Personal Status Updates! (Page 12 of 13)

And now for Tech Talk, with Quinn Mallory:

For the longest time, my niece was understandably furious with me for buying what were essentially netbooks: little $200 tablet-laptops with 10.1 or 11.6 inch touchscreens that could detach from the keyboard and Atom or Celeron processors that could only be used for light office work and web browsing. I used them for word processing and messaging and spreadsheets and website maintenance when I didn't want to be at by (very powerful) desktop computer and wanted to work at the library or the living room or at a friend's house.

My niece would be mad because these machines always failed within a year: they would stop powering on. The charging ports would break. They would inexplicably get the display stuck upside down. Wifi wouldn't work when Bluetooth was on. The keyboard would start inputting random characters. The touchpads would fail. "Stop buying these pieces of junk and get a good laptop!" she'd shriek at me.

I'd protest, "I don't need a good laptop. I have a great desktop with an i7 processor and 32GB of RAM and two solid state drives -- " (really a laptop permanently plugged into a monitor and keyboard and mouse that's too heavy to move around much). "I just need a small laptop for work on the go."

"BUT YOU HAVE TO BUY ONE EVERY YEAR!" she howled at me. There was a long period where, after the last netbook failed, I simply got a keyboard for my iPad. And this past year, with all the work from home, I've come to depend on a Chromebook to tether me to work when wandering away from my desktop.

The Chromebook, a Samsung Chromebook 3 with a matte IPS screen (that I had to install myself) was great -- but with the shift to working from home, I realized that all the (limited) Chrome apps and (slow) Remote Desktop access didn't replace my need for a Windows 10 laptop that could run LibreOffice and Adobe Photoshop and InDesign. Despite working from home, I often had to go to different rooms for Reasons and I needed a small laptop to keep work with me. I didn't need anything fancy, just something light in hand and on the wallet -- preferably one that fell within the stipend that my job had granted me to buy some hardware for working from home. But how would I avoid all the previous pitfalls?

I was reviewing all the laptop options at an electronics chain called Canada Computers where I'd bought all my previous one year wonder tablet-laptops (this was when they were still offering in-store purchasing amidst social distancing). I went over to their small and light laptops and noticed that, as always, there was a stack of 'open box' / 'refurbished' laptop boxes stacked under the display counter, as there had been every year that I'd bought a cheap laptop from them that lasted a year.

A Best Buy had opened up the road, so to review my options and went there, and noticed that the majority of the laptops were much more expensive than the ones at Canada Computers and where Canada Computers had 5 - 6 cheap little laptops (and numerous returns piled up on the floor), Best Buy had exactly ONE cheap little laptop for sale.

I bought the cheap little 11.6 laptop from Best Buy and it's been precisely what it needs to be. It's slow, but I've disabled all non-essential Windows services to keep it from freezing and but a secondary machine doesn't need to be a speed demon so long as it's capable of opening any and all Windows 10 applications. The battery lasts 10 hours. The wifi and bluetooth haven't glitched, the keyboard hasn't gone haywire, the touchpad works. I was getting bad laptops before because I was going to a bad store for laptops whereas Best Buy, having survived the Amazon apocalypse on retail through price matching and raising the scale of the Geek Squad and being hyperselective in what they show in their show room, has somehow survived and also thrived.

Incredible! It must be hard to get a new job in a pandemic. Congratulations!

I'm still not back here yet for reasons of a migraine (ow ow ow) and my building being unable to repair its air conditioning system until the end of June (some Quinn Mallory-esque thinking is in order now to avoid death should a heat wave hit).

A metal or glass bowl filled with ice in front of the fan works about as well

I still think having one browser for Leisure and only Leisure is best.

Last Christmas, I bought some Tiles off eBay. Or at least I thought I had; two weeks after payment, I still hadn't received them. I filed a concern with the seller. The seller told me that the post office had inexplicably returned the package to him and that he would resend it. One week later, I still hadn't received them, sent the seller another message -- and eBay simply refunded me. I didn't ask them to do that. I didn't ask them to do anything; I never asked eBay to get involved, but my message caused the transaction to be red-flagged.

A few days after that, the Tiles did arrive in the mail which I could of course have kept for free, but as I had received the Tiles, I contacted the seller and transferred his money back to him. I left him positive feedback. And I contacted eBay and asked that they remove any warning from his account as his item had arrived.

