H's Blog

 After moving my wife's Windows 7 PC to a new W7 PC, everything seems to be working, except now she sees "Not Secure" warning in Google Chrome.  "How come?", I said. Firefox works fine. It must be OS issue. I checked the certificate. I Googled GlobalSign certificate and found this site https://support.globalsign.com/ca-certificates/root-certificates/globalsign-root-certificates/ with downloadable certificates. Found R3 root certificate and downloaded. Ran certmgr.msc. Import to Trusted Root Certification Authorities. Now it works. No reboot was necessary.  

 I created two vce files for US Ham Extra exam. I needed to split into two files due to vce file limitation. One is Question pools from E1A to E6C Another is from E6D to E0A Please ignore the score. It is a quick and dirty solution. You need a VCE player. I hope this helps someone interested in taking Extra exam like me. 1 https://mega.nz/file/ctowSIwb# Hrc28SOnKWdX0-FH-_6lZYd- osAFz6DyPYlHfgtmzho 2 https://mega.nz/file/t8oABaKA# GhpPr7mSjkp7AeDtOu_ KiTpZWIWgZGthCpsE7QrAd3g (Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any damages caused by the vce files. Use at your own risk.)

After all the years of struggling to like Windows 10, with Dell Precision M4700, I finally have no major complaints about Win10. The menu still sucks but it does not get in the way any more. In preparation of CCNA test, I hesitantly upgraded my M4700 to Win10 so that the remote test app will work. I installed some essential apps for my daily work and school. Surprisingly, everything works and it seems a little faster than Win7. SDRangel works beautifully because of NVidia Quadro graphics. VCV Rack won't complain because of the lack of OpenGL. From now on, I should buy the ones that Win10 certified, which should be most PCs on the market. No more old ThinkPads. And I will avoid Intel graphics.

Being frustrated by excruciatingly slow speed of Android Studio on Windows 7 on one of several of my beloved ThinkPad X201's, I switched to Ubuntu 18 as a trial. The laptop has 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM. I have had nothing but bad impression and experience of Ubuntu Unity so I was skeptical first. Ubuntu installation was smooth as it should except my SSD not being recognized by BIOS first right after removed the old HD and inserted a used SSD into it to the laptop's HD slot. I had to adjust the location of the SSD to fit into SATA port inside the laptop just right and it took some trial and error but the BIOS finally recognized it and the rest was very easy. After that, as I always do with Linux, I ran updates. I preferred Xubuntu before this, but this time, I really like just plain Ubuntu. Everything seems quick and the UI does not get into my nerve any more, and I rather like it. I installed Chromium browser, Android Studio, SDR# using Mono, gqrx, gnuradio, TeamViewer, Ora...

I have been interested in combining my knowledge of computer network and ham radio. I acquired 2 ICOM ID-1 23cm FM/D-Star transceivers in 2017 from eBay. It was not cheap even for used ones. Back then, Icom ID-1 was the only D-Star DD mode capable transceiver. DD mode allows TCP/IP communication via 1.2GHz radio wave. This year, Icom started selling IC-9700 which is V/UHF FM/D-Star radio in addition to 23cm coverage. According to D-Star repeater lists, only 23cm D-Star repeater in NYC area is K2DIG. I wanted to set up ID-1 to try out DD mode using K2DIG repeater to get a lightening fast (!)128kbps internet. I wanted to know the assigned IP address from D-Star admin server. I contacted NJ2DG which I registered my call sign with. They replied with the required info but they told me that K2DIG has been down for a while and 23cm repeater was down longer than that. I tried to connect to NJ2DG from my apartment but it was unsuccessful. In case anyone in Queens, NY area wanted ...

I have 3 used Dell Venue 11 Pros. 2 with 4GB RAM and 128GB HD. Another with 8GB and 256GB HD. Actually, I have 4th but this one broke after 30 days of purchase from eBay and I could not get my money back. I had nothing but trouble with one of these 3 usable ones. Its BIOS is password protected and its speaker was not working well. Some apps don't install. To remedy this, I tried to run Windows Update but it stops in the middle and does not complete. My last choice was to reinstall Windows 10. But because of BIOS lockup, I could not boot from DVD. I copied Win10 install files to the USB and tried to run setup.exe but it kept failing in the middle. I created Win10 install USB stick from Microsoft and run setup.exe from USB. This time it went through (I kept crossing my fingers during this ordeal) and what a relief after a few reboots when I saw a brand new Windows 10 introduction came up! After hours of installation effort, the tablet is like a brand new computer. Everything...