Category: Office Tech

The US State Department says that an “expedited” passport renewal by mail has a processing time of 7-9 weeks.  I recently had the good fortune to get a renewal done by mail in less than a month.   My renewal papers got delivered to the State Department on August 16, 2023, and I had my new passport in hand on September 15, 2023.   Here are things that probably helped.  Continue reading “Getting a US passport renewed promptly”

Every time one inserts a connector into any communications channel, there will inevitably be some nonzero amount of signal loss.  Green optical fiber connectors use a clever bit of geometry to reduce greatly the signal loss that would otherwise be incurred.

Continue reading “How green optical fiber connectors work”

One of the most familiar and beloved wildflowers in the Rocky Mountains is the so-called “one-sided penstemon”.  True to its name, the plant has its flowers all on one side of the stem.  Continue reading “Why penstemon is one-sided?”

What is the device shown in the photograph at right? My quick answer, and you might say the same thing, is that it is “an EV charger”. But my quick answer is wrong. The device shown at right is a mere “EVSE”, not an “EV charger”. This fact, it turns out, explains why a Hyundai Kona charges at a mere 26 miles per hour, when plugged into this 48-amp device, instead of as much as 42 or 43 miles per hour the way some other EV might do.   See a blog article about this.

The question presented (and answered) here is “which GL.iNet routers provide VLAN wifi client isolation?”  This is likely to be of interest to those who want to set up VLAN protection in their home or small office local area network.  The idea would be to relegate relatively untrusted IOT (internet-of-things) devices to a separate VLAN from the main VLAN of trusted devices, but in addition, to isolate the untrusted IOT wifi clients from each other.  On this page you can see the results of my actual testing as to which GL.iNet routers provide this isolation feature, and which do not.

Many owners of all-wheel-drive vehicles have had it drummed into their heads that if you find the need to replace one tire, the only correct way to proceed is to replace all four tires.  But if your vehicle is a “dual motor” EV, that’s wrong.   You can get away with replacing just two tires.  See blog article.

Four car makers (Ford, General Motors, Rivian, and now Volvo) have announced that starting about a year from now, their newly manufactured EVs will have a charging port that permits charging at Tesla supercharging stations.  This will doubtless trigger the Osborne Effect (blog article).

VOIP.MS is my preferred service provider for VOIP telephone service.  I am looking for one or two PHP coders to join me in constructing a PHP status monitor for monitoring the registration status of SIP trunks provided by VOIP.MS.  Continue reading “Volunteers sought for coding a PHP registration status monitor for VOIP.MS”

Has your Chargepoint Home Flex EV charger lost its green halo, as shown at right?  Is the halo white instead of green?  If so, you may find this blog article to be of interest.