Verizon Pre-Paid vs Post Paid ... and the LTE Network Extender

So I live in a rural area, and while the nearest cell tower is only a few miles away, due to all the trees between the tower and me, I usually have 1 bar of service at best.  I literally have to go out to my garage, and lean against my table saw (left side) to get a signal that doesn't drop out.  And since I work out of my home, my cell service is important to me.  That lead me to "femtocells".

So the use of a "femtocell" seemed perfect.  Per Wiki, a femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station, typically designed for use in a home or small business. And the great news about that is that Verizon offers them direct, so there's little to no technical know-how required as their customer support will handle all the setup headaches (assuming there are some).

To be clear, a femtocell, probably designed, offers a seemless transition and interface between your cell carriers network and a VOIP (via your internet connection).  Thus, whether on the road or at home, calls INTO or OUTOF your cellphone occur seamlessly ... nothing you have to do differently. 

So I left the Verizon franchise store and instead went to my Verizon company store, gave them my phone number (like you always have to do at a Verizon store) and bought an LTE Network Extender.

I took the unit home, plugged it in an immediately got no service, and instead started getting pinged to "call Customer Service".  After 3 days of calling, getting transferred, broken promises of "call backs", promises of elevating this up the "tech food chain", and lots of shoulder shrugging, I finally reached a tech who said "you can't use it ... they should not have sold it to you because LTE Network Extenders are only for Post Paid accounts" (those are the accounts with long term contracts, whereas I have a Pre-Pay account which means I pay month by month).

WHY IN THE HELL DID THEY SELL IT TO ME ???

So I take it back to the store where I bought it and spend an hour with various people there teaching THEM that I can't use it ... that they should not have sold it to me ... and watching them spend 40 minutes on the phone trying to figure out how to get my money back.  They eventually sent me home with the promise of a refund, and a month later I saw the refund.

So now I'm left with the original problem, little to no signal and a job that requires stable cell service.  So since I'm an "eBay-Whore", I turned to eBay to search for "Pre-Pay LTE Network Extenders".  I found several listings, but one buy seemed like the clearest ad so I reached out to him.  He understood immediately what my problem was, and he had the answer ... an LTE Extender that works "out of the box".  Bought the unit and as promised, worked out of the box.  Now I have 4 to 5 bars all the time I'm at home.

World of Tanks (WOT) and how to play Artillery (arty)

Each persons selection of tank types - those being light, medium, tank-destroyer (sniper), heavy, and self-propelled guns (artys) - is an individual selection as to what they prefer.  Me, I have enjoyed playing the arty lines because it's slow, its un-appreciated, and it can really save the game IF you know how to play it.  So let me offer some tips from my perspective.

The advantage I get from playing arty is that you can look down from above and see how everyone plays ... what works and what fails.  That perspective will help you with other tank lines.  Yes, watching QuickyBaby on Twitch also helps, but you gotta jump in and try yourself.

So, what works ... for me.

When I'm first getting into position, I look to see if there's a bunch of trees in my area.  Because if there is, if I need to re-position, I don't need the red arty seeing trees falling and knowing where I am.  So as I'm getting into position, often I will knock down most of the trees around me because at the very start, few pay attention to falling trees and you can do that with impunity.  Take Prokhorovka as an example ... from North or South spawn points, on the west side of the RR tracks are lots of trees and I like to park in there ... and move around if I got spotted.  By dropping the trees in my area at the very start, I can move around with impunity during the game as they will never see any "indicators" as to where I moved to.

Now that the shells are less accurate and less deadly, you have to select your targets carefully.  So when someone is in a scrimmage with an enemy, you need to be thinking about both your lead times (cause those shells arc WAY high) but also where the enemy is going to go.  When he starts to receive shots, typically they will hit the REVERSE key, so aim behind.  Also, watch him for awhile if you can ... sometimes they will go FWD/REV/FWD/REV so you will need to shoot to the middle of them.

