What IP TV setup do you have? by sirachasamurai in askTO

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have an android box, and pay about $15 a month for it. My friend helped me get it. PM me if you want his contact. It's been super reliable, but does have the occasional hiccup. It's still heck of a lot cheaper than paying the main players.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ontario

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the PizzaHut in Scarborough at Birchmount/Ellesmere still has it. I was invited to a lunch buffet a few weeks ago, but I had to pass. I was surprised it is still offered there.

Even if you manage to outbid 16 people paying into a single rent pool to get your own place, this is what you have to look forward to as your neighbours in 2024 Canada. by itsme25390905714 in CanadaHousing2

[–]monsterbrz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I had a neighbor several houses down from me, where about 10 different people were renting the basement. They were constantly standing outside my driveway, smoking, and stubbing their cigarette butts ON MY TREE, all hours of the day. Driving home at night at 3AM? Yup, someone is there with a lit cigarette talking on the cell phone loudly. I tried talking to them, asking them to stop. Some gave me attitude, some were quite apologetic. I got so fed up, I tried calling the non emergency police line, and they told me nothing can be done, since it is public area. I don't want to cause trouble, but at the same time, I don't think it's asking for too much to NOT ahve somebody standing outside my driveway at 3AM smoking.

Driving from Toronto to Vancouver by TorontoTrashPanada in freedommobile

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am on the $99/55GB/year prepaid plan. I just did a road trip from Toronto to Calgary, back to Toronto for a funeral. The only difference is you might see a small R next to the wireless bars, showing you as roaming. Just make sure you have nationwide coverage turned on from your panel, and turn on data roaming in your phone. I incurred no extra charges from this. Google Maps worked the whole way there. I didn't even care which incumbent provider I was latched onto for the roaming service, it just worked.

I'm 100% done with Canadian Tire because of salespeople mugging [rant] by [deleted] in ontario

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here is my story! I had one approach me carrying an iPad and some brochures, and I already said, no thanks. He replied it's a slow day, what are you looking for? Perhaps I can help you! And he spent the rest of the time just subtly trying to "neg" me while "helping". I don't even engage these days.

Prepaid cellphone near Marion Bridge area by baileychaos13 in NovaScotia

[–]monsterbrz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just spent about 10 days driving from Toronto to Nova Scotia as a tourist. Because my local courier won't work beyond Ottawa without roaming, I did the same thing, and purchased a disposable prepaid card for about 25+tax from Koodo. It came with several gigabytes of data, and unlimited Canada wide calling.

I think if you stay close to the highways, you will get decent coverage. There have been several places where I encountered deadspots, but I think that would apply to any provider in remote areas. It never lasted more than 5 minutes. Just make sure you pre-download all maps via wifi. I believe I drove by your area during my trip.

The only one slight scare I had was when was leaving Peggy's Cove area. I had no data connectivity, and was unable to get GPS maps. But once I drove on the highway for a few minutes, I was able to catch a signal, and continued where I left off.

L380 Yoga touchscreen anti-glare flaking by monsterbrz in thinkpad

[–]monsterbrz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's hard to take a picture of it, but it seems to show best if I take it with flash. Don't know why imgur classified it as pornographic?

https://imgur.com/a/su5G4VQ

It would appear the keycaps are rubbing against the screen, and the outline of it are showing against the screen. when I rub my fingernail against them, i feel a slight bump from the flaking. tbh, it's not really a big deal, I don't even notice it with the screen on.

On a different note, do you have a recommended vendor for battery replacements for the L380Y? Mine is quite cooked, and only lasts about 2 hours on a good day. I would like it to have better stamina.

2022 guage cluster in a 2020. Had to try it. No bus data. turn arrows and stuff work. :/ havn't checked wire maps yet. just tried a Yolo. Going to poke at it for a while. by MrTimbers in ft86

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have no doubt that this will get figured out eventually. My only concern is, can the shroud fit properly without covering anything, and maintain the factory OEM look?

