Daily Battles: StayFocusd Blocking Websites Not On Blocked List

StayFocusd is a free Chrome Extension I use to self-regulate how much time I spent on news and social media web sites every day so I can stay more focused and waste less time. It is a great tool I would recommend to everyone who wants to be more efficient and get more done each day.

However, I just found out today that the StayFocusd tool started blocking my Google Adsense dashboard page. I don't ever recall blocking this web site. And after I went into the extension settings page, I also don't see the Google website on the blocked list.

If you also experience similar problem where websites not on the blocked list gets blocked by StayFocusd, don't worry. Here's how you can take care of this extension bug.

If you are like me, most likely you enabled the Require Challenge option, which requires you to type this long paragraph of text (min 425 characters) without making any mistake (any mistake would reset the challenge). Don't bother! Because it is HARD! I failed the challenge twice today.

1. Go to the settings page of the StayFocusd extension and then click the tab that says Import/Export Settings on the left and then click Export Settings to save your settings to a JSON file.

2. In the address bar of your Chrome browser, type in chrome://extensions. Find StayFocusd and then click Remove.

3. Go to the Chrome Web Store and find StayFocusd (or click this link) and click Add to Chrome.

4. Go to the settings page of the StayFocusd extension and then go back to the tab that says Import/Export Settings on the left and then click Import Settings and load the JSON file you saved on your computer.

That's it. Now it should not block websites that are not on your blocked list anymore.

Tao of the Day:

If you get erased by the Mainstream Media, become the Mainstream Media! #LetYangSpeak







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Blank Notifications on Samsung Galaxy Android

Have you noticed that recently you start getting blank notifications on your Android phones? It happened to my Samsung Galaxy S8. Some notifications are fine, while others are just blank, something like this below.

First I thought it was a bug from the app I was using. But then I started noticing it happening with different apps, such as my Vivint app, Twitter, or even my coupons.

Did my research and eventually found out the cause. It is a bug relating to fonts and styles. To fix the problem, just go to your settings page, search "Font size and style", then select the one under "Display". Choose "Font style", and then select the one you use. If it is already selected, just deselect it and then select it again.

Now go back to your home screen and then swipe down to see your notifications. All the notifications should be not empty now!

Wish I had figured this out before I start cutting down on my twitter time. Well! Another battle won!

Video of the Day:

So glad the fire is under control in Australia. Such a disaster. Even the magpie learned to sound like a fire engine!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to use Chrome with multiple Google Accounts

Some people have multiple Google accounts (like me). Some people help their family members with their Google blogs or Gmails (like me). Some other people share a computer among family members (not me). Yet some other people have multiple emails such as a school email and a personal email (like my daughter). Each Google account also meant different bookmarks, different Google drive docs, different YouTube subscriptions, different Google map timelines, different Google calendars and task lists, or different Google search preferences... (now you see, Google owns our lives, and there's no escaping it).

Whatever the situation, it can be very helpful to be able to use multiple Google Accounts on the same computer. It would be super inconvenient to have to log yourself out and then log into other people's accounts. So in the past, I would just open an incognito Chrome window and then log in to their accounts. But that's still a lot of work, especially trying to remember all their different passwords. There's actually a much easy way:

You can configure Chrome to use multiple Google Accounts!

And here's how you can do it:

1. Click on your avatar at the upper right corner of your Chrome browser (which is just left of the 3 dots icon).
2. Click Add.
3. Follow the instructions to log in to the Google Account you want to add.

Now if you right-click on your Chrome icon on your taskbar, you will see all the accounts in a list that you can just click on one to open a new Chrome browser window with that Google Account. As simple as that!

Hope this can be helpful for those who could benefit from this feature!

Video of the Day:

The Known Universe

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Can't login to WeChat in a web browser

I use WeChat, because I can use it to video chat or voice call family and friends in China for free. But really, it's because most of my Chinese friends (in China or not) all use it as their main messaging app. Fine, the real truth is that my boss (wife) uses it to inform me when she needs things done. 😅

As not a Millennial or Gen Z person, I am very uncomfortable with typing on my phone. I type super slow and make all kinds of mistakes (and then the autocomplete feature of the phone would replace them with all kinds of stupid and inappropriate words). On a keyboard, though, I can type super fast, both in English and in Chinese. So when I have to use WeChat, I'd much prefer using it on the computer than using it on the phone.