I feel safe buying anything off eBay because eBay clearly has zero support for sellers and is clearly eager to take any opportunity to refund buyers, but I can see how this system could be abused by buyers.

What happened?

I once lost $15 on a charging cable for an old netbook that didn't fit. I can't remember why I didn't get a refund; it's possible that eBay's guarantee wasn't what it used to be. It was back in 2008.

I can see how it would be easy to abuse the eBay Money Back Guarantee. I would like to tell you that I don't out of some moral objection, but the truth is that it doesn't make strategic sense.

I could have kept the Tiles and my refund. But it would have been shortsighted because this seller has other products I will want to purchase in the future at well below the retail price. If I'd kept his product and his money, he would likely have pre-emptively blocked me from ever purchasing anything from him again or been driven off the platform for supposedly failing to deliver.

I recently bought a laptop off eBay for pennies on the dollar. It arrived with a damaged E-key hanging loose off the keyboard. I photographed the issue filed for a return; the seller, a distributor of refurbished equipment, asked me to close the return at which point they would provide me with a prepaid shipping label to return their hardware at which point they'd refund me.

It's possible the seller misunderstands how returns work. If the buyer closes the return, they cannot reopen it and they are no longer protected by eBay's guarantee of a full refund should the item fail to match the description, and the return case being open does not in any way prevent the seller from issuing a prepaid shipping label. But it's also possible that the seller is trying to get me to close the return so that they can keep my money and I'm stuck with a laptop that has a broken keyboard.

It's also also possible that the seller has every intention of refunding me but will take any chance to get a return closed because eBay has proven to have a hair trigger with refunding buyers so that buyers keep buying.

I could likely manipulate the situation and protest that they are encouraging me to close the return before supplying shipping. Since they claim I need to close the return before they supply shipping, I could stall for three business days at which point eBay would refund me and allow me to keep the laptop (since the seller didn't provide shipping). I'd spend a little of that refund on getting the keyboard replaced at a local repair shop).

But this would be incredibly foolish because this seller has an incredible selection of refurbished hardware at shockingly low prices, a pretty decent reputation for issuing exchanges on damaged goods, and they clearly have additional quantities of the laptop I want.

Also, in both cases, these sellers have my home address and my name and phone number. It's not a great idea to rob people who literally know where you live. When buying things off eBay, I generally stick to items within my country (Canada) and there are a lot of eBay sellers selling refurbished electronics who are situated in or around my city, purchased from offices or retailers trying to get rid of returns.

I've told the refurbished laptop sellers that, since they're located in my city, we can meet at their retail store and do an exchange for an undamaged laptop and if the replacement is in good working order, I'll close the return.

However, I have the feeling that a lot of non-buyer buyers might use this advantage to buy goods, claim they're damaged, stall the return process, then keep the refund and the product. Of course, they might regret that if they ever want to buy anything from that seller in the future or if the seller is within driving distance of their homes or might conceivably have friends with baseball bats who live near them.

(But that Chromebook seller refused to pay for return shipping, she was a hopeless case.)

Got my COVID booster today!

What's your budget?

I'm glad you asked this question, I've been meaning to draft something about computers and calculated misery.

The Expensive Side of Cheap Computers: I spent a lot of my life buying 'cheap' computers thinking I didn't need anything fancy for web browsing and word processing and such, only to discover that these computers would break down and needed to be replaced at a rate of one a year and after buying three, I reached the point where I would have been better off putting the money spent on three bad laptops into buying one good one. An inexpensive computer can, through poor quality control or lousy manufacturing, cost you more than a pricier model or prove unusable.

Calculated Misery: Past cheap computers I've bought had quirks like dust getting under the screen. Or a touchpad that would become unresponsive every 4 - 5 minutes. Or a display that would get stuck in the upside down orientation. Or a spacebar that would stop producing spaces. Or wifi that would switch off if bluetooth were on. When manufacturers aim to hit a low price point, they don't bother to ensure that their hardware functions, thinking customers will be reluctant to refund something that cost so little and grudgingly tolerate it, or that the customer will even return it and buy a more expensive model from them. The term for this is "calculated misery," deliberately making a product difficult to use so that the customer will feel inclined to spend more money for basic functionality. There are entire lines of processors and storage drives and motherboards designed specifically for laptops intended to produce calculated misery.

