a rare problem that resulted in a dead usb flash drive
I had a "rugged" flash drive, but mine is dead to the world.
I've only seen a flash drive have real-deal hardware failure once before what I'm about to describe. Years ago I had a 512MB (yes, megabyte) SanDisk cruzer, and beat the crap out of that thing. One day, it started rejecting any attempt to write data to it. That's a telltale sign that flash drive has reached the end of its useful life, so yep, stick a fork in it, it's done. Chucked it.
The way this rugged drive failed however... this was not only way different in the way it failed, but rare.
"Tough" flash drives mostly either have hard rubber cases (mainly for waterproofing and shock protection) with caps, or metal cases that can really take a beating. Mine had the hard rubber case thing.
What happened is that I plugged this flash drive to a computer, it detected once, seemed to work, then didn't, and that was it. Dead drive.
I should note this flash drive wasn't new. More on that in a moment.
I figured okay, the file system probably got screwed up, no big deal, just delete and recreate the file system. Pop the drive into my Linux computer, nothing. Doesn't even show up in gparted. Pop the drive into my Win11 computer, go to Disk Management. Still nothing.
When the drive was plugged into Win11, the "connected" sound happened, but all the Safe Disconnect showed was "Flash DISK" and nothing else. No media, no drive. It existed yet didn't exist at the same time.
I do some research, and something I can run in Linux is this to see what's going on:
watch "dmesg | tail -20"
I run that, watch the screen, plug in the drive, and see there's that "Flash DISK" again with a nondescript "USB" listed as manufacturer. That's not normal.
After more research, what I found out is that the flash drive's controller cannot talk to the NAND chip anymore.
Now if I wanted to, I could use other software to determine who made the controller, download what's known as a mass production tool (a.k.a. mptool) software that specifically supports the controller I have, and maybe save the drive.
No, I'm not doing that. Even if I saved the drive, there's no guarantee it would ever work the same as it did before since I strongly suspect the memory on it is toast. This thing is getting chucked in the trash.
What caused this kind of flash drive hardware failure?
Not Rufus, although that software did put the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. But again, not specifically Rufus's fault.
If you don't know what Rufus is, it's very handy free software used for writing bootable ISOs to flash drives. For the recent computer I just installed Win11 on, a USB stick had a bootable ISO written to using Rufus (a different one since the rugged flash drive failed).
For that rugged drive I used, it had been written to as a bootable USB several times before - but not exclusively by Rufus. In fact, the last time it was written to was using the Windows Media Creation Tool for Windows 10.
I had Rufus running, plugged in that rugged drive, tried an ISO write, and within seconds, nope, not happening. Drive is dead.
Again, this wasn't Rufus's fault. Rufus just happened to be the thing I was using at the time that ended that flash drive's life. It could have easily happened with any other ISO media creation tool.
My best guess as to what happened?
Two things. ISO writes and heat.
If I were writing things like documents or images, no problem, since those are little file writes. But when writing multi-gigabyte ISOs? Different story. That heats the flash drive right up, stays that way for a while until the writing is done and many files are written both large and small.
Neither fsck nor CHKDSK would have helped me here, because even if the flash drive was deemed "good" by either utility, the failure still would have occurred. I'm certain of that.
What usually happens with a flash drive is that when it starts to near the end of its useful life, file writes start failing (like the 512MB I mentioned above), then fail some more, then finally the drive isn't even recognized. The rugged flash drive was different. There was no warning at all and it just straight up stopped working completely.
What I've learned
Flash drives should not be trusted with anything to be saved for the long term. Thankfully, the one I had that died didn't have anything important on it. As crazy as this sounds, for long term storage, it's better to use DVDs.
windows 11, now slightly less terrible than it used to be
I said recently that Windows 10 will be dead in October. Although my primary computer runs Linux, I do keep a separate Windows laptop for "runs only on Windows" specific stuff. It runs Windows 10. Or rather, it used to. Now it runs Windows 11. It's a bone stock install with the latest version. Thankfully, Win11 doesn't suck as much as it did a year ago.
When I say the installation is bone stock, I'm not kidding. What I always do with Windows is run a few third party programs to disable all the crap I don't want. Not this time. Instead, I just ran Win11 as intended...
...almost.
The only thing I did differently is install the OS without a Microsoft account (meaning local account only). Since that was doable, that's what I went with. Aside from that, everything else is the standard Win11 installation.
I'm running Win11 on a laptop over a decade old with a Core i5, 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. I thought briefly that maybe I should buy a 512GB SSD since those are cheap now, but nah, I had the 256GB as a spare and just used that. For what I use the laptop for, that works. I could upgrade the RAM to 16GB, but Win11 runs fine with 8GB.
I hate that the right-click context menu has been changed. There's a registry mod that brings back the old menu, but I haven't done it yet.
