Calibrating Weather Station

 This Spring I received a Weather Station for my Birthday.  It was something that I had wanted to do for some time and so far I am happy I did it.  The Tempest Weather Station is a newer technology for Weather Stations as it has no moving parts.  For the most part I have been very please with the Tempest and it has been fairly accurate with one exception.  That exception is rainfall. The haptic rain sensor has been off by quite a bit according to the rain gauge that I have about 10 feet away.  I am currently going through the process to have the station calibrated by the vendor to see if we can increase the accuracy.  I hope so but even if the rain is not the most accurate, I have found the rest of the station to provide good data and I enjoy having it.  

New Weather Station

After many years of wanting to get a personal weather station I finally ended up getting one for my Birthday this year.  I looked into a number of different stations and ended up deciding to try the Tempest from Weatherflow Technology.  It was pretty easy to setup and has no moving parts so I am anxious to see how well it works out.  Looking forward to a now be able to help with local observations for Milwaukee Skywarn and the NWS.  I will still have my CoCoRahs Rain gauge to compare to since the is usually the biggest complaint about the Tempest.  

Found My Mac

 After trying out various new MacBooks I came to the conclusion that although I really like having a new MacBook, I really don't like the prices of new MacBooks.  I don't travel with a computer nearly as much as I had in the past so it's hard to justify spending the kind of money that new MacBooks cost.  I decided that I wanted to get a new Mac but at a lower cost.  I ended up deciding to try a Mac Mini.  I used a tool called refurb tracker to watch for refurbished Mac Minis with the specs I was looking for.  The refurbished models were few and far between for a while but I finally saw one that I could live with.  It is a 3.2 Ghz I7 model.  It only has a 512Gb SSD drive but that should be plenty for my Boot drive.  I can keep things like photos and music on an external drive.  I got the model with only 8Gb of RAM since Apple is ridiculous with their RAM prices.  To upgrade to 32GB they wanted $600.   I was able to get 32Gb of Crucial RAM on Amazon for $140 and I installed it myself.  The install process is not as simple as it used to be but using a tool kind that I bought last year and the iFixit video/guide I was able to upgrade the RAM myself in about half an hour.  Now I have the Mac Mini driving all three of my older Dell monitors and have not had any performance issues so far.  I am pretty happy with the performance and price since I paid less than have of the cost of the 6 Core MacBook that I had tried recently.

Mac Pro Experiment Done

Last fall I purchased a used Mac Pro because I had always wanted one and found a decent deal on one locally. I made a number of updates to it and enjoyed using it but I decided this summer that the experiment had run its course. The Mac Pro had plenty of power for running some multi threaded apps but most of my daily work did not really benefit from it. I also really missed having a computer that I could take with me when I wanted to work some where other than my desk. I ended up selling it this summer and replaced it with a 2015 MacBook Pro. I am not really ready to make the jump to the new Macs with all USB C ports so this Mac is the best I can get.

Mac Pro Update

Well I didn't make it to the year that I was going to try to make it to without reloading the OS on my Mac Pro. I like my Mac Pro but I think I made a bad choice when I listened to someone else recommend a video card for it. When I got my used Mac Pro it game with a GT120 Video Card that was stock on these models in the past. The only benefit that card has is that it is supported natively by the OS so you can see boot screens using it. The performance is not that great and definitely not powerful enough to drive three monitors. I got a GeForce 750TI that I had been running since October and that card worked well enough but it requires Nvidia drivers and that is an on again off again issue since Nvidia puts out drivers but Apple has to approve them and twice now I have had my system messed up by Apple updates since I didn't have updated Nvidia drivers. I decided that I had enough of that and purchased a Radeon RX 560 and so far that is working great. The other benefit of the Radeon RX 560 is that is is one of the cards that Apple recommended for Mojave so I should be able to updated to Mojave without any other upgrades now. I am not planning to do that anytime soon though since there are still too many stories of things not working right and it's just not mature enough.

Computer Challenge`

I have a habit of liking to re-install the Operating System on my computer on a semi-regular basis for one reason or another.  I have decided that with my new computer I am going implement my new hardware setup and see if I can install the OS and live with it for an entire year.  I don't think I have done that for some time.  I recently sold my 2014 Macbook Pro and moved to a 2009 Mac Pro.  The Mac Pro is an older computer flashed with newer firmware to allow it to run the most recent OS and the hardware does everything I need so far.  Since it is the older tower I can have multiple hard drives and have a decent graphics card to run multiple monitors.  I hope that they come out with a newer Mac Pro that has the same capabilities next year.  I have wanted a Mac Pro for a long time and so far I am really liking it and don't miss the Laptop at all.

Got My Mac Pro

So after much searching on Craigslist and E-Bay I found a Mac Pro that I decided to get.  I found a local business that rebuilds Mac Pro systems and they are less than a half hour from my house and have been doing this for some time.  The price on the one I selected was a little higher than some other comparable systems but I am ok with that after I spent some time talking to the owner of the business and hearing more about his rebuilding process.  He is meticulous about cleaning and preparing the components to give them the longest life possible.  I decided on a Mac Pro 4,1 that has been flashed to a 5,1.  It is a 3.46 Ghz 6 Core Xeon with a 250 Gig SD as a boot drive and 16 Gig of Memory.  I have a couple of upgrades planned for it but my initial impression is that it is not any step back in performance than my current 2.8 Ghz Quad Core i7.

