Daily Battles: 64GB USB Disk Not Recognized Correctly in Windows

So it all started from me trying to move some large files between computers and smart devices. I plugged the USB drive into Jane (a Windows computer and one of Philip Jane's many physical existences where Philip Jane is my virtual smart home butler), but the USB drive only showed a capacity of 200MB.

"What's going on?" I asked myself as I correctly ejected the drive safely (following proper Windows procedures) and plugged the USB drive onto my Mac, my main computer. It showed 58GB space.

"Maybe the drive is formatted into a Mac only format," I though to myself. And sure enough, it was in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

No problem for a tech savvy geek like me! Within one minute, I have successfully formatted the USB drive in exFAT format, a format that both Mac and Windows can understand.

I unmounted the USB drive (proper Mac procedure in handing USB drives) and plugged the it into Jane again. "What the heck?" It still only showed 200MB.

"Is something wrong with Jane?" I asked myself as I promptly unplugged the USB drive from Jane and plugged it into Philip (another Windows computer and one of Philip Jane's many physical existences). This time it correctly showed the USB drive as 58GB.

"Maybe Jane just can't read exFAT," I told myself, "and I really should make it FAT32, Window's favorite disk format.

I quickly launched the disk format utility in Philip. But wait? Why isn't FAT32 an option for format? The only option available is NTFS.

After reading an article named "Help Article – Fix for “Windows Format, no FAT32 option," I got it. Turned out Windows can't format any USB drive bigger than 32GB. The article suggested that I download a free utility which will let me format the drive even though it is big. But guess what, the link sent me to a page like this:

Hey, you can't fool me! Didn't I say I am a tech savvy geek? These are advertisements disguised as a legit web page! I clicked the back button and looked at the date of that help article. Yep, that article was written in 2014, 5 years ago.

I searched again, and this time I decided to open an article named "Solved: FAT32 Option Not Available in Windows 10/8/7." This one suggested that I download a free (for home use) utility called AOMEI Partition Assistant. This one looks okay. So I happily downloaded the tool and installed in on Philip. Upon opening the utility, I realized that the utility is not even recognizing the USB drive at all.

I guess I am back to square one.

I vaguely recalled that Jane recognized the drive with a volume name of something EFI, so I plugged the USB drive back in to Jane. I was correct, the volume was named "EFI System." So I started googling EFI System. Turned out an EFI System is a bootable windows partition.

Plugging the USB drive back into Philip, I opened Disk Manager so I can look at all the partitions. The USB drive actually had two partitions, an EFI System partition, a exFAT partition, and also an unused partition.

Maybe that AOMEI tool will correctly recognize the drive is there's only one partition. I quickly deleted the unused partition and the exFAT partition. Loaded up AOMEI again. Nope, still not recognizing the drive. When I tried to delete the last EFI System partition, I found out that Windows Disk Manager doesn't let me delete this partition. All options grayed out. Great!

More searching online landed on this article: "How to Delete EFI System Partition in Windows 10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista." Didn't want to mess with rebooting Philip using a bootable disk (since Philip is a headless computer, meaning it doesn't have a monitor plugged into it), I went all commando. And this time, I was able to delete the partition successfully. Thanks Brithny!

Going back into Disk Manager on Philip, I created a single partition and a single volume and formatted it as exFAT and went back into AOMEI again. GUESS WHAT? AOMEI still doesn't recognize the drive. What a piece of junk. I am uninstalling this %&*!

"Let's try the drive on Jane again!" I decided. And as soon as I plugged it back into Jane, the drive was recognized correctly as a 58GB drive. I didn't need FAT32 at all!!

So what was really going on here?

First, since the USB drive had both a FAT partition and a Mac OS Extended partition, on Jane, a windows computer, it recognized the FAT partition only, and on my Mac, it recognized the Mac OS Extended partition only. Nothing strange here.

Secondly, once I reformatted the Mac OS Extended partition to exFAT, Philip decided to use the exFAT partition over the FAT partition because Philip is a Windows 10 machine. And Jane decided to use the FAT partition and not the exFAT partition because Jane is a Windows 8.1 machine.

Thirdly, Windows won't let you format a USB disk to FAT32 when it is bigger than 32GB. But you can format it to exFAT and that should still work fine with Windows 8.1.

Mystery finally solved and I can finally move my large files in peace. Just another daily battle with technology, and I have come out triumphant once again! Hooray!!

