I am a card guy
This is a real test of whether somebody actually cares about you or not.
Today is Valentine's Day, and per my usual, I did buy a card for the special someone in my life.
I'm writing this not to talk about Valentine's Day but rather the importance of sending and receiving cards.
Cards matter, and don't let anybody tell you differently.
Some businesses send out birthday cards. True, it's not the most personal thing in the world when a business sends one of these. However, any business that sends one gets a thumbs up from me because they actually spent the money to mail one out. Somebody working for that company thought it a good idea to mail out cards like that just to be nice. It puts a human face on the company, which is a very good thing. And I know that for a lot of people out there, those are the only type of birthday cards they even receive. Getting one of these cards will at least put the thought of, "Well, at least somebody cared" into the mind of the recipient.
The cards that matter the most are the ones you receive from people you know, be they family or friends. Whenever you receive a card, be it for Valentine's Day, birthday, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, anniversary or whatever it is, that person actually cares about you. Why? Because they took the time and effort to pick a card, buy it and mail it or hand it to you in person.
Anybody you know that sends a card is giving of themself to you. Always remember to contact the person who sent the card and say thank you. That's not optional. You do it.
Sending a card is a really good test to see if somebody actually cares. If you send a card but never get a card back or even a thank-you, well then... you know where you stand.
And while the internet is a wondrous thing that connects people in many ways, one of the absolute worst things is the e-card. Sending a card electronically has no thought and no effort behind it at all. The only thing worse is sending a text message. And the absolute most bottom-of-the-barrel thing one can do is sending a text message with one emoji in it. Doing something like that is totally lazy and insulting.
However, a phone call where you speak nice wishes to somebody is okay. It's not as good as a physical card, but at least taking the time to dial, call and say something nice to somebody takes actual effort.
I've encountered people who make very lame excuses why they didn't send a card. I'll send them one, then ask later if they received it since they never said thanks or sent a card in return. They say yes, they received it, and then comes the lame excuse of why they didn't send one.
Example: I mailed a card to somebody some years back, waited, and there was no return card or even a thank-you. About a week later during a phone call with them, I asked if they received the card I sent. They said yes, and then I was told, "Oh... I don't do, um.. cards..." That means a) they received my card, b) could have said thanks for the card but didn't, and c) never thought once that maybe they should send a card in a return.
I don't talk to that person anymore.
Does this mean you always have to send a return card? No. But if you care about who sent the card at all, at least return contact and say thanks. If you don't, the only thing you'll ever receive for the rest of your life will be birthday cards from businesses for the ones that even bother to do that.
Installing USB ports in a house the easy way
It's becoming increasingly necessary to do this...
...and I don't consider that a bad thing.
Examine a wall charger with outlet extender. You get 5 conventional power outlets 3 USB ports and 1 USB-C port for powering/charging stuff. This could be complemented with some USB-C cables.
Installation of one of these is stupidly easy. Unscrew the center post for a standard two-outlet plate, push on the USB wall charger, screw in the center post, done. The only tool you need is a small screwdriver for that center post.
And believe me, yes, it's necessary to use that center post so the wall charger stays put. Don't skip that part.
Best to get used to USB-C now
The reason? Spec 2.1 of USB-C can support 240 watts. The previous spec was 100 watts.
Even if you can't bump to USB-C v2.1 and have to use the 100-watt spec, get the wall charger anyway because it's cheap and overall better than using a USB hub or your computer to charge/power stuff with.
Garmin discontinuing map updates for older models
I'm genuinely surprised this didn't happen sooner.
Garmin says that a whole bunch of models will no longer receive map updates as of July 2023. Basically put, the map updates will stop for most models made before 2013.
While true it states this will only apply to Australian and New Zealand models, it would not surprise me at all if North American models will be included in the no-more-updated-maps shortly after that.
Does anybody still use a Garmin GPS that's over 10 years old?
While I personally have a collection of old Garmin GPSes, my daily driver is the Garmin DriveSmart 66, a current model at the time I write this.
Older Garmin models I'd consider using as daily drivers would be the nuvi 2599LMTHD and nuvi 56LMT.
The absolute oldest I'd use would be the nuvi 2597LMT, a 2013 model. Using anything older than that is where I really notice the age of a older Garmin GPS. Slow searching, slow map drawing, slow route calculation and so on.
The whole "lifetime maps" thing
This is the part where people get mad.
Take the nuvi 50LM, originally released in 2011, and one of the best models Garmin ever made. It's really basic and has no smartphone connectivity and no traffic support, but is ultra-legible and is an incredible basic GPS navigator.
The "LM" in nuvi 50LM means "Lifetime Maps". Lifetime in this instance does not mean forever. It means the useful lifetime of the device...
...and that's where we enter this gray area.
What amount of time qualifies as the useful lifetime of a device? That's never been answered. Is that Garmin's fault? Not really. At the time they introduced Lifetime Maps, it's probably true nobody at Garmin ever thought anybody would still be using the same nuvi 10 years later. There was even documentation written that said if you didn't update your device at least once every 2 years, no more free map updates.
But, here we are in '23, and some people actually do use a 10+ year old Garmin GPS and regularly update whenever a new map is released.
There were two errors Garmin made. Use of the word lifetime, and not documenting any end-of-support dates (or at least none I could see).
Per use of the word lifetime, all I can say there is Garmin should have never used that word, but they did and the damage is done there. They're going to get flak for ending support on 10+ year old "lifetime" products and that's just the way it is.
