Four Wins

A Friday Hodgepodge

Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner.

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1. A few weeks ago, I suddenly became unable to back up my blog with a script I've used for that purpose for over a decade. My suspicion was that something had changed on Google's end, and that I might need to change the script.

But then I asked ChatGPT about what I was seeing and it raised another possibility: A change at Google caused a bug in the wget utility I relied upon to surface. A bit of digging around showed that I was indeed running an older version of wget that had the problem which manifested in my script failing.

Since the end of support for that version of Linux was coming up in April, anyway. I installed the latest version on an old laptop and voilà, the unchanged script worked again.

Hooray! AI saved me time figuring out what the problem was, and helped me realize I should go ahead and upgrade.

2. In an attempt to move my desktop to a newer OS, I had all kinds of trouble, including at one point having trouble installing even a very simplified version. (And, after I did, I wasn't able to use the machine for very long.)

AI really helped here, again. This time, it saved me time and research by finding log entries that indicated possible causes.

After performing some diagnostics, I concluded that a component integrated with the motherboard had failed and was corrupting data.

Ultimately, AI helped me identify a hardware problem that required me to replace my desktop, and guided me in finding a solid, inexpensive replacement.

3. I like using certain web pages like stand-alone applications -- Google Calendar and a weather site I like for example. The --app option for Google Chrome is a great way to get this effect with a display that omits the browser's UI elements.

It's been around for a while, but I migrated away from the browser I had been using for that purpose, so I was unaware.

4. Three cheers for antilock brakes! I was driving my son home on a rainy day when an incompetent driver swerved in front of me and came to an abrupt stop for a yellow light.

I am sure I would have rear-ended him without the help of that technology.

-- CAV