I cannot find how to make the non-movable taskbar smaller. That's annoying.
There does not appear to be any show-all option for taskbar icons, as in for the smaller ones on the right. Any time anything new is installed that has one of those icons, I have to manually enable that so I always see it. It also annoyed me that the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" icon was hidden by default in a submenu. Stupid.
When changing certain settings for certain things, I found a mishmash of earlier crap and some positively ancient crap all over the place - in stock Win11. It's a mess. The Device Manager looks straight out of Windows 2000, as does sound event control. Control Panel is still there that looks straight out of Windows 7, while at the same time Settings exists, which is a Win11 thing.
File Explorer is better. I like that. Many improvements there.
Command Prompt and Terminal are much better because of tabs and a nicer font.
Notepad is better as well, but still nowhere near as good as Notepad++ (arguably one of the best text editors ever to exist).
Boot-up time is quicker than Win10, but shutdown time is about the same as 10.
Win11 has TAR support with ZST compression. That's a very nerdy thing, but I like it because ZST archives are nice to work with. When I type tar --zstd -cvf archive.tar.zst folder-to-archive, it works the same as in Linux. Good. Opening a ZST can be done using stock Win11 File Explorer as well. Also good.
Terminal in Win11 does allow me to do things somewhat "the Linux way", which I appreciate.
I like that I can run the older style programs in Win11 that I prefer, such as IrfanView (image viewer/editor), LibreOffice, 7-Zip, Notepad++, and so on.
Add/Remove for uninstalling crap seems to work okay, although I had to uninstall Microsoft Teams twice just to get it out of there. Win11 was really insistent on keeping Teams for some reason.
Most importantly is the fact I was able to get along with Win11. When I tried it before, I hated it. But now it's slightly less terrible. I was able to get the OS installed, get everything working, Windows-Updated the bejeezus out of it, and I can run my Windows-specific stuff on it that I need to.
I believe there are 3 big reasons why it went better this time. Some time has passed and many bugs with the OS have been fixed, I used a local account instead of a Microsoft account on installation, and I installed it clean.
The clean install is a big deal, because I'm absolutely certain that had I installed this over an old Win10 installation, that would have not gone well. Better to just use a blank SSD and install it clean, which is exactly what I did. It worked.
windows 10 will be officially dead by october 2025
Did you know Windows 10 was originally released July 29, 2015? At the time I write this, that was nine-and-a-half years ago. And if you didn't know, Microsoft's official end-of-support date for Win10 is October 14, 2025.
This does make me wonder if there will be a repeat of what happened to WinXP users when Win7 was released.
I remember back in 2009 when Win7 was new. I was all-in with it, but a ton of XP users had absolutely no intention of switching, with the thought of, "I'll run XP forever! Ha!" Well, we all know how that fared out, because nothing is forever.
The vast majority of those XP holdouts ended up with computers that got old, broke, data was lost, and they were forced into the uncomfortable position of buying new computers.
It didn't have to be that way.
It is amazing to me how the holdouts who use old operating systems do not prep for the future at all. Even something as simple as buying a 512GB USB stick (which is cheap now) to back up important data is something they absolutely will not do.
What's available now that wasn't back in '09 are cheap mini PCs. These things by design barely take up any space. You buy the thing, learn the OS, get used to it, and can switch over at a reasonable pace instead of being forced into it.
Did I do that? No. I did the "hard mode" thing, switched to Linux in '23 and continue to use it. But I wouldn't ask a Windows user to do that. Instead, I just say get a 512GB stick, copy over your stuff, get a mini PC, set it up to your liking, copy over your backed up data, and ta-da, done. Now you're ahead of the curve and don't have to be forced into any unnecessary computer purchases.
Will the Win10 holdouts take those reasonable steps? Smart ones will. As for the rest, they'll keep using Win10 after October, maybe get away with it for 6 months to a year, but then uh-oh, something on the computer broke. Could be hardware or software, but something will break. If it's hardware, the new replacement stuff won't support 10. If it's software, the new version won't support 10. You're screwed both ways.
"But everything works on 10 now!" Yeah, currently. But six months to a year after official support ends? Yeah, good luck with that. You'll need it.
Better to just back up your stuff and ready a cheap computer box now rather than when it's too late.
my boomer car of choice, late '80s personal luxury car
I don't own a car like this, but I'd like to because it speaks to my middle aged sensibilities now.
What is a personal luxury car? A two-door luxury sport coupe that has some size to it. There's the traditional four-door luxury sedan, but the luxury sport coupe is the smaller version of that and usually has more power to it.
Does any carmaker sell a new personal luxury car? BMW and Audi still do, but they obviously don't have the feel of how personal luxury cars used to be. A true personal luxury car is supposed to be more comfort (as in more luxury) than sport, and that's not what the German carmakers are building.