Specifications: While you may consider your computing demands modest, the truth is that cheap computers can be too weak even for web browsing and word processing. I have thought as you have in the past, buying Intel Atom / Pentium / Core M processor computers with 4 GB of RAM and eMMC or spinning drives, thinking I didn't need better. Then I'd discover these machines would freeze up loading web pages. Or that when typing, there would be a 1/3 delay between my finger tapping the keyboard. Or they would crash when running word processing software because of poor driver support.

Minimums: Despite your humble intentions, nobody in 2021 should buiy a computer that isn't at the very least: an Intel i3 processor with 8GB of RAM and a solid state drive (SSD). Intel Core Ms, Pentiums and Atoms are not fast enough to run Windows properly. 4GB of RAM is not enough to run meet a web browser's memory demands reliably. A spinning hard drive or an eMMC drive (cheap flash memory) is not quick enough to load applications responsively.

You can get decent AMD processors, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with AMD's product line to know which ones are okay and which ones are designed for calculated misery.

Storage: The SSD should have at least 128GB. That's not a lot for all your family photos, but it's enough to store and run Windows programs and you can store personal files on an external drive (which can be spinning). Make sure it can run Windows 11 which is coming soon.

Refurbished Computers: I've had some good(ish) experiences with buying refurbished computers off eBay. One time, what I received wasn't what was advertised; I got a refund. It's guaranteed by eBay. Another time, I got a great deal on a business laptop that arrived with a broken keyboard; I got a guaranteed exchange, but the replacement had a severely worn battery that had to be replaced. It was still a great deal, but it was troublesome and might be difficult for someone who doesn't live near a trustworthy computer repair shop that can supply and install replacement laptop batteries. At full price, this model would have cost several thousand dollars; I was able to get it for a mid three figures -- but not everyone will go to maximum effort for maximum computing and minimum cost. Not everyone will take two weeks to get the laptop, another three to get it exchanged and another week to get the new battery.

Retailers: For the average person who knows nothing about computers, your best buy is likely a Best Buy. It's more expensive than buying refurbished, but that might be best because Best Buy is a retailer that's thrived in a retail apocalypse for two reasons: they do price matching to compete with online retailers. And due to the price of retail floorspace and the need to keep products going out, Best Buy does its very, very best to avoid selling brands and products that are prone to defects.

They don't want customers constantly returning items due to buyer's remorse over buying a low quality product at a low price; they try to only sell products that are likely to leave their stores and create such buyer satisfaction that the product will never come back. That said, Best Buy can't catch everything; my Fitbit watch went dead and one laptop I bought from them cracked open when I opened it. This brings us to our next subject --

Extended Warranties: The internet is filled with articles telling you that extended warranties from big box stores are not worth it, that it's cheaper to find independent repair services. However, this is highly situational and dependent on hardware. Best Buy's return policy is that you have 15 days to get a refund on your laptop. The manufacturer will generally offer a one year warranty, but Best Buy may not facilitate returns and exchanges after the 15 days, leaving you to the calculated misery of having to set up a delivery with the manufacturer and a lengthy period without your computer.

An extended warranty can get you up to three years where you can get a refund or exchange at the store. And it can cost several hundred dollars in addition to the cost of the laptop. This extended warranty is only for hardware failure, not accidental damage.

I find it grossly exploitative for any retailer to charge you for the right to get an exchange or refund for a defective item that they've sold to you. If it won't last, they shouldn't sell it; if they sell it and it fails, they should refund or exchange it within one year, not 15 days. But the reality is that sometimes, the extended warranty may be the best option for the product or the customer.

Repairability: Some laptops are modular and designed for easy replacement of storage drives, screens, keyboards, wifi and bluetooth modules, etc.. Some laptops have all the hardware soldered onto the motherboard and may be impossible to repair, only exchanged. Not every customer can tell the difference; not every customer lives near repair stores that would be cheaper than a Geek Squad plan; not every customer can identify a capable repair service and an inept and overpriced one.

Anyway. Here's the Best Buy listing for what meets my standards:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage … Categories

I have been mildly impressed with Microsoft's hardware. I had a Surface 3 for awhile. I had a Surface Pro 3 for awhile. My aunt has a Surface Pro 4.