Possible Mac Pro

I have a lead on a good deal on a Mac Pro and am hoping to pick it up this weekend.  I have decided to sell my MacBook Pro now since it still has a good resale value and will pretty much cover the purchase of the Mac Pro.  I have been a little hesitant to move to a Mac Pro since the older non 2013 Models are getting pretty old but they are built as workstations and have been spending a lot of time reading about them in some forums and there are a lot of users out there still depending on them.  The appeal of having a system that I can actually do some work on outweighs the concern of them being old.

Changing Computers

I have been a little dissatisfied with Apple's hardware current hardware direction and offering for some time.  I used to have a 2011 MacBook Pro and with that Laptop I could open up the chassis and upgrade or replace the memory, the hard drive, and the optical drive.  I liked having that flexibility.  Now Apple is on a quest to make everything smaller and lighter and they make their laptops so that things like memory and hard drive space are not user replaceable.  Really don't like that.  I like Mac OS but I really am getting irritated with Apple's hardware direction.  I have also decided that my computer needs have changed over the last couple of years and I really don't need a laptop anymore.  I am thinking about getting a older Mac Pro or building a Hackintosh.  The Hackintosh would be the more current hardware but the Mac Pro systems are built like tanks and I have always wanted one.  Have been looking a lot lately for a good deal on a Mac Pro but have not found one yet.  I am leaning towards the Mac Pro even though it's an older platform.

New Fitbit

I switched from a Fitbit one to a Fitbit Charge HR last summer after I lost my Fitbit One.  I liked some of the features on the Charge HR but missed the battery life of the One.  The Charge is supposed to be able to go something like 5 days on a charge but I usually had to charge it after 2 or 3.  Recently my Charge HR started to fall apart and I called Fitbit and they gave me the option of a replacement or 30% towards a new tracker.  I decided to upgrade to a Charge 2 and am anxious to see if I can get better battery life out of the new one.  The Charge 2 also replaceable wrist bands so I am looking for something besides the stock band that it came with.

Apple Headed the Wrong Way

I am currently using a 2011 MacBook Pro and right now it seems that I may not buy another Apple Laptop. I am not even sure if I will buy another Apple Desktop. Apple seems to be obsessed with making systems thinner and lighter and forgetting that there are people that are more concerned with performance over portability. In their drive to make things smaller they have resorted to soldering in memory and drives so that users can't even upgrade their hardware anymore. My 2011 MacBook Pro has been upgraded several times and still works great. Making hardware that cannot be upgraded is making things more expensive and they are alienating more and more customers. They make great hardware but not everyone wants the smallest system or to store everything in the cloud. I am anxious to see if they upgrade things this fall. I hope they change their direction but I doubt it.

 

Sonnet Echo 15 Impressions

I have been looking at Thunderbolt Docks for my MacBook Pro for some time and finally took the plunge. I decided to purchase the Sonnet Echo 15. It was the most expensive of the docks that I looked at but I decided to get it because of the extensive functionality it offered. It would give me USB 3 on my older MacBook Pro and still has FireWire and esata. It also included an optical drive and room for a hard drive.

When I first unpacked the dock I liked the look of it. It did not look cheap like some others I looked at. I plugged in my peripherals and monitor and things worked right away. I didn't start having issues until I loaded the driver and rebooted. When I rebooted I found that I first had to login to my MacBook and let it finish booting up before I could use the keyboard and mouse. I have a usb keyboard and mouse and when I have them plugged into the Mac instead of the dock I can boot up and login on the external keyboard and display.

The second issue that I found was that when I plugged my speakers into the dock I only got sound out of one of them. I then unplugged the input cable and plugged it back into my MacBook and sound returned to normal.

The fan on the dock is not loud but is noticeable. If that was the only problem with the dock I would keep it but it's not. For a dock that costs almost $500 I expect to have no issues. I will be returning the dock and will be back to my original setup.

 

Goodbye to Drupal

I started learning Drupal about 8 years ago when I decided to update our Parish website from a Dreamweaver Solution to something that I or others could update without having to have a proprietary program on their computer.  Drupal has a rather steep learning curve but it is rather powerful and has a pretty great community of supporters that help develop it and make it better.  I am saying goodbye to Drupal as I will no longer have time to develop the Parish Website and the people that they are looking to develop a new site for us plan to use Wordpress for the new site.  I can't say that I blame them.  Wordpress has a huge market share and there are many more developers that work with Wordpress and in turn the sites are usually less expensive to develop.  I had switched my blog from Drupal to Wordpress sometime back because I had less time and was looking for something simple to allow me to blog when I felt like it and add a couple of other pages.  Wordpress makes this very easy for us amateurs.  I enjoyed the platform and the community but now it's time for me to move on.

