Category Archives: Computers

When a brand like OtterBox lets you down

The PolyBlog
November 30 2023

I often find brand loyalty a fickle mistress. You’ll see someone ranting about problems with company X (say Bell) while another raves about it. It’s particularly funny in the negative form, such as in online IT forums about Canadian mobile networks, where someone will rant and rant and rant about how terrible Rogers is, and then announce they’re switching to some new and wonderful cell startup with great offerings, without realizing that the new entry is using Rogers’ network.

Or they rant about how terrible Rogers is and they’re switching to Bell, posted right after the rant by someone who is fed up with Bell and switching to Rogers. On a good day, you can see them going from Rogers to Bell, Bell to Telus, Telus to Koodo (hah! same company and network), and Koodo back to Rogers.

You can see it more easily when someone is attached to a specific car company. The jokes, slings and arrows between truck owners are legendary. My favourite a few months ago was a guy talking about having a problem with his truck, and he had no idea where to even get a Chevy fixed. He then joked that if it had been a Ford, he obviously would have known where, because it would happen more often. And then he got everyone back on board by throwing Dodge owners under the bus, errr, truck.

But for most things? I don’t really care about a lot of brands on things. I like my iPhone, it serves me well, but I’ve owned Android before, and I miss certain aspects of it. If I wasn’t sharing stuff with Jacob and Andrea, and having a single OS being too useful, I’d probably still have my Android stuff. Yet there are a few things I normally swear by, and I don’t even care if they cost more. I just know they’re reliable and buy it.

You can’t go wrong buying OtterBox phone cases, right?

Otterbox makes some damn good cases for phones and tables. I would generally have no hesitation to recommend them. They’re solid, they don’t break down easily, good value for money, fit well, etc.

But they also have what most people say is a gold-plated warranty. It’s not quite “life-time”, but reasonably close for the products they sell. If you buy a phone case that is made by OtterBox, it comes with a seven-year warranty. Most people will upgrade their phone within seven years, so it is generally for the usual lifetime of the product it fits.

I’ve had OtterBox cases before and after 4-5 years, sure, they’re starting to get a little marred, but I’ve never outlasted one before I upgraded my phone.

For my iPhone, I got an iPhone XS Max back in January 2019. That’s almost five years, four years and ten months plus some days. At the four year mark, a little flap that covers the charging port for the phone broke off. Not surprising, really, it was a hinged flap, and an obvious weak spot. I don’t really need it, so I didn’t miss it much when it was gone. However, it also pulled the case together along the bottom of the phone, giving it a complete mold across the bottom. A structural side if you will.

About four months ago, I noticed that the silicone buttons over the phone’s buttons were getting a bit more mashed in. Not terrible, but not perfect. And then, two weeks ago, the little frame around those buttons cracked and split. It weakens the left side of the case, still totally functional, but it makes me less than confident of good protection if I drop the phone.

I needed a new case. And OtterBox has this gold-plated warranty, right? Everyone says so, right?

Not so fast, warranty claimer!

You go to the website for OtterBox US, it tells you if you’re from Quebec to go away as they have problems with Quebec regulations and laws right now (not uncommon for foreign shippers and not relevant to me).

At first glance, the claim process seems to be, hahaha, seamless.

You click on “Warranty”. It tells you that if you have a product of theirs, you can get a new one, as long as you pay shipping and handling. Seems fair.

It asks me if I bought it direct or online or elsewhere, with several options. I got it at Amazon.ca, so easy peasy. It asks other questions like phone or tablet, which type of case it was (with or without screen protection, folding, etc.), then it gets into more specific things for your phone.

Like make (Apple), Model (XS Max), etc. Eventually, it gets you down to the models that match.

Now here’s the weird part. OtterBox has about 8-10 big lines of cases…slim, chunky, with protectors, without, silicone, clear, blah blah blah. My model was a Commuter series, in Bespoke Way aka Blazer Blue. I can still get the model on Amazon.ca right now for just over $40 (it was only $35 originally) but not the same colour.

So, when I get to my model of phone, I should have dozens if not hundreds of choices, for multiple models and various colours. Yet the OtterBox only shows 2. Neither is my model of case.

One is a clear coloured case to slip over it, nothing like mine and about half the cost. The other one? Very similar, but it isn’t even for the XS Max. It is for another iPhone in the Series 11 model, which also has a 6.5″ footprint. Great that it shows it to me, because the cameras on the two phones are totally different. On the XS Max, it’s a small vertical 2 camera setup. The Series 11 format is a sideways triangle with an overall square footprint twice the size. So the S11 model WOULD fit my overall phone, just not very form fitting for the camera. Anyway.

So I look for other config options, nothing. I do it again to see if I missed anything. Nope, same result. Hmm. Oh, look, a line that says, “If you don’t find your model, click here!”. Right, missed that the first time. I click it and it takes me all the way back to the beginning and asks me if I want to claim a warranty.

I go sideways and try to reach customer service by email. Nada. They have a CHAT option, but after it asks me my name, and some basic Qs, it comes back and says, “Hey look, you’re on hold”. After 3 minutes, it says, “Sorry, we don’t have anyone to help you” and kicks you back to the contact page so you can call them.

But I don’t WANT to call them. That’s why I am on their website, so I don’t have to phone them. Grrrr.

