Liam has a pair of LIFX BR30 bulbs in his room. The bulbs are several years old, off warranty, and the south bulb recently shifted to a blue hue for all light modes. I don’t like throwing this stuff away and no one else seemed to talk about how to fix it, so I decided to make a couple repair guides on iFixit, one involves resoldering a pair of resistors on the BR30’s white PCB.

The BR30 light is back in service and the blue hue shift is gone, Liam is happy, and one more broken item is out of my shop – woohoo!

I was trying to view maps in Google and property parcels on the Hennepin County website with Safari and kept having horizontal lines shred map images. Yuck.

Fortunately, a response to a post on an Apple Community discussion was actually helpful:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254227922?login=true

Thanks, lkrupp!

Years ago my dad installed an M-Link V-1 B in my mom’s 2001 New Beetle. Oddly, the V-1 B isn’t even recommended for this model of vehicle, but I’ll let that go for now. The information I’m passing on today is a fix for when your iPod connector breaks from the M-Link cable.

The M-Link’s iPod connector end is easy to take apart and once inside I found this:

I couldn’t tell which wire went where; however, M-Link provided these photos that helped me fix my adapter:

After M-Link sent pictures, I used this site to draft up a wire and pin number table for those who care. I’ll format this table later, but wanted to post it now to help folks sooner:

Wire color       Pin number	Apple Pin	Function

black		29,30		1,2		FireWire Ground, –

red		21		10		Accessory indicator/serial enable

white		4		27		Audio output, left channel, +

orange		3		28		Audio output, right channel, +

yellow		19,20		11,12		+12 volt, FireWire Power

green		13		18		iPod receiving line, serial RxD

blue		2		29,30		Audio ground, –

brown		12		19		iPod sending line, serial TxD

* Numbers printed on M-Link V-1 B PCB refer to Apple Pins

Also, I was able to resolver the broken cable and my M-Link V-1 B is working again.

Last week I tried pulling the O2 sensor off my New Beetle and I nearly sheared the damn sensor off, and bungled one of the points on the sensor in the process. I regrouped and bought a couple sockets off of Amazon, but they didn’t even fit on. In the end, here’s what worked:

1. Using MAPP gas heat the bung, the female threads holding the oxygen sensor in place, for 70 seconds.
2. Clip the wire off the old sensor and place a 12-point 7/8-inch box-end wrench over the sensor and pull.

That’s it. The sensor required some strength to break it free, but then it came out pretty easy. I was tempted to spin it with my fingers, but be careful as it will retain heat for a good ten minutes after heat was last applied. To reinstall the new sensor (I bought a cheap one on eBay marked 050558 000025-050558 613234-21-05 and Made In China):

1. Apply anti-seize lubricant (Permatex 133A – 81343) to the oxygen sensor’s threads.
2. Apply AGS dielectric silicone compound to the electrical connections on the oxygen sensor and the car.
3. Thread the new sensor into place and snug up with a good tug on a 7/8-inch open-end wrench (I don’t have a torque wrench to apply 30 pounds with, so I estimated).

If this cheap sensor performs I’ll pick up another for front side of the catalytic converter.

** Update 10-16-2023 **
So the cheap sensor from eBay began failing on September 14, 2023, just inside its one-year warranty. The eBay seller tried to honor the warranty by getting me to send them $12 outside of eBay through their PayPal account. Sorry, not falling for that tomfoolery. Instead, I paid five times the price and bought a Walker 350-34377 locally from Autozone that also comes with a one-year warranty. I installed the Walker oxygen sensor early in the morning 10-17-2023, let’s see how long this one lasts! The threads received a some anti-seize grease before I threaded it on and tightened it up with a box wrench.

I also ran some diagnostics with the OBDII reader and the bank 1 sensor 1 seems to oscillate up and down voltages after it has warmed up. The new bank 1 sensor 2 was constant at about 0.45 volts, but I probably didn’t let it warm up long enough to see if it would be constant at a higher voltage at cruising temperature. Next time I go on a longer trip I will re-monitor its voltage.