Mind you that I did all these (and posted this blog) all without my Logitech wireless keyboard, which is out of battery!!

BTW: 58GB is the measurement in actual Gigabytes and 64GB really meant 64,000,000,000 Bytes. Manufactures like to call that 64GB to make it sound bigger and worth more!

Picture of the Day:

Don't ask me why I use a Mac keyboard on Philip and Jane, two Windows computers. But when this thing is dead, it is dead for a long while.

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

Daily Battles: How to Take Screenshot on Android When the Phone is Locked

For my previous post, I needed to take a screenshot of my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S8), that's when I found out that my normal screen capture gesture doesn't work on a locked screen.

To capture a screenshot on an Android phone, the easiest way is to swipe the phone screen from side to side with your palm. But this method doesn't work if phone is locked.

Another method is use Google Assistant. You can say "Okay Google" to activate Google Assistant, and then command it to "take a screenshot." However, this method also doesn't work when the screen is locked.

In order to take screen shot while the phone is locked, you need to push two buttons together. For a phone with a Home button, hold the Home button and the Power button together until you hear a click sound. For a phone without the Home button (such as my Samsung Galaxy S8), home the Power button together with the Volume Down button until you hear a click sound.

That's it! Now onto my next daily battles!

Video of the Day:

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

Best App to Play YouTube Videos On Your Smart Phone -- YouTube Vanced

Admit it, we watch a lot of YouTube videos on our smart phones.

It has been really annoying when I started using my smart phone to listen to podcasts on YouTube, whether I was doing manual labor, or was driving my kids to various activities (and getting stuck in traffic). Why?

I tried using both the Android included YouTube app and the Chrome browser. Both of them:

• Do not remember what was the last YouTube video I was viewing and where I paused (e.g., in the middle of a two-hour long podcast).
  
  
• If I open another app, YouTube video stops playing.
  
  
• Stops playing the video when my phone is locked (whether automatically or when I do it manually).

If you are also super annoyed by these limitations, I have good news!! I have found a video player that addresses exactly those annoyances!!

Actually, some people got so annoyed (more annoyed than me) and decided to create a new YouTube video player based on the official YouTube app. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

The app is called YouTube Vanced, and you can download it from their web site. Features of this app include:

• Block all ads (togglable)
• Background Playback
• Force VP9 (or HDR) or vice versa
• Override Maximal Resolution
• Pinch to Zoom (for all devices)
• Casting Togglable (can be forced off)
• Toggle Themes (Black, Dark, White)
• PiP - Picture in Picture mode (Oreo only)
• Auto Repeat Feature
• Preferred Speed and Resolution

One extra benefit of this app is that while my phone is locked, I could still resume or pause the video play like how it is shown in the below screen capture:

Just download the APK file from the web site and install. That's it! Enjoy!

Sorry for iPhone users (which I am also one). This app is for Android only.

Do not pretend to be what you are not (and I am not a gardener)!!!

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

The Complete Guide on Monitoring and Parental Control on a Chromebook and Disabling Incognito Mode - Part 5

[This is a 5-part series. Here are links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]

Problem Statement:

Know what web sites my daughter wastes time on when she is at home with a school managed Google Suite account (because her school has monitoring of their own) without me spending too much time or spend any money on new hardware devices.

Option 4: Other Chrome Extensions

There are also Chrome extensions you can install from Chrome Web Store onto a Chromebook for additional parental control functionalities.

4.1 Off the Record Chrome History

Off the Record Chrome History is an extension you can install that will allow browsing history to be remembered while in incognito mode. However, it is more of a convenience for the user of the Chromebook for look up, because as soon as the incognito window is closed, all history are erased. This can only work for me if I catch my daughter red-handed before she closes the incognito window. But she has really fast fingers from years of piano training. So it does me no good!!

Read more about the extension here:
How to Save the Browsing History of Incognito Mode in Chrome

4.2 StayFocusd

StayFocusd is actually a fantastic tool I frequently use myself. The Chrome extension lets me set time limit on how much time I can spend on web sites where I tend to waste a lot of time on (e.g., Quora, News web sites, Slashdot, etc.). Once my time is up for the day, I can no longer visit these web sites, thus limiting the amount of time I waste every day. It also works in incognito mode if you enable it in the settings/options page of the extension. If I want to change settings such as remove web sites from the blocked list, I have to type out this long article about not wasting time perfectly without making any mistakes. If a typing mistake is made, I have to start all over on typing the article. This tool also has a predefined list of websites to block, which includes web sites such as facebook, instagram, or YouTube. There's also a Nuclear Option, once used, prevents any setting changes for a long period of time.