A hidden door to nowhere

I decided, screw the model I had, I’d take the case they had available. Anything is better than nothing. I went through the hoops again, got all the way down to the models of cases “available”. I click on the XS Max one and it says, “Sorry, we have no stock of that”. Fine, I’ll take the S11 model. Nope, no stock of that either. I finally ended up getting to the contact page again, and tried a few things, nada. Searched Google for workarounds, perhaps an unpublished email address, nada.

Back on the OtterBox site, I noticed that there’s a link buried in the options to have MORE HELP WITH YOUR WARRANTY. Hallelujah!

There’s an option to contact them via form. Great! I give my name, model number, blah blah blah, not quite all of the same info, but most of it, and I dump the rest into the text box. Sounds great. I submit and I get a confirmation that my case has been opened. Yay progress!

Today I got an update from their CSR, Amanda. She will be glad to help me with their amazing warranty! Yay. All I have to do is call them at their non-toll-free number in Colorado.

Later today, while waiting for Jacob and Andrea at school, I called the number. Put on hold, of course. I lasted about 12 minutes before J and A were done, so I called back later from home. 32 minutes that time before I had to jump on another call.

Let’s recap, shall we?

It was a good case, and I got 4+ years out of it. At $35 to protect a ~$1500 phone, I probably got my money’s worth. But one of the reasons I buy OtterBox is not just the good case, but also because if it ends up having a problem, I can get a new one if it wears out. There were certainly a lot of other phone cases available for way less than $35 when I bought mine, after all.

But if you want to use the warranty, apparently you have to use it fast. Otherwise, they have no stock left of anything, you can’t actually choose a model of any sort, the website will put you in an endless loop so you can’t do anything, the only choice is to call them at your expense and sit on hold for a really long time with no guarantee anyone will even help you, and if you actually manage to submit something through the website, it just says, “Call me!”. And, of course, even if you do get all the way through, you still have to pay shipping and handling.

And I confess, I don’t have great experience with shipping and handling. In my experience with US companies that ship, they often have some sort of limited shipping account with FedEx or UPS that jacks the price so high, and in US dollars, you might as well just buy it outright in Canadian. I don’t know how many times I tried to buy some small astronomy gadget that was about $10 off a website and the shipping alone would have been $30.

I’ll try them maybe one more time by phone, but I’ll give them 10m at opening time and then I’ll bounce. I sent CSR Amanda back a somewhat grumpy message saying, “So why did I submit all my info online if all you do is say “call me” so we can start all over?”. Not the best method to get help, but at this point, do I really think I’ll get something worthwhile? Or just more frustrated?

In the meantime, I need another case. I found a highly reviewed one on Amazon for less than $20 that seems decent, will be here next week. I was already ordering some other stuff and I have Prime, I might as well go with free shipping. If it doesn’t work well, I can always set it aside for when I’m doing astrophotography (it’s a small slimline style that would work well for that) and buy one of the original Commuter series again. I suspect if I can get another 4+ years out of it, it’ll be time for a phone upgrade anyway. I mean, I know OtterBox is a little scummy, but it WAS a good case. Just disappointed I can’t get Blazer Blue again.

A little temporary website drama

The PolyBlog
September 21 2023

So a funny thing happened on the way to the forum…or some such quote.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been kicking up a little dust in the old website, uploading a whack of galleries from Flickr and embedding them on my website. I did one yesterday evening, which basically involves about 11 steps:

  1. Sorting all the photos into the respective groupings like one person’s wedding or a picnic on the river;
  2. Weeding out the duplicates, which for 2004 has been a nightmare, as I mentioned earlier, with 5-6 copies of photos in different resolutions and formats since I’ve uploaded them to other sites in the past, but all I want now is the best version of each photo to get it down to “one set”;
  3. Filtering out the bad photos and curating the good ones;
  4. Merging them into “monthly” folders or big “event” folders;
  5. Letting my software do facial recognition on them;
  6. Adding labels to each photo;
  7. Uploading it all to Flickr, including videos if necessary;
  8. Setting some variables on the Flickr albums, including cover photo;
  9. Creating a new gallery on my website;
  10. Updating the gallery index; and,
  11. Moving the folder on my hard drive to the final structure where it gets auto-saved and backed up several different ways.

However, yesterday evening, I made a new gallery (step 9) on my website early evening and it all went fine. Things I had written the night before and updated in the morning were being “shared” automatically by my media tools; everything was working.

Then about 9:30 p.m., I did a new gallery, copying over an old one to a new template and then going in to change the links. I have done the same thing about 50 times in the last 3 weeks. Except I had noticed the night before that some of them weren’t showing right, spent about an hour fixing that glitch (a problem in a setting that was being ignored), and yet last night, when I went to save it, everything looked good. Until it wasn’t.

Glitchy

Since my restructuring of the site a few years ago after a huge meltdown, things have worked relatively smoothly on my site. Yeah, I’d like this tool to work faster, I’d like more power with that one, but I like keeping the cost down, too, as it is, after all, just a personal site. I’m not selling anything through it. Yet. (Dun dun dun! Stay tuned for the long future!)

So adding a new gallery is easy peasy. I add it in, I click save, and the website says “no”.

Well, technically, it threw an error saying my JSON wasn’t valid, but it meant it didn’t save. It has been working perfectly, nothing changed for the settings, everything looks fine on the front end, but it wouldn’t let me create new posts. Hmmm.