One advantage of watching the game unfold is that you learn where people always perch / snipe.  So at the very start, I usually put at least one shell (called a blind shot) into one of those areas ... and get about a 33% hit rate.  Even if I don't see it HIT something, I suspect that at least 50% of the time, I cause damage to an enemy.

Another aspect of "watching" is knowing where to point your arty where you know the enemy always advance ... pre-aim or "getting ready".  If you don't get ready, your reticle bloom will delay your shots by 20 or so seconds while the reticle calms down.

Change targets ... hitting someone on one flank, them moving to the middle gets them to all be careful because they really don't know where your aiming, so all of them think "he could be aiming at ME".

Stop being an arty ... when the game is getting down to the final tanks and being an arty isn't of much value (map depending of course), put yourself in an aggressive mode and go and harass the enemy.  A few days ago I had two instances where I did this.  In the first case, I rolled in front of the enemy to distract them ... yes, I died, but my teammate killed them and won the game.  In the second case, I was going up the hill to harass a "red" (because my team mate and a red were trying to "get" each other and both were on low HP).  Well, half way up, my team mate dies, so I stop on the path and pre-aim at the path coming down as I figured they would come down that way (they knew I was there ... intuition).  Anyway, some artys cannot aim straight ahead, so I backed up onto a rock to push my nose down, and waited.  About 10 seconds later, the heavy comes down and I "shot gun" him and win the game.

Another tactic is watching your flanks and seeing which flanks are failing.  Earlier today, I saw that the west flank "good guys" had all died, so I figured the enemy would come that way.  I was able to move east and pre-position my shots to that location.  Sure enough, my arty teammate (who would not follow me) dies as he lights up an enemy ... and I took him out.

Finally, watch the map carefully ... you can, but the other tanks cannot ... they are too occupied trying to not die and kill the "reds".  When I see a flank die, I call it out and hit my HELP key (F7) ... sometimes it get's others attention and they re-position ... but I stress "sometimes", like 10% of the time.  Usually your ignored but it's worth a try.

And remember what Vince Lombardi once said ... "it's not like it's life or death ... it's much more serious than that".

Generator powering house using Conntek 60837-00 14-50P ... diagram

I am not an electrician ... just a hacker ...
NOTHING I say here should be taken as gospel !!

A stand-by auto switching generator (thinking like a Generac unit) is well north of $10K ... doesn't make sense to me, so I bought a portable generator to run the house in the event that we lost power for long.  In years past. losing power was common at my location, but with the build up in our area, it's not so common any more.  And while it's nice that it's un-common, the down side is that portable gas generators needs lots of routine maintenance that I don't want to do any longer (mainly having to drain out the gas).  So instead I bought a dual fuel Pulsar G12KBN generator (solid wheels ... no airing them up) that is rated to 50 amps at 240 VAC, or 12KW surge, 9.5KW continuous ... won't handle the A/C load, but everything else is covered (I use oil for heat, so not a big draw in the winter).  With "dual fuel", I could use it w/ propane for short periods, but be able to switch back to gas if the "grid" is down for an extended time (note ... gas provides more power out, while propane de-rates the output power).

HOW TO CONNECT THE GENERATOR ...
or how I did it ... 
YOU SHOULD NOT DO THIS. 

I didn't want to invest in an auto switch-over circuit for the generator as that's thousands of dollars ... and now that power is so stable, I may never need to switch or at most, maybe once every 24-36 months ... but I want to be ready.  So since I know "house power" and 240 VAC wiring fairly well, I setup a 50 amp "camper outlet" outside on the wall, and I run a MALE TO MALE cable to connect them.  I'm smart enough with house power that I'm careful with how to connect them, but if you don't know what your doing, THIS CAN KILL YOU !!!  The simplified steps you take to connect it are:

1. Shut off house main panel breaker.
2. Shut off camper outlet.
3. Connect male to male cable.
4. Fire up generator.
5. Switch on camper outlet.

