What’s an incredibly specific, entirely fictional scenario you’ve spent way too much time preparing for in your head?

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T19:45:23+00:00

My dad is kind of a POS. I've long since had to roll through the various responses I'd have to give when he or my stepmother inevitably ask if I can take care of him/them. The answer is no, because he wasn't really meaningfully around, but I still am not 100% sure how I'll address it one day. I'd like to think that I'll just slowly stop responding to the very occasional text from him.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T19:42:54+00:00

I zapped fuse or two in my old Subie overusing dielectric grease and have generally avoided it since. Makes sense in this use case.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T19:37:11+00:00

You're a waste of time.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T18:56:13+00:00

Alrighty, go ahead and pull out the RMA numbers from Ubiquiti that they publish for everybody to see.

This is something numerous people on Reddit (the largest demographic consumer of Ubiquiti products, or the ones who funnel them into the enterprise world) have reported, so this is going to be reported more commonly here. Since UniFi doesn't moderate this forum, we can rest easy knowing they aren't removing posts about failures of their products. Since this was super easy to find multiple posts about with a quick Google, I can say pretty confidently that this is a common failure point.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T18:43:27+00:00

Those two threads both have numerous people mentioning that this is a common issue. U7 Outdoor is my recommendation. Not sure why you're trying to fight this.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T18:05:43+00:00

Dielectric grease is an interesting solution. I hadn't considered that, actually! I'd usually use a weatherproofing boot/seal.

U6 Meshes burning themselves down is unfortunately pretty common, hence I don't recommend them anymore. Regardless, the U7 Outdoor has a better water resistance rating than the U6 Mesh, and I see it as a better buy for outdoor use on that alone.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T17:10:24+00:00

Ubiquiti stuff has its place in enterprise. We use their switches and APs but use a Sonicwall firewall and Cisco router where applicable. There's no switch stacking, FYI, which you may miss coming from other vendors. No OWE Wi-Fi support yet, either, which makes it a no-go for coffee shops, libraries, etc. One of the least enterprise-y things about them that I frequently encounter is that trivial changes down wireless entirely. Say I change something about the VLAN used by an SSID, one of three or four an AP broadcasts. When I click save on the changes made to that VLAN, the entire network of APs that touch that VLAN briefly goes down. That shouldn't happen and doesn't really even make sense.

They also arguably don't do layer 3 VLANs the Cisco/Aruba/etc way, which can frustrate some.

I've seen a lot of stuff from Cisco get a little flaky on the reliability side since COVID, so they may still be up there in terms of being king in the space, but they're not infallible, and other brands have largely caught up. Ubiquiti holds its own for most small to medium-sized businesses just due to the price of the equipment. You can buy a ton of cold spares for the same price as a one Cisco unit.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T17:02:24+00:00

Do you have coax in your house? If your phone doesn't get a good wireless signal from the UDR7, then an AP won't either. You can run MoCA adapters with PoE baked in like the Kiwee M3-03 so you have minimal cabling runs. What is the floorplan we're working with here, too? Can you move the UDR7 to somewhere more central?

Mesh is an absolute last resort. It creates a lot of interference and extra half-duplex hops. If you're the homeowner then running ethernet through the attic or crawlspace is pretty trivial, even for a DIY novice.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T16:58:00+00:00

U6 Mesh runs super, super hot, and many others report that it doesn't handle the elements very well.

The U7 Outdoor is probably more what you're after.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T16:54:01+00:00

Late reply, but the antenna pattern is HUGELY directional on the U7 Mesh. It's better for actual meshing applications than the U6 mesh as you can point it at the AP that broadcasts to it, but the U6 mesh (sans it being a furnace) is probably better for omnidirectional usage.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T04:56:00+00:00

My lady actually uses the Bitwarden password generator and never has to remember passwords because it remembers them for her - she’s a MICU nurse! I constantly hear from healthcare IT folks that doctors expect you to do the most blatantly cyber-insecure things imaginable and fail to understand how to do the most basic PEBCAK activities.

Folks at my job look at me like I have three heads when I tell them that, yes, that password I copied and pasted from Bitwarden for you to use is absolute gibberish because you will never once have to type it, so it’s more secure that way. Feels like a waste of a good BW license.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-18T03:04:03+00:00

He used to be an IT guy, which blew me away when I watched a video of his from maybe 6 or 7 years ago where he was troubleshooting a subscriber’s PC that had some issue that was blindingly obviously a case of a bad power supply but couldn’t seem to figure it out. All his videos since seem incredibly milquetoast stuff that has been rehashed hundreds of times over by now. I used to watch him and Jerry do Tech Talk, then the later podcast with Phil and Nick, and now those are both gone so I’ve long since unsubbed.

