9 July

Using your Mac with your iPhone hotspot? Be sure to turn on low data mode!

In the summer, I like to take my MacBook Pro with me and work outdoors. Doing that is entirely dependent upon my T-Mobile hotspot on my iPhone. I had my account maxed out at 16 GB of hotspot data per month, so imagine my surprise today when — one day into a new cycle — I got a notification text that my data had been used up!

I’m still not sure what exactly my Mac was doing, presumably some kind of background iCloud Drive backup, but I managed to use up an entire month’s allotment of bandwidth in extremely short order. I worked with T-Mobile support to get my account bumped up to the absolute maximum 20 GB, but there’s no certain explanation of what it was that used all of that data.

But along the way I discovered the Mac does let you configure “low data mode” specific to each network you connect to. If you find yourself needing to use a hotspot regularly, I would strongly recommend turning on low data mode for that network. To do that with the new Ventura System Settings app, go to WiFi, then under Known Networks click the … icon for your hotspot, and chose Network Settings…

Now here’s where it gets interesting. I turned on the Low data mode toggle about five times and it kept, after a couple of seconds, shutting itself back off. Finally it “stuck.” Now we’ll see over the coming days if it actually makes a difference!

Selling the Music Man!

Say it ain’t so! Well, it’s so. I have my Music Man StingRay 5 bass up for auction on eBay.

I love that bass, but I just can’t justify having a $1400 bass that sits in its case 99% of the time. Especially when I can sell it and use the money to buy both a bass and a guitar from Fender’s Mexican factory. And have almost half the money left over.

Say what you will about Ed Roman, but he had it right when he was talking about the likes of Fender and Gibson. (I think he was ripping more on Gibson, because of their obscenely high prices for U.S.-made guitars, but the message applies to Fender too.) Fender has 3 basic lines of products: their low-end beginner instruments made in China under the Squier brand, their “standard” line of Fender guitars made in Mexico, and the high-end stuff made in California. But the fact is, while there’s a huge chasm in quality between the Chinese Squiers and the Mexican Fenders, at about double the retail price, there’s very little difference between the very nice Mexican Fenders and the vastly overpriced American Fenders.

This was reinforced for me last weekend when I played my father-in-law’s Mexican-made Precision Bass. He bought it to play for the contemporary services at his church, based on my recommendation. I figured it would be a decent, reliable instrument, and it would only set him back 400 bucks. I had owned a Mexican-made Fender Jazz back in high school, and it was great until I decided to take it apart and muck around with it, and even after that it was still pretty decent. But I think the Mexican factory has made great strides; if I didn’t know better, I’d never guess that P-Bass wasn’t a U.S. model.

So it is, in a week or less the Music Man will be on its way to a new home, and I’ll be applying that cash towards…

Fender Standard Jazz Bass V

…and…

Fender Standard Stratocaster

…and while I’m at it, this, to (finally!) rip all of my LPs…

USB turntable

Geek Sonnet No. 1

‘Tis true, once I had learn’d of dual screens,
My first thought was Nintendo had gone mad.
But as the months went by, the people saw
The wonders of this little handheld game;
And, by and by, the Sony PSP
Did not catch on as well as Sony’d hoped.

T’was the DS that gain’d more market share.
Meanwhile I kept my distance from them both;
For me the GBA SP was fine,
Although I must admit its screen was dim.
I knew its days were coming to an end,
And so it was that I schlep’d to Best Buy.

And now the DS rarely leaves my hand,
but when it does I long to play again.

I’m “The Dude”

I had a real life Big Lebowski moment today.

I was driving the kids to Como Zoo. We had just pulled into the right-turn lane from Snelling onto Midway, when some (pardon) asshole in a car next to us threw a lit cigarette butt through my window. It hit me right in the head!

I had to pull over quickly and locate the butt, since it was still smoldering. It had fallen down into the plastic well on the floor between my door and seat. There were unburned shreds of tobacco on my shirt and shorts, and the car still smelled of cigarette smoke when we returned from the zoo two hours later!

The fury I was feeling at that moment was quickly offset by my overwhelming sense of pride over the astounding parallel parking job I did when we got to the park. As usual on summer weekends, especially when the weather is nearly ideal, as it was today, parking spaces were scarce in Como Park. I managed to locate a very tight space, most certainly available simply because no one was brave enough to attempt to sqeeze in.

Now I am no great parallel parker. In fact, when I took my driving test at age 16 I got perfect scores on everything except the parallel park and hill park, both of which I failed completely (that is, zero points). Luckily it all came out in the wash and I still got my license without having to retake the test. Here we are 16 years later, and even now I get nervous when the need arises to parallel park. Fortunately, several years of living and driving in large cities have forced me to improve my skills… somewhat.

I went for it. And I made it. Sure I bumped the truck behind me a few times, but that’s what bumpers are for! In the end I was nestled tightly with about 4 inches of space on either side. I had to climb across my hood to get over to the passenger side of the car, before I realized that next time it would be easier to just go around the truck parked behind me.

I was so impressed with myself, I had to take a picture.

Parallel parking gets pwned!

Fortunately, by the time we left, both vehicles surrounding us were already gone, and their replacements gave us plenty of maneuvering room.

Addendum (July 10, 2006) — I’ve been thinking about this more, and I believe I have my Big Lebowski reference wrong in a number of key ways. First off, I knew from the beginning that a few points were different: I wasn’t holding a roach clip in one hand and a beer in the other, and I didn’t crash my car while trying to retrieve the flaming butt from my crotch. (Boy, that sounds worse than it is.) But now that I think about it, I don’t recall whether the aforementioned “flaming butt” was thrown in his window by a passing vehicle, or whether it was his own, and he was just a poor shot. I’ll have to watch the DVD again to refresh my memory.