So, I’ve had an error like this before, forgot what it means, looked it up, oh, that’s right. My permalinks aren’t saving properly. Instead of a URL address being “ThePolyBlog.ca/?P=923” or “ThePolyBlog.ca/2023/09/20/Wedding_gallery”, I like my structure to look like “ThePolyBlog.ca/Alex_and_Jacobs_wedding”. In other words, the title of the page shows up in the URL itself, like prose. If I was running a shoe blog, I couldn’t use the title “New shoes” 10 or 12 times a month with that structure, but I vary my titles. So that is the default. When you get a JSON error, it usually means that, for some reason, WordPress has forgotten the structure of that setting.

The primary solution is to click on it, resave it, and all good. In the past, it has always worked. Did it this time? Nope, couldn’t save still. Huh. Tried a few different settings and discovered if I went to the vanilla format, it worked just fine. The “hard code default” would work, my set default would not. Huh? A little odd, but potentially a clue if I could figure out what it meant. Off to google my favourite WP help sites.

It could have also been a problem with my certificate, but it was working fine (if it wasn’t, my front end would have blown up — it was showing fine). Tried a few other things.

Then it hit me…wait, I have a backup that gets run nightly, dodo bird that I am. I reset it to the night before when it CLEARLY had been working fine, and voila! It still didn’t work. Time travel was not the answer, apparently. By reverting my site back a day, I had wiped out two posts, but I had copies of those in my email that I could repost once the problem was solved. But it had not worked, it still wouldn’t let me save.

The BIG solution to try is to deactivate just about everything. I really HATE doing it. Not because I don’t like the deactivation, it’s the part where you have to reactivate things slowly, one by one, until you find something that conflicts. But it’s the standard “self-solve” step — turn off all the bells and whistles to a plain site that works before adding each bell or whistle back in. Okay, all deactivated, and the theme switched to a basic theme. One of my reluctances here was that a couple of my plugins do NOT keep the data for their settings when they’re deactivated, so when you reactivate them, you have to go through all the settings again. Blech.

But with everything off, no bells, no whistles, the site … still didn’t work! WTF? That is NOT possible…is it? Apparently so. If you’ve eliminated all those pieces, one of the higher solutions was to see if a certain mandatory file still exists. WP needs it. I checked, and gone. WTF? How in hell did that file “disappear”? There’s nothing that I have done to get rid of it. Could the host have done something? No clue.

Anyway, I was manually putting each bell and whistle back in when a small lightbulb went off. Wait a minute…if the problem is with the structure, then all of my backup is perfectly fine. It SHOULD work, except for that other problem. It wasn’t my posts, or my plugins, or my theme. I could scrap the manual rebuild process and simply restore again from the backup with all the plugins and settings back to my version of normal. Which I did. Nothing would let me save, but all my plugins were back to normal.

I submitted a support ticket, asked a couple of questions, and left it.

During my lunch hour today, I also realized that I had restored from my backup from Sept 19th, two days ago, when I knew things were working. But I had also done a backup on Sept 20th at 9:00 p.m. or so, not too long before I found the new error. If there was nothing wrong with my settings, I might as well go with the full latest backup, one day later and with the two missing posts restored. Done. Earlier tonight, I reposted them.

I checked a bunch of other online settings at lunch, all looked normal. Tweaked a couple of things, went into my website, did a test NEW POST, and it saved just fine. Umm…that wasn’t working last night, I swear.

So. my website is back to normal, but I don’t think I fixed anything. And my support ticket is sitting there unopened. I won’t be surprised if someone already saw it, found something they did and fixed it, but hasn’t told me yet. It’s not great service, but it can happen. And in the end, everything is back where it should be. I think.

From the front-end, I didn’t think anyone would notice. But I missed something. I had posted a blog about my mental health, and it was one of the ones that got rolled back temporarily. So I had posted it, my social media app had shared it on FB and Twitter, and a few people read it. Then I rolled the website back and those posts disappeared temporarily — from the WEBSITE. I planned to republish them later, but I forgot that they were still showing as posts on FB, for example. People could see the post link, see a short preview so they knew it was “live”, etc. But after the initial roll-back, if they clicked on it, the links went nowhere. A friend flagged it on FB that the links weren’t working. Oh, right. So I temporarily deleted the links, eventually republished the posts and created new “updates” for FB and Twitter as a repost. But that was minor compared to the website glitch.

But this is the second of two new posts that I’ve written today. Plus, I reposted the other two posts that I deleted and restored during the backup, so I think it’s working again.

Just a glitch, I guess.

Nudging the website a bit

The PolyBlog
July 10 2023

I thought I was mostly caught up on all my website stuff, and more or less ready for posting various reviews to come. Recipes. Podcasts. Music in general. Books, TV and movies were already down.

So imagine my surprise when I went to do my updates for some of the other items, just to give myself a baseline for my goals and I realized that a bunch of things that were ON my website were not actually live. The music reviews were still in pending from my last migration. Podcasts sitting in draft.

I could live with that reality, sort of shrugged it off as “Oh, I guess I didn’t get to those before”. Okay, no big deal.

