Pool Deck Drain Cleaning, Mechanical and Biological

Now for something completely different, a cobbled-together "solution" for a clogged pool deck drain!

Hurricanes Helene and now Milton have had their way and then some with my area of Florida. As a result, various compostable debris off my roof has found its way down onto my pool (or bacta tank, if you're that hardcore) deck and through the plastic drain. Similar to this one except the drain lives at the corner of the concrete deck and concrete block wall.

Heavy rain led to water intrusion into my garage underneath the back porch due to a compromised door threshold with rotting wood thanks to one and done sketchy, sloppy workmanship by a contractor who shall remain nameless (not out of compassion, it's just been so long I've forgotten, lucky them). 

So, inspired by madness and various other factors, and rather than pay some handyperson to do the job for me, I put together a selection of goods to handle things brutishly.

First, a wood augur, this one.

Next, a 1/2 inch hex socket to hold the augur in place.

Then, a couple of TEKTON 1/2 Inch Drive socket extensions, 24 inches each.

Next, a socket adapter to enable my cordless drill to hook up with this maniacal assembly. 

And, finally, OG Duck Tape to literally seal the deal. 

The idea here is to connect these pieces into basically a long, heavy drill bit that will see the auger power through what gunk and dirt lives in the deck drain and extract it. 

Here's the end result, Ryobi drill for scale.

Months prior to devising this thing, I deployed a liquid biological dethatcher, basically a concoction of beneficial bacteria and microbes to go after accumulated organic matter and start to break it downl. This is similar to the notion of  creating compost, where bulky leaves and branches and grass clippings and whatnot are deconstructed into humus, ideal for gardening among other things.

To help my new microbial friends do their job, I also every few weeks in added some compost accelerator to speed up and promote the bacteria's growth.

Before this enterprise, the rotting threshold saw water intrusion leading to small puddles of water collecting in the area indoors just behind the back door leading to the pool deck.

After a few goes over a couple weeks with this super-lengthened augur, proper drainage has been restored, and despite the inches upon inches of rainfall, water has yet to accumulate. This is buying me some time so that repairs can commence to the threshold once the nice, agonizingly brief spell of cool fall weather sets in.

Following drilling into the muck and seeing the auger capture and help me extract foul-smelling, increasingly soil-like gunk, I took a regular garden hose to the drain and did a once over with it down the length of it. As I did so, very fine organic matter with roughly the same dark hue (and odor) as the dethatching agent would bubble up through the drain as I went, suggesting the bacteria had well established itself and been gobbling up the stuff in advance nicely.

Not exactly within the purview of information technology, but at the same time a nice side project to pursue to take unclogging clogs into my own hands.

Gateway vs Router: T-Mobile 5G Home Internet and Wifi Network Contention

A couple of years ago T-Mobile 5G Home Internet finally became available in my area of Florida, enabling me to ditch longtime but miserly AT&T with their paltry "legacy" DSL (6 Mbps down / ~384 Kbps [!] up), for upwards of 170+ Mbps down / 3-6 Mbps up on 5G.

In the wake of the afterglow of comparatively fantastic speed, following hurricane Debby that blew through my area of Florida in August 2024, I experienced significantly decreased internet bandwidth with my wireless devices only.

Devices hardwired via ethernet cable, like my desktop PC, were unaffected, and speed tests for those showed around the expected bandwidth. My laptops (plural), tablets (ditto), and others though were definitely having issues. Why?

I called T-Mobile and they informed me that one 5G tower of theirs was down for repairs while at least one other was undergoing maintenance and awaiting parts. I proceeded to reach out over a dozen times by message back and forth with T-Mobile support via former Twitter and Facebook, tracking their progress and advising of changes on my end. My 5G gateway has been facing out a south-facing window of my home, and the nearest tower they recommended was E-SE, so I oriented the front face (where the 5G antennas live for this Sagemcom Fast 5688W gateway) as best I could in that general direction.

Now, here's the thing. When I first set up the gateway using the T-Life mobile app for Android, I configured it (innocently enough) with the same wifi SSID and password as that used by my TP-Link router (which supports the newer WIFI 6 standard, as does the 5G gateway). Therein lies the problem, as I found out with reasonable certainty. 

The wifi 6 standard among other benefits enables you to not have to create unique SSIDs to use around your house, say. Instead of creating one SSID for say each wifi extender you might have on every compass point of your home as you might have with wifi 5 and older, now you can use a single SSID to be smartly managed by the router in a mesh setup (as I delve into here).

However, as I discovered, that does NOT mean that separate wifi 6 gateways or routers play nice, wifi wise, with each other. Computers, tablets, even wifi extenders all cope nicely within the wifi 6 standard, but "royalty" in the form of gateways and routers that actually serve as upper management for your local wifi device community can clash.

I followed steps in the T-Life app to do the following:

1. From the Overview => My Wi-fi screen, create a new wifi network named TMobile (with SSID hidden).
   
   
2. From under My Networks, tap the current SSID I originally configured on both my gateway and router, let's call it DARTH.
   
   
3. Tap on DARTH, and on the Network Details screen, tap Delete Network, and confirm. Note also the reminder from T-Mobile, you must have at least one Wi-Fi network to be able to access the gateway from the T-Life app itself. 

