The Manual Process Is The Point
Earlier this week on a Reddit thread I was discussing Caffeinated Checkbook. Someone pointed out that “every banking app does this, so why …
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The Industry Decided to Harvest Users. I Decided to Build for Myself.
I started writing code in 1981 on a Commodore VIC-20. I was 11 years old.
Not because I had a plan, not because I saw a career path, I was only 11 after all, but because computers were the most …
Continue ReadingCaffeinated Checkbook: A Notebook That Does Math
I used GnuCash religiously from around 2005 until 2011. Every transaction, every account, credit cards, the works. I was the kind of person who reconciled to the penny every month and felt vaguely …
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Caffeinated Notes: A Digital Steno Pad
Since I started writing code in the early 80s I’ve always had a notebook with me. In high school and college it was a spiral notebook. I’d sit in the cafeteria between classes with a cup …
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Caffeinated Vitals: My Doctor Asked for My Numbers
What happens when a doctor gives instructions to an arguably neuro-spicy middle-aged developer and said developer can’t find an app that suits them?
They write their own of course.
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Caffeinated Calendar: A Calendar App Born Out of Frustration
I’ve been self-hosting my own calendar infrastructure for a while now. CalDAV, Radicale, the whole stack. It works. But the one thing I could never get right was the client. Every calendar app I …
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A Jury Duty Scam
New month, new scam attempt. I’m certain this is also because I’ve put my number out there a lot recently, but today I got a call from someone claiming to be a sheriff from my actual …
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I Was Targeted by Two Sophisticated LinkedIn Pig Butchering Scams in the Same Week
Over the past few months, I’ve been increasing my visibility — more blogging, more conversation on LinkedIn, and generally showing up again after some time off. It was paying off: more profile views, …
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Replacing Todoist with a Self-Hosted CalDAV Setup
Update (April 2026): Since writing this post, I built Caffeinated Calendar, which connects directly to Radicale and any CalDAV server alongside …
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A Self-Hosted Contact Form for Static Sites
Static sites are great. They’re fast, secure, easy to deploy, and scale better than just about anything else. What they don’t do well, though, is anything dynamic that requires a web …
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Why I Moved from Enpass to Bitwarden (via Vaultwarden)
For years, I was a satisfied paid user of Enpass. It was simple, reliable, offered a one-time purchase model that respected the idea of software ownership, and best of all, worked everywhere that I …
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Choosing the Wrong Tool Isn't the Tool's Fault
I originally wrote a version of this for Caffeinated Softworks, but the topic struck close enough to home that I wanted to …
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EmberJS, VueJS, React, Angular, etc. Which one to choose?
For the last couple of years, I’ve been dabbling with a few side/hobby projects. Several of these have been in the form of a Single Page App (SPA). There is a lot of appeal to that with the …
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I Want To Play
So I’ve been working on bringing a new project to light in my spare time over the last few years, dittos.io. It is a communications …
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Dead Synology DS1515+
So last March I purchased a Synology DS1515+ and wrote about it in one of my posts “Who Shall Control My Media? …
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Paid Memberships Pro Require CVV/CVC When Using Stripe
Paid Memberships Pro is a great WordPress plugin that allows paid subscriptions to your WordPress site. It has tons of features …
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Sony DualShock 4 USB Wireless Adapter Controller Pairing
It took me way too long to figure this out, but there is no documentation at all on Sony’s store website, and google kept referring me to Windows 10 setups. We’re running a Windows 7 …
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Google WiFi Review
Google WiFi promises an attractive, easy to setup, easy to manage, and relatively inexpensive home router that is mesh capable. Mesh networks help to eliminate “dead spots” in larger homes …
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HexBug Vex Robotics Spider Review
Our oldest son has been wanting one of these since he first saw them. We’ve got several of the HexBugs already, including HexBug nanos, beetles, spiders, larvae, fish and tarantulas. He also …
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Great Northern Popcorn Lincoln Popper Review