That's why one day when I saw a friend using the web browser version of WeChat, I was super delighted! She told me that all I had to do is to go to http://web.wechat.com and then scan the QR code with my WeChat app on my phone. Sounds easy, right? So I immediately gave it a try. Then I got this:

What's going on? My account was suspended? What did I do???!!!

Also, I only want to use the web version. I definitely don't want to install any Chinese apps onto my computer!!! Who knows what kind of Trogen Horses they are going to sneak in with those apps!

I frantically searched the web for solutions. You know, it's like when you just found a treasure chest, and then realize it is locked. You want to pick that lock, or smash the lock, or just pry the chest open, or smash the chest.

Couldn't find anything! Keep searching!! Still can't find anything!!! Keep searching!!!

Eventually, I found it!! From a developer on GitHub who wrote a program that integrates with WeChat:

Your issue is related to the latest policy changing from Tencent: Newly created Wechat Account will not be able to login via Web Wechat anymore. Wechaty is using the Web API of Wechat, which means newly created account will not use Wechaty to log in.

Now I just feel like Fan Xian who simply can't open that chest his incredible mother left him no matter how hard he tried. (Check out Joy of Life, a great book and TV Series.)

Well, you win some battles, and you lose some battles. I'll patiently wait for Tencent to someday enable this feature for "new" WeChat users like me because after years pass, I will no longer remain a "new" WeChat user.

Video of the Day:

This is how I feel about my daily battles sometimes.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to disable news notification on your Mac

I don't remember that I ever enabled news notifications on my Mac. But time from time, something would pop up on my screen, notifying me of some piece of news I had no interest in reading.

Hi Apple, if I want to follow the latest news, I go to Twitter or go to YouTube and watch the Daily Show. Stop sending me useless stuff I never requested like how the many other companies do.

I tried searching for "news" in system preferences in my attempt to shut it off and found nothing!! Is this Apple's way of telling me, stupid Apple users, Apple knows what's good for you. So stop questioning and just OBEY!

Enough ranting. Here's how you can turn it off:

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Select Notifications.
3. Find News in the left pane and select it.
4. Select None under news alert style.

You are welcome! Now on to my next tech battle!

Key to Happiness: Lower your expectations, especially when it comes to your kids.





BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: An error occurred when viewing YouTube videos

When you open a YouTube video on your computer, have you seen this error below?

If you have, chances are, you see this error a lot when you go to different youtube videos. Even though you could refresh, or click the play button a few times to get past this error message and get the video streaming started, it is SUPER ANNOYING!

People have posted this issue on Google Support web site, and hundreds of people echoed their frustration with the same issue. As usual, Google simple ignores the request for help as evidenced in this thread below:

https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/10329866?hl=en

Anyway, I did my own research and investigation and finally found a solution to this problem. Here's what you have to do if you are in the same boat: You have to disable hardware acceleration from your Chrome browser.

1. Click the 3 dots icon on the top right corner of your Chrome browser.
2. Select Settings.
3. Click Advanced in the left pane.
4. Click on System.
5. Toggle off Use hardware acceleration when available.
6. You will be asked to Relaunch Chrome.

That's it. Happy Internet Surfing!

Picture of the Day:

Lower left news: Speed limit jump will 'eliminate the safety risk' on Legacy Highway, officials say

Headline news: 2 dead after head-on crash on Legacy Parkway.

Such irony!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Not getting Blogger new comment notifications in email

I have been encouraging my daughter to blog because I think it is a great habit to write every day. Writing can help you organize your thoughts in a logical way, so it not only improves your writing skills, but also improves your thinking skills. It allows you to offload stuff from your brain so it can work better with other matters. It gives you tangible records of your thoughts that you can go back to. It also facilitates with whatever kind of research you want to do. It is just such a great habit that I encourage you all to try.

Here's my daughter's blog if you want to check it out. Appreciate any kind of encouragement you can give to her!

As I was going through my daughter's posts and leaving comments on how she can improve, it came to my realization that she never gets notified for all the comments I leave on her blog. Strange! Cause I do get notified in email whenever someone leaves a comment for my blog post.

After some digging, I finally found the reason: You have to specifically enable comment notification to the email you specify. It is not on by default.

If you noticed the same problem with your blog comments, here's how you can enable it:

1. Go to your blog settings page and then select Email under Settings.
2. Under Comment Notification Email, add the email you want to use.
3. Make sure you click the Save button to save your changes.

If you use a different email address from the admin user of the blog, an email will be sent to that email address inviting the user to view new comments.