I also put this on my daughter's Chromebook and blocked many websites, especially social media and video sites. She does get 15 minutes each day to do her Instagram thing or watch a YouTube video.

A small drawback on this tool is that you can't set time limit per web site. However, the biggest draw back is that your kids can actually simply disable the extension and then enable it again after their Internet spree (which my daughter quickly figured out). They can also remove the extension and then add it back in again. Also, sometimes Chrome OS update would break the extension and you have to click the repair button to get it working again. The developers of the tool said that they sent requests to Google on preventing people from turning the extension off. But we all know how apt Google is on user feedback and feature requests (10+ years), so that's not going to work soon. The developers recommended adding the chrome://extensions page to the blocked web site list. Not a great solution because during the allowed time, kids can easily go in and disable the extension.

So great tool for yourself, but only useable if your kids don't know how to work with extensions, which is probably unlikely because first thing they do is to google how to disable StayFocusd.

So how many times have I being saying this: Not a solution for me!!

4.3 Mobicip

Mobicip is a popular parental control tool many people recommend. For it to work on a Chromebook, you will need to use the Mobicip Parent Control with Screen Time Chrome extension. The tool claims that it offers the following features:

• Filter the internet & block objectionable content
• Limit screen time 
• Monitor browsing history & online activity
• Use intuitive web portal or mobile app in Parent Mode, 24x7 on the go 

I did not test this tool because it is not free and you have to buy an annual plan with price ranging from $49.99 for 5 devices to $159.99 for 20 devices. Some quick research also reveals that just like the two extensions I listed above, kids can easily turn the extension off and then back on, and you would be blind for that time being.

This video below is created by Mobicip to show you how to set it up on a Chromebook. Note that the comments are all disabled, which feels shady to me. There are probably a lot of complaints in the comments and the company didn't want to show them.

Anyway, if you want to give this tool a try, go for it. But for me, this is, again, not a solution.

So to conclude on this 5-part series of parental control on Chromebook, there are really no solution that is perfect. Pick the one that works best for you. And to my super delight:

I finally found the solution that works for me!! Hooray!!

The Solution For Lanny:

This tool is free (with limited history duration and you can pay for longer period); it is by device, so I can distinguish between my son and my daughter; it allows me to check web browsing history from my computer or phone any time I want; and it also works with her school assigned G Suite email address/Google account!

Since my daughter also reads my blog (I know you are reading this, Addy. 😜), I will not reveal the tool here. If you want to know what this solution is, contact me via email.

Of course, ultimately, I am also using many of the other solutions I listed as a combined solution (DNS, router, Google Family WiFi, StayFocusd, etc., etc.).

Parenting is a tough job!! So good luck to all parents out there. And hopefully you have found something that works for you after reading my blog. Leave me comments and let me know which one worked for you! Share the success story and share the frustration!!

Video of the Day:

This is how I feel after I finally found my parental control solution!

Now onto my next daily battles!

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

The Complete Guide on Monitoring and Parental Control on a Chromebook and Disabling Incognito Mode - Part 4

[This is a 5-part series. Here are links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]

Problem Statement:

Know what web sites my daughter wastes time on when she is at home with a school managed Google Suite account (because her school has monitoring of their own) without me spending too much time or spend any money on new hardware devices.

Option 3: On the Chromebook Computer

There are ways you can control things right on the Chromebook laptop itself. But the first thing you should do is to make sure you set yourself as the owner of the Chromebook before you add your kid in as a non-owner account. The first user to set up the Chromebook becomes the “owner” of the Chromebook and can set up special privileges. Factory reset if your kid already has an account so you can start fresh and set yourself as the owner.

The very next thing to do is to turn off Guest Browsing on the Chromebook. Only the owner can change the setting.

3.1 Chrome History and Incognito Mode

Chrome browser can remember history of web pages visited, even though the user can still manually delete history entries, which my daughter had done. But if I walk in while my daughter is using her laptop, she would have no time to delete history.

However, if my daughter opens Chrome window in incognito mode, history is not logged, and all it takes is one click to close the incognito window even if I walk in on her. This is actually by design and it is almost impossible to defeat that (there is one "workaround" that's not very useful, which I will discuss in part 5 of the series).