I love popcorn. Always have. Its one of those things from childhood that provides fond memories and an overall sense of happiness to me. My boys also love popcorn. About once a month we do a …
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Asus ZenPad S 8 Review
After using an Nvidia Shield tablet for a year or so, and dealing with a battery recall and then an RMA because it would no longer hold a charge after only 3 months, I decided to try something …
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D-Link DSP-W110 Wi-Fi Smart Plug Review
For the last few months, I’ve had a D-Link DSP-W110 sitting in a drawer. I bought it when it was on sale, and have been meaning to compare it to the
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A Few Thoughts on Tablets
I’ve been through quite a few Android tablets since they first hit the market a few years back. I started with the incredibly well built T-Mobile branded Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. I actually still …
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Who Shall Control My Media? Part 5 - Back Ends and Front Ends
Since the Media Players post, I’ve been working on refining our setup and getting it to the point where I can stop …
Continue ReadingWho Shall Control My Media? Part 4 - Backend Storage
So you’ve got a lot of videos, home movies, pictures, etc., that you want to have access to from all of your devices and get them on your big screen. Sounds simple, right? Its anything but. …
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My first few days with the OnePlus 3
I didn’t really want a new phone but my HTC One M9 was starting to really irritate me. Specifically the battery and power usage. It got to the point where I was having to charge it at least 3 …
Continue ReadingWho Shall Control My Media? Part 3 - Media Players
Media players are a interesting topic. Over the past couple of years, we’ve tried a variety of them. The first one was back in 2007 and was the D-Link MediaLounge DSM-520 that got its media …
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Redmine API and Jetbrains Integration
I just thought I would put this out there in case anyone else had the same problem as I did as there is surprisingly little out there.
I just recently switched back over to using
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Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on Asus ZenBook UX501VW
UPDATE - Dec 1, 2018 - I’ve Finally installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on the Asus ZenBook UX501VW
First off, …
Continue ReadingInstalling Ubuntu 15.10 on the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW, Redux
Update 2016-04-25, this post is obsolete. I now have information on installing Ubuntu 16.04 at
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JetBrains IDEs, Haswell processors, Linux and FUTEX_WAIT
I thought I would put this here in case anyone else has been experiencing the same thing I have been. Start up a JetBrains product, any of them -- PhpStorm, WebStorm, CLion, DataGrip, or any of the …
Continue ReadingPower Supply for ASUS ZenBook UX501VW
After I purchased the new ASUS ZenBook, I went looking for another power supply for it, one to keep plugged in at my desk at the office, and another one for my backpack. One would think that would be …
Continue ReadingWho shall control my media? Part 2 - Infrastructure
The infrastructure I’ve had our media setup on has changed quite a bit over the years, too. When I first started streaming stuff, I was using
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Who shall control my media? Part 1
Over the last couple of years, the entire media landscape has changed. We were quite happy with MythTV, but its pretty limited in its scope, it can only handle TV, …
Continue ReadingInstalling Ubuntu on the ASUS ZenBook Pro UX501VW
Update 2016-04-25, this post is obsolete. I now have information on installing Ubuntu 16.04 at
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TP-LINK HS100 WiFi Smart Plug and Amazon Echo First Impressions
With Jessica not being nearly as mobile any more, we decided it was time to start looking into a little bit of home automation. To start, …
Continue ReadingASUS ZenBook Pro UX501VW Review
After three years of using my trusty Vaio laptop, the time had finally come to replace it. The Vaio has been a great laptop for me, but it was starting to show its age. When I bought the Vaio, its …
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LUKS Encrypted SSD under Ubuntu 14.04
So, after upgrading my laptop a couple weeks ago I found myself with a “spare” 960GB SSD from my old laptop. Since the new laptop uses an M.2 PCIE SSD and has no room for expansion, I …
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Amazon FreeTime Unlimited - Great idea, bad implementation
Its no secret that I like Amazon and their services. There are a lot of things they do much better than their competition, but there are also quite a few things that could use some re-thinking.
