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Keeping Python up to date on macOS

Sometimes the internet is a horrible, awful, ugly thing. And then other times, it’s exactly what you need.

I have 2 Raspberry Pi each with different versions of Python. One running python 3.4.2 and the other running Python 3.5.3. I have previously tried to upgrade the version of the Pi running 3.5.3 to a more recent version (in this case 3.6.1) and read 10s of articles on how to do it. It did not go well. Parts seemed to have worked, while others didn’t. I have 3.6.1 installed, but in order to run it I have to issue the command python3.6 which is fine but not really what I was looking for.

For whatever reason, although I do nearly all of my Python development on my Mac, it hadn’t occurred to me to upgrade Python there until last night.

With a simple Google search the first result came to Stackoverflow (what else?) and this answer. 

brew update
brew upgrade python3

Sometimes things on a Mac do ‘just work’. This was one of those times.

I’m now running Python 3.7.1 and I’ll I needed to do was a simple command in the terminal.

God bless the internet.

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An Evening with Post Modern Jukebox

About a month ago I discovered a kitschy band that did covers of current pop songs but re-imagined as Gatsbyesque versions. I was instantly in love with the new arrangements of these songs that I knew and the videos that they posted on YouTube. I loved it so much that I’ve been listening to them in Apple Music for a couple of weeks as well (time permitting).

I mentioned to Emily this new band that I found and she told me that they would be playing at the McCallum Theatre and I was in utter disbelief. We bought tickets that night (DD 113 and 114 … some of the best in the house!) and we were all set.

To say that I’ve been looking forward to this concert is an understatement. For all the awesomeness that the YouTube videos have, I knew that a live performance would be a major event and I was not disappointed.

I think this is a concert that anyone could enjoy and that everyone should see. This was the first concert where I was both glad to be there AND glad that I had gone (usually I’m just glad that I have gone and have a hard time enjoying the moment while I’m there).

I have the set list below, mostly so I don’t forget what songs were played. It’s also really cool because some of the performers at the concert were the ones in the YouTube videos. Miche (pronounced Mickey) Braden was an amazingly soulful singer, and her part of ‘All about that Bass’ was on point and breath taking!

It was such an awesome concert. I can’t wait to see them again!

First Set

Thriller

Sweet child o mine

Just Like Heaven

Are you going to be my girl

Africa

Lean on

All about that bass

Second Set

Umbrella

Story of my life

Since you been gone

Crazy – Gnarls Barkley

Heart of glass

Habits – Tove Lo

Time after time

Encore

Stacy’s mom

Creep – Radiohead

Such Great Heights

Band

Hannah Gill – vocals

Demi Remick – Tap

Miche Braden – vocals

Natalie Angst – vocals

Casey Abrams – MC / vocals

Ryan Quinn – Vocals

Ben the Sax Guy – Sax and clarinet

Dave Tedeschi – drums

Steve Whipple – bass

Logan Evan Thomas – Piano

The trombone player was amazing, but I wasn’t able to find him on the PMJ Performers page.

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Monitoring the temperature of my Raspberry Pi Camera

In late April of this year I wrote a script that would capture the temperature of the Raspberry Pi that sits above my Hummingbird feeder and log it to a file.

It’s a straight forward enough script that captures the date, time and temperature as given by the internal measure_temp function. In code it looks like this:

MyDate="`date +'%m/%d/%Y, %H:%M, '`"
MyTemp="`/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp |tr -d "=temp'C"`"
echo "$MyDate$MyTemp" >> /home/pi/Documents/python_projects/temperature/temp.log

I haven’t ever really done anything with the file, but one thing I wanted to do was to get alerted if (when) the temperature exceeded the recommended level of 70 C.

To do this I installed ssmtp onto my Pi using apt-get

sudo apt-get install ssmtp

With that installed I am able to send an email using the following command:

echo "This is the email body" | mail -s "This is the subject" user@domain.tld

With this tool in place I was able to attempt to send an alert if (when) the Pi’s temperature got above 70 C (the maximum recommended running temp).

