Internet on the Move

Last week I had an important meeting I needed to take fairly early in the day. Normally I like to exercise before work and so I headed to my gym and made sure to bring my computer. Rather than rush home to make the meeting, I just joined from the gym. I thought they had Internet access but that turned out to be wrong. No worries, I just used the Internet connection from my phone and turned on "Personal Hotspot." While I had plenty of signal strength, I could see the video but not hear the audio. The easy fix meant using the phone portion of my smartphone and calling in manually to the meeting. It could have been more elegant but worked.

Before heading to the gym, I felt sure it had Internet access and surprised me that it didn't. Fortunately I didn't really need to participate in the meeting, just listen. Now I know that I should not plan on taking early-morning meetings in the gym. I had been tempted to take other more important meetings from where I exercise every morning and am now glad I haven't.

Then yesterday I got an e-mail about Starlink. It is Internet service provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Basically you buy the hardware for around $600 and pay a monthly service fee of around $120 to have a fixed Internet connection almost anywhere on land around the world. That is a bit more than I am paying for my current provider and so I am not going to change services any time soon. They do have other options though.

I have often thought about getting a camper and going out on the road with my wife. We could visit national parks across the country and Starlink has a service for that. You pay the same for the hardware but up your monthly commitment to $150 but can roam anywhere your camper will take you. It would allow me to continue working full time yet be able to spend my evenings sightseeing.

I have also thought about getting a bigger sailboat and heading out on the ocean. This is where Starlink has potential that isn't quite realized. First your hardware costs jump to $2,500 and your monthly service fee jumps to $250 per month. They also don't have service all the way to Hawaii. If all you plan to do is stay close to land, Starlink has you covered. It is those longer journeys where you may have to rely on other more expensive solutions.

Yes there are quite a few options for those looking for Internet connectivity on the move. Fortunately I don't need anything too complicated right now but it is nice to know what my options are.

Mac: App is Damaged and How to Fix

It has been a long time since I have updated the software on my Suunto Baro 9 watch and so I figured I would do it last night. Something that should have taken only a minute or two took over an hour of troubleshooting thanks to lies my Mac told me. Fortunately I figured out what I needed to do. Hopefully this post helps someone else. More than likely I will use it myself for a similar problem or the next time I need to update my watch.

Suunto created a software application that you can run on either your Mac or Windows computer. Rather than go through the hoops Apple requires to put it on their App Store, you can download it from Suunto's own website. The downside to that is Apple wants to protect you from malicious software and doesn't want you to run any software they have not reviewed. Instead of telling you that, you get an error when you try to run any program not downloaded from the App Store. The error says:

Suuntolink is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the trash. 

That is an outright lie and Apple should be ashamed of themselves for such a poor indication of what is wrong. Instead it should read:

Suuntolink was downloaded from the Internet and we don't trust that it doesn't have a virus so we are not going to let you run it.

At least then the user would know what the real problem is and be able to find a solution. Then to compound problems, the solution provided on Apple's support site does not provide correct instructions on how to run the program. Should you run into this problem or a similar one on your Mac computer, here are the instructions on how to get it working.

First you will need to open a terminal. You would think you could find a program called "Terminal" in the Applications directory but it is found in the Utilities directory that sits in the Applications directory. If you are not used to the command-line interface (CLI) on the Mac, this is where you find it.

Next you will need to go to the Applications directory in the Terminal program. This is as easy as running the following command:

cd /Applications

Next you will need to run the "xattr" command to clear all of the extra attributes that the MacOS assigns to programs and files on your computer. When you downloaded the Suuntolink application, the operating system decided it didn't like it and assigned certain attributes to keep you from running it. To clear all of those extra attributes run the following command:

xattr -c Suuntolink.app

Now if you are using the latest version of MacOS, which is Sonoma as of the time of this post, you may get an error saying "Operation not permitted: 'Suuntolink.app'." You will also see a dialog appear on the upper right of your screen saying something along the lines of "Terminal is trying to change the attributes of an application and doesn't have permissions to do so." Fortunately there will be a drop-down list that will allow you to change that. It will open the Privacy and Security control panel and allow you to change permissions for the Terminal program. You will have to run the previous command again and it should work fine with no acknowledgement that it worked other than not printing an error message.

You should now be able to double-click on the Suuntolink program in your Applications directory and run it without any difficulty. If it still doesn't run without giving you an error message, right-click on the Suuntolink icon and select the "Open" option. If your mouse only has a single button, then just hold down the Control (often abbreviated as CTRL) key and click on the icon.

It took me an hour to figure this all out last night and so I hope these instructions help you should you run into a similar problem. While I am tempted to say that Apple is to blame, the reality is that they have your best interest at heart. They really don't want you running a program that contains a Trojan Horse or Virus and so this is a safety feature. I would not use these steps on any program you do not trust absolutely. Otherwise you could really screw up your Mac.

My Latest Useful 3D Pring

I like to keep a box of tissues in my truck as it comes in very handy after a busy day skiing. Whenever I am done, it feels good to blow my nose as the cold temperatures makes for a runny one. Unfortunately I don't have a great place to store the tissues. I thought about putting Velcro or hook-and-loop fasteners to the bottom of the box and placing it on the carpet floor between the 2 front seats. My wife thought it a bad idea as it would mean replacing the Velcro for each new box. This is a great use for my 3D printer.