Continue ReadingKindle Fire HD Kids Edition Tablet Review
Last fall, Amazon introduced its new Kindle Fire lineup, and we very excited by the new Fire HD Kids Edition Tablet for our soon to be 4 year old, Alex. We ordered it immediately and tucked it away …
Continue ReadingAmazon Fire Stick vs Roku 3
So back in December, Amazon was running a promo for Prime members to purchase the new Fire TV Stick for 50% off, making it just about $21 after tax. I couldn’t pass up that offer. After using …
Continue ReadingSoftware Design Principals - For Users
I’ve been chewing on this since the latest Android update hit Jessica and my phones, and I posted about it here. Basically, software design …
Continue ReadingDear Google, Stop it.
Dear Google,
Stop it.
Stop what, you ask? Stop being so damned arrogant. You’ve forgotten your own motto, “Don’t Be Evil” and you’ve missed sight of what made you the …
Continue ReadingWhy I Just Bought a Nexus 7 2013
I’ve had a Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus for about three and a half years. Its been a great performer for me, and we’ve put it through a lot of abuse. We used it for watching movies, checking …
Continue ReadingOh, Comcast how I wish I could quit you
No, really, I wish I could quit you. Unfortunately, cable service is effectively a monopoly in most places. You’re the only company that can provide half way decent Internet speeds, and the …
Continue ReadingFixing My Parents Network Part 1
A couple months ago, my parents finally replaced their old Sony console TV (a tube TV) with a bright shiny new Samsung 60" Smart TV. Its a thing of beauty. The picture is crisp and sharp and …
Continue ReadingYii2 vs Symfony2 - First Impressions
So a few weeks ago I started in on a ground-up rewrite of an existing project. Its currently using a framework that based around my
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New Gaming Headset
So last week for my birthday, Jessica told me that I had to buy myself a present to open up in front of our oldest son. She wants to stress the importance that all birthdays aren’t about him …
Continue ReadingExisting LUKS Partition and New Primary Boot Drive on Ubuntu 14.04
Yesterday I attempted to upgrade from Ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 on my office system. It failed. Everything appeared to go smoothly, but after rebooting, I got a black screen. No grub menu, no grub failure …
Continue ReadingGoogle Chromecast Review
With this week’s announcement of the Amazon Fire TV, I thought it would be a good time to review our Chromecast. Though I don’t see myself purchasing a Fire TV box, as we already have a Roku, there are quite a few comparisons against the Chromecast and the Roku both, so I thought …
Continue ReadingPhpStorm Simple Speedup
So, I’ve been working with JetBrains PhpStorm for about 6 months or so now. Only recently have I started forcing myself to serious work with it. Part of the reason why I used tabbed terminals …
Continue ReadingCisco/Linksys ATA Exploit?
So I’ve encountered a strange exploit being attempted against the VoIP system I maintain. Its not actually against the softswitch, though, but rather against the end customer’s ATA. We first saw this particular exploit three or four months ago, and its a rather strange, but at the same …
Continue ReadingProtocol Buffers and multiple inheritance
After I posted Google Protocol Buffers Where Have You Been All My Life, I started thinking about the …
Continue ReadingGoogle Protocol Buffers, where have you been all my life?
So two weeks ago I discovered Google’s Protocol Buffers, and I have to ask, where have you been all my life?
The project I was working on requires speed and scalability, both vertically and …
Continue ReadingNew Myth Frontend - Almost Perfect
A few months ago we moved into a new place with a much smaller living room, it didn’t have nearly enough room for a full size computer case in the room. So it was time for a new, much smaller frontend for our MythTV setup.
Size, noise, and being able to “hide” it are the primary …
Continue ReadingPHP Annotations are a Bad Idea
I’ve been writing code in PHP for a long time now, both for my own projects and as a freelancer. I’ve seen well written code and truly horrific code and everything in between. Much of the work I’ve done for my personal projects has been using a framework that I’ve built and …
Continue ReadingMigrating from GFS to GlusterFS
This week I started the process of migrating from GFS to GlusterFS. The hardware running my GFS cluster is older and I decided it was better to replace it than continue maintaining it.