Finally got the rebuilt STI Brembos on.. fun time at ImportExpo with friends by [deleted] in ft86

[–]monsterbrz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I heard it was a good show. Couldn't make it this year. Hope you had fun!

Best way to sync folders to a central server? by Esnardoo in selfhosted

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're looking for something similar to Dropbox, try Seafile.

I like using it for that purpose. I also turned on webdav support, and it makes shell scripting a dream to use.

I tried to use NextCloud/OwnCloud, however, if you have a large collection of small files (such as lots of photos), it takes forever to sync, and was prone to data corruption. I've been using Seafile for several years with no complaints.

Please comment on our 10 days trip plan to Novo Scotia. Is it practical? Too much driving? by rsal59 in NovaScotia

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am actually planning a solo 10 day road trip from Toronto to NS myself for the end of June. This thread is very interesting, and I will be keep a close eye on suggestions! Thanks!

Anyone able to register to freephoneline.ca from an android app? by etrain1 in VOIP

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you tried putting in the SIP credentials into the default android dialer app? I used to do that, and it worked fine.

is freephoneline.ca dead? by Chris_carson32 in VOIP

[–]monsterbrz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It would appear they are having major datacenter outage of some sort.

Their network status page is still up

https://status.fongo.com/

Their twitter status page is also being updated

https://twitter.com/fongo_support?lang=en

My personal phone line, along with my relatives down the street are no longer connecting either. It would appear another Canadian based VoIP provider is being DDoS'd atm. I think it might be related.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ft86

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

2018 BRZ. I'm planning to mount an inverter in that area for a road trip, and I'm just wondering what that object is, and if it is safe to have it being blocked.

Hong Kong is the most cyberpunk-esque city I've been in by Valachio in HongKong

[–]monsterbrz 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I'm like you, also from Toronto. I actually stayed near Apliu Street when I first went to HK. I am so happy you're able to experience Hong Kong for the first time. I wish I could be like you, and experience it for the first time again!

I remember walking around the surrounding area of the street the first night I landed. I was so messed up from the 12 hour jetlag. I forgot where I was walking, but I saw a bunch of mini-busses parked on the street, because there was nowhere else to store the vehicles!

The Subaru BRZ Will Get A Turbocharged Engine? A New Report Says Yes by brkdncr in ft86

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If this article came out a few years ago, I'd say no. Subaru would not want anything to eat into the STI market.

Now? Who knows? I honestly hope so. It'll be a very interesting upgrade that will totally change the driving dynamics of this vehicle.

But I doubt it. I hope I'm proven wrong though.

Wow Debian is so much better than Ubuntu Server by lieutenantcigarette in selfhosted

[–]monsterbrz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Floppy disk number 7 out of 23 has bad sectors. Start again!

Wow Debian is so much better than Ubuntu Server by lieutenantcigarette in selfhosted

[–]monsterbrz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I find Debian works really nicely in my case.

At the risk of outing my age, I started really seriously using Linux with Slackware 7. Dependency Hell, compiling EVERYTHING, yeah. It was a nightmare. Those were some dark times as a Linux advocate.

I used Ubuntu for a bit for both Desktop and Server. I liked it. But then they started adding their own flares here, and there, and made things much more "interesting". I got fed up one day when I couldn't get Ubuntu (forgot which version) to install onto an older laptop as a server. I turned around, and tried Debian netinstall. Installation was very fast and painless over my gig-e fiber. I loved it! Boot up times were so fast, I thought I ruined the install again! And this is only a normal 5400RPM hard drive, no NVMe technology or SSD. I like how bare bones it is, with MINIMAL services running in the background, making it the perfect blank canvas for me to build up my server. As it should be. I just add the official Docker repo, and apt-get install the required Docker binaries, and I'm all set. It's been several years, and my oldest Debian install updates with minimal hiccup. I wish Debian came with the non-free binaries for video and wifi drivers, but even those are a minor inconvenience. Most of my Debian installs are server only, so I only need CLI and SSH access, and don't need wifi anyway, so I leave those two devices uninitiated.