I decided I could print a tray that firmly holds the box of tissues and then put the Velcro on the bottom of the tray. The first thing I did was measure the box of tissues I keep in the truck. I took the measurements in millimeters as that is the unit of measure my drawing program expects. Then I went to TinkerCAD.com and drew a hollow box inside a solid one. I made the walls 5mm thick and about an inch high. Then I ran it through the 3D printer software to slice the design into commands for my 3D printer. Next I transferred the GCODE file to my printer on a small SD card and started printing.

The printer said it would take about 23 hours and so I went to bed. In the morning I woke up and checked on my print. I immediately stopped it when I discovered a mistake. I made the floor of my tray about an inch thick. That is way too thick for what I wanted. I also discovered I made the tray a hair too small. I modified my design in TinkerCAD and re-sliced it. Then I started printing it again. The new print only needed 17 hours and so I let it go making sure to check on it throughout the process.

The finished tray looked fabulous. Then I encountered my next problem. The tray stuck to the bed of my 3D printer and it took Herculean effort to get it off. Finally I got it separated and got some Velcro to stick to the bottom. Then I put it in the truck only to discover one final problem. The latest Velcro does not stick to automotive floor carpet. At least not the stuff in my truck. I need to find some of the cheap-no-name-brand stuff and that should work well. Right now there is enough friction to keep the tray from sliding around too much but I want to make sure it is firmly attached and won't slide around as I go around sharp corners.

I talked to my youngest son who also has a 3D printer and we discussed how to modify the design of the tray so it will be easier to remove from my print bed. We have some ideas but right now the tray is working perfectly, as designed. Once I put the correct hook-and-loop fastener on the bottom, it will be finished and I don't need to print another one.

Practice makes perfect and there are a lot of little lessons you will never learn unless you play around with the tool you are using. This story is a great example of that.

A Dedicated E-Reader

One of my Christmas gifts from my wife was a Kindle Fire or E-Reader. It is something I wanted and appreciate her getting it for me. On Monday I headed to California and used it instead of bringing a number of books and other reading material. I have to say that I really appreciated having a small electronic book. Had I brought paper copies, I would have added a lot of weight.

My wife and I are preparing to hike Mt. Rainier in July and the recommended training guide can be found in a book called "Training for the Uphill Athlete." My wife purchased the Kindle version of the book and because our Amazon accounts are linked, I also have access to it. It is a rather hefty book and I am glad I didn't have to carry the paper copy. I started reading the book while waiting to depart Salt Lake and made great progress before even getting on my flight. I continued reading while headed to Los Angeles. Then I read on the way back home. I am now about half way through and have enjoyed the experience.

While in Los Angeles I had some other personal reading that I like to do at breakfast. I brought my e-reader to the hotel buffet and enjoyed a leisurely pace while I ate and read. I liked not having to carry a second book with me.

Now there is a problem with using an e-reader before bed. The Kindle Fire is really a small Android tablet and I am concerned about blue light keeping me up and making it difficult to sleep. While reading on the flight home, the screen seemed to almost have an e-paper look to it. This leads me to believe that the device shouldn't keep me up any more than reading a book. I will have to do some more testing though.

I feel like I had a successful first trip with my Kindle and look forward to using it more often. Any time you can cut down on the stuff you need to bring on a trip, you should. I always try to carry just a small computer bag and a small backpack. If I could condense everything down to a single bag, I would. The Kindle is a small step towards that direction.

Fixing E-mail SPAM Filters

One of the new benefits from my company I am receiving this year is identity protection. I received an e-mail from our service and it had all sorts of warnings on it that indicated the message originated outside of my company's network. Before setting up the service, I had to review my benefits to make sure it came from the company actually providing the service. Our IT department loves to test our Phishing skills and sends us bogus e-mails about once a month. When we flag it as a Phishing e-mail we are told if the e-mail really is a test. Once I verified the valid e-mail message, I logged in and set up my account.

Our identity protection company suggested using a personal e-mail address. They then asked to verify it. I did and they sent a message with an 8-digit number they wanted me to enter into their website. When the message didn't arrive quickly I looked at my SPAM filter which didn't have the message either. While I waited for the verification code to arrive, I investigated my SPAM filter settings. I don't know why I have not done that before.

Whenever I go through my SPAM report and see an e-mail that should have made it to my inbox, I click the "Allow" button. I assumed this would allow all e-mails from that sender through. When I checked my filters, I had a number from the same companies but with different senders. I didn't realize that companies changed the senders based on the message being sent. While I would have loved getting a message from anyone at Disney.com, the sender looked like:

123abc@disney.com

Furthermore, there were a number of subdomains like:

456def@email.disney.com

What I really want is to receive everything from any part of Disney. In order to do that I had to go into my SPAM filter settings and created rules for "Allowed Domains" and not just "Allowed Senders". I went through all 57 allowed-senders rules and converted them to allowed-domains rules. Then I went back and deleted the duplicated rules in allowed-senders.

I have been spending several minutes a day going through the message subjects of the e-mails caught in my SPAM folder because no matter what I tried, I couldn't figure out why clicking the "Allow" button wasn't allowing all messages from particular companies through. Now I know why and will be proactive in making sure I create the correct rules. In the future, I hope to not have to spend any time reviewing my SPAM messages.