Background Information
Back in 2003 I needed to find a storage solution that was fast, reliable, and …
Continue ReadingLUKS Encrypted Disks under Ubuntu 10.10
This posting is mostly just a reference for myself since I don’t do this often enough for me to have it memorized. These are the steps I use to create LUKS encrypted disks to use as a backup …
Continue ReadingLinux Soft Phone Roundup
I’ve been working heavily with VoIP for the last couple of years, and every few months I find myself looking at SIP soft phones again. I haven’t really used them at all under Linux in a long time because none of them quite fit my needs or are as good as the ones available under Windows. …
Continue ReadingOpen Source and other nuggets
The silence for the last few months has been because my life got crazy. I’ve been spending a lot of time working and what hasn’t been working has been spent in preparation for our new baby. Yes, thats right, baby. In 2006 we were told by a fertility doctor that we would likely never …
Continue ReadingMoving to MythTV Part 2 - The Frontend
So, in the last 3 weeks I’ve done a lot with MythTV. Most notably, I’ve finished the frontend system that is connected to our TV. There was a lot of trial and error, frustration and an entire system replacement, but its now up and near perfect.
So, a week and a half ago Comcast got …
Continue ReadingMoving to MythTV Part 1
Going to preface this by stating this will be a multi-part blog post, and I have no idea how many parts there will be when I’m all finished. Oh, and like most other things I write, it will probably be really verbose. Sorry ‘bout that, its just the way I tend to write.
Continue ReadingRemote Desktop on Xubuntu 9.10
So I was planning to work from home on the Friday after thanksgiving so I wanted to be able to access my work desktop from home just in case. Normally I just ssh and use terminals and such, but for some reason I decided I wanted a full desktop. I use Xubuntu at home and at the office, and there is …
Continue ReadingFedora out, Xubuntu in
The number of minor annoyances in Fedora 11 turned into a major annoyance. Last Saturday I wiped Fedora 11 from my home machine and installed Xubntu, which is the Xfce-centric Ubuntu distribution. I did the same on my office machine on Wednesday.
Overall, I’m quite pleased with Xubuntu and …
Continue ReadingFedora 11 First Impressions
So this week I did something unprecedented for me. I downloaded and installed a new Fedora release the same week it was released officially. After reading a bit about how stable and quick it is for others I decided to take the plunge. I’ve now installed it on three machines (in this order):
Continue ReadingMediaTomb revisited
As I mentioned before, I keep coming back to MediaTomb, playing with it for a few hours and then going back to uShare. Not this time. For the …
Continue ReadingFUPPES Revisited
So after a bit more Googling, I took another look at FUPPES. The “release” (SVN-578) seems quite a bit more stable. The version I was working with is SVN-634, which is the latest from the author’s subversion repository. It still has the mostly the same pros and cons. The stable …
Continue ReadingUPnP Media Servers
After doing quite a bit of research on media players in 2007, I convinced Jessica to get me a D-Link DSM-520 for Christmas that year. Since then, I’ve made most of our DVD collection and all of our music “on-demand”. Well, sort of.
Things still have a long way to go in the whole …
Continue ReadingFirst update of 2009
Well, the last two years have been…..Interesting.