There you have it. Wish Google would have made comment notification enabled by default. But Google is never good at UX design (or really, they never cared is the more accurate description), and we have to live with that.

Video of the Day:

If you have never heard of Andrew Yang, Google him. He brings a fresh air and a lot of sense to US politics. Here's a video of people dancing to a rap song written by a fan of his that describes his policies. This is the first time I know of people writing songs about a presidential candidate's policies. So check it out!

It's not left, it's not right, it's forward! -- Andrew Yang 







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Fighting Bad UX Designs

Today's blog post on daily battles is a bit special, because we, consumers, cannot win this kind of battle directly with technological solutions or hacks. All we can do is to complain or vote with our choice of products. And if we are loud enough, product makers will have to listen and then make improvements.

I am talking about Bad UX Designs, where UX stands for User Experience.

A good product lets users accomplish tasks. A great product also makes the process intuitive, efficient, and pleasant.

Let me give you two examples of bad UX design that bugs me almost every day.

The first example is a function in the Android mobile operating system running on my Samsung Galaxy S8. As illustrated below, a user can use a button (or swipe up) to show all apps currently running on the phone and then swipe up to force quit the app that is malfunctioning or one you no longer want.

Most likely, you are in the app you want to force quit before you perform the swipe up action to kill it. But as soon as you swipe up, the app you want to quit moves right and hides itself behind the edge of the screen, so when you swipe up the app to kill it, most likely you'll be killing another app that you had no intention of killing. This happens to me almost every time, and it is super frustrating. Why can't we just keep the current app right in the middle? Whoever came up with this design would be having a serious talk with me if he/she worked on my team!!

The second example is a web page used by the County Library. What's the first thing a user does when he/she visits the library web page? Most likely the user would try to log in, so he/she can get personalized information and paths to activities relating to his/her personal account. In the picture below, you can see that when a user tries to log in, a popup would jump out from a control right above the login link, obstructing the login link completely. The user has to then try to figure out how to get rid of the big popup and then get to the login link by carefully maneuver the cursor around all the controls in order to avoid triggering any popups.

Such bad UX designs add unnecessary stress and cognitive workload to users who already have to fight all kinds of battles with technology every day besides their non-technical daily challenges. Please! Please be a little bit more diligent with UX design work so we can make their lives slightly better! Use your own design daily so you identify the suffering, and run good user studies to iron out all these annoyances!!

Video of the Day:

Lesson learned: divorce the woman who thinks the car is more important than your life.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: OpenDNS blocking a domain resulting in undefined error

OpenDNS is a useful tool for monitoring your kids' online activities and blocking websites you don't want them to visit. I blogged about this tool in my blog series named The Complete Guide on Monitoring and Parental Control on a Chromebook.

One useful feature of OpenDNS is the ability to block en entire category of websites with a few clicks. You can look at the list of domains your kids visited and select the domain you want to block. Then you have the option to block this domain or block similar domains as shown below.

For example, my daughter used to waste a bunch of time "window" shopping on online shopping sites. I simply clicked block similar domains from OpenDNS, and many web shopping sites that I have never even heard of all became blocked, to my great satisfaction.

However, sometimes a specific website slips through because it was not part of a category when it should have. One example is disneynow.com. It is clearly a video site. But when I blocked YouTube with the category of video sites, OpenDNS only considered video upload sites.

If you select block similar domains on disneynow.com, you will get a prompt saying it doesn't belong to any categories and you can suggest a category. However, it doesn't really let you create the new category and block it. If you select block similar domains, you actually get an error message says "Error blocking disneynow.com. Undefined." This is No Bueno!

A little bit of research revealed that people actually reported this problem as far back as 2016. But guess this bug never had high enough priority, so it never got fixed (see link below).

https://support.opendns.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/220050547-When-i-try-to-block-a-domain-i-get-an-error-

However, it is still possible to block the domain. You just have to go through a different route. Here are the steps:

1. Click the SETTINGS tab at the top.
2. Select your network from the dropdown box.
3. Scroll to the bottom to find a section named Manage individual domains.
4. Add the domain you want to block in the Always block field.
5. Click the ADD DOMAIN button.

Voila, mission accomplished! Lanny 1 and Lanny's daughter 0!!

Moving on to the next battle!!

Video of the Day:

You got to love this boy's attitude. He keeps battling and never gives up!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

The Outcast: Volume 1 Chapter 2

Read all chapters by blog label: The Outcast Posts Label.