My Apple Magic Mouse A1296 was suddenly turning off whenever I moved it around or bumped it. I pulled the batteries out and noticed some battery acid deposits on the positive terminal of the mouse. Easy fix, once again my fiberglass pen to the rescue, in the picture below see the battery acid on the left terminal and the cleaned terminal on the right side:

A1296 with dirty positive terminal on left and cleaned positive terminal on right.

** Update 11-16-2022 **

Oddly, it worked fine for a while, but now it’s becoming unusable again. I may attempt this hack, but it hardly seems worth it:

https://www.instructables.com/Magic-Mouse-A1296-14500-Rechargeable-37v-Li-ion-Co/

Others suggest make a small paper airplane and wedging between the batteries, sometimes with tinfoil at the battery leads to tighten up tolerances. I tried the paper airplane route, will report back…

I’m not really sure how this happened to my Park Tool PFP-3, but somehow I misplaced the rubber gasket that goes between the pump shaft and the base (or maybe it fell off when I was taking it apart). No big deal, I’ve got a handful of extra rubber hose washers for my garden hose and I was able to stretch one around the pump’s shaft. The gaskets I used are TerraVerde Splash 91422 (UPC 715064914223), which seem to have some stretchiness to them.

Only one garden hose washer was needed for an excellent replacement o-ring. Park Tool shows some maintenance for the PFP-3 and watch my video for some of the repair in action.

Today I had the pleasure of working with US Bank’s, Justina, after my daughter recently incurred a returned deposit fee. Justina was excellent and forthright in explaining US Bank’s fee and that they will not verify a personal check before a customer attempts to deposit it. She said US Bank will verify cashier’s checks, but not personal checks. This is a note to self and others: stop accepting personal checks for payment from others unless you want to expose yourself to liability that includes your banker’s returned deposit fee.

Interestingly, deposits can also be returned if the personal check has incurred too much damage. I asked Justina what constitutes damage and she explained that damage to numbers on the check may warrant a returned deposit fee – if a deposited check rolls through US Bank’s teller machine and is unreadable, they can assess you a returned deposit fee.

I’m curious what else meets US Bank’s criteria for customers incurring a returned deposit fee. For instance, if the check’s paper has too much moisture and slips in the teller’s machine, what moisture to paper ratio warrants a returned deposit fee? Ha, this inquiry will wait for another day. In the mean time, don’t handle personal checks.

Every once in a while I want to be able to download an entire folder from an FTP server. After setting the local download directory, with something like:

lcd /Users/brad/Desktop/Junk

I navigate to the directory on the FTP site containing all the files I wish to download and type:

prompt
# the command above allows the downloads to keep going without user intervention

and then
mget *.*
# mget with the above wildcard should download any file in the directory. There are any number of ways to limit it, for instance, if you only want .csv files use the following command:

mget *.csv

I’ve been running the open source Homebridge project on a Mac mini, now on Monterey, with several plugins and good success. I remember reading about setting the plugins as a child process to offer improved responsiveness when accessing HomeKit on an iOS device. These instructions show one of the ways to create a child process.

Prerequisites for this are running homebridge and a venerable plugin, homebridge-config-ui-x, then:

1. Access your homebridge installation using the web ui provided through homebridge-config-ui-x.
2. Near the top of the browser window, click “Plugins”.
3. For the plugin you wish to be more responsive, tap the wrench to the lower right of its name and choose “Bridge Settings”.

4. Slide the child toggle to the right, click “Save”, and then restart homebridge.

to

5. In Home.app on your iOS device, click the “+” and then “Add Accessory”.
6. Click “More options…” and choose the accessory that you turned into a child bridge above.

Before completing step 6, you may want to delete any plugins that were previously added as a non-child bridge. And when adding the new child bridge, follow the questions and prompts that Home.app presents to you.