So the next logical question to ask is: can we disable incognito mode on the Chromebook? Luckily, the answer is yes, and there are several ways to do it.

The first option is to disable incognito mode in Chrome's underlying configurations in the file system. What you have to do is to first get the Chromebook into developer mode. Note that you will be wiping the Chromebook clean when you enable to disable developer mode. Also while in developer mode, you might not be getting all the Chrome OS updates.

How to enable developer mode on your Chromebook

Once in developer mode, you need to create a folder /etc/opt/chrome/policies/managed, and then create a JSON file and put this in the file: (as described in this web page)

{
    "IncognitoModeAvailability": 1
}

By the way, if you notice there's a Linux (Beta) option in your Chromebook, don't let that fool you. That is running a docker container version of linux in a sandbox. In laymen's terms, it means the Linux you run is completely separate from the Chrome OS Linux powering your Chromebook.

Great solution if you have a new Chromebook to set up and if you don't care much about the Chrome OS updates. In my case, since my daughter already had many things customized on her laptop, wiping it clean is not an option for me. Also I do want Chrome OS updates, so once again, not a solution for me.

Another way to disable incognito mode is to use Google Admin Console. However, the laptop has to be part of the Google Device Group for that to work. This is a way for Google to make money from like schools so it is not free. When I contacted my daughter's school's IT department, turned out that my daughter's laptop is not part of their device group, so they can't disable incognito mode for me. They suggested that I can get a loaner Chromebook laptop from them, which is part of the device group, and they can disable incognito mode on that one for me, at a price of $150 per semester. Since I don't plan to spend any extra money, this is also not a solution for me.

How to disable incognito mode in Chromebooks with Google Admin Console

There is one more way to disable incognito mode (I heard), which leads to the next section.

3.2 Google Family Link

Google recently released Google Family Link as a tool for Parental Control. In order to set up Google Family Link, you need to download and install an app called Google Family Link for parents onto your smart phone, and then download and install another app called Google Family Link for children & teens onto the Chromebook you want to control through Google Play Store on the Chromebook. Google Family Link allegedly enable you to:

• Restrict or block access to apps from the Chrome Web Store and the Google Play Store.
• The ability to disable Incognito Mode.
• Parents can manage the websites their children can visit on Chrome.
• Parents can limit a child’s ability to grant permissions to websites.
• Be default with Family Link, Chrome browsing tries to block sexually explicit and violent sites from being shown to children.

You can read this online guide on the features and how to set up Google Family Link.

However, one devastating limitation of Google Family Link is that it doesn't work with Google accounts set up with G Suites, which is exactly my daughter's scenario, because she has a school assigned Google email address and account.

Bummer!! Another solution that doesn't work for me!! 

Part 5 of the Complete Guide ⬅ The last part

If a woman says she is not feeling well, offer to go shopping with her. If she declines, then she is really not feeling well.







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

The Complete Guide on Monitoring and Parental Control on a Chromebook and Disabling Incognito Mode - Part 3

[This is a 5-part series. Here are links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]

Problem Statement:

Know what web sites my daughter wastes time on when she is at home with a school managed Google Suite account (because her school has monitoring of their own) without me spending too much time or spend any money on new hardware devices.

Option 2: Remote Access

2.1 VNC Viewers

VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing. It is "a graphical desktop-sharing system that uses the Remote Frame Buffer protocol (RFB) to remotely control another computer", according to wikipedia. VNC allows you to remotely view another computer's screen without the user of that computer knowing. You can also send keyboard and mouse events to the remote computer as if you were sitting in front of that computer.

Several companies offer free VNC apps, such as UltraVNC, TigerVNC, and RealVNC. I have actually used UltraVNC extensively on my home network computers and am finding it very useful (especially with my super old and slow windows 10 computers). The way it works is that you can install a VNC server on the computer you want to monitor and then simply run a client viewer on your computer to connect to that server on the remote computer.

UltraVNC

TigerVNC

RealVNC

Having had great experience with VNC viewers, I searched for a solution on Chromebook and found the VNC Viewer for Google Chrome extension by RealVNC in the Chrome web store. Very excited, I gave it a try, and then very sadly, found out that they don't have a client you can install on a Chromebook. So the extension is only good for the case where you want to control another non-Chromebook computer from your Chromebook. Further research found that the reason there's no client for Chromebook is because Chromebook doesn't use X11 (and is pretty locked down), according to a developer from TigerVNC.

