I just went on a two-week river trip from Budapest to Amsterdam and left my $3500 camera behind in favor of my phone. I am glad it did, and exceeded most of my expectations.

Luckily, I purchased a KraftGeek Magnetic camera grip and 5000mAh charger to use with the Pixel 10. It has a very handy button that activates the shutter too.

Why did I get this phone?

I used to use Samsung phones, but switched to Pixels when the Pixel 8 came out. Despite the Pixel 10 CPU (and especially the GPU) being slower than those in Samsungs, they are plenty fast enough for everything I do; but I do not play video games. 

For many, many years now, OpenSUSE would not install Parallels Tools in LEAP virtual machines.

I have been trying LEAP 16 beta in Parallels on my Mac Studio, and after Parallels' update to version Version 20.3.1 (55959), I was suddenly surprised to see a black triangle asking me to update Parallel's tools, and to my surprise, it worked! There are some things to know about the process that I will explain here.

I Bought this OXO Coffee Maker in 1916, and have used it almost every day to make excellent coffee. I religiously clean it out using Citric acid to remove calcium buildups whenever the machine say it is cleaning time.

In my previous post, I detailed my struggles with Comcast. They resulted in my Internet connection's ability to do 2.5 Gbps downloads and 350 Mbps uploads. I decided to upgrade my home LAN to accommodate these speeds. I also really wanted to stop using my Comcast XB8-T as a router because it requires using the Xfinity app to do anything—a very frustrating process. (I wonder why Xfinity excludes customers who do not have a cell phone?)

Xfinity support has no way of viewing screenshots, so they cannot properly assist you with complicated issues.

I have spent two days trying to get a Deco Mesh BE63 to work with my Xfinity Technicolor XB8 Gateway. Bottom line is that they seem to be incompatible. A Deco engineer is scheduled to call me, so maybe this will change.

There are fundamental problems with the Xfinity app (on Android at least). 

Last Friday I got a call, supposedly from Publisher's Clearing House. Supposedly from Todd Floane at 516 543-6151. I googled him and he is a legit member of the Prize Patrol, but scammers use his name. I was the grand winner of $7.5 million and a Mercedes car! I thought it a scam, but decided to play along. They were going to deliver it all to me on Saturday, but I was away videoing at Rock to Bach all day. So we postponed things until Monday. In the meantime, I got this email:

Panasonic Electric Razor for Men, Electric Shaver, ARC6 Six-Blade Electric Razor with Pop-Up Trimmer, ES-LS8A-K

I have used of Panasonic electric shavers for decades. I finally decided to upgrade my Arc5 to an Arc6. It is a big investment, $400 when not on sale. So is it worth it??

Upgrading Drupal 10.3 to Drupal 11

This is my notepad for efforts to do this upgrade.

First install the upgrade_status module:
composer require 'drupal/upgrade_status:^4.3' 

Upgrade drush:
composer require drush/drush:^13

Keep exporting your database because installing any module can throw an unrecoverable error.

When you uninstall a module, first do it in the Extend/Uninstall menu, and then using composer remove drupal/module_name

My new Pixel 9 Pro XL (P9XL) arrived today, replacing my Pixel8 Pro. With a trade-in and the Google Store credits, it cost me about $700 for the 1 GB storage model. NOTE: If you order this, you only see the 1 GB storage option if you select black. I regretted this when I ordered my Pixel8 Pro in pearl and thus only saw 512 MB available.