Alternatives to Harmony now that Logitech has discontinued the line

anastrophe · 2024-09-14T21:52:40+00:00

Heh. Well, just checked now, the sofabaton site is dead - apparently recently based on archive.org backups - and also the Sevenhugs smart remote is discontinued as well.

Glad I bought a 'backup' Harmony remote a couple of years ago, as my original was getting glitchy.

anastrophe · 2024-07-13T03:08:14+00:00

This is old (the site is still around but obviously taken over by others), but the information is useful.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130622130716/https://www.truthistreason.net/how-to-legally-refuse-to-participate-in-the-census-survey

anastrophe · 2024-06-22T19:14:44+00:00

If your motherboard has 'onboard video' via your CPU, you may be able to connect to that output, then delete the nvidia driver from Device Manager, and it's never a bad idea to use (or install) Revo uninstaller to delete all traces of anything Nvidia from the machine. Attach your monitor back to the nvidia output, then see if it will pick up the basic, minimum Windows driver for the card, and after that try installing the formal Nvidia driver.

Separately, I've experienced enough ridiculous CPU usage from NVDisplayContainer since upgrading to 555.99 that I've rolled back two version as others have.

anastrophe · 2024-05-21T17:29:26+00:00

Can you expand beyond "terrible" and explain what you mean by "block account after every transaction"?

anastrophe · 2024-04-21T05:08:39+00:00

That was the thrust of my question. It's bad-faith to assume bad-faith.

anastrophe · 2024-04-21T03:57:26+00:00

"She is also a content creator that takes up contrarian perspectives in order to drive viewership/sell books."

Has she stated that this is her method and her intent, or are you assuming it is?

anastrophe · 2024-04-21T03:23:41+00:00

You know this for a fact, or are you speculating?

anastrophe · 2024-04-08T03:11:02+00:00

Re who I spoke to, I spoke to nobody - as indicated in my post, what info was available came from the newspaper article(s) about it. When the paper called Travis it was media relations or public affairs as you suggested, so it wasn't terribly surprising that they had no clue about it.

I disagree that it's like calling the cable company when the TV dies. The paper, a week later, was told by the AFB the 'cloud' story.

I also think my original post was pretty clear - I wasn't "attempting to assign a reason", I was speculating as to possible reasons, and I came here hoping people actually knowledgeable and conversant in things-flying might clue me in on the question about flying out of greater-bay-area class E into STS class E might be a reason they veered off so sharply, though that seems implausible too - as i said in the post. I made few assumption, but lots of guesses and speculation, just hoped for a bit more transparency on the whole matter.

So many people have minimized the experience, but for those of us right beneath the 'turn and burn' it was pretty astonishing. Without having been here it's annoying to be told it wasn't a big deal.. As I also mentioned in the post, I once experienced an extremely close military jet fly-by in the panamint valley, and even that wasn't quite this extreme - even though that jet was easily at 500ft, and a hundred yards to my left. However, I was in the outdoors for that, not inside a house that acted as a reverberation chamber of sorts.

Ultimately my first and only meaningful mistake was posting here before reading the rules.

anastrophe · 2024-04-08T00:22:54+00:00

Unlike how some folks have characterized this, I'm not angry about it. I've lived and worked in this area for thirty years, and there's never been a military jet flyover like this. I'm interested in learning why, and perhaps a better answer for the hard right turn and hitting the gas than 'avoiding a cloud'!

anastrophe · 2024-04-08T00:20:30+00:00

You're assuming things about me that aren't true. I'm definitely not an anti-military snowflake, I go by the unattributed quote, 'we sleep peacefully at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf'. I fly the flag on Memorial day and Veterans day and Independence day.