That’s all, the plugin you enabled as a child bridge. I’ll continue to test this feature and report back here how it is working.

Turns out this post is a draft in process – the instructions work up until step 13, lucky 13! If I continue to update this, I will look at instructions here, here, here, here, and maybe even here.

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My macbookpro11,4 rocks a 2TB SSD and over half of it is full. I jailbroke our Time Capsule and successfully transferred 3 Time Machine backups, but the backup for my macbookpro11,4 got messed up. Rather than troubleshoot further, I decided to erase the macbookpro11,4’s sparsebundle from the Time Capsule and start fresh. A first-time backup to our Time Capsule would take days to transfer this much data from the macbookpro11,4 and the first backup would likely be disturbed every time I pull my macbookpro11,4 off the local network and go somewhere.

To speed this up, I had the macbookpro11,4 complete its first-time backup to a FireWire 800 2TB hard drive, which took 6 hours. I then moved the FireWire drive to a desktop computer that stays on my network. Fortunately Aaron Cohen has kindly published instructions for what I proposed above. I’ve ever so slightly tweaked those instructions, here:

1. Preferably using USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt, connect an external hard drive to your Mac you wish to backup and complete a Time Machine backup.
2. Make sure your computer has a name in System Preferences -> Sharing or your first Time Capsule backup could fail.
3. Set up your Time Capsule using the AirPort Utility. When you’re done, you should be able to see the Time Capsule under Locations in the sidebar of a Finder window.
4. Mount the Time Capsule drive, by selecting the Time Capsule in the sidebar, and then, if necessary, clicking the Connect As… button and entering your Time Capsule password (that you set up in the AirPort Utility).
5. You should then see a folder called Data, representing the internal disk in your Time Capsule.
6. Double-click on the Data folder to open it; it should be empty.
7. From the Mac you wish to back-up over your Time, open the Time Machine preference pane, click “Select Backup Disk…”, and choose your Time Capsule from the list.
8. From the Time Machine menu on your Mac, click “Back Up Now” to force Time Machine to start backing up to your Time Capsule. Once it starts whirring along, look in the Time Machine preference pane and you should see “Backing up X MB of Y MB” or check out the Finder window that was showing the contents of your Data folder where a sparsebundle file should now appear. When either of these conditions are true, cancel the Time Machine backup as we only started it to create a sparsebundle file that we’ll use later. When your Mac stops backing up to the Time Capsule, turn Time Machine off on your Mac.
9. Download SuperDuper!, which is an excellent backup and disk copying application. The free version is all you’ll need, but if you like it, I recommend the full version to support Dave Nanian and his super effort.
10. Move the external hard drive to a computer on your local network. Preferably this computer will have an ethernet connection (preferred) to your Time Capsule
11. From the Time Capsule Data folder, double-click the sparsebundle file that was created moments ago. Doing this should mount a new drive Time Machine green icon on your desktop called “Backup of [your computer name]”.
12. Launch SuperDuper, set it to copy your old backup drive to “Backup of [your computer name]” with “Backup – all files”, and click the “Options…” button and under “During copy” choose “Erase Backup of [your computer name], then copy files from [your computer’s hard drive name]”, click “Copy Now”, and enter your credentials when SuperDuper! prompts you.
13. This transfer will take a while, but at least your MacBook device is free to leave the network. It appears my 1.2 TB of backups will take at least a day, copying from a FireWire 800 drive to a Mac mini ethernet connected to a Time Capsule.
14. When the Mac mini to Time Capsule transfer finishes, re-visit Time Machine preferences on your MacBook select your Time Capsule as the backup drive and check the box for automatically backup.
15. Either enter Time Machine to verify that your backup history is still present or run another backup to verify connectivity. The first network based Time Machine backup after the copy described above may take a while during the Preparing… phase, but after that it should be working.

Thanks for setting us up, Aaron! Before finding Aaron’s instructions, I also checked out Pondini’s old site and a couple Apple Exchange sites, but Aaron’s website was the best.