Volume 1 Eastwood is All Boulders

Chapter 2 One hundred boys in black (1)

Wherever there are humans, there are always sizable human gathering places. They are called cities. The biggest city in the Eastwood Grand District was the Capital City of the Riverwest State. Here, besides the many easy-to-spot drunkards wandering the streets, the most active groups included black-market peddlers, criminals in the shadows cautiously watching the police patrols, and … the orphans.

Eastwood used to be the wealthiest and most developed mine planet in the Federation. No matter how advanced a civilization was, people making a living as a miner always undertook more risks. The invention of the Autonomous Crystal Ore Extraction Vehicle and the implementation of the full scale computerized safety monitoring, to a great extent, improved the safety of mining operations. However, over the past thousands of years, complex lithosphere movement and the geological changes impossible to predict by computational models, still took away many miners’ lives. Children of such unfortunate miners became a unique species that always wandered about the many city streets in the Eastwood Grand District.

Whether having lost one or both parents, such traumatic life experiences resulted in very unique mentalities for these kids. The Federation covered their living and educational expenses in full, yet had no means of preventing these kids from going astray from school daily. Under surveillance from implanted chips, they couldn’t drink their day away like their jobless uncle miners before reaching legal drinking age. Nor could they meddle with black-market businesses. Although the Federation Government did provide ample food supplies, such a gloomy, piglet-like life simply could not exhaust the exuberant hormone productions inside their bodies. Therefore, violence, rebellion, territorial wars, and similar frantic acts all followed naturally.

The phrase “bastard orphans” in Deputy Chief Bao’s irritated tone referred to this group, a group that gave continuous headaches to the Governor’s Office and the Police Department.

There was still a long way to go before these young orphans would successfully evolve into sinister gangsters. Mere imitation also limited the amount of demolition power they possess. But their sensitive status, orphans, made the situation difficult to handle, especially as the Eastwood mine resources gradually drained out. Most of these kids became orphans from the last mine accident ten years ago, which had a profound impact on the Eastwood Grand District.

……
……

“We want to watch Jian-Shui-Er!”

“Jian-Shui-Er!”

Police sirens resonated everywhere. After receiving commands from their angry Deputy Chief, the Riverwest State Second District Police Department sent in reinforcements as quickly as they could. They were, after all, directly responsible for the public safety around the Bell-Tower Street. Wasting no time, they successfully isolated the over-one-hundred orphans in the middle of the street.

The abundant police batons and riot gears did not scare the Bell-Tower Street orphans. Shouting and chanting continued, except those banners made of rugged tarps were no longer held straight. Maybe the kids were getting tired.

The funniest scene of the protest involved the youngest orphan boy, who seemed to have exhausted himself from the chanting. He simply repeated the name “Jian-Shui-Er” again and again, as though this name had some kind of magical power. Yet, his voice sounded utterly worn-out.

“Hey, take it seriously!”

The orphan leader was annoyed. He shot a stern look toward the young boy and then grabbed the little guy by the ear.

Only after the police had surrounded the Bell-Tower Street, he started to feel the dread. But if Xu-Le had said that Bao wouldn’t dare do anything in the presence of reporters, Bao wouldn’t dare try anything, would he? When did Xu-Le ever misjudge a situation? As soon as he thought of that name, the orphan leader straightened his back and boosted up his courage. Even the indignation on his face looked more sincere.

“We want to watch Channel 23!” he shouted out in an even louder voice toward the many video camera lenses behind the police blockade.

Over one hundred boys protesting the Federation Government in the street, just so they could watch TV … what a mad scene that was!

……

……

Support translator Lanny by leaving comments below and also spreading the word about this great story!

Video of the Day:

Beluga whale playing fetch

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Enable Remote Desktop on Windows Home Editions

Remote Desktop is a great tool that lets you get onto a remote Windows computer as if you were just sitting in front of that computer. I can even use it directly from my Mac to support/control my family members' computers using an app called Microsoft Remote Desktop.

I just recently allowed my 10-year old son to start using an old computer, so he can write blogs, manage his calendar, and search for knowledge (not watching cartoons or playing games online). So naturally, I needed to put some parental control on his computer.

Read about a complete suite of parental control solutions I blogged about previously.