This means VNC is not a solution for me either.

2.2 TeamViewer

TeamViewer is another remote support/monitor app that has a free version for personal use that I have been using frequently for my home network computers. You can set up your computers to automatically accept TeamViewer sessions, which allows you to immediately see what is going on with the remote computer. When I searched and found out that TeamViewer has a Remote Desktop for Chrome OS, I got super excited and quickly got it set up on my daughter's Chromebook. But once again, my hope was crushed when I realized that this Chrome App only allows me to remotely connect to other computers FROM the Chromebook, as confirmed by TeamViewer developer in this web page, because they don't have a client that you can install on Chrome OS due to the way Chromebook works.

In a similar boat is another remote support app called Zoho Assist.

So is there no way to do remote support on a Chromebook? There actually is one called:

2.3 Chrome Remote Desktop

Chrome Remote Desktop is Google's answer to remotely controlling computers. It is a Chrome App that you can install from chrome web store and requires the control computer and the destination computer to both run Chrome. Chromebook, of course, runs Chrome. Once installed, this Chrome App actually allows remote control across multiple platforms, such as controlling a Mac from a Windows PC.

But how does Chrome Remote Desktop work?

First, both the control computer and the remote computer need to have the Chrome app installed. Then the remote computer can initiate a support session (generate code) and then provide a unique code to the control computer in order to connect to the session. The code will only work one time and the remote computer needs to confirm sharing every 30 minutes. Follow the link below for detailed instructions.

How to use Chrome Remote Desktop to access another computer

But you see, if I have to ask my daughter to initiate a remote session, that completely defeats the purpose of monitoring. She can easily close all the Chrome windows/tabs she was wasting time on before allowing me to connect to her computer. Again, not a solution for me. 😕

That's it for today's post. Make sure to read:

Part 4 of the Complete Guide

Video of the Day:

Found this YouTube playlist with lots of 80's greatest hits!

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

The Complete Guide on Monitoring and Parental Control on a Chromebook and Disabling Incognito Mode - Part 2

[This is a 5-part series. Here are links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]

Problem Statement:

Know what web sites my daughter wastes time on when she is at home with a school managed Google Suite account (because her school has monitoring of their own) without me spending too much time or spend any money on new hardware devices.

Option 1: Control at the router and network level

1.2 Parental Control on the Router

Another place to implement parental control is right on your router, whether it is a modem/router combo device or a separate WiFi router you connect to the ISP modem.

Most routers sold today offer some kind of parental control. Even my five-year-old Motorola model/router has it. However, with so many variety of makes and models of routers out there, the level of parental control you get is a total YMMV (Your Mile May Vary). Generally you login to the admin console of the router (normally just type 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 into your browser address bar), and create your custom rules there.

So what kind of parental control might be available on a router?

Control Internet Access at the Device Level

Pretty much all routers will allow you to disable Internet access based on device MAC address (a unique id for any network device) because that is an essential function of a router. Most routers will also allow you to create device level schedules that determines when a device can get online (even my 5-year old Motorola router has that).

Filter and Block Contents at the Device Level

Again, most routers today will allow you to block websites at a device level, and possibly with a schedule so certain websites can only be visited during allowed time (my 5-year old Motorola router does that). This helps, for example, if you don't want your kids watching YouTube all night. However, the duty is on you to identify all the websites you want to block or control, and if your kids are smart enough to find other video web sites (such as dailymotion or disneynow) that you are not aware of, you are in trouble (once you find out, of course, they are now in trouble 😉).

Some router might offer list of websites or even categories you can select from. But these are rare.

Control How Much Time a Device Can Stay Online

This is a more flexible and advanced control, because now you don't have to specify fixed schedules on when your kids can get online. They have X amount of time to have Internet access for that day, and they can choose to use it anytime they want. However, this is an overall Internet access control, not control based on which website they visit. So you can't say, for example, 15 minutes on Instagram each day.

Some routers offer this capability right on the router, such as this cheap TP-Link AC1750 WiFi Router for $57.99.

TP-Link AC1750 Dual Band Gigbit WiFi Router 

Keep Track of What Websites Your Kids Are Visiting

Knowing what websites my kids are visiting is the most beneficial feature for me for my daughter's case. Some routers offer to keep a history of all websites visited (can be filtered by device), such as some NetGear routers as described in this How-To article.