More Macbook

So after a week of stress testing my Macbook and not being able to replicate the failure that I had but noticing that it is still running hot I took my Macbook back to the Applestore and explained the situation to them.  Since it was still under Applecare for a couple weeks they agreed to send it in to their depot to be repaired.  I had it back in 3 days and so far it is running much cooler.  At the depot they replace the logic board as well as both fans.  I am hoping that this will last for sometime since my Applecare runs out in 11 days and I would really like to keep using this Macbook for at least a couple more years. For the most part it has run well for me and I don't want to spend money on a new one for at least another year minimum.

2011 Macbook Pro Failure

This afternoon around lunch time I was checking Facebook on my Macbook Pro when I encountered something entirely new.  As I was scrolling down the screen my screen froze and I could hear the fans on my Macbook Pro kicking into high gear.  After a minute or two my Macbook Pro rebooted but it would not boot back up for me to use it.  It would boot to a gray screen and then sit there with the Fans screaming.  I then disconnected my Macbook Pro from my KVM and tried to boot it connected to nothing but power and it still would not boot beyond that gray screen.  I tried everything I could think of and could not get the system to boot.

Through some patience and trial and error I was able to get my Macbook to boot for a short while but it failed again as soon as I plugged in my external monitor.

After this I decided to do some research and found that I was not alone.  There were many reports of 2011 Macbook Pros failing with issues related to the Discrete Graphics Adapter in them.  I went ahead and made an appointment at the Apple Store for the next time I could make it and did some reading to see how bad it really was.

Here is one of the more active sources of the information that I have found in relation to this issue.

Discussion in Apple Support Forums.  There are over 11K responses in this thread.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4766577?start=0&tstart=0

Going to try more tonight to see what I can do.

 

Goodbye to Drupal

I converted my blog from Drupal back to Wordpress several months ago and have not gone back so far.  Wordpress is much easier to deal with from a user perspective.  Media Handling is so much easier than Drupal for something like my basic blog.  I am now working on converting my Church Website and my one other site from Drupal to Wordpress also.  I have found there are several plugins for Wordpress that give me the ability to setup my website similar to how I could with Drupal in the past.  There are different ways to do things in Wordpress but I am going to stay this time.  Drupal keeps getting more complex and is getting beyond the reach of the casual user or hobbyist.

Back to Wordpress Again

My blog has moved back and forth several times between Wordpress and Drupal. Now I am back on Wordpress. I had tried to convert from Wordpress last year because I was kind of upset with Drupal for removing blogapi from core when they went to Drupal 7 and the contrib module did not progress for a long time. I liked the authoring abilities of Wordpress but there were some things like views that I used a little on my blog that I could not easily replicate in Wordpress. After some more research and a new desire to actually use my blog some more I found that there are some free plugins that let me accomplish what I want.

I think this time I am going to stay on Wordpress and look to use it on other smaller sites as well. It is more suited towards a small personal blog like mine. Drupal keeps getting more powerful and I am really not their target market.

New Omega Theme For My Site

I spent much of my Holiday Weekend working on reworking the theme for my blog.  There were a couple of reason that I wanted to do this.  One was I was not happy with the way the site looked. The other was I spent some time watching drupalize.me videos on Omega so I had a little bit better idea of how to set things up in Omega.  I have to admit I like the look better now but I was really a pain at times.  Finding node.tpl.php was not straight forward and it took me some time to figure out how to declare the template variable in the node pre-process function instead of putting the code in template.php.  There are some other things I want to do to my blog but this will have to do for now since I have two other sites I need to spend some time on.  At least now I have a better idea of how to make things work in Omega.

Back to Drupal Again

I had converted my blog back to Wordpress a couple of months ago and I liked how it looked and was easy to access using mobile tools.  The problem with it was that I could not do some things that I wanted to do with Wordpress that were trivial when using Drupal.  You take things like CCK and Views for granted when you don't have them.  For instance, I keep a list on my site of the names of people that I walk in support or in memory of when I walk in the Komen 3-Day.  I could not find an easy way to keep that list in Wordpress but it was very simple in Drupal.  Define a custom content type to store the names of the person and how I now them.  Then setup a view to only show the names.  5 mimute effort with Drupal but really not easily done unless you use a commercial Wordpress module.  So back to Drupal it is.  I have pretty much finished up making the changes that I wanted to my blog and I have something that will work for now.

New iPhone Case

I purchased a Lifeproof case for my iPhone 4 and there are some things I really like about it and some things that I hate about it. I did the water test on it and it was waterproof so that is good. I am not really considering going swimming with it but I do like to have a nice durable case for when I am out walking. I am pretty confident that it would handle rain pretty easily. I also like the belt clip that comes with the case. It holds the phone in place securely and I am not worried about losing it.

One of the things that drives me nuts about it is the screen protector. I ran into the same thing with the Otterbox Defender on my older iPhone. It protects the screen but it makes the screen less responsive. I also didn't really care for the implementation of the switch to silence the phone.

I am going to keep the new case for when I need protection for outdoors but will go back to my regular Otterbox Commuter case as my everyday case.