At first, I tried adding this code:

if [ "$MyTemp" -gt "70" ]; then
   echo "Camera Pi Running Hot" | mail -s "Warning! The Camera Pi is Running Hot!!!" user@domain.tld
fi

Where the $MyTemp came from the above code that get’s logged to the temp.log file.

It didn’t work. The problem is that the temperature I’m capturing for logging purposes is a float, while the item it was being compared to was an integer. No problem, I’ll just make the “70” into a “70.0” and that will fix the … oh wait. That didn’t work either.

OK. I tried various combinations, trying to see what would work and finally determined that there is a way to get the temperature as an integer, but it meant using a different method to capture it. This is done by adding this line:

ComparisonTemp=$(($(cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp)/1000))

The code above gets the temperature as an integer. I then use that in my if statement for checking the temperature:

if [ "$ComparisonTemp" -gt "70" ]; then
   echo "Camera Pi Running Hot" | mail -s "Warning! The Camera Pi is Running Hot!!!" user@domain.tld
fi

Giving a final script that looks like this:

MyDate="`date +'%m/%d/%Y, %H:%M, '`"
MyTemp="`/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp |tr -d "=temp'C"`"
echo "$MyDate$MyTemp" >> /home/pi/Documents/python_projects/temperature/temp.log
ComparisonTemp=$(($(cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp)/1000))

if [ "$ComparisonTemp" -gt "70" ]; then
   echo "Camera Pi Running Hot" | mail -s "Warning! The Camera Pi is Running Hot!!!" user@domain.tld
fi
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iPad versus MacBook Pro

May people ask the question … iPad Pro or MacBook Pro. I decided to really think about this question and see, what is it that I do with each device.

Initially I thought of each device as being its own ‘thing’. I did these things on my iPad Pro and those things on my MacBook Pro. But when I really sat down and thought about it, it turns out that there are things I do exclusively on my iPad Pro, and other things that I do exclusively on my MacBook Pro … but there are also many things that I do on both.

iPad Pro

There are apps which only run on iOS. Drafts is a perfect example. It’s my note taking app of choice. Using my iPhone in conjunction with my iPad makes Drafts one of the most powerful apps I use in the iOS ecosystem.

During meetings I can quickly jot down things that I need to know using my iPhone and no one notices or cares. Later, I can use my iPad Pro to process these notes and make sure that everything gets taken care of.

I can also use Drafts as a powerful automation tool to get ideas into OmniFocus (my To Do App of Choice) easily and without any fuss.

I also use my iPad Pro to process the expenses my family incurs. We use Siri Shortcuts to take a picture of a receipt which is then saved in a folder in Dropbox.

I monitor these images and match them up against expenses (or income) in Mint and categorize the expenses.

This workflow helps to keep me (and my family) in the know about how (and more importantly where) we’re spending our money.

Mint is available as a web page, and I’ve tried to use macOS and this workflow, but it simply didn’t work for me.

Using OmniFocus on the iPad is a dream. I am easily able to process my inbox, perform my weekly review and quickly add new items to do inbox. The ability to drag and drop with with either Apple Pencil or my finger makes it so easy to move tasks around.

The other (obvious) use case for my iPad Pro over my MacBook Pro is media consumption. Everyone says you can’t get real work done on an iPad and they point to how easy it is to consume media on the iPad, but I think that shows the opposite.

When you’re ready to take a break from doing real work, the best media consumption device is the one you have with you 😀

MacBook Pro

When I really thought about what I use my MacBook Pro for I was … surprised. Quite honestly, it’s used mostly to write code (in Python) using my favorite editor (PyCharm) but other than that … I don’t do much on it that I can’t do on my iPad.

When I record podcast (OK, really, just that one and just that one time) I use my MBP, and if I have a ton of stuff I need to clean up in OmniFocus then I’m over at the MacBook, but really, it’s doesn’t do anything I can’t do on the iPad Pro.

Maybe I don’t do real work in the macOS ecosystem?

What I do on both MacBook Pro and iPad Pro

Honestly, they both do a great job of getting me to where I want to go on the internet. Some people think that mobile safari isn’t up to it’s macOS counterpart (and they’re right) but for my (non-coding) needs, it doesn’t really matter to me. They both work really well for me.

