The guaranteed way to get the right car directions every time
This is something I learned many moons ago, and it always works.
The way I use GPS navigation is with a Garmin DriveSmart 66. However, even if I weren't using a Garmin and instead used Google Maps, Waze or something else, what I'm about to describe would still be the way I'd get to places.
The problem
I enter in an address for a place, and every now and then the destination given to me is slightly inaccurate. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but it is when approaching the destination.
Any one or more of the following can happen:
- I'm not told if the building is on the left or right side of the street or road.
- If the place is in a large parking lot (mall, shopping center, etc.), I'm not told where in this gigantic lot full of buildings where the building I want actually is.
- I'm successfully directed to exactly where the building is, but there's no parking. A parking lot is somewhere nearby but I've no idea where it is.
- If the destination is a professional building (such as for a dentist, specialist, etc.), I'll be directed to the building, but there is no parking on the street. There is parking in the rear behind the building, but that's for employees only, and I don't know where the customer parking area is at all.
There's more, but you get the idea.
The solution
Use GPS coordinates acquired from Google Maps satellite view.
About 15 years ago in the late 2000s well before before anybody had smartphones, I figured out quickly that the only way to get exactly where I wanted to go was from using GPS coordinates. When you use coordinates, it's an absolute. Direct coordinates input will take you precisely to a destination with a variation of only +/- 10 feet or so. It's that accurate.
On the desktop using Windows using your web browser of choice, enable satellite view in Google Maps from the bottom left "Layers" button, find the location you want to navigate to on the map, right click and the coordinates are shown. The image above (the entrance to a parking garage in Austin TX) is an example of that.
On mobile, it's slightly different. I load google.com/maps in the mobile browser, swipe up the bottom menu, touch "Satellite" to enable satellite view, find the place on the map I want to navigate to, zoom in super tight (if I don't, Google Maps will keep trying to give me the nearest address), touch and hold, and then I get the coordinates.
I can use the coordinates on whatever mapping system I have. Garmin GPS navigator, Google Maps itself, Waze or whatever.
The only thing you have to remember is what positive and negative numbers mean.
For the first number (latitude), positive is north and negative is south. For the second number (longitude), positive is east and negative is west. The only time you have to remember this is when punching in the location to a Garmin GPS.
Using the above example, on a Garmin it would be input as N 30.265385 W 97.737160. Easy enough.
It's literally the last mile where most navigation problems happen
More often than not, the most stress I have whenever going anywhere unfamiliar is when arriving at the destination. The last 5 minutes is where all the anxiety builds up, but I outright avoid a ton of that anxiety just by using coordinates instead of street addresses.
I'm good enough at choosing coordinates now to where I'm usually successful at avoiding all the stuff that stresses me out at the last mile.
The only time this method doesn't work is if the Google Maps satellite image for the destination hasn't been updated in a while. Am I screwed at that point? Nope. That's when I go to Bing Maps, because sometimes their satellite views are more up-to-date.
One way or another, I get those coordinates, because they work better than anything else.
It's time to throw out those old USB sticks
I like using USB pendrives. A lot. But those old ones are really showing their age.
At the time I write this in February 2023, the best deal for USB pendrives are the SanDisk Ultra 128GB, 256GB and 512GB USB 3 flavors, with emphasis on USB 3. The Ultra is a "full case" design (which I prefer) while the Ultra Flair has a thinner case.
I have a small pile of USB 2 pendrives. At this point, these things are borderline unusable. The only thing they're good for is operating system installation software these days.
And speaking of operating systems, modern Linux really hates USB 2 flash drives. It doesn't matter what distro you use. Mounting the pendrive is easy enough. But if you write 1GB or greater of data to a USB 2 stick and then go to unmount, prepare to wait at least 30 seconds to a full minute or even longer before the OS says you can safely eject.
Why does this happen? It's because of the way Linux writes data. Before it allows an eject of a pendrive, some file sync has to happen in the background. If you wrote small files to the pendrive, the unmount is quick. If you wrote large files, that USB 2 bogs down the file sync speed, resulting in wait time and a lot of it.