One tool I use is Remote Desktop. Since this is an old computer running Windows 8 Home edition, it does not come automatically with Remote Desktop capabilities. Same goes for any Home version of the Microsoft Windows operating systems such as Windows 8.1 Home, Windows 10 Home, etc., because Microsoft wants you to upgrade to the Pro version for this feature. However, you don't have to pay and upgrade. Here's what you have to do to enable Remote Desktop on your Home edition of Windows:

1. Upgrade to Windows 8.1 Home if you have a Windows 8 computer

This is important because there's a security patch included in Windows 8.1 that if you don't upgrade, Remote Desktop will return an error complaining about CredSSP encryption oracle remediation like the one below:

Just upgrade to Windows 8.1 Home, which is free from Microsoft Store (type that in the search field in the Start Menu), and this problem would go away.

2. Install RDP Wrapper Library

Go to the RDP Wrapper Library Github page and download the zip file. Extract the zip file and then go into the folder to run the install.bat file as an administrator (right-click and then choose run as administrator). Hit any key at the end to exit out of the installation.

Now run the RDPConf.exe file in the same folder and make sure it says Listening. If it says Not listening like the one below, move on to the next step.

3. Add Offset Code to the rdpwrap.ini file

In the above image, you should be able to see the version of windows (build number) you are running. In the above example, it is 10.0.17134.1. Find this number, and then go to this link below to find the match file.

https://github.com/fre4kyC0de/rdpwrap

If you can't find a matching txt file, then sorry, you won't be able to get RDP working on your computer. This is actually the case for my wife's computer. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll see people requesting txt offset files for these versions of Windows, and for some versions, the author of the code repo simply will not support. Just come back to this page from time to time and see if the author might change his mind.

If you do find a matching txt file, yay! Go to the folder on your computer called \Program File\rdpwrap and find a file called rdpwrap.ini. You want to edit this file with a text editing app (such as NotePad) that runs with elevated access (right-click on the NotePad app and select Run as administrator). Then you want to copy the content from the matching txt file and then paste that to the end of the rdpwrap.ini file. Make sure you have a blank line at the end of the ini file, otherwise it won't work.

If your remote desktop still does not connect, check your firewall settings. Follow the article below to allow remote desktop and ICMP (so you can ping the remote computer) to go through your firewall and remote desktop problem would go away.

Allow Remote Desktop in Firewall Settings
Allow Ping (ICMP) through your Firewall

Happy remoting now!

Video of the Day:

Addy playing Chopin's Prelude in E Minor

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Mac Running Super Slow With kernel_task Using More Than 100% of Your CPU

If you use a Mac and start to notice that your Mac is running dog slow, most likely it is due to the "kernel_task" high CPU usage bug.

To confirm, open your Activity Monitor from under your Application and under Utilities folder. You should see something like this below where kernel_task should only use a small percentage of your CPU (in my case, 6.3%): 

If you actually see the %CPU going for more than 100% (mine went as high as 116%, which is beyond my math understanding), that's why your computer is dog slow.

This "kernel_task" process is actually your Mac operating system. So you can't really stop this process.

First, you should try to close all your Chrome windows or whatever web browser you use (I tend to leave like dozens of them open), because one possible culprit is the Flash player, which most likely only lives in your web browsers. The good news is that when you restart your browser, all your web pages (tabs) will automatically come back, so you don't lose anything.

If the above step doesn't solve your Mac slowness problem, then you should really just restart your Mac. It is very interesting that people always joked about restarting Windows as the defacto method to solve all Windows problems. But these days, restarting your Mac is also probably the defacto method you should use for Mac problems. Sad!

Hopefully, your Mac slowness would go away and you can get back to your usual life. If not, then you should read this article for more information on troubleshooting! Good luck!

How to Fix Your Mac’s “kernel_task” High CPU Usage Bug

Picture of the Day:

A nice evening view picture from my deck.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Not Able to See Shared Google Calendars on iPhone

If you received an email saying that someone has shared a Google Calendar with you, and then you accept the invitation. Most likely you still can't see the shared Google Calendar events on your calendar.

Do not panic! This is Google's choice by design (a bad one).

Here's what you have to do to get calendar events to show up:

• Open a browser on your iPhone, whether it is Safari or Chrome or something else.
• Go to calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect.
• Sign in to your Google account if you are asked to.
• Check the checkbox(es) of the shared calendars you want to see on your iPhone.

Same goes for iPad and Mac. Just follow the same steps and you'll be fine.

See how easy it is? Now move on to your next battle with technology! Good luck!

