Author Archives: Paul Begley

We bought a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV

A 2017 Chevy Bolt EV has replaced my beloved 2005 Saab 92x (aka Saabaru, a Saab badged Subaru WRX) and the best car I’ve ever owned. When I started researching cars to replace the Saab, we considered buying new and … Continue reading

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Personal Letterhead

With email and other forms of electronic communication, no one may care about writing letters, but I’m starting to write letters to friends and family. I wrote many, many letters in college. Phone calls were pretty expensive in the mid-late … Continue reading

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Today is World Password Day

Tips I’m sharing with family and friends. I use a password manager (LastPass) and MFA for all accounts that have monetary or business value (including Amazon, Google, all accounts that involve money). Password Recommendations The smartest choice for all users … Continue reading

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How to stop robocalls – Jolly Roger Telephone

I wanted to share my experience filtering calls to my 90-year-old mother who has had her phone number for 60 years and appears to be on every scam caller list. Every list. And she felt compelled to answer every call. … Continue reading

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These are a few of my favorite things

UPDATE – added to the list. Like everyone else, I’ve been working remotely since March 2020. Ergonomics is a huge issue for me, and something everyone should consider. In my home office, I have the following setup: Chair – I … Continue reading

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Home Network Recommendation

Today I received an email from one of our neighbors, actually their son! He’s a gamer, super technical, and after replying, I thought it would be better to document my recommendations here and update based on feedback from Rob and … Continue reading

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YouTube TV and CBS All Access streaming issues using PiHole

UPDATE – there was a widespread two hour (or so) outage for YouTube and YouTube TV when I posted the original article. After further research, there *is* an issue streaming CBS All Access with PiHole active. The work around for … Continue reading

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Microsoft Word is the best WordPress desktop app

Obviously I had too much candy on Halloween and coffee today. I decided to start posting my backlog of technical notes to WordPress. Naturally I pulled out my old WordPress tools and none of them worked. Attempts to configure resulted … Continue reading

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Microsoft Teams administration error – solved!

Our engineers ran into an issue attempting to update Microsoft Teams through the Admin Center. The engineers opened a ticket with Microsoft Support, and they hadn’t run into this before and thought it was a proxy error. Well, we are … Continue reading

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Cord Cutting or AT&T ruined DirecTV and how we fixed the problem

Summary We have been testing streaming services off and on for the past several years. We were early adopters for various streaming devices (Roku, Chromecast) and many streaming services, including Netflix (DVD, now streaming), Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Britbox, DirecTV … Continue reading

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