Year: 2020

Fixed #2

This morning while watching the FRS play against the Astros, dismayed at the lack of control I had over the way to watch afforded by the Samsung TV app, I went searching the interwebs to see if I could find others in the same predicament (phew, that’s a seriously long sentence.)

Somehow, someway, via a couple web pages and/or message boards, I ended up on an MLBTV Roku help page – https://www.mlb.com/live-stream-games/help-center/roku-requirements (phew, that’s a seriously long URL.)

There I found a list of supported Roku devices. I certainly hoped mine was, as it is fairly new, and when I checked it did in fact make the list. Another thing mentioned was to make sure the Roku’s firmware was up to date, with Version 9.1 being the minimum. When I checked this, my unit had version 9.2 installed. Darn, I was hoping that would be the problem. I then for the heck of it, checked to see if there was an even newer version, and there was, 9.3. After updating and a reboot, MLBTV worked like it did, just last week.

I speculate that MLBTV worked fine using 9.1, when they released 9.2 last week it borked it, so the fix came quickly in 9.3. Now, if I could just fix 1 & 3…

I Hate Technology

1. Over the last weekend I went to add a book to my Kindle using the software called Calibre. I have used this program for several years on both our laptop and desktop PCs with great success. But for whatever reason, now, it did not recognize that I have the Kindle connected to the PC. Searching the internet reveals solutions that may or may not have worked a decade ago, but nothing of help for me. Most are hopelessly outdated as to software or hardware. Wait, I just had a thought, I should try a third USB cable…

2. Regular readers will remember that I am re-watching the 2018 Boston Red Sox baseball season. It has been our, well mostly my, after breakfast entertainment for the past several weeks. I watch it using the MLBTV app on the Roku Premire attached to the living room TV. On Monday when I went to watch Game 1 of their series with the Atlanta Braves and an error message popup up saying, “The content I selected is unavailable.” I tried selecting “jump to an inning” instead of “start at the beginning.” no dice. I selected a different game, “Unavailable.” I selected the game I watched just the day before. Nope, still unavailable. My first thought was, “Well, I guess they decided to stop access to the archives.” I tried using the app on my phone and, what do you know, the game was watchable. Went over to the PC and tried from there, available just fine. Fortunately, the MLBTV app that I downloaded for the TV works, so I don’t have to watch it on the phone or PC (my mid-range phone cannot cast to the TV.)

3. We went out and did a bit of driving to do some geocaching today. Loading caches to our GPSr turned out to be a big hassle. Just like the Kindle problem in #1 above, software and hardware that communicated reliably for years and years suddenly stopped cooperating. Suddenly GSAK will no longer send the .gpx files to our Garmin eTrex Vista Hcx. I tried updating drivers, but that was no help. So my work around involves transferring the cache files to a Garmin based bit of kit, BaseCamp (which I hate), that then will load the info onto the GPSr.

Track 03 – Rock Hard Times

We are back to just a static image while this Eel’s song plays this week. There were a couple of fan made animation videos for this tune, but there was a giant watermark in the lower lefthand corner for the demo version of the movie maker software. If I’ve peaked your interest for this version, here it is…

Shoot, I Still Need A Chute

In Aiken, we used to be able to pile our yard waste at the curb and the city would come around with a truck armed with the Jaws of Death to remove it. In Klamath Falls, Waste Management takes care of the yard waste along with the trash and recyclables. But here you need to bag the waste and put it out on the curb with your plastic trash & recyclable bins. You get three 30 pound bags a week for free. The first few pickups we used some bio-degradable lawn bags, but when we ran out we bought some paper ones from Home Depot. They are kind of tall and hard to get to fully open. And once you do, they don’t stand still or stay open while loading them, but still nicer than the plastic bags.

A couple weeks back we noticed that our neighbor uses the same Home Depot bags too, but to go along with them she had this cool green plastic chute that fit perfectly inside the bag. It both held it open and standing up straight. It also made it easy to make sure the debris got into the bag…

I just had to have one of those. It was Sunday afternoon and we were in for the evening, so I figured we would just go to the store early on Monday and do Store Pickup. I checked for local availability and the web site said there were 43 of the Plastic Leaf and Lawn Chutes on hand. Since I was paying by charge card online and the chute is a mere $8.97 I thought maybe I should order something else to make it come to something over ten bucks at least. We were down to just one yard bag, so I added a 5-pack of the bags, of these they had over of thousand in stock, for a whopping $2.47 more.

I placed the order and my confirmation came within seconds. A few hours later I received another email from Home Depot, they were cancelling part of my order, the Leaf and Lawn Chute. I guess their inventory was off, way off. So now I had a charge on my credit card and a Store Pickup for two dollars and forty-seven cents.

When we finally made it to Home Depot on Tuesday morning, I almost pulled into the “Pandemic We’ll Bring It To Your Car” parking spot, but my not wanting to be not rude about it made me go ahead and enter the store. When I arrived at the the Customer Service Desk there were two representatives working and both were helping people. So I stood back my six socially distancing feet and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally someone came free and and helped me, but it seemed like it took so long it might have been quicker if I had walked back outside, moved the car, called the number and had them bring it to me.

I still need a chute, but I guess I can hold off until fall when maybe they actually will have some in stock (the web still says 43 on hand in Klamath Falls.)