The July '23 date is the first I've seen where Garmin finally announced end-of-support for a particular line of automotive GPS products. So yes, Garmin has finally documented a date, and it's good in the way they did it. A date was announced several months in the future that gives the user ample time to back up their favorites and switch over to a newer model.
But again, people are still going to get mad because they think lifetime means forever.
As the old saying goes, nothing is forever.
A dirt cheap data recovery solution
I didn't even think this thing would work, but it did.
2023 has been the year where I've finally decided to get off old media completely. This started with pulling data off DVDs and transferring that to flash (as in USB sticks and SSDs). It ended with getting data off a few old hard disk drives I had, but required buying a thing to do it due to my own stupidity.
A few months back I ran across an old power brick while I was cleaning out some things. I checked the connector and it didn't look like it belonged to anything, so I threw it out. Later on, I go to pull data off those old HDDs and realized oops, that was the power brick that went to the only IDE style drive enclosure I had. Yep, stupid.
Now I needed another IDE connector, so I scanned around and found one (actually, it was one of one of several available), and bought it for real cheap since I knew I'd only use this a handful of times and then never again.
Did it work? At first, it didn't. I had 3 HDDs I needed to access. The first one didn't work, the second didn't work and the third did. It just happened that the third didn't have a jumper on it, so I took the jumper off the other two drives and then they worked. (Evidently, connecting a HDD with a jumper having the drive set "master" or "cable select" is something this doesn't like for whatever reason.)
As dirt cheap as this thing is, it was smartly designed. I had both 2.5" mobile HDDs and a 3.5" HDD to deal with. One side of the IDE connector the kit came with is for 2.5" drives that can be self-powered with USB alone. The other side is for 3.5" drives and requires the drive to be externally powered, hence the reason for the power brick you see in the photo at top.
It was lovely that this cheap kit came with everything needed to power up an IDE drive and get to the data on it. The only downside is there was no instruction manual whatsoever. Just a box of cables and a power brick. It would have been nice if there was at least a one-page card that gave instructions, but nope, I didn't even get that. I suppose that's what you can expect for as cheap as I bought it for.
It was also lovely that I didn't have to mess around with any software drivers. Once I figured out that all the drives needed to be jumper-less, it was as simple as plug-in-and-go and the drive showed up on the computer.
Was I able to recover anything?
Yes, but only from 1 of the 3 drives just because only 1 actually had recoverable stuff on it. After plugging it in, it initially showed as a formatted blank. I ran Recuva and it found a whole bunch of stuff that I was able to recover.
In the end, the recovered data I was able to archive made buying the cheap IDE kit worth it.
That sound
One last thing to say for now just because I think it's funny. Of the 3 drives, one was a really old 6GB 2.5" HDD from some laptop I had years ago. When that thing spun up, it made a drive noise I've not heard in a long time. I can't really describe it in words. It's a noise where if you remember how loud HDDs used to be back in the '90s and '00s, you instantly recognize that sound.
That sound isn't pleasant but at the same time nothing to make you run for ear plugs. It's just a sound that nearly all PC and laptop drives used to make that you never hear anymore.
Think of it as the same as hearing a dial-up modem handshake connection noise, or the noises a floppy disk drive makes when the diskette is being used, or even a telephone dial tone. That sort of thing. You hear that sound, and in your mind you're instantly transported years ago back to when you used to hear noises like that regularly.
Blu-ray vs. everything else for data storage
It is interesting that this isn't cheaper.
I recently just did a massive data transfer where I finally moved all the data I had backed up from DVD to flash media. SSD, specifically. Why not Blu-ray? In both the short and long term, it's just not a good option.
Any Blu-ray burner drive (internal or external) will at the time I write this in January '23 runs you 65 bucks minimum.
For blank media, you have two options. Regular and M-DISC. The M-DISC format is specifically for archival purposes and will outlive you regardless of what age you are. I'm not kidding.
When you do the math, regular BD-R costs about 88 cents per disc that can hold 25GB each. That sounds nice at first until you realize it takes 40 discs to reach 1TB of storage.
Okay, you say, I'll get 50GB Blu-ray discs. Now the price just doubled, and it still takes 20 discs to get 1TB of storage.
If I go with SanDisk 512GB USB 3.0 stick instead, that's a one-time $40 cost, and all of the 512GB is available immediately on one stick.
If I get a 3.5" HDD enclosure (about $30) and a 5400RPM 4TB HDD (about $65), the cost is $95 - but - I'm getting a full 4TB all up front, all at once. Yes, it requires a powered enclosure, but still, we're talking 4TB here. I could even go 8TB 5400RPM HDD if I wanted.
Blu-ray would be better if...
...the drives and media were cheaper. But they're not. And there's no good reason why they're not.
A Blu-ray burner drive at this point should be 30 bucks, but it's more than double that.
A 50-pack of BD-R DL discs (the 50GB kind) should also be 30 bucks, but it's well more than double that. And bear in mind I'm talking about regular Blu-ray and not the highfalutin M-DISC stuff.
The real kicker...
...is there is no guarantee there will be any new Blu-ray drives available even in as little as 10 years from now.
With HDDs and flash media sticks, I'm fairly certain there will still be USB A style ports around in the future. If not, there will at least be adapters available.
With Blu-ray however, yes the drive will connect via USB most likely. But if there are no new drives to, you know, spin the disc to read the data, that's a problem. If you decided to use Blu-ray today, the best long term solution is to buy an external drive, test it once to make sure it works, then put it in storage and hope it works 10 years later... which is not a good solution at all.
If Blu-ray were cheap, then sure, you could buy backup optical drives and it wouldn't be much of an issue. But again, it's not cheap.
You're just better off with flash media or HDDs for big storage.