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Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

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  • mac: Apple Music “lost” my CD files

    When trying to get some music for a personal video, I discovered that many of the songs that I had previously uploaded to Apple Music were “lost”, so I was actually using the Apple Music subscription. I had been using Apple Music to “store” these files. One of the great deals that Steve Jobs (RIP)…

  • mac: Keyboard Input and Character Viewer lost

    OK, I’m not sure what is up with my installation, but it used to be that if I hit “Caps Lock” twice, it would switch input mode,s and then there was another command to bring up the emoji viewer. All of this broke with the MacOS 26 Tahoe upgrade. The Input  menu no longer appears…

  • mac: Tahoe Unsigned App tap dance and reset of third party menubar buried in System Settings

    Well, sometimes there is an intentional obscuring of “unsigned” apps (like Stats). Before Tahoe MacOS 26, you could just right-click and choose to open anyway. But now it’s a pretty unintuitive thing, you have to fail trying to run it and then go to System Settings and click a button: Reset the party menubar application…

  • hike: Lessons from Climbing at Altitude

    OK, we normally do day hikes or short camping trips, but we’ve never done a long five-day hike from 4-5km up (yes, that’s 16,000 feet in altitude). learned a lot about what it takes to get up there, and here are some tips if you are similarly inclined, but here are the big lessons. Listen…

  • music: Background Music for Final Cut Pro

    OK, here is one frustrating thing: if you are trying to do a nice video (for friends) and want to get a nice soundtrack, the copy protection with Apple Music makes it impossible to add a track for your movie in Final Cut Pro. Looking at what you actually get, if you ask for “Download…

  • mac: Fix Tahoe menubar missing 3rd party apps

    Well, this is a frustrating one. You boot up your Mac, and suddenly ALL yourthird-party menu bar icons have vanished. 1Password? Gone. AlDente? Disappeared.MonitorControl? Nowhere to be found. The apps are running (you can see them in Activity Monitor), but the menu bar is acting like they don’t exist. The documentation on this is scattered…

  • home: Nest Displaying a Clock

    It is actually harder than you think with these smart devices to make things work exactly the way you want. Someday, it will be as easy as “Always display the time when I walk by my Next thermostat” But in the meantime, you need to know how to use Farsight with the Nest 3rd Generation…

  • net: UniFi VPN to Home Teleport eratic, Wireguard works

    Well, we’ve had two cases where we want to access our Unifi network at home. In one case to get a Time Machine backup finished and also to access the home servers. The documentation is just terrible, so here’s a quick guide as of October 2, 2025 Teleport: Load WifiMan then login Teleport. This is…

  • tech: APC Smart-UPS 1500 SMC1500 Battery Replacement: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Build My Own Battery Packs

    Long story short, if your trusty old APC Smart-UPS 1500 (SMC1500) is making that annoying beeping noise, it’s time for new batteries. I’ve been down this road more times than I care to count (sigh, the joys of running a home lab), and here’s everything I’ve learned about replacing these batteries without getting completely ripped…

  • dev: Massive YAML file debugging

    Well for a variety of reasons, all of our ultra cool agents, we have a nearly 6,000 line single YAML file that is our base configuration. So it is nearly impossible to figure out what is wrong because it is not incorrect syntax, but the tool (TNE Compass if you must know) is very picky…