This is just a quick update to give the site a recent post and start to get back into the whole blogging thing again. Things have been extremely hectic for the last two years. Some good things have happened, some bad, but mostly just busy. …
Continue ReadingFedora 9 and KDE4 - I wanted to love them
I’ve been running Linux as my primary desktop since about 1996 (switching from OS/2 when IBM started dropping support for it), and running Linux servers since early 1994 (my first Slackware system was running Linux Kernel 0.99pl15). Over the years I’ve tried many of the various …
Continue ReadingFrivolous Litigation
From Wikipedia on Frivolous litigation there is a great quote from Lawyer Danial B. Evans:
Continue Reading[W]hen a judge calls an argument “ridiculous” or “frivolous,” it is absolutely the worst thing the …
Home Improvement - Nov 4, 2007
Woot! We finished Jessica’s room to the point where we moved her computer into it. We got the floor cleaned up and the baseboards put back on yesterday:
Its somewhat disturbing to note that my wife matches her room. Pink on the …
Continue ReadingPumpkin Carving 2007
So its that time of year again. The air is crisp, the days are much shorter, and the grass in the back yard is covered in leaves from the neighbor’s trees. Tonight shivering street urchins will be knocking at the door in a variety of costumes begging for candy. My candy. Not yours. Can’t …
Continue ReadingHome Improvement - Part 2
We got the first coat of paint on the walls on Sunday and the room immediately transformed, still no appropriate adjectives -- Jessica says that her choices for colors escape description. Of course now she wants a theme song, too. Something that speaks to her personality. The Pinky and the Brain …
Continue ReadingHalloween 2006, Better Late Than Never
After Jessica saw what I had posted today, we had the following IM conversation:
[11:55:49 AM] <Truffle> there’s a gnome in the first set of pics
[11:56:05 AM] <gottafixthat> LOL. Of course there is.
[11:56:12 AM] <Truffle> gack! 
[11:56:18 AM] <gottafixthat>
[11:56:20 …
Home Improvement - Part 1
Since we moved into our house back in early 2003, we’ve slowly but surely been redecorating rooms and fixing the place up. We’ve had a few people live with us in that time, and each time, Jessica has always sacrificed her …
Continue ReadingGothic 3 - First Impressions
After a very long wait, Aspyre has finally released Pirahna Bytes’ Gothic 3 in the states. Jessica and I picked it up last Saturday and have been playing it every evening since then. I would say we’re about 20% of the way through the game at this point, so I thought I would post my first …
Continue ReadingHalloween 2006
Its that time of year again! No, not that time, its Halloween! That of course means pumpkin carving. After last year’s marathon session on October 30th, we decided to get an earlier start this year. Got them on last weekend’s …
Continue ReadingStill in a time warp
That last post about Gothic II, model trains and Al Lowe’s new game I started back in May. It took me almost 5 months to get back to it. Talk about being in a long term time warp.
There have been a lot of things happening at my company, most of which I can’t talk about publicly because …
Continue ReadingGaming time warp
Talk about out of character for me. A few weeks ago at E3, Al Lowe, one of the greatest video game makers of all time announced that he has created a new company called Continue Reading
And there was much rejoycing. Yay!
Study Shows Coffee OK For HeartFrom the article: “Coffee lovers can drink up without fear of increasing their risk of heart disease, …
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MP3 Box Issues
Well, a few days ago Jessica started having problems with it. The box started locking up. Took a bit of effort to get it back online again (since its headless), three or four reboots before everything …
Continue ReadingMP3 Box v0.1
Its been a busy few weeks since my last posting. I spent a couple Sundays working on the web interface and the streaming interface. It still needs quite a bit of work, but it is very usable now. I …
Continue ReadingMP3 Player base distribution update
So, I’ve been working on the MP3 player project quite a bit over the last few weeks. Christmas is a month away, so with the limited time I’ve got to work on it, I’d rather do that …
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Happy Halloween!
So, yesterday afternoon Jessica and I went out to get pumpkins to carve. Its become a bit of a tradition for us over the last several years that we both really enjoy. Since we went out on the day …
Continue ReadingMP3 Player Update
Quick update on the MP3 player project. I spent several hours yesterday looking at cases, embedded systems, and got really, really frustrated. The Home Theater PC (HTPC) is just now starting to catch …
Continue ReadingSimple Set Top MP3 Player
For a couple years now, Jessica has wanted a simple, standalone MP3 player that she could put on her desk or on a shelf, or …
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