Recent content by wkearney99

There's something to be said for getting it run NOW, while the cheaper price is available. Weigh whatever the minimum commitment is for the cable service against what it might cost to have them connect you later. I'd price it out. Because it'd be my guess that doing it while they're at it...

Just about all smart dimmers support using accessory switches at 3-way locations.  Which can be more than just 2 locations.  I have a Ra2 dimmer setup with four accessory switch locations.  It's outside spotlights from the roof eaves, controllable from the dimmer location itself (in the master...

Yep, happens for me.  Being logged in and clicking the View New Content link above.

  That's entirely false.  I've had two S8's repaired.  One needed a new digitizer due to the glass getting cracked (the screen under it was ok).  The other had a bad battery.  Both were repaired and continued to function perfectly for several years after.   The digitizer one was due to getting...

The issues with HD calling have perhaps more to do with the kind of data stream being transported over the cell network rather than the specific fidelity of it.  It's been decades since I had to care about phone codecs but once upon a time it REALLY mattered.  I'm guessing there's still plenty...

Several deals I've gotten on refurbed units came up on the Woot.com website.  But when I've needed one and no immediate deals were available I used Amazon, being careful to check the seller and the return policy. 

Buy once, cry once.  Get the right device for the markets you'll be using.  Do not let price of the unit be your only guide, otherwise you discover gotchas like band coverage after the fact.  Of the many phones I've had over the years I have to say the least troublesome was the Samsung S8 on...

As has been said, 4G isn't going away any time soon.  5G requires much closer proximity of towers in order to gain the benefits of it.  For densely populated areas it certainly has potential.  But most places aren't that and will continue to have 4G LTE coverage for quite a while. Where it gets...

Yeah, if it was an enterprise server situation I'd "do something about it" but it's just the house and it never really rises above the noise level of everything else that "needs doing".

I have an assortment of UPS units around the house, supporting various DVRs, game console, computers and TVs.  Power hiccups around here often enough that having them dramatically cut down on the number of blown power supplies and other electronic device failures.   It's been on my 'to do' list...

Wow, I'd totally forgotten about the squeezebox stuff!

I haven't paid much attention to their current offerings.  But, iirc, the jukebox sotware was something different and development wasn't continued? I haven't poked at this in quite a while, but I never managed to find a good all-around jukebox-like solution that didn't end up being a chore to...

Free trial, yeah.  But still worth buying.  I still keep my license upgraded to support their efforts, even though I don't use it regularly anymore.

One piece of software that's good for wrangling a lot of media is J.River Media Center.  The metadata and file naming tools are amazingly robust.  That and their smart playlist and media sync tools are pretty handy for doing things like transcoding files on the server into naming structures and...

Have to imagine folks that did installs during the winter are going to have issues if/when the trees leaf-out come Spring/Summer.  Water in foliage is a bigger problem for RF than most folks realize.  Ran into that trouble myself some years ago when my remote farm house (at the time) lost...