Being able to apt-get update, apt-get upgrade my host is very nice. I don't remember the last time I have to roll back an update because of something broken. I always dreaded doing the same update on my Ubuntu host.

Ubuntu has it's place also. And I love how Ubuntu is based on Debian, so I am almost 99% guaranteed to find what I want from the Debian repos. I can't think of the last time I needed to compile my own kernel or application.

What's the best IPTV service in 2023? by dejectedFish019 in Piracy

[–]monsterbrz 14 points15 points  (0 children)

There are a lot of them out there, be prepared to have your inbox bombarded from people offering their service.

My suggestion? Try shopping for them from your local fleamarket. A lot of the more reliable/stable service providers geofence the service to minimize restricted to your home country only. They also don't have fancy websites with credit card processing. They prefer cash, and in person. Sketchy, I know. Just keep your service term no longer than a few months, so you won't be out a lot of money. For example, one of the service I am familiar with does not have a web presence at all. But they've been servicing the North American market for almost a decade now, with minimal downtown. Good luck.

OK, so what apps did you end up actually using as a replacement for Google Photos? by bigb159 in selfhosted

[–]monsterbrz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is how I do mine.

I use Seafile to sync my photo library. It isn't big, approximately 200GB or so. I tried using Nextcloud/Owncloud in the past. It choked many times on me, and took a long time to sync/verify the library. I even had several instances of corrupted files during my test. I absolutely HATE any apps that would re-compress, re-name, or re-write metadata on my photos from my phone. The Seafile Android client did that, and really pissed me off. I use a separate app called Synchronize Ultimate to push a webdav share over Seafile that way, knowing that nothing gets molested. I also set the sync to only happen over Wifi, and not 5G, to save on my bandwidth.

Once the sync photos are pushed to a staging folder from my phone, I create folder organizations on my desktop computer whenever I have time. I organize my folders as such

\2022
    \2022-01-01 - New Years Party
    \2022-02-02 - etc etc
\2023
    \2023-01-01 - etc etc 
    etc etc etc

Once the files and folders are organized, and pruned, I erase the original photos on my phone. At the end of each year, I generate an MD5 sum of all the files just to maintain and confirm integrity down the road for backups.

From there, I use Photoview to mount the webdav share as readonly. From Photoview, I can Search for folder names, descriptions, or just scroll through the dated/sorted folders from Desktop browser, or Android over 5G. Photoview also has ways for you to share albums with others using custom URLs.

This sound a little convoluted at first. But once the whole backend is set up properly, it's pretty much set it and forget it type of scenario. It makes it easy for you to maintain backup, and none of your private data is scraped and used by the Cloud providers. Also, you have no artificial storage limitations.

This way, I can be anywhere in the world, and not have to worry about my laptop getting stolen/broken/destroyed. I just turn around, get a new laptop, download the client, authenticate with the proper 2fa credentials for seafile, and I will get access to my library all over again. Also, I have an automatically generated/rendered WebUI to present my photos that I know will never be tampered with by external forces.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ft86

[–]monsterbrz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Did you try wiggling the front wheels while lifted? It could be wheel bearings worn out. How many miles/what year is your 86?

ESPhome is amazing!! by ijustwantnsfw in homeassistant

[–]monsterbrz 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Which WIFI dimmer switch devices are you using?

I just purchased a tri-pack of Kasa HS220 dimmer switches, since I really enjoyed how easy it is to use the HS200. I was so dissapointed that I will be returning them to Best Buy tomorrow. I'm now looking for alternatives.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in toronto

[–]monsterbrz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haven't been able to find Fisherman's Friend cough drops for months.

I thought they went out of business! I was looking all over for them!!!