The solution? Don't use USB 2.0 and use 3.0 or greater instead.
Does using sync -f /usb-drive help when using USB 2.0? A little, but not all that much. Better to just use faster USB pendrives.
In Windows, the wait time for eject of a USB 2.0 pendrive is minimal, but it takes about 2 minutes 45 seconds to copy 1GB to a USB 2.0 stick, whereas with USB 3.0 it takes fewer than 20 seconds.
Whether you use Windows or Linux, dump those USB 2 sticks and just get 3's. This also makes sense when transferring files from the phone to a flash drive. Yeah, connecting a USB 2 stick to a phone technically does work, but you wait a long time to copy anything more than a few photos.
These stupid things are needed for cleaning guitars and electronics
This is one of those "you can find them when you know what they're actually called" things.
I play guitar and also work with small electronics at times. Both of these types of things need periodic cleaning, and both have tiny areas that are really difficult to clean just because of the way they're shaped. An example of this is the inside of a guitar tuner post where the steel string goes through. There is absolutely nothing out there that can clean that because the space is so small...
...except one thing: cosmetic swabs.
And wow, sometimes these things are difficult to locate. If you're lucky, you might be able to find them at your local department store, but probably not and you'll have to get them online. Yes, these things are wonderful to have.
Cosmetic swabs, as in "a Q-Tip with the pointy tip" isn't something you know unless you specifically know what it's called. And now you know.
How often will you use these things? More than you think. Anything you need to clean that's in a very small area where you need a precision tip so you don't splash solution (usually isopropyl alcohol) is where cosmetic swabs come in handy more than a little bit.
Cosmetic swabs also come in extremely handy for small electronics areas where you need to use DeoxIT D5. Clean a micro USB or USB-C port? A regular size cotton swab can't do that, but a cosmetic swab can.
If the whatever-it-is is tiny and a precision tip is needed for cleaning it, get a box of cosmetic swabs.
Why I will never own a Gibson SG guitar
I won't own an SG for the same reason I won't own a Fender Duo-Sonic.
Recently, I tried out a Gibson SG Standard in Cherry finish - a totally gorgeous instrument. The guitar shines in all the right places and wow, does it look nice.
Why did I try the guitar out? Two reasons. First, the Guitar Center I went to did not have it locked to the guitar stand (it is typical for GC to lock higher priced guitars to the stand so you have to ask to play it). Second, this is one of Gibson's lower priced guitars. Yes, the SG Standard I played was priced at $1,799, but that's a bargain compared to a '50s or '60s Les Paul Standard that sells for $2,799 at the time of this writing.
Side note: Yes, I know the Gibson Les Paul Tribute is $1,299, but if I were going to buy a Gibson Les Paul, it would be a Standard. Not the Tribute, not the Studio. Standard. That's the one that matters...
...which makes the SG Standard all that more attractive, because after all, it is a Standard model.
So what's the problem with the SG Standard? It's a problem all SG's have.
No, it's not neck dive, because that can be easily accommodated for by snaking the strap through the belt.
No, it's not the sound, because the pickups sound great.
It's the lower bout curve position that forces the bridge forward when playing the guitar in the seated position.
Confused? You won't be in a moment.
Look at the curve beneath the pick guard of the SG and where its position is. Now look at the same place on the Les Paul. Notice how the SG's curve (as in the curve going up towards the pickups) is further back compared to the Les Paul...
...and that's the reason why I can't own an SG.
When playing in the seated position with the guitar rested on the leg, the SG's bridge sits more forward and there's not a thing you can do about it. Every time you sit and play an SG, that bridge will be further forward. I absolutely cannot get used to that. The Les Paul bridge position when playing seated is just fine, but not the SG.
This is literally the exact same problem when comparing the Fender Mustang and Duo-Sonic. One plays great seated (the Mustang) and the other feels terrible (Duo-Sonic) all because of the position of the lower bout curve cut position.
