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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • node815@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.mlAlpine as a desktop OS
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    16 days ago

    I’ve dabbled in it, but not really committed to it. It’s a great lightweight server of course. I am a KDE Plasma user so I did a quick test of that and was able to install it via Alpine, but at the time, the support for javaws was not there which I needed at the time for my job, so that killed my plans on using it. I may venture back to it later on .


  • node815@lemmy.worldtohomeassistant@lemmy.worldHACS
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    24 days ago

    Mushroom cards Local Tuya - so I can control my Tuya Devices without needing the cloud.
    Wyze - I have a couple of cameras which are Wyze so I use it for those. I’m not against the cloud for some things. :) Spook - not your homie – When I deactivate or rename a device (seasonally), it lets me know which dashboards need updated for example. Playstation Network - so I can show what my PS5 and PS4 are doing while active. Several other items such as themes I’ve tried out and probably more I’ve tried but never removed.


  • I left Win8 to go full time on Linux. For several years before this, I used to host web sites professionally and build them so I was used to Centos and Debian servers but not comfortable enough to be able to manage them deeply. In other words, just enough to make them work, but more complex troubleshooting was not my strong suit.

    I later landed a job where their primary systems are Linux based and through that training and learning, I became more comfortable in the CLI and have never looked back.



  • First, confirm if you can access Cockpit by going to the https://localhost:9090, If not, follow the Fedora instructions here: Having some familiarity with Command Line is essential. Your graphical package manager may or may not include Cockpit.

    https://cockpit-project.org/running#fedora

    Cockpit does sometimes allow you to install “plugins” from the web GUI, but in my experience (both on Debian and Arch), it doesn’t do it to well. If you can’t install plugins for 45 Drives file sharing plugin, you will need to do it manually:

    For the 45 Drives plugin to enable sharing: https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing (I believe it’s the “Direct from .rpm” section if you scroll down in the Readme)

    From there, once you are logged into Cockpit on the left you will see a link for “File Sharing”

    This isn’t as complex as it may seem as long as you follow their steps you should be golden.


  • I only use a Windows VM For our ancient (in computer terms) Canon LIDE 60 scanner which seems to work best there (linux produces highly grey contrasted scans).

    For all of our scanned documents from the scanner, I have it mapped to a network drive via Samba Shares. Since you are using Fedora, I think you may already have Cockpit installed. This makes it a lot easier and is a web gui to manage servers. You can usually access it on your Desktop via https://localhost.9090 Then you would need to install 45 Drives File Sharing plugin and setup a SAMBA share.

    From the Windows VM, just map to the same workgroup you set in the SAMBA Share you created and give it a drive ID such as F:


  • For terminal, the first thing I install is Midnight Commander - dual pane file manager. https://midnight-commander.org/

    For all of my physical Linux machines - Cockpit and Cockpit-File Sharing plugin.

    Desktop

    • Thunderbird

    • Firefox

    • Vivaldi

    • Gnome

    • Chromium I use Firefox, wife uses Chromium and My WFH job I use Chrome. Vivaldi is a backup browser, I’ve been messing around with.

    • QEMU/LibVirtd - So I can run a Windows VM for my old Canon Lide 60 scanner which scans clearly there, otherwise in Linux, it’s contrasted super grey for some reason.

    • Kopia-UI - Backup system which supports NFS Shares - set and forget type of setup.

    • VLC - Need I say more? Lol

    • OnlyOffice - Better aesthetically IMHO than LibreOffice

    • PDF Arranger - Works well to re-arrange pages or rotate them after scanning them in. (I self host Sterling PDF and will probably switch to that later)

    And for some inspiration - the “Awesome Linux Software” list (Not mine) similar to the other Awesome lists you see around. https://github.com/luong-komorebi/Awesome-Linux-Software


  • If after 9pm M-F, and I plug it into AC Power (Not USB on desktop), then it mutes all system sounds until I unplug it from the AC power. During said time, if certain people call, it raises the ringer to full so I can answer it.

    I still have this enabled, but rarely ever use it, it came in handy about a year ago though - when near any of the WiFi hotspots at my work, then turn volume off, upon leaving the range, volume comes back up. Also, enabled my work profile which set an Autonotification to set a timer on my phone and watch for my break and meal periods. I now am full time WFH, so neither of these come in to play.

    While connected to Car bluetooth, cancel my work timers (above).

    I was working on but had to put on pause, a Google Voice interceptor - the goal behind it is to auto use Google Voice to make outbound calls if you are not calling a contact in your list otherwise, if you called one of your contacts, it would use your normal phone number.

    Taskernet share for above (Google Voice Robot) If link is broken, it should be searchable. It’s not guaranteed to work.


  • In one way, I’m happy this is happening, in another way, I’m not - I’ve given well over 2 decades of my life to the call center way of living. Let me give you a sneak peak into what really happens in the daily life of a call center worker.

    • You live by the time on your telephone, it’s your punch in and punch out system in most centers. Don’t clock in more than 8 or 15 or whatever insane metrics they set past your clock in time else you will be considered tardy. This includes all breaks and clocking out.

    • If you are a first contact person and taking phone orders, your ‘talk time’ is measured. Anything more than the standardized 5 or 6 minutes is considered excessive and they tell you to move the calls along faster.
      If you are customer service, your talk time is loosened but you are also the first and last contact the customer should have for the issue.