I also tend to use OmniFocus on both when I want to mark things as done, add new items, or make bulk edits (OF3 on iOS finally made this one a possibility).

I also use the terminal to access servers via ssh on both platforms. The great thing about the command line is that it’s mostly the same where ever you’re coming from.

Terminus on iOS is a a great terminal app and I can just as easily navigate the server there as I can using the terminal app in macOS.

I’m also just as likely to plan my family’s budget on iOS as I am macOS. It just kind of depends which device is easier to get to, not what I’m planning on doing. Excel on both platforms works really well for me (I work in a Windows environment professionally so Excel is what I use and know for that kind of thing).

Finally, writing. I use Ulysses on both macOS and iOS and really, I love them both. Each app has parity with the other so I never feel like I’m losing something when I write on my MacBook Pro (or on my iPad Pro). Sometimes, it’s hard to really tell which platform I’m on because they do such a good job (for me) to make them basically the same.

All in all, I don’t think it’s a question of which to choose, iPad Pro or MacBook Pro, iOS or macOS … it’s a matter of what device is closest to me right now? What device will bring me the most joy to use, right now? What device do I want to use right now?

iOS or macOS? iPad Pro or MacBook Pro? These aren’t the right questions to be asking. It should be … what device do I want to use right now? And don’t care what anyone else thinks.

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Fizz Buzz

I was listening to the most recent episode of ATP and John Siracusa mentioned a programmer test called fizz buzz that I hadn’t heard of before.

I decided that I’d give it a shot when I got home using Python and Bash, just to see if I could (I was sure I could, but you know, wanted to make sure).

Sure enough, with a bit of googling to remember some syntax fo Python, and learn some syntax for bash, I had two stupid little programs for fizz buzz.

Python

def main():

	my_number = input("Enter a number: ")
	
	if not my_number.isdigit():
		return
	else:
		my_number = int(my_number)
		if my_number%3 == 0 and my_number%15!=0:
			print("fizz")
		elif my_number%5 == 0 and my_number%15!=0:
			print("buzz")
		elif my_number%15 == 0:
			print("fizz buzz")		
		else:
			print(my_number)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Bash

#! /bin/bash

echo "Enter a Number: " 

read my_number

re='^[+-]?[0-9]+$'
if ! [[ $my_number =~ $re ]] ; then
   echo "error: Not a number" >&2; exit 1
fi

if ! ((my_number % 3)) && ((my_number % 15)); then
	echo "fizz"
elif ! ((my_number % 5)) && ((my_number % 15)); then
	echo "buzz"
elif ! ((my_number % 15)) ; then
	echo "fizz buzz"
else
	echo my_number
fi

And because if it isn’t in GitHub it didn’t happen, I committed it to my fizz-buzz repo.

I figure it might be kind of neat to write it in as many languages as I can, you know … for when I’m bored.

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Share Your Gifts

There’s this new commercial by Apple called Share Your Gifts all about a young creative woman that keeps all of her creativity to herself.

She does a really good job through the entire video of creating neat things, some seen, some not, and then making sure that no one else sees them by stuffing them into her idea box.

Her ideas are only shared when her dog opens the window to her apartment at which point her ideas are spread throughout the city.

People on the street see the ideas as the horrified young creator watches her creations get shared.

And you know what happens? People are genuinely happy about the creations that have been shared with them.

The creator’s fear that people would not appreciate or understand her creations were unfounded. People laugh and smile and enjoy what she’s shared.

It’s a hugely impactful video for me because I, like most creative people I’m guessing, are terrified of sharing what they’ve created.

What if what I made isn’t understood? What if no one likes what I’ve made? Worse, what if no one notices what I’ve made. What if people make fun of what I made. What if … what if … what if … ?

I like this commercial because it takes those “what if’s” and turns it on it’s head! What if people connect with what I’ve made? What if people enjoy what I’ve made? What if people are happy because of what I’ve made?

The act of creating, for me at least, is less about any external validation, and more about trying out something new and learning, but I still am afraid to share.

These feelings, these “what if’s” can hold me back from sharing some truly fun things I’ve done. Who knows, maybe some of them are amazing.