Video of the Day:

My daughter's high school soccer team was featured by the local TV station on their effort to serve the community! Go girls!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Fix A Chromebook That Won't Turn On

If you have a Chromebook and you cannot turn it on even though you are pretty sure you have the battery fully charged, you've come to the right place.

Before you decide to open it up and replace the battery, or hard reset the Chromebook back to factory default, you should always try this method I am describing first. I might fix your problem without losing any data and save yourself a ton of work.

Step one: make sure the battery has been charging for a good while.

Step two: hold the refresh button and the power button together for 10 seconds and then let go.

Image from TechyThings.com

Now hit the power button again and your Chromebook should start normally.

Here's a video showing you step by step (come on, there are really only two steps):

Picture of the Day:

Silver lake in Brighten Ski Resort, Salt Lake City, Utah

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: HoMedics Shiatsu Neck & Shoulder Massager Stopped Working

Since I sit in front of a computer all day (with pretty bad postures), I have very stiff neck and shoulders. Boss got me a HoMedics Neck and Shoulder Massager (model number NMS-620H). Having just left it lying by my desk for quite a while, I decided to give myself a massage when I felt a very tight back. However, when I turned it on, nothing moved. Here's the thing, when nothing moves, no one gets a massage.

The massager was only about 2 years old and I honestly haven't used it much. I tried pushing all the buttons, hoping that I simply forgot how to operate this thing. When I push the heat button, the lights do light up and I could feel the massager getting warmer. It simply just doesn't move the kneaders. I power cycled it a few times, but that didn't change anything.

Tried searching online and see if other people had similar problems. The answer was yes. Many people had the same problems, but the only way to fix it was to have the manufacturer replace parts or replace the entire unit.

Didn't want to go through all those troubles, so I decided to try fixing it myself. If you have similar problems, here's what you can try.

First of all, make sure the massager has power (and don't make a mistake like this). In my case, since the lights come on and I can feel the massager warming up, I know the massager is getting enough power.

Next, unplug the massager from power and have it just sit overnight. Yep, it's that simple. Once you have patiently waited (or you simply forgot about it for many nights), plug it back in, and try turning it on again. You'd be very pleasantly surprised that the massager has returned to life.

We know HoMedic makes all kinds of massagers such as this one, this one, and this one. This method should also work for those types of massager. At least you should give this method a try before you start calling the warranty service.

Hope this simple method can help you out and save you a bunch of extra work. Moving on to the next daily battle!

No matter how delicious the just cooked noodle is, do not be tempted to eat it right away. Patience is the virtual, otherwise, you will burn your tongue and not be able to taste it.






BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Get Rid Of Recommended Videos at the End of a YouTube Video

Don't you find it very annoying that towards the end of a YouTube video you watch, a bunch of recommended video thumbnails cover up most of the player screen and obstruct the ending part of the clip?

Well, here's how you can fix that:

Go to YouTube web page and click on you avatar icon to open the menu. Click Settings with the gear icon. Next click Playback and performance from the menu on the left, and you'll see something like the image below. Uncheck Show annotations and in-video notifications. Make sure to click the SAVE button. That's it!

Another battle fought and another battle one. Moving on to the next battle!

This fix is also super valuable if you find yourself keep clicking those thumbnails to watch clips after clips late into the night... 







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Why Can't I Edit My Slack Message

Slack is a popular instant messaging app that many companies (especially among tech companies) use for internal team communications and collaborations. The company actually just had its IPO earlier this year (June 20th, 2019, to be exact) and peaked at an evaluation of over $20 billion.

Example Slack App Screenshot

To be honest, Slack is great for the communication part, but it can also be super distracting with all the notifications from all the channels you are in (some channels you just don't want to mute). And I actually sometimes intentionally turn it off for hours at a time if I need to get into the zone and focus on coding, troubleshooting, or designing.

One feature in slack is that you can edit your own messages in case you had a typo, forgot to @someone, or need to add additional info. But you might find that sometimes you can just right click on the message and select "edit message" to make your changes:

But some other times, when you right click, the edit option is missing from the menu and can't be found in the "More message actions..." screen either. WHY???

Turned out this is a setting your Slack admin can set, which governs how much time you have if you need to make edits. If you wait for too long, then you will lose the permission to edit. This help page below shows you how you can adjust that permission setting if you are the workspace owner or admin:

Manage permissions for message editing and deletion

I am neither the owner nor the admin, so I simply start a thread under the message I have lost the permission to edit and just post corrections there.


