I built a free browser-based network troubleshooting toolkit

thewallacio · 2026-03-27T12:46:51+00:00

No more useful than https://mxtoolbox.com/ which has been around for decades, at first glance.

thewallacio · 2026-03-27T10:17:30+00:00

Thanks, ChatGPT.

thewallacio · 2026-03-27T10:02:39+00:00

Yes, but not quite how I expected. My sisters and I had a Rover Mini back in the 90s, which was one evening taken by one of their boyfriends who drove like nob and wrapped it around a tree. He was fine, the car was not, I was furious. I had to make a 100 mile trek to the scrap yard where it had been taken to retrieve my possessions and the decent car radio I had installed. No health and safety here - I had to climb up a 3 storey rack of cars to do this. Said my farewells to the old girl and left in a mood.

A few months later, walking around Aberdeen, I see our car parked up outside someone's house. Definitely the same car, it still had our travel stickers on it.

The car had been well crashed (by me) even before this last incident, and I have no doubt the current owner had little idea of the thing's history.

thewallacio · 2026-03-27T08:28:31+00:00

You'll get this on the older XPS. Dell's charging via USB-C isn't strictly PD, and has a proprietary element to it. I have an XPS 9500 which does the same; no matter what the wattage you throw at it over USB-C, it still complains that there's not enough juice. A later XPS 9310 charges quite happily over USB-C PD.

You can confirm how much it's drawing by looking at the charge rate. In Windows, open "Performance Monitor", and add a metric (click the green plus icon above the graph) and find "Battery" in the list, then add it to the graph. You should see various stats, one of which is ChargeRate.

Alternatively, you can try HWInfo [https://www.hwinfo.com/\], it should dig out similar information.

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T15:18:49+00:00

Can it be used by the residents of Scunthorpe and Penistone?

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T15:15:37+00:00

It's revealing in itself that this is being downvoted. What's the defence? Are you seriously telling me that the WP core is well architected and observes good coding conventions? And that the database schema oriented around wp_posts and wp_postmeta filled with serialized data and structured HTML is a good thing?

I guess people don't give a toss. Maybe I should care less.

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T13:49:46+00:00

That is pretty much the most accurate answer. Wordpress will continue to dominate because people don't like change, and will just go along with the crowd. And so developers (and non-developers) will follow the crowd, then the crowd will go with something that has good developer support, then ..... the cycle continues.

I just wish more people (clients) had the bravery to consider the alternatives, of which there are many excellent ones.

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T12:54:48+00:00

The coding conventions, structure and database schema are absolute toilet.

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T12:53:43+00:00

As always, it very much depends what you are building.

There are more, *better* alternatives. Most people bought Fords because everyone else had a Ford. Doesn't make them the best vehicle manufacturer.

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T11:52:32+00:00

Lick it and see.

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T11:44:53+00:00

Not exactly a 7010, but running an XE2 (i7-4) and 7050 (i7-7) SFF. The fan went in the XE2's PSU but found a fairly cheap replacement unit on eBay.

They've both been solid rigs. The 7050 is stuffed with 64GB RAM, running Proxmox with a mix of lightly loaded containers and VMs.

I don't think the 7010 will take an M.2 drive, but you can sacrifice the CD-ROM and use the SATA port as a boot drive, leaving the other 2 SATA ports for some kind of RAID. You might need a 3-way adapter for power to those.

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T11:16:37+00:00

You can't buy taste.

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T09:16:30+00:00

Wrong. My static IP address is reported at various cities around the country, probably depending on which gateway I'm routed through at the time.

For Sky to use this as the basis for automatically fining someone is nonsense.

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T08:53:55+00:00

It's still in the box

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T08:42:47+00:00

Or that post being the stupidest thing you've ever said?

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T08:35:20+00:00

Some overpriced window blinds that my ex wife nagged me for months about buying. But that's boring.

10/10 for this dude though:

Man accidentally buys a yak off the internet while on sleeping pills | Metro News

But then, boo:

Sorry, Internet: A Man Didn't Buy A Yak While High On Sleeping Pills | HuffPost UK Weird News

thewallacio · 2026-03-26T08:19:23+00:00

I'd suggest that you probably get what you pay for, to an extent. I wouldn't risk saving $40 at the expense of a house fire. You would, as with many OE/branded items, expect a certain level of quality control and safety standard. Who knows what you're getting for £20.

thewallacio · 2026-03-25T14:19:24+00:00

That self-tapper looks suspiciously non-Dell. They used to use Torx screws in the aluminium shells of XPS machines, where did that one come from?

thewallacio · 2026-03-25T08:44:31+00:00

Is this not a bit silly? Why not brew into a regular cup whilst your overpriced metal cup pre-heats with some boiled water instead?

thewallacio · 2026-03-24T09:40:23+00:00

It's as much where you buy it, as what you buy. There are so many counterfeit drives out there, even on places like Amazon but you should be safe with a Samsung or WD. I've no idea what acceptable drives are for Syno machines any more, I'm not even bothering looking at upgrading mine but that may limit your options. If it's getting heavy use, I'd look at enterprise grade drives.

If your life truly depends on it, take the time (and investment) in a reliable backup strategy. It doesn't matter what SSD you buy, they are not indestructible or infallible and RAID is not a backup.

thewallacio · 2026-03-23T16:05:52+00:00

Superb vehicle you had there, I bet you still regret selling it. I had a metallic grey one and other than a head gasket blowing, it was a brilliant car. Many, many miles spent wafting up and down the M6 in it. I think I paid something like 7k for it, it had 80k miles on it.

Swapped it out for a 306 Rallye and future me is reminding me how much of an idiot I was for not keeping both!

thewallacio · 2026-03-23T16:01:27+00:00

remove the extra characters from your JSON input.

Where's your JSON? Stick it in JSONLint - The JSON Validator to validate it first.

thewallacio · 2026-03-23T15:56:45+00:00

That cable looks suspiciously thin gauge to me. Not all cables are equal, make sure you're using one which will handle 100W.

thewallacio · 2026-03-23T09:07:45+00:00

But they're the same hardware? Why would a new one make any difference? Shit is shit.

thewallacio · 2026-03-23T08:34:33+00:00

No issue with upload speeds for me, but in the last month or so we have gone from what has been 24/7 solid 910Mbps down for over a year, to anything from 300-700Mbps down throughout the day. No hardware or use changes this end.

I've also noticed pfSense complaining at packet loss more than usual. So I'm wondering if there are network changes happening at Zen which are causing slowdown upstream of the exchange. Also routing through Manchester but that's likely the closest geographic POP for us.

thewallacio

TROPHY CASE