So what if someone doesn’t like what you’ve made? So what if someone makes fun of what you’ve made? If you hold yourself hostage to the naysayers, and the potential negativity of the world, you rob the world of something truly extraordinary … you.

And so, with this in mind, I am going to worry less about the potential negatives of what I create when I share it, and focus more on the happiness that it brings me, and the happiness it might bring to others.

Here’s to sharing your creativity … here’s to sharing your gifts with the world!

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Adding my Raspberry Pi Project code to GitHub

Over the long holiday weekend I had the opportunity to play around a bit with some of my Raspberry Pi scripts and try to do some fine tuning.

I mostly failed in getting anything to run better, but I did discover that not having my code in version control was a bad idea. (Duh)

I spent the better part of an hour trying to find a script that I had accidentally deleted somewhere in my blog. Turns out it was (mostly) there, but it didn’t ‘feel’ right … though I’m not sure why.

I was able to restore the file from my blog archive, but I decided that was a dumb way to live and given that

  1. I use version control at work (and have for the last 15 years)
  2. I’ve used it for other personal projects

However, I’ve only ever used a GUI version of either subversion (at work) or GitHub (for personal projects via PyCharm). I’ve never used it from the command line.

And so, with a bit of time on my hands I dove in to see what needed to be done.

Turns out, not much. I used this GitHub resource to get me what I needed. Only a couple of commands and I was in business.

The problem is that I have a terrible memory and this isn’t something I’m going to do very often. So, I decided to write a bash script to encapsulate all of the commands and help me out a bit.

The script looks like this:

echo "Enter your commit message:" 

read commit_msg

git commit -m "$commit_msg"

git remote add origin path/to/repository

git remote -v

git push -u origin master

git add $1

echo ”enter your commit message:”

read commit_msg

git commit -m ”$commit_msg”

git push

I just recently learned about user input in bash scripts and was really excited about the opportunity to be able to use it. Turns out it didn’t take long to try it out! (God I love learning things!)

What the script does is commits the files that have been changed (all of them), adds it to the origin on the GitHub repo that has been specified, prints verbose logging to the screen (so I can tell what I’ve messed up if it happens) and then pushes the changes to the master.

This script doesn’t allow you to specify what files to commit, nor does it allow for branching and tagging … but I don’t need those (yet).

I added this script to 3 of my projects, each of which can be found in the following GitHub Repos:

I had to make the commit.sh executable (with chmod +x commit.sh) but other than that it’s basically plug and play.

Addendum

I made a change to my Kings script tonight (Nov 27) and it wouldn’t get pushed to git. After a bit of Googling and playing around, I determined that the original script would only push changes to an empty repo … not one with stuff, like I had.  Changes made to the post (and the GitHub repo!)

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The PIR Sensor Debacle of 2018

Last spring I set up a Raspberry Pi to record humming birds at my hummingbird feeder, compile the recorded h264 files into an mp4 and upload it to YouTube.

I’ve written about that process before here, here, and here.

This post is a bit of documentation to remind myself about how to connect the PIR sensor to the Raspberry Pi so I don’t forget.

When I went to set it up this year, it appeared like the PIR sensor wasn’t working. It would start the video capture, but it wouldn’t end it.

I tried a couple of different things (including the purchase of some new PIR sensors) but none of them seemed to work. I was worried that the heat from the early bit of summer last year had maybe fried my little Pi.

But no, it turns out that the link I was using as the basis for my project had a diagram AND a description about how to connect the PIR.

I had assumed that the diagram was correct and that I didn’t need to read the description, but it turns out I did BECAUSE the diagram had the connections set up in a way that didn’t line up with the PIR sensor(s) I have.

In the Parent Detector PIR sensor the connectors are (1) Power, (2) Ground, (3) Out

In my PIR sensor the connectors are (1) Power, (2) Out, (3) Ground.

This meant that the power was getting to the PIR sensor, but there was no way to send the trip because the signal was being sent to the Ground.

Anyway, the morale of the story is, pictures are nice, but reading may save you some time (and money) in the long run.

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ITFKH!!!

It’s time for Kings Hockey! A couple of years ago Emily and I I decided to be Hockey fans. This hasn’t really meant anything except that we picked a team (the Kings) and ‘rooted’ for them (i.e. talked sh*t* to our hockey friends), looked up their position in the standings, and basically said, “Umm … yeah, we’re hockey fans.”

