Tong Family

We are literally swimming in a sea of confused data about the Corona Virus data sites, so here are some tips for looking at them and a list of good ones. Note that all of these models have problems, so lists are the issues with them, but some general observations: Deaths vs. Cases. Most places,…

Well we are in the middle of an upgrade cycle now, so if you want a MacBook, here’s what to do: First, look at the Mac Rumors site to see what the current. As of March 2020, they seem to show that a MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro 16″ are the best. Or look…

When you are building a presentation, how should you lay things out and what are the right ratios. The main thing to realize is that if your slide is 16:9, then it makes some sense to have rectangles that are longer than they are tall. The Golden Ratio. This is buried deep in the mathematical…

Normally I would say tips. But my levels of strictness are commandments > rules > tips > tricks. So this is pretty high (Defcon 2). So on what should you do with your company in these circumstances, there are two great resources: Dan Rosen. He’s an old friend and an experienced angel investor. He has…

Since I’ve been building PC, I’ve completely forgot that you can get infant mortality problems where things die early. We just had a $550 motherboard literally die after one week of use. ASUS is awesome because they have online chat to get through this, but here are some things to know: When you are buying…

Well, this week I’ve been a Zoom with 20 people for a happy hour, countless Zoom 1:1s, then two Zoom Webinars and then a Zoom college reunion gathering for nearly 200 people. What a learning curve it is, but here are some notes on how to use it: You pretty much are going to have…

Well since I’ve got more time at home and am maintaining no less than half a dozen websites, it’s time to jot down what is working and what is not. here are some notes, but the things to decide are: Do you want to use an out of the box theme? These are actually pretty…

Ok got a Zoom call coming up and want to make sure to have maximum bandwidth. This machine kept on falling back to using 2.4Ghz, 802.11n with 72Mbps maximum. The way to fix is pretty arcane. you have dive into `Device Manager` and twiddle with the advanced parameters for the Qualcomm adapter: 1. Set preferred…

Well now that so many of us are at home, figuring out how to keep your video and other calls running well is more important than ever. Since yesterday, our network speeds have been horrible. Before the crisis we were getting 190Mbps upstream and 5Mbps downstream. But starting yesterday that had dropped to 30Mbps/1Mbps and…

Well hopefully everyone is ok, but there are millions who aren’t. Here are some notes about what you can do to help others. Not a comprehensive list, but some good resources: OpenTable Gifts has a limited number of restaurants that take their gift cards. For now, they are eliminating all fees to the restaurants, so…