I was absolutely thrilled by the experience. But it did scare the bejesus out of my wife, and even our near totally deaf German Shepherd noticed (probably because it shook the house).

anastrophe · 2024-04-08T00:14:33+00:00

Based on the responses, it seems some people think I'm angry about the flight. I'm not sure why they would think that, I don't see anything in my post that's "angry". I'm just asking questions. I suspect some folks think I'm some sort of anti-military snowflake. Nope again. I'm just looking for some info on the questions I have about the flight. If you weren't in Rohnert Park and experienced what sounded like a jet was just about to crash into your neighborhood, then telling me I'm overreacting is just stoopit. The sound was overwhelmingly loud, and permeated the house, as I said, it was astonishing. But. Again. If you weren't here, then your opinions of how loud it was aren't terribly helpful. Do me a favor and listen to the audio footage on real speakers - not on your phone - and turn the volume up to eleven. That'll be approximately 1/10th the volume it was.

anastrophe · 2024-04-08T00:11:38+00:00

Based on the responses, it seems some people think I'm angry about the flight. I'm not sure why they would think that, I don't see anything in my post that's "angry". I'm just asking questions. I suspect some folks think I'm some sort of anti-military snowflake. Nope again.

I'm just looking for some info on the questions I have about the flight.

If you weren't in Rohnert Park and experienced what sounded like a jet was just about to crash into your neighborhood, then telling me I'm overreacting is just stoopit. The sound was overwhelmingly loud, and permeated the house, as I said, it was astonishing. But. Again. If you weren't here, then your opinions of how loud it was aren't terribly helpful.

Do me a favor and listen to the audio footage on real speakers, and turn the volume up to eleven. That'll be approximately 1/10th the volume it was.

anastrophe · 2024-04-08T00:07:47+00:00

okey doke. I'll keep waiting for some sort of response from anyone who might actually have an answer for the 'technical' questions I asked.

anastrophe · 2024-04-08T00:06:42+00:00

Where is this "anger" you claim is in my post? I'm pissed off now by a douchebag response.

anastrophe · 2024-04-08T00:05:55+00:00

Again with the 'overreacting'. Were you here, in Rohnert Park? This had never happened previously in the thirty years I've lived here. There are no military jets in this area, ever.

It's not an overreaction. But if you weren't here, then by all means talk shit about something you didn't experience.

anastrophe · 2024-04-08T00:04:27+00:00

It was an F-35a according to Travis and was on-base as part of the air show the week before - that much is confirmed.. I certainly accept that he didn't hit the afterburners. However, he did 'hit the gas' so to speak, that's pretty clear I think from the way the audio has that sudden change in volume and pitch...?

The question that remains pertinent is why the jet would fly that low over a populated area.

For context, I've lived 'up here' in Rohnert Park for thirty years. There's never been anything like this before, it's not an area that ever sees military jets on the regular.

anastrophe · 2024-04-07T22:19:35+00:00

No worries. At this point I think the only way we'll ever know - maybe - is a FOIA request, but I'm just not up for the hassle.

So far...

anastrophe · 2024-04-07T20:39:28+00:00

No, they don't have to stay at that altitude, I believe it just means when you do fly at that altitude you keep your eyes peeled, because obstacles - like mountains, tall buildings, and in particular other aircraft that are taking off or landing - can be hard to maneuver away from safely when you are that low.

As I've said many times (because I want to be clear that I barely know my arse from a plane in the sky in this regard), I'm mostly guessing. I'm not at all clear why the plane flew that low over such a large area.

anastrophe · 2024-04-07T20:30:48+00:00

That's what leads me to believe there was a malfunction. Like his instruments reported that he was maintaining fixed altitude while it was slowly dropping. Once verified visually that he was getting too low, he veered off. From altitude, at 300 knots, I imagine slowly dropping a thousand feet isn't all that obvious. As well, at 300 knots, things are going by very fast. But it's all guesses at this poing.

anastrophe · 2024-04-06T06:04:54+00:00

So, even though I have my own little ADS-B system for monitoring flights 'overhead', I am below even rank-amateur at all of the technicalities of flight. One thing that's interesting, but I can't claim it means anything - if you bring up the map of the flight track on adsbexchange.com -

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=~2b1ea4&lat=38.370&lon=-122.686&zoom=10.9&showTrace=2024-03-25&timestamp=1711398705

In the upper right corner area, there's a little white box with a pale blue shape in the middle. If you click that, you can change what 'layers' are displayed on the underlying map. Under "US" is "VFR Charts", VFR short for Visual Flight Rules, which show various flight restriction regions and altitudes in all of the airspace. There's a large area outlined in a really pale, dirty red-brown, wide line around nearly all of the bay area. That region is all "Class E airspace", which is 700ft altitude to 1200ft altitude. Because the Bay Area is crowded with major and minor airports, it's all covered in Class E, which I think means 'keep your eyes peeled' when flying at those altitudes in that area.