To make using the generator a tolerable NOISE experience, I decided that parking the generator right outside the house sucked, so I decided I'd park it far away ... I figured 75' should do (to my detached garage).  A little calculations showed that 75' needs a minimum of 6 gauge, but it was "iffy" so I went with 4 gauge wire (which is rated for 60 amps) for lowest voltage drop.  This resulted in me buying a 75' section of 4/4 cable that is 1" in diameter.  I bought some of the common 90 degree NEMA 14-50P connectors to put on the ends, but the 90 degree connectors makes flexing the 4 gauge cable pretty impossible.  Also, the pins were no where near large enough for the 4 gauge wire.

Someone suggested a straight-in connector, so I bought two of the Conntek 60837-00 for $30 each ... and while not 100% perfect, it's about 99.9% perfect, which is close enough for me.  They are rated at 12,500 watts, so a bit more than the peak of my generator.

There's two little issues in my application with these connectors.  The first is that the cable is 1 inch in diameter, and the "compression ferrule" on the Conntek is also 1 inch, so it's snug, but not too bad. Just makes it tight to screw on the compression stage.

The next thing that's a little iffy is the wire diameter.  Ideally, the .24 inch diameter of MY 4 gauge stranded wire (charts say from .20 to .26, so I mic'd it) should fit into the pins just fine, (using drill bits, I find that the max size that you can fit is .25 or so ... a few pins are a bit larger then that, so I just documented the smallest).

But unless you have tools for cutting big wire like this, using everyday handyman tools means that the strands come apart some and you can't get the wire into the slot without leaving "wire hairs" dangling out.  So I decided to put a lot more thought into it, and get creative ... here's what I did:

I stripped off about 8 inches of the outer jacket, then took off 6" from the individual wires ... thus leaving 1 to 2" of "working room" (note ... 2" is the MAXIMUM).  You need the 6" of bare copper so it stays TIGHTLY together.

The Conntek takes about 5/8" of bare wire into it's connection zone, so I took out a propane torch and soldered each wire so they were solid from 1/4" to 3/4" from the insulation end... this means you need to know how to solder, and it requires you to rotate the cable around and solder 2-4 times ... to expose the whole wire ... this makes sure that solder is all around on each wire ... the final result is shown here:

Then, cut through the soldered area leaving 5/8" of bare wire ... like this (I found a pair of pliers worked well for the 5/8" spacing and to hold the wire cause it get's hot while cutting it):

Assembled:

In case a diagram helps clarify, try this:

Step 1 ... strip off 8" of jacket

Step 2 ... strip off 6 to 7" of insulation to show 6 to 7" of copper wire (depending on if you want 1 or 2" or working room).

Step 3 ... tin the wires from 1/4" out to 1/2" out

Step 4 ... cut the wires off at 5/8" (I used a Dremel cut-off wheel).

Step 5 ... and you are left with this

This makes the ends nice and clean ... there may be burrs on the ends so polishing the ends with sand paper maybe necessary ... once you do that it goes right in.

In case you don't know how to solder, and want to try a different approach, you can probably clip off some strands to make the wire smaller.  The cable I bought says it uses 119 strands in each wire, so I figured that if 119 strands is rated at 60 amps, that's about 1/2 amp/strand, so 50 amps means no less than 100 strands.  So you could probably clip off 9 of the strands and make it fit well.  And 110 strands should be good for 55 amps, so that's a 10% tolerance.  Is this the perfect way?  NO !!!  It's not perfect or MIL-SPEC, but it probably should work just fine. I was about to do that myself when I thought of this soldering approach.

Just a note ... my garage is on a separate line, so it's easy to look over to the garage from the house and if the garage outside lights are ON, then residential power is back.  When that happens ...

1. Switch off the camper outlet
2. Switch off the generator
3. Disconnect and wrap up the cable.
4. Turn the house main panel back on

Review: Vevor

I bought the Vevor Manual Winch Stacker Material Lift 72" Max Height ... left the title as only "Vevor" so that more people might find this review.  I figure most of Vevor parts will fall into this catagory of issues.

Vevor doesn't allow reviews on their web site, so I figure people who buy it need to publish the results.

I bought the unit so that I could easily remove/replace the 70 pound "over range" microwave ... at 70, the body is getting a little weaker, so I figure this would help.  Also, the window AC/Heater in the garage is broke, so I need to take it in for service, and again, a little heavy for me.