And then I realized that for my recipes, even though I had put a whopping TWO of them on the newly-configured site almost a year ago, I find of forgot to add any way to find them. No links in the menus. No sub-menus for recipes at all. If you searched the site, and knew what you were looking for, sure, they would have popped up. But it was a bit of a dodge to get there.

So I fixed the other six recipes that are on there AND put up multiple sub-menu options to aid in navigation.

Then I did the music ones. Plus some podcasts. And added all the sub-menu options for those too.

And just for fun, I did some book reviews this weekend too. Two fiction ones and one non-fiction. I have a somewhat large back-log of book reviews to do, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to get through them in an orderly fashion. I’ve decided they will be part of my writing goals, so I’ll try to do an “old” review of something in my “TO BE REVIEWED” pile every time I do a “NEWLY READ” review too. That means probably several years to get through the backlog, but I’m not in a rush. I’d just like to be a bit better organized.

Of course, I also had to organize my desktop files and make backups of all of this to various “mirror” sites and my own desktop plus cloud options.

I’m not done, but it was a busy weekend for updating my website. I *think* I have all the indices working the way they are supposed to, but only time will tell.

Onward!

Schrodinger’s computer purge (part 1 / 3)

The PolyBlog
January 15 2023

So, I’m a techno-wannabe-geek with elements of hoarding in my DNA. I find it hard to dispose of working computer parts, long after I’ve outgrown the need for them. Some “saves” are practical and some are not. And like Schrodinger’s cat, my computer purge is both real and theoretical at the same time.

A. Network cabling. Sure, I had too much coax at one point, leftovers from running connections to parts of the house that didn’t have a cable outlet. Back when I had cable feeds, that is. We long ago switched to internet streaming, and we had proper outlets installed when we moved in to add to where things needed to be.

What is left is Ethernet cabling. But when we moved in, and we had the basement renovated, I had the electrician run some extra ethernet cabling through the house. One went to the living room for the TV and gaming machines. I didn’t have an actual need for that when I did it, we still had cable, but it seemed like a good place for a connection. I considered one in the family room, but we didn’t think we would ever have a computer or TV in there, so it seemed overkill. Fast-forward to the pandemic and Jacob was doing his schooling from that room, an ethernet cable would have been nice. Wifi was good enough, but I eventually ran a cable from the office upstairs (our main internet hub) down to the playroom with that “lie flat” style Ethernet cable, so there IS a feed there now that Jacob uses for all his gaming. And he noticed the difference instantly.

But I knew there would be a need in the finished basement, so I had TWO lines run to the basement. I probably only needed one, but well, why not? At the time, the electrician grumbled and complained, thought I should only do wifi, and I was like, “Why would I settle?”. Particularly with some of the wifi challenges that can come up from interference, distance, etc. There is a whole sub-industry with ways to extend your wifi farther to weak areas of your house. Mostly obsolete at this point, but still, it seemed prudent to just do it.

Now that I’m in the basement for work full-time, it’s pretty sweet having the proper cabling already in place. I added some lie-flat CAT6, which left me with a bunch of old ethernet cable to dispose of, sitting in a box. Well, actually, two or three boxes, mixed in with other things.

After Andrea helped me sort all of the basement electronics into about 12 separate smaller boxes, I realized how much of that leftover cabling I still had. Oops. Out it is going, boxed into two boxes and currently waiting in the garage for me to make a run to the dump.

B. Keyboards and mice. You know when you upgrade your keyboard and mouse? Maybe get something a bit nicer, cleaner, sleeker? Well, I tend not to dump the old keyboard and mouse right away, just in case there’s a problem. And in my defence, there HAVE been several occasions where a keyboard or mouse died, and I went to the basement, grabbed a previously used option, and got everyone back in business in minutes, not hours or days. Not exactly saving lives, obviously, but it’s a nice backup to have.

A few of them are wireless. More than I thought, actually. Andrea likes having a wireless keyboard, while Jacob and I seem to prefer wired ones. His is a gaming keyboard, as is mine, but mine is just for size and tactile feedback. I don’t use any of the gaming features, really. While a keyboard is nice and big, the little wifi dongle that goes with it is not. Dun dun dun.

I was going through all my USB sticks, memory card readers, etc., and pulling out the dongles. I found most of them no problem. And was able to toss one of the keyboards. It had no recharging capability, batteries only, and Andrea said it died fast. So it goes to the e-waste pile. Another? Hmm. No dongle. Did you know that the wifi ones are all adjusted for frequency so that they don’t conflict with a neighbour? You don’t want an office full of wireless keyboards to be getting confused which keyboard is which, so they are paired tools…each keyboard and mouse use a specific dongle. I had thought they were all like Bluetooth connectors, it broadcast a general signal and received one through pairing, not through the frequency control. So I didn’t try to keep them together. And if I don’t have the right dongle, the keyboard and mouse are dead. Oops.

No problem, I would see how much a replacement was. Oh, you can’t get a replacement because the frequency is unique, you can’t get a general one and adjust it to match. The original dongle or you’re dead in the water. Oops.

So, I had to toss what I thought was a very nice Microsoft keyboard and mouse with no dongle. Then, as I’m weeding another box, I find a small bag of USB devices. Including three more dongles. Is it this one? Nope, that looks like it is for my old MyGica remote. Which is already dead and gone. Toss. Another one comes up as a Bluetooth device…oh, it’s generic, designed to be plugged into desktops that don’t have Bluetooth. I guess I should put that in the little save pile. A third, that must be it? Nope, it is a dongle-style USB drive, with a fairly large capacity, yet super compact.