Most NetGear router you can buy today seems to offload the website visit history function to the Circle App on your smart phone (you just have to go through the hassle to download the app and configure it), such as this NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1750 WiFi Router for $88.

NEGEAR Nighthawk AC1750 Gigbit WiFi Router

Since I don't intend to buy any new devices and spend more time reconfiguring my entire home network, this is not a solution for me.

You might ask, what is this Circle App thing? That naturally leads to the next possible solution, an additional monitoring/control device on your home network.

1.3 Circle with Disney

So what is Circle with Disney?

Circle with Disney is a physical box that wirelessly connects to your home network to monitor, control and report on internet activity.

I can't figure out why this device has Disney's name associated with it. It is made by a company in Oregon. Customers do feel a bit safer when they see Disney's name.

This is an add-on device to your network that allows you to manage the following through the MyCircle app on your smart phone:

Basic features:

• Online content filters per device from existing categories.
• Time online tracking per device and stats (graphs).
• Breakdown of which sites were visited per device throughout the day.

Premium features:

• Limit online time per device.
• Bedtime control (basically scheduling Internet off)
• Pause Internet for a device from your app.
• Location tracking for mobile devices. (This is more for convenience of stats in one place. Your mobile devices can already do this by their own.)
• Rewards of extra online time (Basically the same as you increasing allowed time online.)

Although this is not a solution for me because I don't intend to spend extra money, this does sound like a great solution. The Circle for Disney device sells for $99.99.

Circle for Disney

Before you pull the trigger and buy this device though, be aware that there is a catch:
What you are buying for $99.99 is the device and a one-year subscription which includes all the premium services. After one-year subscription is up, you will have to pay $9.99/month to keep using the premium services. My understanding is that you should still be able to get the basic features for free. And you should be able to obtain the other features from other means most likely for free.

1.4 Google Mesh WiFi

Google Mesh WiFi is a product to improve WiFi signals at your home especially for those spotty areas. It is also a WiFi router so you don't need a separate WiFi router solution. I already have Google Mesh WiFi at my house. A 3-pack (nodes) Google Mesh WiFi sells for $239.

If you already have Google Mesh WiFi or are planning to get them to improve WiFi signals anyway, you should definitely take advantage of the parental control functions that come with it for free.

The control and monitoring happens on a smart phone app you download to manage your Google WiFi. Inside the app there's a function called Family WiFi. There are four main features:

1. You can group devices with labels and then monitoring and control at a group level.
2. You can apply Google's SafeSearch filter on a device or a group of devices to block adult web sites automatically (same SafeSearch in Google search engine).
3. Schedule Internet time-outs. For example, shutdown Internet access to a device or a group of devices at 9:30pm during weekdays and 10:30pm at weekends.
4. Pause/Un-pause Wi-Fi access on demand directly from your own smart phone.

To read more about the Family WiFi features, you can read this Google Help Page.

But there is one feature lacking, website visit history. Google actually sell this as a privacy feature as described in this Google Help Page. We all know that Google is already tracking everything about you, your search history from the search engine, your schedule from your calendars, your hobbies from your emails, places you visit from your smart phone geo data, and your conversations at home from Google Home voice assistants. So please stop pretending and just give us the website monitoring feature for heaven's sake!

I take full advantage of the Google Mesh WiFi's Family WiFi parental control features. But because of the lack of history logs, this is also not a solution to my problem.

By the way, if you do want to get Google Mesh WiFi and also want to use Google Home, make sure to read my other blog post about how to make them work together.

That's it for today's post. Make sure to read:

Part 3 of the Complete Guide

You will get paint on you when you paint, no matter how careful you are.

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

The Complete Guide on Monitoring and Parental Control on a Chromebook and Disabling Incognito Mode - Part 1

[This is a 5-part series. Here are links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]

My teenage daughter uses a Chromebook for her school work and assignments. Chromebook is a lightweight laptop computer running Chrome OS. Here lightweight is both in terms of the computing power and the actual weight. The biggest benefits of a Chromebook is that: 1. It is very cheap!! (Such as the one below for only $139.91 on Amazon.) 2. It has long battery life (11+ hours). 3. It is very light (Solid State Drive) and also durable (Solid State Drive).