    • Your phone calls are monitored and/or recorded (For Real!). If you are like me and hate to your your voice, woe be it to you when they play back your last call or two so you can hear yourself talking to the customer. If not recorded, then it is up to the monitoring person to be nice. You are then told what you need to do to speed up your talk time, or increase sales etc…

    Telemarketing

    Oh dear God, this is a life sucker and has the highest turnover on jobs. You quickly learn more about human nature in an odd sense. The sheer pressure on booking that next sale is insanely high and if you don’t meet the sales minimums for the day or even hour, you are sent home without pay. I worked for a company which sold HR Manual trials, I was never more relieved and happy to be fired when I was for not making the per-requisite sales quotas for the half day.

    TIPS

    I don’t think I’ve encountered a single call center rep in my years of service where a CSR decided that today, they would be a jerk. All we ever want to do is get through the day and earn our wages and go home.

    One thing I will say with confidence, is everyone you work with has something in common, you aren’t there necessarily because you enjoy it, you are there because it puts food on the table and beats living off of unemployment benefits. It’s a thankless job.

    If you receive great service from a call center rep (CSR) and are happy, politely ask to speak with their supervisor and when you do, be sure to leave them a good review. It doesn’t always help to do this after a bad call, but sometimes rebounding to a new agent by calling the company back and asking for a supervisor will make a big difference if you take issue with them about the poor quality of service you received.

    Remember, if you can’t resolve an issue with a CSR, It’s not always that they don’t want to resolve the issue for you, their hands are probably tied and in fear of losing their job or being reprimanded, they simply won’t budge.

    Kindness goes a long way with us as well, if you are respectful and kind, we reflect the same back to you and often have tools at our disposal to grant you an extra discount and/or savings. We genuinely want to see you happy!

    ON THE OTHER HAND

    If putting AI in front of the call centers will help screen out the most common issues, then by all means do it. Also, if the stupid bean counters out there which insist of outsourcing to third world countries as it’s cheaper, can find it to be more cost effective to use AI, and keep the jobs local to their country of operation, then I’m in favor of it.



  • I came pretty close to death I think - I was home recovering from a surgery and woke up early in the morning, short of breath, my heart was racing, and literally felt like it stopped. Naturally, at that time, my bladder decided it need to be relieved so I stumbled breathlessly into the restroom and did my thing. When I stood up, started to lose my hearing and vision for a few seconds, and felt myself starting to collapse, but I managed to catch myself and things restored, I face planted on my bed which got my wife’s attention and 911 was called. All of this was due to a massive pulmonary embolism choking my heart I later learned. The embolism was caused by a clot which traveled up my leg.

    Lesson learned: Keep moving after recovering from surgery at home kids! Your life depends on it.



  • For those that don’t want to go back to the Dark side (Reddit), the post referenced a theme (Grey Layout global theme) which got KDE Dev’s involved who in reaction removed the listing from the store.

    In short - the theme ran code to run a rm -rf on the user’s drive which wiped everything during install. Aside from backing up your data religiously, be sure to inspect the code instead of blindly installing for now. KDE Dev’s said they will need to do better so I expect some changes are afoot to provide better security.



  • YAY!!! FINALLY! From the site:


    "KWin’s “Active screen follows mouse” setting is now gone; now the active screen is always the one with the cursor on it, or the last one that was tapped with a touchscreen. This turns out to be much simpler and it’s what we think most people wanted anyway, hopefully alleviating complaints about OSDs and new windows opening on unexpected screens"


    That was one of my most annoying issues, but learned to work around it. But on the rare occasion where I end up clicking and I don’t realize that my mouse was on the the other screen, this will be a huge improvement. (especially when I have my Always on top windows for my job)


  • I live in a suburb of Portland and in an apartment. Our management is nice enough to provide a covered space (a luxury!) for a single car. I got to thinking about EV’s and if all of a sudden everyone here was driving them, there would be no place to charge them, but then why not place a charger in front of each parking space? Problem solved. Then, the managers would probably assess an additional fee on top of the already high rents for monthly charging privileges.

    Living in this area does have it’s advantages, you can drive just a short distance to the local library and hit up the chargers, there, or go to the stores and always find an open charger or two

    I get and will readily admit that most cities don’t have this so I appreciate the concern over EV charging stations. I don’t know much about them as I drive a dinosaur powered Honda so it’s not yet in my radar. :)





  • Probably the only true way of knowing is by setting up an EXTERNAL host somewhere on a VPS or maybe a reputable VPS provider. Then, on that provider, set up Uptime Kuma, or if you don’t want to go through that trouble and don’t mind a potential 10 minute gap in knowing, https://uptimerobot.com/ which checks every 5 minutes and sends an alert.

    Once you do this, unless you have a Static IP, you will want to register with a DDNS provider so you can then tell the uptime service to ping your DDNS host which should echo back . If your internet is down, it won’t echo back and then it will trigger their alert. Of course, this won’t work if your IP changes, so staying on top of that is key unless you use a router which auto updates it which a lot do now days.

    Or, if you use Cloudflare Tunnels, it can be configured to alert you when the tunnel is down or unhealthy (A.K.A. No internet or the server is rebooted).


  • I will update my OP soon, but with the help of Dave811@lemmy.today here I was able to resolve my domain to my machines at least through Cloudflare using the ‘’’ --accept-routes’‘’ tag in my tailscale up command. This then, allowed me to point the A Record to the IP for the machine which Tailscale gives. I will have more details on this later this weekend or maybe sooner. I’m still working on resolving my password manager being exposed through Tailscale which I figured out this morning, so I need to migrate that over to a new LXC container. Then, after that - I’m ready to move away from CF once I copy my existing tunnel mappings over to the A name records with Porkbun. (shoot! I might just write a new post about this so anyone can glean from it when I’m done). Its still very much a Work in Progress.