Okay, let’s finally toss the non-working keyboard, the MS keyboard that I don’t have the dongle for, and a wired keyboard that is just worn out, into the garage. I threw in 2 wired mice, although those go in the “offer to the buy nothing group”. And I would recycle the wireless mouse that goes with the keyboard.

About 30 minutes later, after taking some of that stuff to the garage, I am going through smaller box 4 of 12 in the basement, and oh, look, another dongle. And it says Microsoft on it! Damn it. I go back to the garage, pull the keyboard and mouse back out, test it, yep, it matches just fine, everything works. Andrea needs a new wireless keyboard for when she goes back to work, but not immediately, she has one keyboard she’s working with for now from work. Score! I can give it to her, yay hoarding! She has a mouse she likes, so she just needs a keyboard. I gave her the MS ones to try, annnnnnd, no joy. She doesn’t like the feel of them at all.

So back to the conundrum. I don’t often use a wireless keyboard setup. I might when I get the TV hooked back up to my computer and I’m doing some streaming stuff. But when I did that before, I just used the laptop keyboard. But that’s a different kettle of fish to fry, and I’m not there yet. Will I want a wireless one? Perhaps. I’m trying to purge, but I also don’t want to purge something and turn around in 3 months and decide that a wireless keyboard setup is what would work well in the basement. Plus, it’s nice to have ONE backup. Okay, it can stay. I ditch another wired one that was a maybe.

C. Computers. I thought this one was going to be easy. I have four extra computers that I am not currently using. Wait, I know that sounds like a lot. Don’t freak out yet. Let me explain.

For active computers, I have my main desktop. I also have my MS Surface as my laptop. Everything synchs, everything works, all good.

But I also have an old desktop PC that was mine before I upgraded, and then Andrea’s before she got a laptop, and then Jacob’s before he got a laptop. It isn’t super powerful, but it runs fine, has no issues, and would work in a pinch if needed. Except we all have laptops, and if someone is in a pinch, my Surface could be handed over just as easily until we find a working permanent solution for someone.

So I should ditch the PC, right? Except in the basement, I want a computer hooked to the TV. Plus, I have a new 3D printer, and was thinking about putting a computer on that desk to do my modelling stuff. It’s not high-end modelling, so I don’t need a powerful computer, and if I’m streaming, I could go with something way less powerful even. It’s a viable solution for that space. If I want to go that route. And the two functions can be done by the same computer.

But I have three other computers to consider. First and foremost, I have my previous laptop. It’s an HP, runs well most of the time, and would work equally well as a streamer and with the printer. However, I’m having trouble with it connecting via wifi, so it likely would need to be connected through Ethernet (which is fine, I have a connection right there), and it also doesn’t want to charge at the moment, which I think is just which powerpack I have plugged in. But if it’s always sitting there, I don’t care if it charges. I used to stream from it before, I just found it a bit bulky and heavy for writing on long-term, hence the newer and faster and lighter Surface.

I also have an older Compaq laptop that went before the HP model, which I can easily purge. Once I find the power cable for it so I can power it up and wipe the memory. But it also works just fine, except for a weak wifi module, reminiscent of the era. I can offer it to someone through the buy nothing group, lots of hobbyists repurpose things like that, use it to run Linux, etc. It clearly “goes”, or at least I thought it should.

And then there’s my little NetBook. An ACER Aspire One. I bought it as part of an endless search for a small writing tablet/computer that could go anywhere, be used anywhere, and let me write anywhere. I wrote lots of stuff on it, but it always seemed a bit clunky. The MS Surface is NOT clunky, but it is a bigger screen overall. Nevertheless, I’ll never go back. So it too can be powered up, wiped and recycled / repurposed.

My goal was for all three laptops AND the PC to be in play for one of them to remain as a streamer and the rest to go. Except I’m having a hard time working out what combo that should be. And as I was playing with the options, I came across another idea.

There is a version of Linux that is very game-based. If you install it on a computer, the list of specs for hardware to run old games is pretty basic. Even the Aspire One can handle it. With many of the old 8-bit and 16-bit game available online through legitimate and nefarious means, it is viable to install Linux, connect a game controller, and turn the machine into a Retro Video Arcade. I had planned to make one through 3D printing and use a Raspberry Pi sitting in my closet. A small project I wanted to do, with some people having made really cool old Game Boy designs but running way more powerful insides and games. But as one project for the Aspire One mentioned, if you build it with a Pi, you also have to add a case, a video display, perhaps a keyboard, and a USB port. In effect, you have to add all the peripherals that are already built-in for the Aspire One, except an external controller. I could repurpose the Bluetooth dongle and even go BT for the controller. Or wired. Or wifi even.

I have a very specific idea in mind for one possibility as a gift for someone, and if I did it with all three of the dead laptops, it would give them new life. Well, sheep dip. The goal was PURGING, PolyWogg, not repurposing. I mentioned the gaming project to Jacob, and mentioned that if he was interested, we could do it together and see if we could get it working. I could just do it myself, if he’s not interested, I don’t think it will be that hard, but if he was interested, I could help him do it to get it running. To my surprise, considering all the other little game projects we have that we can do, he wants to do this one with me. As happy as I am about that, it sealed my fate. I can’t quite ditch those if I can repurpose two of them as gaming options and the other two are possible streamer options. I’ll eventually ditch 2 of the 4, maybe even all 4, within the year. But Jacob and I are going to give them the hobby treatment first. They’re relatively compact at least.