As a responsible parent, I want to make sure that when my teenage daughter uses the laptop, she is not wasting time watching online videos, online window shopping, access inappropriate contents, or wasting time on social media. So in this post I'll share my findings on the many ways of monitoring and parental control on a Chromebook.

Problem Statement:

Know what web sites my daughter wastes time on when she is at home with a school managed Google Suite account (because her school has monitoring of their own) without me spending too much time or spend any money on new hardware devices.

Option 1: Control at the router and network level

1.1 Use DNS Servers

DNS stands for Domain Name Server. The server is responsible for translating easy to memorize domain names (such as lannyland.com) to an IP address (such as 67.222.38.97), so your app or browser can find the actual web server hosting the service. Without a DNS server, your device would have no idea where to go when you put in a web address. All your phones and computers are configured to use a DNS server so they can function correctly. In most cases, the DNS server is managed by your Internet Service Provider or a big tech company that offers free ones (e.g., Google).

Since a DNS server is the translator in between, it can do two things:
1. Log what translation queries it received, and
2. Decide if a translation should be made.

For parents, this means:
1. You can see what web sites and web pages were visited in logs.
2. Use a filter service on the DNS server to deny translation requests for bad web sites by their names (URLs).

If you are an expert in managing computer networks, you can run your own DNS server at home. It has been a long time since I ran full suite of networking services at home, and I don't want to spend the time to set all these up at home. So not a solution for me.

Another option is to use free services like OpenDNS (they have paid services too). You will need to sign up an account with them and then configure your system(s) to use their DNS servers.

Pros:

• Even the free version lets you see stats and logs of domains visited (only for 14 days).
• With the free version you can also block individual domains or user existing filters to block websites by category (e.g., Social Media Sites).

Cons:

• You need to know your router's IPV4 address at your ISP in order to create the network in OpenDNS dashboard. It's actually really easy to find it. Simply type "what is my ip address" in your Google search box while connected to your home network and Google will tell you. Your IPV4 address is most likely a dynamic IP address (vs. a static IP address), which means it can change from time to time (luckily, not very often). OpenVPN's solution is to install a client on your computer that will automatically update OpenVPN when the IP address changes. But you will have to install that on a different computer, because there is no client available for Chromebook. Or, just update the IP address in OpenDNS settings when it changes.
• If you set your router to use OpenDNS's DNS servers, you can't tell who visited the web sites (e.g., both my wife and my daughter visit shopping web sites). So instead, you should set up custom DNS just for the computer you want to monitor. This also means it works best when you only need to monitor one kid.
• This only works if the device you want to monitor connects to your home network.
• Stats are logs are only made available to you once each hour with a big delay (hours). If you don't need to know very quickly what your kids are browsing, this might be a solution for you.
• Stats and logs are actually not very informative:
• There's no timestamp on when a domain is visited and how much time is spent there. 
• The smallest range is a day, so you can't pin point domains visited by hour.
• Logging is also at domain/subdomain level, so there's no info on what web pages were visited.
• All the domains visited by scripts in web pages (such as auto ads, tracking, etc.) are also tracked, creating a long list of entries. For example, during the 6 hours I tracked, my daughter visited 724 unique domains, and during the peak hour, she visited over 500 unique domains (see screen captures below). This makes finding what websites she really visited a very time consuming task.

Example of useless domains tracked. Note the number of entries.

Example graph for unique domains visited during a 6-hour period.

If you think this meet your parental control needs, go to the links below to get more information. But it is clearly not a satisfactory solution for me.

Differences Between the Free and Paid Service Plans
How to Use OpenDNS on Your Router, PC, Tablet, or Smartphone
How to Change the DNS Server on a Chromebook


That's it for today's post. Make sure to read:

Part 2 of the Complete Guide

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

Daily Battles: Make Google Mesh WiFi and Google Home (Mini) Work Together

Google Mesh WiFi is a great solution for homes that have bad or spotty WiFi signals. You can get as many nodes as you want and then put them in different parts of your home. They mesh together and provide good quality WiFi coverage throughout your home.

You can also use the Google WiFi app (only available on your smart phones) to manage WiFi connections to all your devices and schedule when they can have WiFi access or filter unsafe, inappropriate contents for your children.

It supports typical router functionalities such as port forwarding, static IP, prioritized streaming, and more. However, it doesn't log what websites your WiFi devices are visiting.