Video of the Day:

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Google Adsense Home Page Not Loading Can't Login

I opened my Google Adsense home page as usual today to see Google's Stats on my ad units. Then I got the following error message:

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it.

Tried several times and still got the same error message.

If you are also seeing this message, don't let it fool you. This is a blatant lie!!! No Google engineer is looking at this to resolve it for you, because this is just a static message they display when certain scripts are blocked from running on their web page. You can wait till you drop dead and no Google engineer will help you!!

But I will!! 😁 And I don't work for Google!!

Normally, this error happens if you recently installed an ad blocker extension to your Chrome browser (or other similar things such as NoScript on Firefox). But I haven't installed any new extensions at all. So what is going on?

Turned out it was the uBlock origin extension I've always had that was causing this problem. My guess is that it just had an auto update or downloaded new database or something. All you have to do is to click the icon from the tool bar and then click that big power button to disable it for the current page you are on.

So the lesson learned here is that, again and again, auto updates might break things. Check your Chrome extensions. Something must have updated if the page worked perfectly for you for a long time and suddenly stops working when you have not made any changes to your computer.

We live in a world where things no longer work reliably in trade for the convenience of getting new features automatically. Just enjoy it, because there's nothing you can do. 







BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Print on a Chromebook

Chromebooks are cheap laptop computers that run the Chrome OS, a lightweight OS developed by Google, that uses Chrome browser as the main UI to basically run browser apps (linux-based kernel).

Because of the lightweight OS design, many things become much harder to do on a Chromebook laptop, such as printing to your home printer, especially if it is a printer that's a few years old, like my Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer.

This printer has been serving our needs well. It is wirelessly connected to our home network. All our computers can send print jobs to it, except the Chromebook.

Google's online help page made it sound really easy to get your Chromebook set up to print to your home computer.

Your first option is to connect your home printer directly to the Chromebook via an USB cable. But seriously who does this? Most likely the printer is shared among multiple devices, and plugging it into a laptop each time you need to print sounds terrible when home printers today are pretty much all capable of wireless communications.

You can also set up the printer as a local wireless printer according to Google. You just make sure your Chromebook is on the same network (subnet) with the wireless printer, go into the settings page, search to find printer settings, and then add a printer by selecting the auto-discovered printer nearby, or manually specify settings such as the IP address of the printer and the IPP protocol.

Sounds pretty easy, right? I was able to quickly add my printer using the find printer nearby method (auto-discovered), but when I tried to print a test job, nothing came out of the printer. Also tried the manually add method by specifying the IP address of the printer. I know my Chromebook can see the printer on the network because I can ping its IP address and can also view the printer status in a browser when I enter the IP address. But still, nothing comes out of the printer when I ran a test print job.

The next option is to set up the printer as a cloud printer. One benefit of this approach is that you can print to the printer even when you are not on your home network. Some newer printers are cloud-ready, meaning they are automatically accessible from outside your home network. My printer, unfortunately, does not have this capability. So in order for it to be discoverable in the cloud, I have to install a Google Cloud Print connector on a computer that has to be always on and always connected to the same network as my printer and always logged in with your Google Account. You have to install the Google Cloud Print connector on this computer and this computer basically serves as a print server that will bridge the communication between your Chromebook and the printer.

In the Lannyland residence, unfortunately, I don't have such a computer dedicated to the printer just that the Chromebook can print. Even though Philip and Jane are always on (BTW: Philip and Jane are two physical existences of my smart home butler Philip Jane), their main functionalities required them to be on a different network from the regular home network the printer is on. And trying to make them multi-homed (meaning connecting to multiple networks at the same time) creates more problems.

But if you have such a computer laying around, this might very well be your solution. When I tested it, I was able to print from the Chromebook. Just make sure the computer never goes to sleep and always stay connected to your home network.

Read the linked articles below for details on how to set up your printer for your Chromebook in details.

Chromebook Help: Set up your printer

Google Cloud Print Connector for Windows

Google Cloud Print Connector for Linux

So how does my daughter print from her Chromebook? I tell her to email me the doc, and I'll print for her from my computer. 😅

[Update on 11/21/19:] Google just quietly "announced" that Google Cloud Print will be officially deprecated by the end of 2019. Google, shutting down another Beta product and leave your users hanging. Hooray, You did it again!

Video of the Day:

Whale Lifts Kayakers Out Of Water

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com