Sigh. I thought I was doing well, there were already 4 boxes of e-waste in my garage. Plus, 4 boxes of books and CDs, that’s a separate purge. And about 2 boxes of various computer gear upstairs, ready to leave the house. But those will go to the “buy nothing” group if anyone wants them. Some of them are actually worth a bit of milk money, but I’m happy to give them away for free if someone can get a bit of use of them still. Even though some will take them and just try to resell them, I suspect. Andrea’s already gotten rid of 3 or 4 things already, but there’s more to come. I’ll talk about some of that in part 2 later this week.

An intermittent website gremlin

The PolyBlog
January 3 2023

I mentioned in my post about my plans for the year that things had gone sideways on me for my website earlier in the day. I’ve got an intermittent gremlin hiding in my website somewhere. And finding the little b****** is like a game of whack-a-mole because it can be almost anywhere. Fair warning, this one is mostly for people who are interested in solving website problems aka the technical bunch.

For context, my blog (and just about every other site out there) is really made up of thirteen basic components:

  1. The hoster’s server hardware
  2. Hardware settings for the overall server;
  3. The hoster’s server software;
  4. Settings for the server space I’m using;
  5. The WordPress application software itself;
  6. The settings for the core WordPress application software;
  7. A theme for the website;
  8. Configurations for the theme;
  9. Multiple plugins for the back-end of the website;
  10. Configurations for the back-end plugins;
  11. Multiple plugins for the front-end of the website;
  12. Configurations for the front-end plugins; and,
  13. My posts, pages, media and comments aka the content.

Most of my time and energy is devoted to #13, the content.

Over the years, I have had as many as 45 front-end and back-end plugins running (#9, 11), adding features or tweaking the look and feel here and there. The theme itself (#7) has been relatively stable for almost ten years, I love the one I use, and I have the pro version that lets me tweak it in a hundred different ways. The first six elements are the infrastructure of the website, and I tend to leave them relatively stable, upgrading pieces when I need to, etc. General maintenance.

When I’ve had major meltdowns over the last ten years, it has been one of three things:

a. I didn’t like the distribution of content across the two websites;
b. Something changed in the server software that messed up my site; or,
c. There was a problem with the hardware.

At times that has been where the company’s systems were hacked, or some setting got changed in the system’s back-end where I can’t see it, and suddenly my site started running REALLY slow. I switched from two hosts because their support for #1-4 was inadequate. But I’ve had an ongoing gremlin of sorts for about five years, and I don’t know where exactly it lies.

When the gremlin appears, things start running slow

As I said, I used to run about 45-50 plugins. But the back-end of my website started running slowly, so I cut it back to about 35 and then 30. Each time, it felt like I was cutting off a limb. I had spent a fair amount of time on the choice and configuration of plugins (#9-12) and liked how everything worked except when it didn’t. I eliminated plugins where there were conflicts and used single bigger / better plugins that could replace several smaller plugins that didn’t play well with each other. A few tools? I just dropped them.

Now here’s the twist in the tale. I don’t care about the speed of the front-end too much. That speed affects a lot of rankings in search engines and is part and parcel of search engine optimization, but most people coming to my site are doing so simply for MY stuff, aka either friends or family or people wanting to know about HR for the government. I’m not going to suddenly go viral because my website ranks higher in a search engine; I’m too niche for that type of concern. My REAL concern is the speed of the back-end.

Here’s what happens for any editing process. I open up an edit window, and the post appears. Then, some of the “configurable settings” for THAT post start to appear — like a featured image, categories, tags, and a few other key pieces that I need to set. Each of those uses up a bit of memory to load on the server. The amount of memory I have available on the server (not storage space, but RAM, basically) is controlled back at the #1-4 stage. As the post loads, it uses up that memory. Those are the basics.

About five years ago, I could run 45 plugins with no problem. I could even edit 10-12 single posts at a time if I wanted to do so (and sometimes, when I was tweaking the format, that made life WAY easier). Then the site started to slow down on the back end, often because of the size of the security plugins. It shouldn’t really affect the BACK-END, but it does for some reason. I cut it to 30, and it was all good again. I’m down to about 25 now. But anything I cut now is really painful to remove. Yet about a week ago, it started to run really slow in the background again.

My post loads, no problem. But whereas the image, categories and tags load within 3-4s if I’m running 0 plugins, with about 15 plugins running, it is about 8-10s for the rest of the pieces/settings to load. Slow load is still manageable at that rate, as I can work on other pieces while those elements load. Except at 25-30 plugins? Some of the edit windows NEVER finish loading. I can sit and wait and wait and wait.

I loaded THIS post, copied over from a previous one and edited it, and I’ve been working on it for almost 20 minutes of writing time. My Featured Image has loaded, while the categories, tags, and reusable images have not. I’ve installed a cache, can save the file, reopen it, and some of the rest or maybe even all of it, will load because it’s cached. (I just tested it, 40s to get my Featured Image to load, a reusable block timed out, and nothing for categories and tags yet. Closing and reopening? Everything loaded in 5s). This is NOT a resource-intensive site; it should NOT take those first times to load, no matter what is running.