In retrospect, that little warning T-Mobile provides turned out to be prophetic, and I wish I took the hint early on that hey, maybe dueling wifi networks are part of the problem, here. Indeed, by setting up the T-Mobile gateway to use the exact same wifi network as my router, I can only imagine the constant radio frequency duel going on between the two devices, each with the same valid credentials and security, each vying for control of the wifi devices on my LAN.

Now, having that TMobile network on the gateway, not only hidden but completely unique to DARTH which my router manages exclusively, and the T-Life app connecting by wifi from the former network's only connected device, my phone, I now am enjoying bandwidth much like my desktop PC from my laptop.

Much better! At this point the only things stifing connectivity are what you'd expect, obstacles impeding signal between the wifi extenders and the router, the relatively elderly Intel Centrino onboard adapter this particular laptop uses, etc. Not a pitched battle between gateway and router over which one serves as the official conduit for local network traffic.

Tips On Home Mesh Network Setup

Recently decided to upgrade my wifi setup. In addition to getting a high-end router in the form of a TP-Link Tri-Band BE19000, featuring the performant Wifi 7 standard, I got several mesh-capable wifi extenders.

The process wasn't as straightforward as I would've liked, which is usually what I get for not planning ahead and importantly, reading the instructions and taking notes, otherwise known as being lazy. However, being meticulous and refining my steps helped things turn out nicely.

Here are some tips for your wifi upgrade journey.

• Advise anybody at home that the network will be down for a bit.
  
  
• Bookmark support pages for the router and range extenders.
  
  
• Install the manufacturer's app or, if you prefer, note the default IP address, admin username, and password for all the devices.
  
  
• If you like, download the latest firmware for each and keep handy in a folder or on a USB stick, in case upgrading through the device interface automagically isn't an option.
  
  
  
• Set up your new router, install its latest firmware, back up settings.
  
  
• Whether swapping an old router for a new drop-in replacement, make sure you give it a static IP address via the app or web interface.
  
  
• Give your backup configuration files descriptive names. Instead of just "config.bin", try "manufacturer MODEL123 - location.bin". For example, "TPLink AX5400 - Basement.bin". 
  
  
• Ensure other settings like WPA security, date / time, DHCP server, QoS, and others are configured to your needs. 
  
  
• Of course, enable the router's mesh capability if you haven't already.
  
  
  
• Set up each range extender individually, in close proximity to the router.
  
  
• WPS can simplify extender setup, but for that you need to have the router and extender physically close, say a meter or so apart.
  
  
• In case WPS doesn't work out for whatever reason (connectivity issues, or yours is a use case a bit more complicated than just plug and play), connect the extender to one of your router LAN ports with an ethernet cable. 
  
  
• Going even further down the use case rabbit hole, consider assigning a static IP address to each extender. If you do, be sure to exclude the extenders' addresses from your DHCP server range to avoid IP conflicts.
  
  
• Especially if using identical extenders, use a Sharpie to label each unit. It could be a code you devise, the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, etc.), directionality (e.g. "N" for an extender at the north side of your home). 
  
  
  
• Enable each extender's mesh capability to leverage Wifi 6+ technology.
  
  
• Prior to Wifi 6, some use cases made sense for each extender to have its own SSID, but with the newer standards, you can use the same SSID across your entire network. 
  
  
• To verify your extenders are part of the mesh once physically moved to their new homes, open the router's mesh configuration and verify your extenders appear in the list and are healthy and enabled. 
  
  
• If you like, double check to ensure each extender's MAC address, as listed, corresponds to the notes you've jotted down.
  
  
• No notes? Create a text file, Word document, Excel sheet, etc., and to it list each extender with make, model, IP address, MAC address, descriptive name, and anything else you deem important to recall later.
  
  
• One thing about wifi range extenders, most I've worked with will have two separate MAC addresses, one for its onboard ethernet port, the other for its wifi interface. This can be a bit confusing if you're tired and it's late and your trusty Advanced IP Scanner displays MAC addresses for which the last number is off by one from what you expect. 
  
  
  
• Once all is said and done, be sure to download and save backup firmware.
  
  
• Should something go haywire, you can lean on your backup configurations in case you made a change and must revert it, especially in cases where tired you has made many changes to many devices and are maybe losing touch with reality.
  
  
• While I haven't tried it, I'm reasonably certain that if you happen to replace one of your units with another identical model, you may be able to upload your previous unit's config file to the new one. Keep in mind, however, that subtle variations between models, like the hardware version, may differ from one model's revision to the next.

That about sums up my less inelegant, more refined process in this latest instance of moving up and onward with faster, better, seamless mesh wifi networking. ⚡

 

Start Menu or Taskbar "Bulge" Follows Cursor

In Windows 10, have you noticed recently that if you happen to click the Start Menu or right-click the Taskbar, then and hover left or right over any one of the listed items, a sort of "bulge" appears to be following your cursor?

This appeared to start happening by default for my otherwise ordinary display settings as of a month or few ago, and it was just one of those things that's mildly infuriating if like me you both are an acutely visual and detail-oriented person, and prefer an absolutely no-frills Windows desktop experience.

After poking around I found the solution. Settings => Color Settings reveals that Transparency effects is the offender. 

By setting this to Off, no more bulge, no more seething with apoplectic rag-- I mean, annoyance.

The only minor and to me inconsequential issue is that the background is a tad darker thanks to the now fully obscured transparency. No big deal, and far better than yet another decision casually inflicted by Microsoft upon its userbase.