First time I ordered, for some reason Fed Ex returned it to the shipper ... no explanation ... but Vevor refunded my money within 1 day.  So I re-ordered and it got to me in about a week.

Note ... 'googled' a bit to find "Vevor coupon" and found lots of places with $10 off coupon codes.

The parts inside the box are heavy, and are not secured ... they just bounced around while in transit.  While each part was wrapped in paper-thin foam and very little paint scratching occurred, it destroyed the parts container inside so all the parts were floating around inside the shipping box ... which had holes in it from the heavy parts hitting the sides, so many many many of the nuts and bolts were lost in transit ... I had to dip into my personal inventory to put it together.  Worst of all was the lack of a manual or parts list ... had to use the pictures to figure out how to put it together (even though the web site says it has a "user guide".

Where's my manual !! ??

And NO, the manual is not on their web site.

I think there was a stamped flat wrench in the box "at one time" to put the wheels on, but it was missing ... and you really really need something like that.  Anyway, once I put the wheels on, most pieces go together using the pictures as a guide.  The two other things to note are:

1) the hand crank mechanism "floats" on the rail ... there is no way to lock it in place ... so I'll probably hammer in a wedge to lock it down.  It is possible there is some sort of locking mechanism that got lost, but no way to tell without a manual of some sort).

2) my case came with an extra "A frame" piece that does not show up in any pictures ... just an extra piece of metal to float about and do more damage.  It's about 18" x 24" and heavy, so it's not like I can overlook where it goes from the pictures.

The plywood base and back-drop are pretty flimsy but easy enough to replace ... if I like it, I might go to my sheet metal shop and get some replacements made with "diamond plate".

I've written them on the parts and manual ... we'll see how they respond.

How Stupid Are California's Recall rules ??

 So Gavin Newsome need to get over 50% of the vote, or he is out.  Well, do the math !!

Let's say 10 million people vote, and Gavin only gets 4.9 million of the votes to stay, and 5.1 million vote for him to be kicked out.  Well,  the rules say that the person that got the most of those 5.1 million votes is the winner.

There are 46 people running, so if 45 of them each got 110,000 votes, that leaves Candidate 46 with 150,000 votes ... and WINS ... so 1.5% of the population gets to decide who is Governor ... how crazy is that ??

Getting a Third Covid Shot ...

I was fully vaccinated seven months ago. I walked into a pharmacy this week and got another Pfizer shot. I didn’t tell the pharmacist it was my third; she didn’t ask ... but I did lie in that I said it was my second, so now I have TWO vaccine cards !!  Since the U.S. has no central database of immunization records, the store had no way to know I’d been vaccinated at the local health department.  I did not provide any ID or Medicare numbers (just checked the boxes that said "no insurance"), so I doubt I'm tracible. 

Justification ... Israel’s Health Ministry recently announced that after five months a double dose of the Pfizer vaccine remains 91% effective at preventing severe disease but only 39% effective against infection. Israelis over 60 who received their last shot at least five months ago are eligible for a third dose. Germany said it will offer third shots to the elderly and sick starting next month, and White House officials told reporters they will soon advise Americans who are over 65 or immunocompromised to get them. I’m 69, so why shouldn’t I get one too?

CNN Health reports that a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine can “strongly” boost protection against the Delta variant – beyond the protection afforded by the standard two doses, new data released by Pfizer on Wednesday suggests.

The data posted online suggest that levels of antibodies that can target the Delta variant grow fivefold in people 18 to 55 who get a third dose of the vaccine.  Among people ages 65 to 85, the Pfizer data suggest that antibody levels that should protect against Delta grow 11-fold more than following a second dose.

The second dose cause a slight fever, 1 day of body aches, and a really sore arm ... but that's it.  The third dose has caused a mild fever, a little bit of tiredness, and a sore upper arm at the injection site ... small price to pay.

Recently, Bloomberg published this chart about how the immune system reacts to the third shot:

So I took the plot and inserted (in RED) 8 months ... so got mine at the 6th's month.  You can see here (in RED) how I think the antibodies did.