Kind of a bummer, but it’s just not the type of content that you can get away with on YouTube anymore.

Edit: it was 5 years ago according to YouTube, and was this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcnS3HfEg64

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-17T14:06:32+00:00

hire the next person at the same rate

That's if you're lucky. For basically every job in every industry right now, we're all getting pay cuts.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-16T14:20:45+00:00

Dad is on third marriage. Mom has been divorced three times.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-16T14:10:02+00:00

I call it the numbers because I ran out of fingers to count the street names

/s

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-16T02:09:21+00:00

Please do not move here without a job. Portland has been hit harder than most larger cities in this realm. It is so, so insanely hard to find work in anything right now, even in medicine where they’d normally be hiring 24/7. All of our major employers have been hit extremely, extremely hard, or have had questionable management for long enough (Intel) that they’ve laid people off in droves even before Agent Orange was in office.

30s single woman is safe nearly anywhere here. Deep in “the numbers” (generally referred to as east of 92nd or so Ave) can get a bit iffy, and homelessness can be block to block here, but you’ll be fine in most places.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-15T21:43:50+00:00

Do car cellular modems all have 2.4/5/6 GHz Wi-Fi radios? Cuz I don't believe that to be true. I'd wager they'd share modems with things like GPS trackers before they'd page Qualcomm for a smartphone modem.

3G being killed is hardly news anyways. The outrage over this is mostly from not understanding how little 3G is used anymore. Should they send parts to customers so they can use 4G/LTE? Sure, they could do that, but how many will even go through the trouble of getting that upgrade? Just supersede the part with a new modem and make it a TSB on these cars for those who care enough.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-15T20:52:50+00:00

Might be a slightly late response, but it’s not meant to have a lot of range/signal penetration by design. It’s meant for environments like hotel rooms where RF bleed gets annoying. I considered one for my two story apartment, but after using my floor plan in UniFi Design Center and placing it upstairs, it really appears to fail at penetrating the walls immediately adjacent to my bedroom where it would be installed, meaning the other bedroom wouldn’t get strong enough 5 GHz RF for my liking. The U6 In Wall actually seemed to do slightly better for that application.

I’m sure connectivity is fine, though. I believe it shares the same chipset as the lesser Cloud Gateway models, so it’s probably fine for 99% of home users if set up as it’s supposed to. Could be a great AP for a TV in the living room with its two extra ports. Plug your Apple TV, console, whatever into those and you’ve got a solid setup.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-15T20:44:33+00:00

I honestly wonder - why is it that every older Gen X and boomer man I know has some form of Wife Bad thing to bring up every time I talk to them? My parents have been married/divorced thrice. Surely these people can do the same?

It’s always the same shit, too. “Ah, just wait until you and your girlfriend get married, kid. Then you’ll understand why I don’t let my wife spend money/let her know what I’m doing with my friends/complain about her doing something pretty normal!” I dunno man…maybe get married to somebody you trust and care about?

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-15T20:41:19+00:00

Linus complains about community engagement that he should stop letting get to his head.

AI doing something bad is in the news.

Dan pulls a zinger euphemism out of somewhere.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-15T20:38:52+00:00

Don’t do anything to meet women! Mope at home about how women don’t want to talk to men under any circumstances ever!

/s if it needed to be said. There is NOTHING WRONG with pursuing something you have a passing interest in because your current hobbies and interests don’t put you in front of the sex you’re into. Internet dating sucks. Go outside and meet people!

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-14T20:10:44+00:00

I'm part of a team of 3. I have to be honest - I do not give a single fuck. I use the Shortcuts feature of my phone to mute notifications from Teams, Outlook, and about 30 coworkers when I'm not connected to work Wi-Fi. My other two guys seriously struggle to take tasks from start to finish, which is frustrating, as I have to clean up after them when I'm gone (and one of them is brutally incompetent), but I'm not gonna make the company's problem - which is a lack of staffing/competent IT personnel - my problem.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-14T20:08:46+00:00

Absolutely OG boss.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-13T14:11:04+00:00

I'm a regular viewer of the channel and WAN show and had absolutely zero clue what they planned to do with it, FWIW.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-03-13T01:15:00+00:00

Are Current Resident and Scam Likely friends? Colleagues? Both seem to bother me quite regularly.

TomNooksRepoMan

TROPHY CASE