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Woke at 04:00, shower, coffee, toast, emails.
Then the ironing to get out of the way before dropping the car off for a service and have new brake disks fitted all round - I've got 20 mins before Timbo is due to pick me up, so I'll do a quick supermarket run to get mouthwash (since I opened the last new bottle just before bed last night) and a few odds and ends.
Walk out of the supermarket and the phone goes - Rich needs a favour. Sure, what do you need? "Can you drive me to A&E, I think I've broken my foot." Ah. No car - have you still got Gills car key (his wife went on holiday in sunny climes yesterday)? Yes. OK, I'll be home ASAP and get you off down there. Ring Timbo to see if I can hurry him up, and the first thing he says is "Can you do me a favour?" 
His neighbour (a drug addict) has had a stroke, so his (psycho) wife is down at the local A&E with him, and he's babysitting the two girls* but Timbo's wife is due at physiotherapy at 11, could I take her? Explain the car problem, the Rich problem but say I'll do what I can. Finally he turns up and I get home, grab Rich, he grabs his fishing gear so he can tie some flies while he's waiting to be seen because he's going on a three day fishing trip tomorrow, I suggest his phone and charger and off we go - to a further away hospital than the addict because his wife's daughter is a doctor and they have a shorter waiting list.
Surprisingly quickly "how to drive a manual" comes back to me - it's been nearly two years since I switched to auto - and I drop him off, get back home to look after their dogs just in time to swap to Timbo's car and load up Eryl for her physio and off we go. I wait outside, listening to an audiobook and then take her home. As I'm reversing into their drive (which is a complicated job in an unfamiliar car) the phone rings - it's Rich who has been processed, could I collect him? Swap back to Gill's Fiat (a willing little hybrid, but the second slowest car I've ever driven and with the build quality you expect from Italian cars) and drive back to the hospital to collect Rich who has indeed broken his foot and has a large boot on which means he can't go fishing tomorrow. He's not a happy bunny.
Finally get home and the cat is furious because it's been eight hours since he ate his breakfast and I should know better than that ... 
And one of my jobs today was to set up a new set of cat food for him as he's a picky little toad and I have to feed him different meat / manufacturer for each meal or he goes off them and will never eat them again. So I've got to do that before I can feed him which isn't his idea at all.
Busy day. And it's not over yet.
* And Timbo's as good with kids as Josef Fritzl but that's their problem**
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Quote: Rich, he grabs his fishing gear so he can tie some flies while he's waiting to be seen because he's going on a three day fishing trip tomorrow
I like this guy!
Quote: has indeed broken his foot and has a large boot on which means he can't go fishing tomorrow. He's not a happy bunny.
Bummer.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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I'm worn out from just reading about your movements of the day.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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Wow, that is a busy day. You've done more in less than a day than I've accomplished all week. I've been diligently working to refine my talents in the art of procrastination lately. The more I practice, the better I get.
There's no procrastination technique that is too petty for me to engage in. There's a moth that's been flying around my living room for several days now. I sprayed it with bug spray several times, and it just keeps flying around. Sometimes I sit and watch it flutter about the room. I have my television on and it's streaming CBS News. I'm not watching it because I'm more interested in watching the moth.
Anyway, don't overdo it. Be sure to take time out for yourself, too. 
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OriginalGriff wrote: Woke at 04:00
Well there's your problem right there! 
But OTOH, I suspect if you got up later, you'd just get less time to get the same amount done...
But seriously, as I was reading through, I thought I was gonna need a diagram.
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A conspicuous number of events, for a such a small country
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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I changed ISPs back in January, and it just so happens I started running into problems, roughly at the same time, with the Debian VM I had running Pi-Hole. Eventually I just shut it down, and I hadn't tried to recreate it until recently.
I quickly realized that nothing was going through Pi-Hole anymore (reinstalled from scratch, including the OS). Total Queries and Queries Blocked figures remained at 0. As I used to, I provided Pi-Hole's (static) IP as my primary DNS on a few systems (also all using static IPs), followed by my DC's IP, and finally my router's (192.168.1.1) - in that order.
Unlike the router I was previously using, my (new) ISP's router does NOT present any option to specify any DNS server. I've gone through every page, including settings hiding under Advanced buttons. Nothing about DNS.
I know very little about DNS, but searching through articles discussing problems with Pi-Hole, I did find something that also adds domain controllers to the mix.
I do have a domain controller, which is set up with its own DNS service. I launched its DNS Manager, selected my domain, selected Forwarders, right-click, Properties, then added Pi-Hole's static IP as the first entry (the only other one being my router, which - after this change - is now the second in the list).
Bingo - suddenly the Request and Blocked figures immediately shot up, and pages that used to be riddled with ads now show blank spaces where ads used to be. Bonus, since all my systems already have my DC's IP for their primary DNS, I don't have to add Pi-Hole's IP anywhere (but as a forwarder on the DC itself, which is a one-time operation).
But a question remains. If I had a system that had its preferred DNS set up as this (in this order):
a) Pi-Hole
b) The DC
c) The router
...why would the queries not go to Pi-Hole first and foremost? Now my configuration is:
a) The DC (with Pi-Hole's IP under Forwarders)
b) The router
...and it all works.
Why?
Either way, I hope this helps someone.
