Category: Life Beyond Tech

Posts that shouldn’t have much to do with tech.

January 6, 2022

If all my tech “work” could be done in a lab…

I’ve been back at work for 4 days since the winter holidays, and I’m already feeling burdened by how much I need to learn to stay relevant, and how much I am letting this impinges upon my personal life outside of work.

I have a lot of good things to say about VMware and I am grateful they have the new Lab environment. And… I must admit that I haven’t been doing myself service since I haven’t really been using them.

If I could move all my vSphere, Horizon, K8s learning to their labs… what would I gain, and what would I lose?

Gains:

I would move to my phone as my primary device significantly faster
- This would encourage finding a really good backup solution
I could donate the T20, z220 and not have to cry about TPM upgrade woes, or CPU incompatibilities when using vMotion
- Although this would lose that nice (but dated) GTX 780 card.
I could return the really nice, but not really useful Intel NUC from work
My work remains… my work!
My personal tech burden is significantly reduced

Cons:

I would still need to care and feed for the same same VMs I have now
I would end up re-emphasizing my need to move from Google Workspaces over to O365
I would lose everything if VMware pulled the plug on my lab for whatever reason.

I think its about time I do something about this and start building in the labs. I’m never going to get where I want to be if I keep getting bogged down in trying to resurrect old hardware.

Don’t forget the wisdom of the Professor.

September 24, 2021

The unbelievable difficulty in watching Bluray on a computer

For a very long time I didn’t care much about the quality of my movies. DVD has generally been fine. This all went downhill –albeit slowly at first– when I got a really nice TV. The TV was the free one my friends gave me from the loading dock at their apartment. It was broken, but a DC capacitor switch out fixed that. It was HD, and I liked it.

Skip a few chapters and we arrive at my current state.

I have attempted several paths to watch my brand new Ultimate Matrix on Bluray collection. Yes… the Matrix. Matrix Resurrection is coming soon and I felt that was worth watching everything again, afterall the Matrix series was a very significant part of my youth. As nice of an idea as this was, I sincerely regret my decision to not just buy more bits from Amazon.

I have tried to watch this on:

2016 macbook pro
Win10 VM in VMware Fusion
Linux Mint
Win10 bootcamp on the macbook

Please note I have not actually tried this on a true Windows PC, because oddly enough I don’t really have one. Time changes everything.

In short I have learned the following:

How AACS DRM is really very interesting (Blu-ray – ArchWiki (archlinux.org)). I can see similar elements to this being used for machine-to-machine authentication in the future.
I learned about the limitations that VLC has when it comes to bluray. libbluray – VideoLAN
- And the limitations of VLC with AACS libaacs – VideoLAN
I gave up and found out that PowerDVD can play bluray, and it’s a free download. As long as you’re OK with yet another vendor getting an email address, so they can harass you about their version of the cloud.
I found out that PowerDVD wont’ work in a VM. There may be some workarounds, but this problem seems pretty old. (powerdvd virtual machine themida – Google Search)
I found out that PowerDVD didn’t like my graphics card under Bootcamp.
Customer Support – PowerDVD displays an error message “Incompatible graphics driver. Please use default driver for playback.” | CyberLink
Or maybe my displayport monitors from my dock. HDCP and Targus Docking Stations | TechTalk
At this point I don’t really care.

Essentially I get the frustration tractor owners feel when they can’t fix their own equipment. I have more appreciation now for the FTC Ruling for Right-to-Repair. The FTC Votes Unanimously to Enforce Right to Repair | WIRED

I burned $40 on eBay to buy these disks. I burned 4 hours of time trying to get this to work. I have too many hobbies, and can’t pick this one up. I’m going to buy the trilogy on Amazon and try to not think about making Jeff Bezos any richer.

November 15, 2019

Commercialization of Facial Recognition will eliminate privacy for the future generations

Individual privacy in the face of artificial intelligence, biometric facial recognition, and big data is increasingly under threat of disappearance from our government, technology companies, and society’s own best intentions. Unnecessary government intrusion into the private lives of citizens in the United States is a right protected by law. Due to extra-governmental advancements in biometrics and facial recognition technology, circumvention of the law is being made possible. Often the desire for additional surveillance technology comes from society’s perceived need for additional security through detection and observation. Long-term implications on individual privacy and the negative consequences of privacy loss from forming a surveillance society will be most damaging to the children and grandchildren of today.