I’m having trouble with bluetooth breaking up and not connecting. It happens on multiple headsets, so I suspect the phone. I’m going to try wiping it. Here’s what I had before the wipe.

• Android Pay (BOA)
• Android Wear
• AnkiDroid
• Appalachian Trail Weather
• APRSdroid
  • Callsign = K4KPK
  • SSID = 5
  • APRS-IS Passcode = (stored in password safe)
  • Comment field = “cell beacon”
• Arcus
• Authy (need to backup something here!)
  • Cellphone Number = my physical cell phone number (not Gvoice)
  • 6 accounts configured
• BackCountry Navigator
• Calculator
• Calculator For Android Wear
• Calendar
• Camera
• Chrome
• Clock
• Colors
• Connect
• Contacts
• Device Help
• Docs
• Downloads
• Drive (google)
• DroidTerm
• Email
• Event Reminder
• File Manager
• Fit
• Gallery
• Gmail
  • Configured for two accounts: my primary email account and my newsletter subscriptions account
• Google
• Google+
• gStrings
• Hangouts
• HuskyDEV Classic Watch Face
• KX3Companion
• (password safe)
• Locker - allows 10 attempts before wiping
• Maps
• MARTA
• Messaging
• Moto
• myAT&T
• Nirvana
• Phone
• Photos
• Play Books/Games/Movies/Music/Newsstand/Store
  • Should probably backup my music, but I’ll pick new tracks this time.
• Podcast Addict
  • Go into the menu, select backups, do a full backup, save it to Google Drive.
• Pushbullet
• Quizlet
• Settings
• Sheets
• SignalCheck Lite
• Slides
• Smart Recorder
• SOTA Finder
• SparkPeople
• Street View
• (My bank’s online app)
• Translate
• Uber
• UsbTerminal
• WABE
• Wear Tip Calculator
• Weather Underground
• Wifi Analyzer
• YouTube

• How to fully wipe? Go to Settings > Backup & reset > Factory data reset and then tap Reset phone or Reset device.
• Check /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.bambuna.podcastaddict/files/podcast/ and ensure it is empty, before rebuilding. And Downloads should be empty.

I wanted to change the editor used when clicking on “Edit this Script” on an Autohotkey icon, from Notepad to Notepad++. There are many references to this, but they all assume that Autohotkey is installed and I’m running it semi-portably. (i.e. I have the files on a flash drive and I never installed it.)

I saved the following in a .reg file in my Autohotkey folder, so I can load it into the registry wherever I plug in my flash drive.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AutoHotkeyScript]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ahk_auto_file]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ahk_auto_file\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ahk_auto_file\shell\Edit]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ahk_auto_file\shell\Edit\Command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Notepad++\\notepad++.exe\" \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ahk_auto_file\shell\open]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ahk_auto_file\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Notepad++\\notepad++.exe\" \"%1\""

My college band director had a large ego, an iconic style of conducting, and a loud opinion. He had a PhD, so we referred to him as “Doc.” (We addressed him as Doctor so-and-so.) Here’s a story we liked to tell.

A trumpet player died and went to heaven. St. Peter was showing him around. Off in the distance, they saw a figure conducting erratically, and shouting, “You’re horrible! Play BETTER.”

“Who’s that?” asked the trumpet player.

“That’s just God. He thinks he’s Doc,” said St. Peter.

Need a way to list all the visible access points, with signal strength and signal quality, on a Ubuntu Linux system?

For a one-shot listing (with color coding):

nmcli d wifi

For ongoing listing:

watch nmcli d wifi

For something fancier:

sudo apt-get install linssid

Yeah, I know about WiFi scanners for Android and iPhone. In this case, I don’t actually need to know the WiFi signals – I need to know how well my Linux system’s WiFi card sees the signals.

We’re transitioning from dedicated phone handsets to PC-based telephony at work. i.e. We are taking away desk phones and telling people to use Skype for Business (SFB) on their laptops. We block ordinary Skype, so our users must use SFB (a.k.a. Microsoft Lync).

Here are some observations from the user perspective, following from that experience.

• There is no PC headset that’s as good as the Plantronics CS50 (which only works with real telephones).
  • If you need to be able to roam your floor, walk around corners, etc., you aren’t going to find anything with the same range. The closest I found was the Plantronics Savi. It is flimsy, it doesn’t fit as well, the range isn’t as good, and the controls aren’t as easy to use.
• Talk to your SFB administrators and get access to the POTS system via SFB. In our culture, they call it a “DID” (Direct Inward Dial) number.
  • My DID was behaving poorly. It turns out they re-allocated my number to someone else, without telling me, because why not?
• SFB was telling me “We didn’t find an audio device, which you need for calling”. It started off as just being mute, but then it added the message after I restarted it. Shucks.
  • I have two audio output devices and two microphones.
  • I could right-click on the speaker icon in the tray and confirm that my laptop speakers and microphone were the default audio devices (input and output) and that my wireless headset was set up as the default communication devices.
  • I resolved the issue by restarting the “audio endpoint builder” service via Control Panel’s “Administrative Tools” icon.