Hacking the diagnostic loop

When you try to resolve this type of problem, the first two pieces of advice are (a) changing to the default theme and (b) removing all plugins.

I’ve done that so often (out the wazoo!) that I can eliminate the theme as the cause. It doesn’t matter right now whether I have the default theme or my premium theme installed, it still takes the same amount of time to load on the back-end (I can get a small performance bump on the front-end). I spent a huge amount of time this week testing out some other popular lightweight themes to see if I could get a huge performance improvement and truly eliminate my theme as the cause. I tried approximately 25 different themes, with the same result across the board. If I get above 15-20 plugins, it slows down. Unfortunately, none of those themes works as well for me as my current model. And for what it’s worth, my PolyWogg site has almost the same config WITHOUT the same slowdowns. It happens from time to time, but like I said, it’s intermittent, and NOT as frequent on the PolyWogg site as this ThePolyBlog site.

Now, everyone on the ‘net who knows anything about WordPress will say, “A-ha! it’s a plugin problem!”. Except it’s not. I’ve done the scientific method of loading them one at a time. It makes no difference. And so those with more experience will say, “A-ha! it’s a plugin conflict problem!”.

In other words, it is not one plugin causing the slowdown, it is two of them interacting with each other that is causing the problem. If you are into math and you want to test two plugins, the purest form of those tests would be N plugins * N-1, divided by two. Sort of like scheduling a tournament of 30 plugins in a hockey tournament where they all have to play each other once, which would be 30 teams * 29 opponents divided by 2 teams in each game = 435 games. Yikes.

It’s a nightmare to do that, obviously. I can’t test 435 combinations of 30 plugins, or even 300, if there were only 25. So you can hack the combo pattern. Instead of testing Plugin 1 against Plugin 2, there are a series of variables you can make fixed. For example, of the plugins currently running, I can triage the list into “musts”, “needs”, and “likes”. I have 34 currently installed, but rarely all active.

MUST HAVEHIGHLY WANTNICE TO HAVE
FRONT-ENDAddToAny Share Buttons
Display Posts
Display Posts – Date View
Flexible Table Block
Weaver Xtreme Plus
Weaver Xtreme Theme Support

Photonic Gallery & Lightbox
wpDiscuz
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin		Simple Lightbox
Stackable – Gutenberg Blocks
BACK-ENDAkismet Anti-Spam
LiteSpeed Cache
ManageWP – Worker
Media Library Assistant
OG — Better Share on Social Media
Really Simple SSL
WP to Buffer Pro
Wordfence Security
Yoast Duplicate Post		Advanced Editor Tools
Health Check & Troubleshooting
Nested Pages
Redirection
MailPoet
MailPoet Premium
WPForms Lite
WP Mail SMTP		Dashboard Wordcount
Simple Blog Stats
Broken Link Checker
Media Replace
Press This
WordPress Importer

Obviously, I can install the MUST HAVEs, which are 15 plugins and test those. Since I have to have all of them for my current functionality, I might as well test with that WHOLE group running, minus the Caching program (not much of a test if the Cache is running). With those running, everything loads in about 9 seconds. Not bad, right? Not awesome, admittedly, but it loads fast ENOUGH that I can be working on other things while those are lazy loading, so to speak. So those 15 “work”.

Then, I can try adding them either in bundles (3-4 each time) and see if anything happens OR perhaps some of the “bigger” ones in the back-end first.

For Bundle 1, I focused on the WPForms, WP Mail and MailPoet as they all work together. As I added each one of them, the site got slower and slower but not immeasurably with each one. Some added a second or two, some added no increase. I continued with other bundles of three or four at a time, seeing what they did to my load time, and as I added more and more plugins, creeping up into the high teens and early 20s, the site started to hit what I consider my magic threshold. Anything above 21 right now was bogging it down. Hello gremlin, my old friend, you’ve come to annoy me again.

Technical support has entered the chat

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Can’t you get tech support to help? But here’s the rub. Tech support is good for #1-4 (the server setup). Occasionally, they’ll help you diagnose something where it is a WordPress configuration issue (#6). But after that? The rest of that is YOUR website and YOUR problem. And since it is almost impossible to find WHY it would be doing this, particularly as it is intermittent, it would seem like a plugin or theme problem.

I’ve also come to suspect that the gremlin has friends, of sorts. Or perhaps grandchildren.

About four years ago, the problem turned out to be a security plugin that was doing something funky on my site. I think it was mis-interacting with other plugins, but it was going into an infinite loop. It had done that before on another hoster’s servers, and they couldn’t tell me what was going on, they claimed it was my site causing the slowdown but not how. That was the last straw with them, so I shifted to a new host. Everything was fine so I thought that was the proof that it was the previous host. Except then it happened on my new server. So much so that the host contacted me and asked, “WTF you running over there? It’s slowing down the WHOLE shared server!”.

