phil's blog

I picked up an Alienware X17 R2 a few years back and on several occasions I've run into the weird issue where the keyboard stops working (I have they cherry MX version of keyboard if that matters) and none of the lights for the keyboard will come on. Not even the power light or rear accent lights will light up.

The first time it happened, I scoured the internet for a solution trying the typical "Reinstall the Alienware Command & Control" software, clear caches, etc. etc. Nothing worked and hours spent.

As of 2024, Cobian Reflector and Cobian Backup won't recognize the virtual G: Drive that is created by the Google Drive app.

There is a workaround that works just fine which involves a command line program called Robocopy where you copy the contents of your Google G: drive over to a temporary folder, back that folder up, and then delete the temp folder when you're done.

ASUS ProArt line of monitors are calibrated for highly accurate color profile needs in the art and video industries. While there are better monitors out there for high-end professionals, the ProArt line is fantastic for the average every-day media professional.

One thing I like to do when I first setup a new monitor or computer is calibrate the colors. The ProArt series are designed to be color accurate out of the box, but that doesn't mean much when your OS of choice has its own color profile.

If a device you've installed in Windows is giving the "Base System Device" warning and Hardware Ids begin with PCI\VEN_10B5&DEV_87D0, I might be able to get you on the right path for a driver.

At this point I'm a little fuzzy on what prompted these devices on my computer but I'm 99% sure it's from the Highpoint Tech 7105 raid card I installed. While these drivers aren't necessary for the card to function properly, it's still an eye-sore for those of us who care and if you're reading this, you know what I mean.

In Nov of 2021, I was able to switch off of Cox cable and pickup ATT Fiber. In the Wichita KS market, Cox has dominated and had a monopoly on the area because no-other companies wanted to spend any money to directly compete with Cox cable. Until recently.

Update Jan 2023: There is an official Ubiquiti product that is MUCH cheaper than the media converter mentioned below, that will now work the way you would expect. It is the UACC-CM-RJ45-MG which is an SFP+ to 10GbE RJ45 Transceiver Module that can negotiate 1GbE/2.5GbE/5GbE/10GbE speeds and this is good for up to 100m on a Cat6a cable. This transceiver can be found at store.ui.com under the Accessories -> SFP Accessories -> 100m variant.

A company I work with deals with a lot of LTL Freight truck shipments. I am tasked with adding the various tracking URLs for each respective truck line and decided to post what I have in case someone else can't find the URL (some are kind of hard to figure out). Note, I can't promise these are up-to-date.

Replace the @tracking_number token with your PRO number

Update 2022

Roland updated the CutStudio plugin to fix the problem outlined in this post. Update to the latest (of this writing) version 2.02 for the fixed certificate (see below for explanation if you're curious). I have personally tested this plugin and it does indeed work, mitigating the ugly workaround outlined below. If/When in the future this error crops back up, the instructions below should still work to fix the problem.

Do you use logwatch for your favorite linux distro?

Have you ever enabled the html option to get emails in html format?

Have you ever looked at the email and wished the output was easier to read and just looked more modern?

I set out to deal with these very issues and surprisingly after a bit of searching, didn't find anyone else talking about how to change the html styling for the email output of logwatch.

I run a small ecommerce business with a couple of partners and deal with making sure things move forward on the technology side. If you're into web, then you've probably heard of schema.org and the necessity of having your products tagged with schema markup for the interwebs.

On my sites, I have a place where I can set the availability of a product:
In Stock
Limited Quantity
Out Of Stock
On Backorder

Currently (as of 2020) Schema.org does not have an option for BackOrder, only OutOfStock.