Monit require 10.11 which is useless for those of us on 10.8 or lower. I’ve found XRG to provide a panel display of CPU, memory, temperatures, net+disk I/O, and even local weather. And it’s free. iStat Menus is also good for show status the menubar but it costs. There’s also MenuMeters, which is free.

My parents told me the story of our neighbors behind the house who had a loud birthday party for their 16yo daughter with loud music on a Sunday. I was 1yo and mom was pissed that I wouldn’t go down for my nap. Dad set the high fi’s speaker outside and played Joan Sutherland (aka “Big Red”) singing some aria at max…

I took time out of tech work to do something else (manual therapy) and ended up doing that full time for over 10 years. I took small consulting projects and did work for non-profits but was self-employed the whole time. Now I’m back doing tech work AND manual therapy and found a great company that took a chance on me…

I found the Google Settings already installed (permanently) in my list of Apps. I just installed it next to the Settings icon on my “admin” panel. Thanks for this.

Since I didn’t see a link for this app in the Play Store, I went there and searched for “Google Settings”. The only app that came up that sounded like what you’re talking about was the Google Apps Device Policy. That’s for Google For Business and not applicable. I want back to the search and looked again, not finding…

I started a sysadmin contract after being out of the workforce for 10 years. The startup gave me a chance and time to sit at a terminal and learn what I needed to know in order to get familiar with Linux. But on the 2nd day, a co-worker was setting up a Mac for the software team, struggling to type all the commands…

Lately, I've been contacted by recruiters hired by a company to find people with my skill set (system admin). Mostly, I think because they need someone familiar with the field and who've worked with people like me before. The random submissions to job postings are usually screened by someone doing keyword searches…

I gave Business Calendar 2 a try. I wish I'd waited and tried it out a bit before sending them the fee for the Pro version. It's only $5 (I gave them extra), but there's a major bug in V2 that makes it unusable. They added a template feature so that you can set a bunch of defaults for appointments. One of those is…

This is only useful if you're sitting on a dumb hub instead of a smart switch. I don't know what most people have in their homes, but it's either a modem+router (their modem or the ISP's plus their router), or an ISP's wireless router (combo of modem+router). This app would work for to show your local traffic on the…

The problem with the Amazon apps is that they require they require the Amazon Store App to run. Can't guess what else it does or what info it collects but it's bloatware as far as I'm concerned. Since I was unimpressed with all the other free stuff they 'gave away' about 6 months ago, I ripped it out along with all…

The problem with the Amazon apps is that they require they require the Amazon Store App to run. Can't guess what…

I work in manual therapy and oftentimes I come across people with low back pain who sleep on their sides without support. While the wrong matress may be part of the problem, sometimes just putting a pillow between the knees and holding pillows can stabilize the pattern you're illustrating. And relieve the torsion on…

A lady friend went through some serious back and forth with Crapcast Customer Service over her dying modem. She even bought a disposable cell phone so she could talk to them when the thing wouldn't work any more (it took out her phone service). They kept pushing an $79 "premiere service" fee that would push her to…

The first time Lifehacker mentioned free Amazon Apps for Android, I downloaded all of them. Universally, NONE of them worth worth the storage space on my phone. And they wouldn't run unless I had the Amazon App Store apk installed on my phone (it installed outside of the the Google Play store which set off alarm…

A backup app that requires root isn't really a backup app that's useful. I just went though a huge mess trying to unroot my phone, bricking it, and finally replacing it. If I can't restore the phone without root, it's not a backup, IMO. Helium stopped working reliably with 4.4, so that's out. Another backup utility…

This doesn't work for real gift cards, only debit or credit card #. At least I couldn't get Google Wallet to recognize the Radioshack gift card I've got.

I'm listening to a audiobook where a family of three eat out 6 nights a week. Both parents are small town lawyers and neither cook, so I can see where this would be expedient. But if you can cook and have the time, there are plenty of meals you can make in 60 minutes. AmTK just came out with a Cooking for Two cookbook…

Alton Brown did a whole show on the 'art' of the church casserole. Several were made from leftovers (chinese shrimp and walnut casserole—yum) with a few added ingredients to make something that could easily satisfy 4 adults. Yes, making your lunch and bringing it to the office is much cheaper than going out. Local…

When my partner passed away over 20 years ago, I did the prescribed things to cope at the time. I sewed a NAMES Quilt panel for him, did the memorial service, attended the last big display of the Quilt in DC and said Kadish for him on his Yartzeit for a few years. But it didn't cover all of it. I just recently…

It could be worse. I had a side-business for the last 15 years in manual therapy. I go to classes, usually as part of a short vacation (e.g. Hawaii for a Visceral class, New Orleans for low backpain or Marin for "the pelvis").

We recently had a software issue at work where all the developers couldn't do anything. We narrowed it down to a NAS box that had "splikis in the genekctazoink", or so I told a developers. Ultimately we found a patch that, even though it rebooted stuff *yet again* fixed the problem. But the head of IT was working…