The Plantronics Savi W440 Savi W440 Wireless Headset is the worst headset for PC-based VOIP… except for all the others, which are worse.

I really want a comfortable, high audio quality, long-range, wireless headset for use with VOIP on my laptop. I need to be able to roam the floor, to visit the break room, etc. I’m often on the phone all day and I can’t stay at my PC.

I was very happy with my Plantronics CS50 headset, but then my employer stopped putting real telephones in cubes, so I have to move to VOIP or use my cell. I need wired-qualiity audio. I work with people from around the world and some of them don’t articulate very clearly. Using cell is not an option because it adds just enough fuzz to the audio that I can’t always understand what someone from another culture is saying.

The W440 has less range than the CS50, a cheaper-feeling build, it is less comfortable, it is less securely fitting, the mute button is twitchy, and the volume isn’t as loud.

I hate this headset, but after spending about $500 on a variety of headsets, I’m going to make do with this one.

What does the blinking LED mean?

Common LED values:

• Solid red = headset not “subscribed”
• Flashing red = headset muted
• Flashing red+yellow = incoming call
• Flashing green = talk mode
• Solid green = headset “subscribed”; no activity

Uncommon LED values:

• Flashing green+red = adapter subscription
• Flashing green+yellow = adapter conference subscription
• Flashing yellow = on multi-headset conference call

What does the white LED mean?

• Blinking = charging
• Solid = fully charged

VM Problems

This is lovely. I use a Vmware VM. I don’t want to use the headset with the VM. In the VM settings, I have told it not to autoconnect USB devices. I have not defined an autoconnect for the headset in the .vmx file. This headset should not autoconnect to the VM.

When I start the VM, it connects to the headset. Of course, this removes it from the host. When I fire up Lync (Skype for Business), it doesn’t see the headset and it routes audio through my laptop speakers.

The only work-around is to maunally tell VMplayer to disconnect the headset. This restores its availability in the Windows host. The problem appears to happen only when starting the VM, so disconnecting after the VM is running is a work-around.

According to this blog, it is a bad idea to share a OneNote .one file via a NAS (SAMBA) network shared folder. He says, “In particular many SAMBA implementations seem to have problems with ReplaceFile failing.”

On the other hand, this posting mentions Samba 3.2.3 as being new enough to solve the problem. Some more reading suggests that cheap consumer NAS devices often use old versions of SAMBA, and they don’t implement the ReplaceFile function because it is infrequently used for one-user-at-a-time file access.

If you want to check your Samba version, login to a shell prompt on your NAS and run:

• sudo smbstatus | grep -i version

I haven’t personally tested it yet, so I don’t know for certain that recent versions of Samba work with OneNote sharing. We use a lot of Linux-based NAS at work, and I expect the story would get around quick if it didn’t work with OneNote.

I added a .sh file (shell script) to my Login items, for OS X to run when I startup and then login. It starts xcode to edit the file, instead of running it.

Solution: Rename the file to a .command file.

Why: .sh files are owned by xcode by default; .command files are owned by Terminal. Ergo, a .command file will be run by the Terminal app instead of by xcode.

Alternative: Change system preferences (via Get Information on the file) to open .sh files with Terminal. That could be risky. I don’t have a known risk in mind, except that OS X might expect .sh files to open with xcode, somewhere, somehow.

I’m using the “Merlin” edition of AsusWRT software on my Asus router. When I look in the Network Map, Clients, View List, in the Clients IP List column, I see

• Static (flyover = Static IP) - meaning IP was set on the device itself
• Manual (flyover = MAC-IP Binding) - meaning specified on the LAN tab, DHCP Server sub-tab
• DHCP (flyover = Automatic IP) - meaning allocated by the router from the pool of “IP Pool Starting Address” through IP Pool Ending Address

It turns out that the router will also report “Static” for a device which is using anything other than the address which the router would like it to use. For example, if you change the IP address specified on the DHCP page, but the device hasn’t started using the new IP address yet, it will get reported as “Static”.

So “Manual” means the device got the IP from the router, but the IP was specified by me, and “Static” means “the device is using an IP that it chose”.