When the 2018 baseball season ended, and with the lack of interest in the NFL (or the NBA) Emily and I decided to actually focus on the NHL. Step 1 in becoming a Kings fan is watching the games. To that end we got a subscription to NHL Center Ice and have committed to watching the games.

Step 2 is getting notified of when the games are on. To accomplish this I added the games to our family calendar, and decided to use what I learned writing my ITFDB program and write one for the Kings.

For the Dodgers I had to create a CSV file and read it’s contents. Fortunately, the NHL as a sweet API that I could use. This also gave me an opportunity to use an API for the first time!

The API is relatively straight forward and has some really good documentation so using it wasn’t too challenging.

import requests
from sense_hat import SenseHat
from datetime import datetime
import pytz
from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta



def main(team_id):
    sense = SenseHat()

    local_tz = pytz.timezone('America/Los_Angeles')
    utc_now = pytz.utc.localize(datetime.utcnow())
    now = utc_now.astimezone(local_tz)

    url = 'https://statsapi.web.nhl.com/api/v1/schedule?teamId={}'.format(team_id)
    r = requests.get(url)

    total_games = r.json().get('totalGames')

    for i in range(total_games):
        game_time = (r.json().get('dates')[i].get('games')[0].get('gameDate'))
        away_team = (r.json().get('dates')[i].get('games')[0].get('teams').get('away').get('team').get('name'))
        home_team = (r.json().get('dates')[i].get('games')[0].get('teams').get('home').get('team').get('name'))
        away_team_id = (r.json().get('dates')[i].get('games')[0].get('teams').get('away').get('team').get('id'))
        home_team_id = (r.json().get('dates')[i].get('games')[0].get('teams').get('home').get('team').get('id'))
        game_time = datetime.strptime(game_time, '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ').replace(tzinfo=pytz.utc).astimezone(local_tz)
        minute_diff = relativedelta(now, game_time).minutes
        hour_diff = relativedelta(now, game_time).hours
        day_diff = relativedelta(now, game_time).days
        month_diff = relativedelta(now, game_time).months
        game_time_hour = str(game_time.hour)
        game_time_minute = '0'+str(game_time.minute)
        game_time = game_time_hour+":"+game_time_minute[-2:]
        away_record = return_record(away_team_id)
        home_record = return_record(home_team_id)        
        if month_diff == 0 and day_diff == 0 and hour_diff == 0 and 0 >= minute_diff >= -10:
            if home_team_id == team_id:
                msg = 'The {} ({}) will be playing the {} ({}) at {}'.format(home_team, home_record, away_team, away_record ,game_time)
            else:
                msg = 'The {} ({}) will be playing at the {} ({}) at {}'.format(home_team, home_record, away_team, away_record ,game_time)
            sense.show_message(msg, scroll_speed=0.05)


def return_record(team_id):
    standings_url = 'https://statsapi.web.nhl.com/api/v1/teams/{}/stats'.format(team_id)
    r = requests.get(standings_url)
    wins = (r.json().get('stats')[0].get('splits')[0].get('stat').get('wins'))
    losses = (r.json().get('stats')[0].get('splits')[0].get('stat').get('losses'))
    otl = (r.json().get('stats')[0].get('splits')[0].get('stat').get('ot'))
    record = str(wins)+'-'+str(losses)+'-'+str(otl)
    return record


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main(26) # This is the code for the LA Kings; the ID can be found here: https://statsapi.web.nhl.com/api/v1/teams/

The part that was the most interesting for me was getting the opponent name and then the record for both the opponent and the Kings. Since this is live data it allows the records to be updated which I couldn’t do (easily) with the Dodgers programs (hey MLB … anytime you want to have a free API I’m ready!).

Anyway, it was super fun and on November 6 I had the opportunity to actually see it work:

I really like doing fun little projects like this.

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Hosing my WiFi set up

I have been wanting to put shelves up in my office above my desk for some time. The problem has been that the ones that are sold at Lowe’s or Home Depot are not really what I wanted (too short) and I’m not a super handy guy with building stuff (that’s more my dad and brother) so I’ve just been putting it off. For an embarrassingly long time.