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In most cases, if you use the cable provider's router, you can't change the DNS settings. You MUST run your cable modem in bridge mode (if your provider will allow that), or even better (and more secure), you have to get a more decent router AND a cable modem that is just a modem. One of the reasons you don't want to use your ISP's equipment is because they can also bypass your admin password and perform unwanted updates that could further restrict your access to certain settings in the router.
This is what I had to do, because I am on Comcast and their modem/router was the same way. I have two Raspberry Pi's running Pi-Hole and serving as primary and secondary DNS servers and I couldn't use them because of the ISP's router. If you're interested, I can provide manufacturer/model names of the modem/router I use when I get home from work today.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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My switchover was rather nightmarish, it was supposed to be quite literally replace the previous ISP's modem with the new router, plug my router into theirs, and call it a day.
But due to complications I won't get into, I had to simplify, simplify, and then simplify again to get things working, to the extent that I just removed my own router from the equation. The intent has always been to reintroduce my router, place theirs in bridge mode, and slowly re-add my own customizations one at a time (Pi-Hole being one of them--which I've now managed to do without reintroducing my router first).
But since the ISP switch, I've always been left with this nasty, dirty feeling, knowing my ISP probably has more control over my setup than I'd like.
I will get back to it, but I'll wait until I'm on vacation to do so - working from home, I can't risk going without internet for any sort of prolonged duration. Originally, I had started my migration on a Friday evening, and by late Sunday afternoon, I just ripped out my old router and reluctantly let "theirs" take over. To make a long story short, I was trying to replace too many moving parts all at once.
And FWIW, it's a 5G router - specifically, Nokia's "FastMile 5G Gateway 3.2". The web admin UI is a lot nicer than most ISP's own routers, but exactly as you said, if you can't change something as basic as a DNS, it needs to be turned into a dumb connection device and hand over the real work to something else * I * can control.
The one thing I miss the most is the page from my older router showing, in real-time, the WAN bandwidth usage. I have an old ancient Android tablet I repurposed just to show that page 24/7. If something unexpectedly started chewing bandwidth, I knew immediately. These days I'm left guessing.
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Marking your own message as [Spam] does not grant you permission to blatantly violate the one rule shown in red at the top of the lounge.
Away with you!
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I've probably watched a French video a few weeks ago on YouTube. Ever since, YouTube has been showing me a mixture of French and English ads (maybe 50-50). At least I'm attributing this fact to the one video I might've watched, I see no other reason it might be showing me French ads.
I do NOT log into YouTube, so there's no language preference for me to set. I have no language set in my browser (Edge) other than the default US-English.
And at some point starting this week, every time I go to www.microsoft.com, it explicitly sends me to www.microsoft.com/fr-ca/. Again, despite the fact that I have no other language set in my browser. Or the OS's Regional Settings page.
I could try to clear cookies, but that's an all-or-nothing type of thing - I'd probably lose a lot of tweaks for various sites I'd rather not go through again. As far as I know, you can't clear cookies specifically for one site only. Or can you?
I've just tried InPrivate mode with Edge and going to www.microsoft.com. It sent me to www.microsoft.com/en-ca, so it knows I'm in Canada, but at least the page is in English. That, to me, tells me it's got to be some data in a cookie.
How might I go about finding, then removing that cookie...? Or does someone have a better suggestion?
(and no, I'm not changing browsers for that, TYVM)
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You're forgetting one teensy thing, geolocation of your IP. If the cookie doesn't exist, your country can be guessed by your IP address.
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Jinx! Didn't see your post before I replied. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Bah! I would have beat you to it if I wasn't eating breakfast while I type.
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Location doesn't infer language. It's the language I object to.
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It's got you pegged for Quebec and the language is making certain assumptions about your location.
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All geolocators I've seen since I've been on the internet (94? 95?) have shown my city as being my ISP's...which operates near Toronto, Ontario.
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They do change. It used to be my location was pegged at about 50 miles away. Now it's got me down to about 6 miles.
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Ok.
Riddle me this: Browsers on other systems within my LAN keep me on www.microsoft.com. Only one of them forwards me to www.microsoft.com/fr-ca.
Yet all my systems, from MS's perspective, should originate from the same public IP.
I'm not trying to be contradictory, I welcome the thoughts.
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Ya got me there. I have no idea on that one.
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It might be using your IP to locate you. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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I'm okay with sites knowing what country I'm in (or province). So far all locators have been able to tell me is what city my ISP operates from (which is hundreds of miles away).
It's the (automatic) choice of language that bothers me.
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I hate when they do that. I use Starlink, and all of their addresses point to Los Angeles. As a result, all the ads I get are Mexican language.
Will Rogers never met me.
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There are almost 300 languages spoken in Mexico, about 150 of them in Oaxaca alone. You may have to be more specific. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Interesting, I did not know that - I've always made the assumption that "speaking Mexican" is actually a misnomer for speaking Spanish (there's no such thing as a language called "Mexican").
In the same vein, it's my understanding that there's no such thing as "speaking Chinese" - it's either Mandarin or, to a lesser extent, Cantonese.
It's only when I was an adult that I was even made aware of these sorts of distinctions, when someone asked me if I spoke "Canadian"...always making the assumption that nobody would make the mistake of naming a language after a country, unless there was, explicitly, such a thing...
Languages are fascinating. Programming languages, even more so.
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