Death of Dick Farrel, a longtime conservative radio host from West Palm Beach, Florida ... planetary IQ just shot up.

Let’s be clear here … I’ve had my dual shots of the vaccine, and the “hard NO” vaccine people have made peace with themselves.  Since break-thru Covid cases are very rare (recent UK numbers put the rates down in the 0.1% range) and the death rates even lower, if you’ve had the vaccine, then the morbidity of Covid is approaching that of the flu.  

When Covid first hit, hospitals were swamped and morgues were over-whelmed, we were all scared thinking “I didn’t sign up for this”.  Then, science came thru and gave us the vaccine.

Now, if a MASS Covid event occurs and hospitals and morgues are again swamped, it’s the “hard NO” group and THEY DID SIGN UP FOR THIS. 

So, why should I care?  I don't.  This is Darwin at it’s finest … the dumb will die (like Farrel who try to convince others to NOT take it) and the smart will live.  The immune compromised will hold onto their social distance behavior and wear face masks because they accept the risk Covid possess, and have come to accept the behavior that keeps them alive.  "It’s not a pandemic of ignorance," quipped the Santa Monica Daily Press in an editorial about Los Angeles County's spike in cases and hospitalizations. "This is a surge of straight stupidity."

The smart will live and the dumb will die … seems about right.  I just wish the hospitals would STOP giving the lung transplants to the un-vaccinated who recover ... they don't deserve them.

EMR Telemetry ... the end

Prologue:

Most of the people involved have passed on, and I’m one of the few remaining that was on the inside to witness the decisions.  While this is my opinion, I will try to be as honest as possible.

Introduction:

During my time at EMR, I met many talented and smart people, who shaped my time there to be something I recall with fond memories.  People like Joe Keller, Jud Strock, Art Kelly, Gary Schumacher, Marvin Edgeworth, Bud Thurmond … the list could go on, but these guys helped me extensively and their memory will live with me always.

I landed my dream job at EMR Telemetry (aka; Fairchild-Weston) in 1983 as a Senior Applications Engineer.  The company, located in Sarasota Florida, employed about 1200 people.  In a town as small as Sarasota was back then, the company was a major force there.  

This article will highlight three times where decisions were made which helped destroy the company, with a fourth one at the end for the “final nail”.  Sure, corporate decisions didn’t help, but the lack of success that these decisions caused forced the stakeholders to make decisions which eventually closed the company.

The Company:

At the company were four Strategic Business Units … mine was telemetry (known as EMR Telemetry from its founding name), and the second borrowed ideas and product from EMR and it was called Signal Processing … they did classified projects for the “three letter agencies”.  The third was the “black box” business for commercial airlines, and the fourth was Data Recorders (which then was mostly the old “reel to reel” magnetic analog units).

EMR had provided equipment to all of the space programs up thru the 1980s, and commanded over 80% of the market … so indeed, going to work for EMR was fantastic … we had money … we had prestige … and we commanded the market.

The EMR Product:

Telemetry systems, were for the most part, a huge bank of “front end” signal capturing equipment, connected to a large “main frame” computer with disk farms, and custom software (the software alone often ran to six figures).  As a result, most systems were in the one million dollar range (sure, today, a system that powerful is a Dell PC and a few plug in cards, but back then, we were in the stone ages).

My First Act:

I had established myself there as someone brash enough to “fight the good fight” and “think outside the box”.  I got that reputation, I think, because when I first joined, about 1 year in I was given the task of “Capture Manager” for a major pair of Request for Proposals (RFPs) from a major aerospace company.  The first thing I did was tell the President, Joe Keller, that he was wrong, and that the Request for Proposals (RFPs) should be ignored … the spec was asking for something we could not do.  In the end, we requested an audience with that company, made our pitch, and got awarded a major contract from them.  I was a hero.

