my calculations I figured I could save almost $700/year by dumping cable TV and TiVo and switching to a streaming service.
Enter YouTube TV.
Continue reading ‘Switching to YouTube TV (farewell, TiVo!)’ »
Embracing the Eoan Ermine
It’s late October which means it’s time for the latest Ubuntu release, 19.10 Eoan Ermine.
But first, my traditional summer/fall sports re-cap. It was down to the end of the season for the Indians and Rays but Tampa Bay made it to the wildcard playoff game and then lost to the Oakland A’s. The Super Bowl-bound Browns are sitting at 2-5, in third place in the AFC North ahead of the 0-8 Bengals (been there!). The NBA and NHL seasons are barely three weeks old but the Cavaliers (in year two since Lebron’s departure) are 1-2 and the Lightning are off to a slow start at 5-4.
Now back to Ubuntu …