Google Home series of devices (Google Home, Google Home Max, Google Home Mini, Google Hub) are voice assistant devices similar to Amazon Echo series. You can ask them to look up information such as knowledge facts, weather, traffic, news, or control smart home devices with your voice (by the way, Vivint products such as thermostat, locks, lights, etc., are all compatible with Google Home). But most people use them mainly for music and alarm/timer. My kids like to use them to check their homework.

Since I have both Amazon and Google voice assistants, I only have 3 Google Home devices.

Both Google products are useful. But when I got my Google Mesh WiFi and tried to get my Google Home devices connected to my Google Mesh WiFi, it became a disaster.

Google Mesh WiFi supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi signals. One "nice" feature of Google Mesh WiFi is that for both frequencies, the WiFi network you create will only have one name. This eliminates the confusion when you try to add devices to your home WiFi network because there is only one network to connect to. However, this also created big problem when connecting Google Home devices, because there was no way to specify if you want to connect a device to the 2.4GHz network or the 5GHz network. After I successfully connected my main Google Home to my Google Mesh WiFi, installing Google Home mini turned disastrous. Following the app flow to install mini would get stuck and no error message is given on why it would get stuck.

The funniest part was that when I called Google Home support line, the support staff actually told me that Google Home devices are not compatible with Google Mesh WiFi! Come on Google, you can't even make your own products work together?

Of course, that customer service representative just didn't know what he was talking about, and the knowledge base he used to search for solutions didn't return a viable solution. There is actually a way to get them working together!

The core problem with the set up is really that all the Google Home devices need to be on the same WiFi frequency. Of course, I wish Google would have either:

1. enabled Google Mesh WiFi to take care of this, or

2. allowed me to specify which WiFi frequency to use when connecting Google Home mini to my WiFi network, or

3. at least returned informative error messages on the limitation.

After hours spent troubleshooting to identify this problem, I finally found the solution: you can force all your Google Home devices to connect only to the 2.4GHz WiFi network.

The benefit of 5GHz WiFi is that you can get higher throughput, meaning you can transfer data much faster. However, the benefit of 2.4GHz WiFi is that the WiFi signal can travel much further. Typical range for 2.4GHz WiFi signal is 150 feet (46m) indoor and 300 feet (92m) outdoor. The range for 5GHz is only one third of that. So in order to make sure you only connect to the 2.4GHz WiFi network, you just have to make sure you are far away from your router (or your Google Mesh WiFi nodes).

So there I was, outside my home a long distance away from my router with a long extension cord on a code rainy night way past midnight, using my smart phone to make sure I could only connect to my 2.4GHz WiFi and not my 5GHz WiFi, and then one after another, installing my Google Home series devices. But at least I proved the Google Home CSR was wrong! Google Mesh WiFi and Google Home devices DO WORK TOGETHER!

Well, once I got them working, they worked pretty well since, and I never had to reconfigure them again. So if you were also struggling to get them working together, now you know how.

Best luck with all your daily battles!

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

Daily Battles: How to get rid of unwanted items in your Google Calendar

If you use Google Calendar, you probably noticed recently that a lot of extra events just start to pop up in your calendar, such as hotels you reserved and flights you booked, meeting invitation you received, or worse, notifications on the prize money you just won with bogus phishing links embedded such as this one below:

So what is going on?

This is actually the results of Google AI trying to be smart and convenient for you by scanning your emails and then automatically adding items to your calendar. However, Google messed up by allowing spam invitations sent to your to also show up in your Google Calendar even though your Gmail correctly classified it as spam and shoved it into the spam folder.

On the other hand, it might be convenient for some people to have their travel itinerary automatically inserted into their calendars based on email confirmation they receive, some people might not want that at all! And guess what, I am one of them!!

My wife works as a travel agent, and she sometimes forwards me emails containing hotel reservations and flight info so I can track the credit card charges. Google AI just automatically assumed that I was traveling and then spammed the heck out of my calendar with all these events I have no interest tracking. And it would have been better if I got an email asking me if I want to opt into such "smart" service. But nope, Google just decided to make that the default.

Whining aside, how can you turn these things off and get life back to normal? Let me show you:

Go to Google Calendar and then click the gear icon to get into settings. Then uncheck "Automatically add events from Gmail to my calendar" under Events from Gmail.

Next go to Event settings and change the selection under Automatically add invitations to "Yes, but don't send event notification unless I have responded".

That should disable the evil Google AI from trying to determine your calendar for you!

Moving on to my next battles!!

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