But I got lucky…one of their Level 2 supports looked, quickly realized the security plugin had created an infinite loop of calls, and disabled it for me (with my permission). Everything went back to normal. I checked online and this was a known gremlin for that security plugin. One of the biggest and most popular ones would occasionally futz itself and mess up a config file. You can disable it, uninstall it and reinstall from scratch to fix it — or just use one of the other security plugins. I was running a huge overhead plugin called JetPack which divides the WordPress community in two — those who love it and developers who HATE it. It’s really intrusive. Well, the security plugin was conflicting with it, as was two other smaller plugins to a lesser extent, and I changed security plugins and eventually dumped JetPack anyway. Unfortunately, without JetPack, I have all this other mail stuff to run just so I can get email versions of my posts when I post and allows people to get my posts as newsletter feeds. Not that I have that many people doing that, most get it from Reddit, FaceBook or Twitter. Or referrals from friends.

Anyway. Where was I?

Oh yeah, killing gremlins. Another time it was a legacy of a hack. Another time it was a misbehaving plugin that has since been patched, but I don’t let it run all the time, just when I want some specific stats.

But, as I said earlier, the dang site was bogged down so I reached out to Tech Support earlier noting that I was overloading the Physical Resources AND my IO process limit. Did they see anything that was amiss?

Often I end up using Tech Support as a catalyst for brainstorming. Since they don’t know my site inside and out, I ask questions and they give me crappy answers at Level 1, I eventually get up to L2, and then their responses often trigger something in me.

This time, while I was chatting with them, I got the standard popup in my file manager asking me if I wanted to upgrade to the next level of website performance. I didn’t, it’s almost double the price. I talked to them about it about 8m ago when it started going slower for awhile, and I would love to do it for a month to see if it would make a difference, but alas, they don’t have a trial option to do that and I’m already on a really good discounted plan. If I give it up, it’s gone. I can return to my current lower setting, but at more money than I’m paying now. There’s no simple way to test it to see if it works. And honestly, the improvements will only help me in this area, if at all. There are lots of other “perks” to the higher package but are not anything I need or want or will ever use. Sigh.

So we go around and around, ask a few questions, when I notice something amiss.

My comparison of the three models of plans that are suitable to my situation show that they have three levels of resource availability. The first is 512M, the second is 1G, and the third is 2G. For I/O processes, 2MB, 4MB, and 8MB versions per second. I’m on the middle tier, so 1G and 4MB / second. Except, wait a minute…as I’m going through the allocation process for memory, the piece that is being overloaded right now, my internal server dashboard is showing me 512MB and 2MB/s. The lowest plan settings. I double-check, and then triple-check with a comparison to PolyWogg.ca. The other site? My main site for HR that works? It’s set properly. This one is not.

FFS, is that REALLY it? I ask, they go into conniptions and embarrassment and make the switch / upgrade overnight. Today, everything is loading in 10s.

I should be mad, right?

So, it looks like most of the problem has been a misconfigured server on their end. Instead of being on the higher plan, they’ve had me on the lower plan for some time. I’ll write to the billing people, just for sh**s and giggles, but honestly, I’m not sure I can be that mad at them.

First and foremost, the error has almost NO effect on my website for the user. It’s a wee bit slower than it should have been, but not noticeable as I don’t have that many viewers. I don’t pay for the higher tier for front-end performance, I pay for the backend.

Second, I know how it happened. Way back when they got hacked, they had to create what they called LifeBoat servers. They suffered a massive attack from a former employee, something very hard to defend against if not impossible (the person had access in the building to the servers!), and they could have been dead in the water. They managed to find a way to make things work again, and while frustrating, they created lifeboats to get us up and running as fast as possible. They have customers that are WAY more important than me, but they got me going pretty quickly, all things considered. And when it was “over”, they moved lifeboats back into the main hubs. Which I’m pretty sure is when I got downgraded to the lower-tier plan for space. It shouldn’t have happened, but it’s understandable how it did.

That’s hard to generate anger around…little front-end effect and an understandable reason. Plus, I’ve seen that information in my dashboard for some time. I just didn’t realize what it meant. As I said, I’ll ask for a retroactive credit of some sort, or they’ll extend my expiry date by a month or two or three, but I’m glad that part is fixed.

Oh, right. I left out the important part. There ARE two plugins messing up my load time on the back-end.

I already knew one before I started was a likely culprit. Stackable. It’s a plugin that lets you add a whole laundry list of really good extra style blocks. Back in the dark ages before the Pandemic, I tested a bunch of “block” plugins, and Stackable won by a country mile. I bought the lifetime premium membership option. But, well, it is designed to add things to the back-end editor. Of course, it slows things down. That’s what it does when it adds that functionality. I’ve reached out to them, and they’re working on a speed improvement, but for now, I just have to pare back what I use.

The second one was another likely suspect. I was pretty sure my Mail bundle was screwing things up. I have MailPoet that formats my email newsletters (emails of my posts), WP Mail SMTP that lets me send mail as an authorized sender less likely to be caught in spam filters, and a WP Forms plugin that lets me add a nice contact form to my site. Do I need all of them? Meh. It’s more professional to have them than not. And it means I don’t have to run JetPack. What I should do is find a simple integrated plugin that does all three in a lightweight fashion and pay for a lifetime subscription. But that’s a problem for another day. In the meantime, I put up with MailPoet, as it is the one that slows things down.

I’ve stripped the two suspects down to their skivvies, and the site is loading. Maybe that’s all I can ask for now. Other than my rebate from my hoster.

For now, it’s resolved, if not solved.