In the late '80s, the best personal luxury cars were from General Motors and Ford. GM had the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Buick Riviera, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and Cadillac Eldorado, and Ford had the Thunderbird and Lincoln Mark VII.
Cars like this can go fast-ish, but that's not the point of them. This is a type of car that cruises really easy anywhere it goes. It's especially good for long highway drives.
Some question why the personal luxury car even existed. I don't. I totally get it. It's a car that's luxury and comfort first, sport second, a big trunk for some utility, and wrapped in a package that's not some big ungainly sedan. This is a car for just you and not for sharing (hence personal). It can carry two adults comfortably. You and somebody you like. That's it. Yes, it technically has back seats, but those are never used for people, nor would you want anybody back there.
I do hope America builds these again, because I want one. Maybe Cadillac will be first to bring it back. If they do, I hope they also bring back the Eldorado nameplate and call it that.
how i defeat bad directions
Many moons ago back in the late 2000s, a Garmin nuvi was (and I would argue still is) the best thing to use for GPS navigation. However, I identified a problem. For certain locations, the destination was marked wrong. Sometimes what was supposed to be on the right side of the street was on the left. Or, sometimes the destination was marked in the middle of the road and not on either side of the street. Or, sometimes the destination would be way off.
If you're thinking, "Well, that was a long time ago and locations are marked much more accurately now." Wrong. Oh, so wrong. The same problem exists today and it's even worse than before.
I use a Garmin DriveSmart 76, which is pretty darned good. But whether I'm using that, a navigation app on a phone, or infotainment navigation system, I'm still encountering the same problem I did almost 20 years ago where some addresses are just flat out marked wrong.
What I did to defeat this back in the late 2000s is something I still have to do today, albeit just slightly different. I'll describe both methods.
Old way (which still works):
Before heading out, go to my computer, load up Google Maps or Bing Maps in a web browser, find where I want to go, right-click and get the GPS coordinates. Punch that info into my Garmin, go there.
Modern way:
Load up Google Maps on my phone, press and hold the exact spot I want to navigate to until a red pin is dropped. If that doesn't show me GPS coordinates, I just keep hunting around the map until I find a pin drop that shows me that info. Once I have it, I punch that info into the Garmin, and off I go. If I'm not in my car and just have my phone with me, I'll put that info into a navigation app, and then I go.
"Last mile" is usually the only thing that truly matters
If I have to skip a highway exit due to traffic, that's fine because I can just take the next exit.
If I have to take some wacky side street route with U-turns involved or whatever to get to a place, again, fine. I can deal with that.
Where I get tensed up is at the very near end of the trip. It's either when a) the nav system states "you're here!" but I don't see it and have to hunt around, or b) I do see the destination, but the nav system put me in the wrong spot and I have to lap around. Either of those scenarios are really annoying...
...unless I navigate directly by GPS coordinates instead. Coordinates are an absolute and is as ultra-specific as you can get.
One of the first times coordinates really saved me was when going to a specific Dunkin' Donuts store in Tampa Florida.
If I drove to that place "the normal way", that involved traveling on a major road, passing the store, then doing a rather dangerous U-turn, go back, then another dangerous right turn just to get there. Ridiculous.
Before I went the next time, I loaded up Google Maps at home because I figured there must be a better way to get there. I found that if I used coordinates to get me to a very specific entrance point, combine that with getting off that major road slightly early, getting there would be much safer. I was right, and it was.
That was the way I did things nearly 20 years ago, and it's still the way I get to places now. Even if it's a place I've never been to before, oh yes, I will look it up on the map first to get the exact spot I want and/or determine the easiest, safest entrance point.
Do I do this for rural locations, too? You bet I do. If I have to get to an address somewhere in the sticks, yes I will load up the map, find the place, and get coordinates for the driveway. It's that I want to find more so than the building/house itself so I can park my car without issue.
Here's a great example. In Rhode Island, if I want to go to Newport and take a stroll on the cliff walk, there is only one place I could find to park my car, and it doesn't have an address. I have coordinates marked that literally leads to a tree on a tiny side street. Typical to Rhode Island roadways, it's not easy to get to, but once there, I can park, walk a short distance, then I'm on the cliff walk.
Will the problem of badly marked locations ever be solved?
That's an easy answer. No.
Why? That's also an easy answer. There are way too many locations to get them all correct, and moreover keep them correct.
For every address you've ever seen marked in the wrong spot, there are probably many more also marked incorrectly within a 5 mile radius of where you are. And even if you submit a map correction, yeah, good luck with that going through. Not only is it typical for some addresses to be 7 years or more out-of-date, but also typical for some businesses to be listed that closed shop 7+ years ago too. And for new locations (such as new apartment buildings), it can sometimes take years before they show up on the map, if at all.
If you want correct directions, mark the places you need to go yourself using GPS coordinates, and you'll get there. This was true 20 years ago, and it's still true now.