I've never had a Surface Laptop Go laptop, but the reviews were modestly impressive, mostly taking issue with the original $900 USD price being way too much for an i5 processor and 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. Those are specs for a budget performer, so the price was really more for the lightweight form factor. However, the $550 that Best Buy is charging for it now is pretty reasonable. That's probably the best value on the table here.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/microsoft- … Id=6428996

The Geek Squad warranty for this item is also interesting: it actually covers accidental damage protection. The price is a bit high for that, but it looks like you could take it scuba diving and still be entitled to one replacement.

As for storage: if you boosted the Surface Laptop Go from 128GB to 256GB, it's another $150 USD. That seems unnecessary; you could just store your files on a $45 external hard drive with 1,204GB / 1TB.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easysto … Id=6406515

Is anyone as invested as I am (which is a lot) in which laptop Slider_Quinn21 ended up getting?

I'm preparing an early Christmas dinner because my sister-in-law has to fly to England this year to visit her biological family. My turkey methods have evolved since we last talked. To summarize: turkeys are too big for ovens to cook evenly, so a turkey has to be severely overcooked to ensure that all portions are heated beyond what a microbial load can survive. Turkey is also a lean, low-fat bird. As a result, turkey is often dry.

One solution is to soak the turkey in a saltwater solution for about one hour per pound, absorbing moisture to make up for what's lost. I soak the turkey in room temperature chicken broth and put it in the fridge. This ensures the meat is moist throughout and avoids the dried-out texture of extended oven time. Some people prefer dry brining because it requires less time and can draw out the internal moisture of the turkey.

My take on it: Butterball turkeys are what I'm working with and they have been injected with a solution of salt and water before freezing. Upon defrosting, most of that solution and much of the internal moisture seems to drip out of the turkey. Dry brining might be great for a fresh turkey, but I doubt it's as effective for a frozen and thawed bird.

In addition, wet brining seems to do a better job of softening the meat because the muscle and protein absorb the saltwater and then the sodium and chloride ions in the water separate, pulling apart the meat fibers for a tenderized texture. I tend to brine in chicken broth.

However, I've come to see brining as just one part of pre-roasting turkey prep. Water is great, but the turkey is still a very lean, low fat bird that, even if softened up, is still a low fat, low flavour bird. Brining is actually not very effective at making the turkey absorb any flavour beyond salt. My method after taking the turkey out of the brine is to now fill a meat injector syringe with minced garlic, pepper, mustard, basil, oregano and liquid duck fat, and then inject this fluid into the meat and drumsticks of the turkey. This adds more fat and flavour to the bird within the meat itself.

I apply the dry seasoning on the exterior of the turkey after that along with some mixing powder for crispness and then I stuff the turkey with onions and lemons to add more moisture, and I think the combination of brining for moisture and injection for fat and flavour is probably the winning combination here.

It's possible that another method might be to directly inject brining solution into the bird followed by injecting fat and seasoning, but injections of saltwater might not reach every area of the bird and evapourate. In contrast, injected fat, even if not all-encompassing, will expand and spread throughout the turkey while it heats in the oven.

However, since some of the absorbed brine drips out of the turkey, I also inject that back into the turkey.

Injection also means that basting is no longer necessary. Basting has proven to be a liability because opening the oven every half hour to drip fat and chicken stock on the turkey causes the oven to lose heat and extends the cooking time. However, a turkey injected with fat and leftover brine will effectively baste itself in the oven and it means the turkey cooks faster; I can roast tonight's turkey in 4.5 hours instead of 6.5.

The best way to cook a turkey, however, might be to debone it and stuff it with a small and deboned high fat duck to make up for the lack of fat and avoid the need to overcook since removing the skeletal structures would compact the volume area to cook.

Another reason I prefer wet to dry brining: my mother has some kidney issues, so I can't rub salt all over a turkey.

Yes, the chicken broth I soaked my turkey in has about 40,000 mg of sodium. However, the turkey only actually absorbs about 0.57 percent of that, so it's 228 mg of sodium distributed across a 15 pound turkey. Also, despite the low sodium content, the turkey absorbs enough of the flavour to taste lightly salted and it also opens the meat up to absorb garlic, mustard, pepper, basil, oregano, lemon and duck fat flavour.

However, in the spirit of making these advantages more accessible -- I guess you could inject a turkey with chicken broth throughout the body and let it sit for 2.5 hours per pound to absorb. That would be more salt staying in the bird than I'd want for my family meal, but others may have higher tolerance for sodium.

