Exactly one month ago, this little piece broke. I asked a business for a replacement part, and they’ve been kind but slow (I think I may get the spare part in a week or so). Meanwhile, our door won’t keep properly closed unless we lock it with the key. It’s a small issue but at the same time infuriatingly inconvenient.
Today it hit me: we have a 3D printer! Why don’t I just print the damn part? Continue reading
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the piles of paper cluttering your home? Bills, receipts, contracts, and other documents come in faster than you can file them away, turning your home desktop into a mess of loose papers.
It’s no fun task to keep up with the steady inflow of paper from employers, utility companies, insurers, and so on – it never ends! 
I have shelves full of binders with old paperwork that I will probably never need, but I keep it all, just in case.
Here’s how I put a stop to the paper flood. I solved the paper mess and went paperless instead. Obviously, it takes some effort to set up a paperless solution, but it pays off in so many ways. The two biggest benefits I feel is (a) how easy it is to get the paperwork filed away, and (b) how fast it is to find anything later, even when I am not at home!
My kids will start playing Minecraft on a self-hosted server soon, but the newly purchased Java edition of Minecraft for Windows has the “multiplayer” button disabled. There’s a tooltip that says, “Multiplayer is disabled. Please check your Microsoft Account settings”. That would have been a helpful tooltip if there were any relevant “Microsoft Account settings” that can enable multiplayer. But there is no such setting! 
Google shows that this appears to be a general problem, and the suggested solutions do not work. Some posts even claim that this has been broken for so long that it’s outrageous that Microsoft still hasn’t fixed it. I can now confirm that there is a working solution, but it’s so obscure that not even an hour on the phone with first Xbox Support and then Microsoft Support was able to resolve it!
So, here’s the solution:
Once upon a time, mice didn’t have scroll wheels. (Scary to think how long ago that is!) Then there was a confusing time when some mice had those wheels. Soon after, only a few didn’t. And that’s when many people had that disappointing experience of trying to scroll using a mouse that couldn’t.
If you don’t know that feeling of confusion followed by irritation and then sadness, now’s your chance to relive it!
We live in a time where wheelmice are disappearing again. They are now being usurped by touchscreens. I used to think that putting a touchscreen on a laptop is nonsense: it already has a keyboard, touchpad, trackpoint, and commonly a USB mouse as well. Today’s post is my admission that I am mistaken—a touchscreen on a laptop is remarkably useful! 
Those who know me well will know that I am picky with technology, and I felt that my trusty old Samsung Galaxy S6 was doing a great job. If it works, don’t fix it! But, at long last, the battery is worn out and won’t last even half a day. This put me in a position where I had to do something: spend money to have the phone serviced (to install a replacement battery that is presumably also 5 years old), or buy a new phone.