Myopia at its best:

A friend from the Data Recorders unit came to me one day and said “we have this huge RFP that involves recording lots of videos … you think outside the box, so how would you architect a solution?” (back then, video was an analog signal about 5 MHz bandwidth).  So I spent a few hours and sketched out a diagram that showed a box converting the analog signal to bits, and using new high capacity disk drives to store the data.  I told him that using his current analog recorders would result in an expensive solution that was based on aging technology, and that my approach was based on new approaches that were started to be embraced by industry.  Note that neither of these products truly existed then, but today, video encoders, decoders, and digital storage are everywhere.  

Anyway, my friend floats this up the chain of command, and shortly thereafter, our CTO comes into my office to explain to me that I clearly don’t understand video signals.  If he had seen the wisdom in my approach, EMR would be “the name” in video encoding and digital recording.  Now, I could have fought for the idea, but it was not my SBU, was not my project, and not my product line … so I just shrugged and got back to my work.

A House Divided:

At one point in time, Signal Processing had been contracted to write “high end” software for their customer that did data visualization and data storage.  While at the same time, the EMR Telemetry side had their own software … so sure enough, the two products were being pushed simultaneously to the same customer sets.  So Marketing, Sales, Engineering, Customer Support, Training, everyone, was trying to figure out which product to invest time and resources into.

Finally, management called everyone together where the two different development teams got to pitch their product so that a winner could be chosen … so we would have one core product, one marketing vision, one product to train, and sales would know which product to support.

At the end, management decided to keep both … support both … invest in both.  The house was now divided.

Money Dried Up:

In the late 1980’s, PCs were coming of age, and some OEMs were trying to develop low cost telemetry systems to compete with EMR.  Their problem was that the customers had lots of money to buy “good” systems, developed by the professionals at EMR, so they didn’t get much traction.

However, in 1991, the Cold War came to an end, and Congress started using the term “the peace dividend” to justify cutting DoD budgets.  The result was that our customers, who had money before, now had little, and they were being forced to buy PC based systems instead of the huge “main frame” systems of before since they had little money, but a continuing mission.

To address this, I assembled a few engineers, borrowed some software, and took some old signal processing hardware, put it together, and showed management how EMR could be the solution for PC-based telemetry systems … allowing our customers to have “the EMR brand for 5% of the cost of a main frame system”.

I can still hear the words … “Tim, I can’t keep 1200 people employed selling $50K telemetry systems”.  At this point, I knew the end was near, and started looking for a place to move to.  And indeed, it came to pass that they could not keep 1200 people employed while offering million dollar systems either.

Final Act:

One of my last programs I led was a new data multiplexer, running what was, at the time, the incredibly high rate of 50 Mbps.  It was successful, and management decided that they wanted to take that product, modify it for the commercial world, and market it to a new customer set.  Well, in Product Management, we call that the “Launch Risk Matrix” … where basically, new product brought to new customers is the highest risk.  

At about this time, I decided to leave the company because after all the other stupid moves, and figuring this was just not going to work (IMHO), I needed to get away.  They offered me the position of lead on that team, but I knew it was the wrong product to the wrong market, so I politely declined.

Indeed, after I left and they demo’d the new product to the new customer for the first time, it caught fire.

Epilogue:

Today, the SBUs are gone, the buildings are gone, and the only ones left in Sarasota are retirees.

Texas boy, 3, dies after accidentally shooting himself in the chest at birthday party

Original Story

Until we learn that guns with ONLY split trigger safeties, like the GLOCK line, these things will continue to happen.  It's why I love Rugers ... they have the split trigger for "dropped discharge" prevention, but also have a lever.

Acesori A-World clock / charger

 The device sorta works ... I love the display ... setting the controls via the instructions is difficult, but not impossible ... and having a CR2032 button battery as the backup is nice.

However, if you use it to charge your phone, via the wireless pad or via the USB port, once your phone reaches 100%, it stops charging.  Thus, if you do like I did one night, I connected my phone while it was at 90%, so in the morning about 8 hours later it was at 67%.  This is because about 1 hour after I plug it in, it reached 100% and turned off the charger function ... and this happens if you use either the WIRED OR WIRELESS charging function.

Manual