You could follow up with injecting fat into the bird anywhere from 12 - 2 hours before roasting. The fat doesn't have to be duck: it could be olive oil, butter (probably diluted with water to stay liquid, avocado oil -- it just has to be liquified and room temperature so that it's injectable and doesn't cook the turkey before it's in the oven.

I actually ran out of duck fat when injecting last night and had to make up the difference with bold olive oil mixed with minced garlic, poured into the injector. Probably fine, it just won't have the distinctive duck flavour of a fully duck fat infused turkey.

During lockdown in 2020, I bought myself an Oculus Go, the cheapest Oculus VR headset. I used it to watch movies and TV in a virtual reality cineplex. It was like watching a movie in IMAX from my living room. Recently, I decided to watch THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER on the VR headset. Except... I just kept not getting around to it for weeks. And months. Finally, on Friday, I had some time and put on the headset.

It sucked. The headset was just too heavy and uncomfortable to enjoy it for more than a few minutes. I was hyperaware of wearing a brick on my face. I put up with it during lockdown. But after two years, I've come to realize that I'd rather not wear a VR headset just to watch a movie and will settle for a 55 inch screen or a 12.4 inch tablet.

Putting the VR headset on sale tomorrow. Might get a few bucks out of it.

I bought a set of $7 USD neckband earbuds. That seemed about right for such a dated form factor. They're the Rythflo Bluetooth Earbuds and... I'm reminded that neckband earbuds have some real advantages over true wireless earbuds like AirPods or the Jabra Elite line.

First, neckband earbuds sound fuller and richer with more bass. The Jabra Elite 75t and AirPods sound fine, but being small-sized devices, they never have the depth and bass of full fledged earbuds. They don't have the space for larger sound drivers since they need antennae and batteries. Neckband buds give volume to all the background noise of movies and TV that true wireless earbuds tend to leave out.

Second, neckband earbuds allow you to use your own choice in eartips. My memory foam eartips create a better seal to block out external noises which is preferable for a gym session when I don't want to hear other people around. Most true wireless earbuds need you to use the eartips that came with them in order to fit into the charging case. Neckband earbuds use a charging port. Admittedly, the Jabra Elite 75t comes with active noise cancellation, but ANC for me isn't going to be as effective as a tightly sealing eartip.

Third, have longer battery life. Yes, my Jabra Elite 75t can play for about five hours before it needs to go back in the charging case (which can charge the earbuds three times before needing a charge itself). But neckband earbuds using modern low power Bluetooth technology can last for 30 hours of use (unlike the 6 - 10 hours my old neckband earbuds had on Bluetooth 4.0). I can throw these neckband buds into my gym bag and only recharge them every few weeks.

I was surprised that this cheap neckband set had multipoint pairing (connecting to two devices at the same time), but they have it.

The only thing about these neckband earbuds that disappoint: the microphone is rather crackly. I left myself a voicemail to check the microphone and my voice was a bit staticky.

But I that's okay. I don't think I would ever wear my neckband earbuds outside of the gym; I don't feel safe walking the streets without at least one ear open to the world. I prefer the same when making phone calls. But this $7 purchase is great for the gym.

Sorry for your mom's continued situation.  Glad she is getting care.

UGH.  Oh I am so sorry.  What terrible news.

I'm sorry to hear this, QuinSlidr. You seemed to have a lot of fondness and appreciation for him and I'm sorry he didn't make it.

I'm glad you called him too.

Thank you for asking. My mother's health has been variable, to put it mildly. She is walking better but still in some pain. However, we have been watching a lot of THE CAROL BURNETT show during dialysis and that show has its charms. She is also fond of BROOKLYN NINE NINE which I am happy to revisit.

So, I may be less present for the next week or so. I have a partially detached retina (left eye) and am going in for laser surgery tomorrow morning. At least, I think I am. The clinic has only promised a test to confirm what my optometrist determined, but I don't see why they wouldn't give me the treatment on the day, pocket the money and send me home. I'm likely to have blurry vision for at least a week.

It's weird. I feel 23. When I look in the mirror, I see a 23 year old. (Neutrogena and Cerave.)

Then I start coming loose at the eyes and realize I'm over a decade older than I look or feel. Anyway! Try not to burn the place down while I'm indisposed.