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