As a playing-when-standing guitar, the SG totally works. It's when you sit down with it that everything is terrible if you play with it resting on the leg such as I do.
It's a darned shame, because said very honestly, I really like the look of the SG. But I can't own a guitar I can't play seated.
I place the guitar further back when playing seated in an attempt to get that bridge positioned where I want. That helps a little, but not enough.
While I wouldn't go Gibson, if were I to put the money down for the good stuff, it would be towards an Epiphone Les Paul 1959 model. I'd get all the good stuff and a guitar that rests on my leg correctly when playing seated.
The difference between CMR and SMR hard drives and why it matters
I just ordered a new-old-stock CMR hard drive, and for good reason.
This year was supposed to be the one where I moved away from all computer storage media that physically moves, which means no more optical discs and no more hard disk drives.
I was able to get away from the discs; that wasn't a problem. As for hard disk drives, I found out the hard way that yes, still necessary, but for a very specific reason.
Before I get into that, let's talk about CMR and SMR. Those are not brands but rather abbreviations. CMR is Conventional Magnetic Recording and SMR is Shingled Magnetic Recording. CMR is the older tech.
The advantage to SMR is you get more space out of the drive. The disadvantage is that for big file writes to the SMR drive, the write speed can slow down. A lot. For file reads, yeah, SMR is fine for that. If I were using one for, say, playing back movies or some such, sure, no problem. But as a backup drive, I won't touch it, hence the reason I decided to go with the older CMR...
...which is not exactly easy to come by in 2.5" form factor. What I wanted was a 1TB HGST brand drive (small, I know, but it's all I need), and I had to order the stupid thing from overseas just to get it. At the time I write this, it's on the way here. Why HGST? I have a 500GB HGST I bought new years ago, it's still working a-okay and I'm hoping to get a repeat of that performance in 1TB flavor.
In the 3.5" size, the go-to hard drive for CMR is the Seagate Barracuda Pro. All of them are CMR, start at 2TB and blast up to 10TB and well beyond that for storage capacity. It's the tried-and-true good ol' 7200 RPM CMR hard disk drive. If you need something enterprise grade, then you step up to the Seagate Ironwolf, which are also all CMR (but probably also loud since they're meant for industrial use). The Seagate Skyhawk, meant for surveillance use, is CMR and notably quieter, but that's 5400 RPM and not 7200. The Skyhawk would probably make for a fine backup drive.
The Barracuda Pro would still be my pick if I were going the 3.5" size route. Grab one of those, install it in a box or an enclosure and you're good to go.
I said I discovered the hard way that HDD is still necessary.
What I found out is that using SSD for storing backup data is a bad idea. More specifically, nightly backups.
Writing a large amount of data to SSD sometimes is okay. The same can be said for any flash memory. If you have 5GB or more that you write to the media periodically, that's fine. If however this is done daily, that's when problems can happen with flash memory.
I didn't lose any data when I attempted to use SSD for nightly backups, but wow did the write speed dive. It was bad. With my aging 500GB HGST HDD, read and write speeds were (and still are) always consistent and speedy. No problems. With SSD, not only did write speeds dive but also fluctuated. Not wildly, but enough to raise my eyebrow and think, that really doesn't look right.
SSD as a host drive for the operating system? That's fine. Windows, Linux, whatever. It works. SSD for movies and music used write-once-read-many style? Again, fine. SSD for backup use? Not-so good from what I saw.
Why did I decide to use a 2.5" HDD? I already have drive enclosures for that size and I prefer the smaller form factor. But it's probably true what I just bought will be the very last CMR 2.5" HDD I ever own. After this, if I want to stick with a CMR HDD for a backup drive (and I do), I'll have to go with the larger 3.5".
For my host drive, that's staying as SSD. Absolutely. For my backup drive, that's staying as HDD with CMR. I thought SSD-for-everything would work, but HDD with CMR appears to still be the best thing for backup use, short of a NAS (more specifically, NAS with CMR HDDs in it).