Last a couple of weekends ago my dad had volunteered to help me out in putting up some shelves.

On Saturday at 8:30 we started. All in all the process went really, really well. Only one extra trip to the hardware store (it’s usually about 3) and the shelves were nice and level.

Since I wanted the shelves above my desk we needed to move it, and all of the electronics that were on it, and plugged into the outlet behind it. This included a UPS / Battery backup that all of my electronics were plugged into.

We moved everything away from the wall, and then I moved it back. No. Big. Deal.

Now, the timing may have just been coincidental, but the next morning I needed to do some work for my job-y job from home. I took my laptop into my office (with the brand new shelves) and plugged it into the UPS.

I noticed the lights flicker and discovered that the WiFi router (my trusty AirPort Extreme) seem to have reset itself.

No big deal. I just rebooted and we were all good.

Later that day I plugged in my iMac and then stuff got real. The lights went out. I figured that the breaker tripped, but the sprinklers next to the breaker were on so I waded out through to the box and turned the breaker back on. Or so I thought. I came back in and the lights were still off.

At this point I freaked out because, well, that’s kind of what I do. I went back out and turned the breaker off and then back on. Lights are back.

OK, lets try this again. I plug the iMac back in and … crap. Lights are off again.

Back to the breaker (at this point the sprinklers are off) so off and on the breaker went.

OK, one last time and … mother f!

Somehow I was able to go from being able to have my UPS plugged in and everything being fine, to not.

OK. Swap out the UPS and put back the Surge Protectors. Everything powers on and we’re good.

Except we’re not. The light on my AirPort Extreme is suddenly not a solid green, but instead a flashing amber. I consult the internet and get a very unhelpful message

These are some typical reasons for the status light to flash amber:

The base station hasn’t been set up, or it was reset and needs to be set up again. Use AirPort Utility to set up your base station.

A firmware update is available for the base station.

The base station is set up to use Back to My Mac, but Back to My Mac isn’t working or the password is incorrect. If you’ve upgraded to macOS Mojave, you should remove the base station from your Back to My Mac network, because Mojave doesn’t support Back to My Mac.

The base station can’t connect to the Internet, such as when Internet service is down at your location, the base station can’t acquire an IP address from your primary router, or the WAN Ethernet connection to your router isn’t working.

The base station is set up to wirelessly extend the range of your network, but is too far away from the primary Wi-Fi base station.

If your base station is an AirPort Time Capsule, its internal hard disk is experiencing an issue that requires repair.

And suddenly my entire WiFi is down. And I am sad.

I tried a ton of things to get the AirPort Extreme Back, but nothing is working. I finally throw in the towel and decide to to use the WiFi access point from my Fios router.

This means that I have to update the WiFi on:

  • 3 iPhones
  • 2 iPads
  • 1 MacBook
  • 2 MacBookPros
  • 1 iMac
  • 2 Wemo Switches
  • 2 Raspberry Pi
  • 3 Apple TVs (2 4th Gen and 1 3rd Gen)
  • 1 WiFi connected Scale
  • 1 Ring Doorbell
  • 1 Ring Chime (connected to Ring Doorbell)

It also means that I need to plug my Netgear switch into my Fios router instead of the AirPort Extreme. No big deal, right? Except that it was because I forget that the port that the Cat5 cable is plugged into on a router is important.

I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out why my Sonos and Hue Lights weren’t on my network.

Emily kept telling me to take a break and relax and that was, in that moment, the last thing I wanted to do.

I was able to get all of the iOS and MacOS devices connected back to the internet (via WiFi) and decided that I needed to forget the network and watch game 5 of the World Series.

By the end of the 7th we had the game off and were catching up on CW Comic Book shows.

It was a rough day. But I learned a couple of things:

  1. LAN Port 1 on the Fios Router is the right port
  2. Sometimes, you just need to take a step back and think instead of just react
  3. I have a crap ton of WiFi devices

I’m still working on trying to get the AirPort Extreme back to working so that I don’t need to get a new WiFi router ( have I mentioned how awful the Fios one is? ).