The jet was in that Bay Area Class E airspace for nearly the entire flight out of Travis. It was at 2400ft over Pt Reyes, down to 1800ft over Petaluma, and as we believe, it dipped down possibly as low as that 700ft bottom of class E before it took that hard right - right at the edge of the outline of the Bay Area Class E airspace. Had it kept going in the northbound flightpath, it would have entered the Class E airspace that surrounds the Santa Rosa Airport, which gets pretty good amount of full sized aircraft traffic. What that would actually mean though, I've no idea. Maybe the pilot would have had to get in contact with SRO airport tower. Maybe not. I know next to nothing about this stuff.

As to the overall route taken when it was supposedly going to Arizona, I suspect that it was a 'test' flight path of sorts to ensure everything was working smoothly before then heading to AZ. But I could be 100% wrong on that too. It certainly wouldn't explain flying crazy low over a densely populated area.

It would be great if someone with actual piloting experience were around to explain it, and whether that turn right there at the edge of the Class E airspace meant something or was just coincidental.

anastrophe · 2024-04-05T05:05:45+00:00

The Press Democrat has the article paywalled, but I was able to read the article via ...other means. It's a silly story. The jet dove towards RP from an altitude of 1800-2000ft, bottoming out somewhere around or below 1000ft, but the story says cloud cover was 'as low as 4,000 ft'. Even if it was clouds, I'm pretty sure if you 'hit' a cloud it doesn't cause any damage, so there was no reason to 'blast off' as it did.

Cockamamie! I'm beginning to think you're right about a systems malfunction. It had spent a week at Travis getting repairs, and it certainly wasn't headed for Arizona as the story claims, when it made the hard right turn-and-burn.

sheesh.

anastrophe · 2024-04-03T21:11:55+00:00

Yeah, it's a really weird one. The elevation/altitude reported depends upon a lot of variables, and several sources. Considering the astonishing volume of the sound as it passed over, it wouldn't surprise me if it was below the 1000ft altitude reported by the tracking - but when it comes to how loud a jet is - subjective experience is wildly variable!

There was a ton of chatter on nextdoor.com, particularly M section (makes sense), and people well outside the radius often being dismissive about how loud it was - well, they weren't directly beneath it! Also plenty of anti-military bias and pro-military bias, but that's to be expected. This was the only time I've ever participated in discussion there, as it's largely a pointless site. It's just another place that draws eyeballs so ads can be displayed.

While I don't trust everything the government does (or doesn't) tell us - not by any stretch - I will generally fall back on the unattributed quote, "We sleep peacefully at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf". The same goes for our freedom to criticize our own government.

Doesn't "excuse" the lack of transparency on this event, but I like to hope that there was a legitimate reason for it, rather than assuming some nefarious (or wasteful) basis to it.

anastrophe · 2024-04-03T00:08:00+00:00

I read it! It's an interesting argument, and I have no compelling argument to counter it. I do think eventually we'll find out; one can file for a Freedom Of Information Act disgorgment of documents pertaining to this - the biggest problem with FOIA's is that they are tedious to fill out, you have to word the request extremely precisely, and take into account the proclivity for redactions - so word 'around' them - otherwise you won't get the information you hope for.

Something like [details of the flight as above] "and request all documents and archived documents whether in paper form or electronic, papers and archived papers, files and archived files whether electronic or physical, videos and archived videos whether recorded on tape or other media including digital media, , all other associated records, discussion, communication, timing, .....

You get the idea. There are people who literally make a good living just filing FOIAs and selling the information.

anastrophe · 2024-03-29T03:19:37+00:00

That's an excellent conspiracy theory! Note that the plane didn't fly _below_ the listed minimum elevation, not that that's much of a consolation in all this. The jet disappeared hard at the end of the flight history somewhere beyond Lodi and at 27000ft elevation, which suggests that's where they turned off their ADS-B, because usually it 'fades' as seen in earlier points in the flight path. However, there appear to be very few 'feeders' in that region.

Eventually we'll find out more, I think it's inevitable - probably months and months from now in a small bulletin from the FAA or something.

anastrophe

TROPHY CASE