Business Archives - Justin Foell

If you have a pair of tried-and-true Sony MDR-V6 headphones (or V600, 7506, etc.) and you find yourself needing a new jack/plug, this is the one you want:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/857699-REG/Remote_Audio_SONY18TRSMV2_Sony_Type_1_8_inch.html

It is made by Sony and fits the threaded 1/8″ to 1/4″ TRS adapter.

Continue reading →

This is just my experience, YMMV as they say…

In April of 2022 my VOIP home phone stopped receiving incoming calls. I could still dial out, but nobody could call the house. I received warning emails from Skyetel every 3 hours that my SIP endpoint was unreachable by their servers.

Since nothing had changed on my end, I suspected that something changed with my provider: Comcast/xfinity. Similar to my experience with British Airways, I found that xfinity has now automated everything.

I understand that automation helps if someone just needs to reboot their router, or forgot their wifi password. But for those who need genuine help getting shit done, it presents a huge barrier. It took me 9 calls and 3 trips to the xfinity store to get this resolved…

Continue reading →

Approach 1 (trying to fix the problem directly)

I phoned tech support to explain that port 5060 (for SIP service) was being blocked on my connection.

The first guy I talked to said they won’t open up that port unless I subscribe to xfinity’s VOIP service. Honestly, I didn’t want to talk to this guy anymore. He was obviously from India. No offense, but he sounded more like a scammer than a helper. I wanted to talk to someone who actually works for xfinity in the US, that actually knows how their network is set up. Before I hung up I got the phone number for Advanced Technical Support. It’s 888-780-8571. You’re welcome.

I called that number and magically wound up speaking with an actual technical rep based in these United States. BTW, this won’t happen every time – I’ve yet to figure out what automation magic I did to skip past the overseas nonsense.

When I mentioned my issue he referenced this page https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/list-of-blocked-ports which I had also been looking at, noting that port 5060 isn’t in the list. He said I might need to do some configuration in my modem’s settings to forward that port.

But the Netgear CM1000 isn’t a combo modem/router. It doesn’t have a firewall or port forwards or anything. It just passes all connections on to my OpenWRT router which has firewall/forwarding/wifi/etc.

So the tech guy suggested I try an xfinity-supplied cable modem (at a rental fee of $15/mo) to see if that solves the problem. I wasn’t thrilled with the extra cost, but he said it’s pro-rated and might be worth seeing if it fixes the problem.

Approach 2 (playing the game)

So I went into my nearest xfinity store, went home with a new cable modem, and set it up. Then, to my dismay, when I went into the port forwarding settings on the modem, I consistently got this error:

I called technical support back and they said:

You need to go back to the xfinity store and get a different modem that is supported by the xfinity app. I’ve made a note on your account so they’ll give you the correct one this time.

WTF. OK, so I went back and returned my modem for another one. The new one worked with the app. I did have to do some weird things like disable IPv6 on my router so that it would show up in the xfinity app as an available device and port-forward destination because xfinity only supports port forwards via IPv4.

What’s really going on?

After configuring the router and updating my IP at Skyetel, it seemed to work 💪 Our home phone now rings after dialing. I called xfinity tech support again to re-activate my Netgear CM1000 to see if it will continue to work. Hey – it worked… But why?

My hunch is that by selecting a port forward in the app, something else is getting configured in their network to allow incoming connections – something upstream from your rental router. We’ll see how long the setting lasts before I have to go (temporarily) rent one again 🤞 Also – I was able to reactivate IPv6 in my router without issue.

The next day, the phone rang and it was music to my ears! ☎️ It was my daughter’s friend and they made plans to get together. Then the day after that, I received my first spam call 😱

← Summary Only

Holy 💩 y’all – I just spent two weeks not being able to share my screen on Ubuntu. It started with a regular system update that I think updated Wayland. I noticed that my fonts in certain applications looked sharper – likely meaning that the 4k scaling was working better. Then I noticed that zoom wouldn’t share the whole screen, it would just share a portion. 😩

To be clear about my setup, I was running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with a dual monitor setup. I had been using Wayland because my XPS built-in screen is 4k and my external is standard HD (1080p).

As luck would have it, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS was recently in my update queue, and I figured it couldn’t get much worse. So I upgraded, but (womp womp) it didn’t help.

Continue reading →

Now zoom wouldn’t show a normal screen sharing option, but it had a new “System Capture” selection.

The system capture selection would bring up another new prompt:

But after I clicked “Share” nothing would happen. People on the other end would just see a black screen.

PipeWire Debugging

After some research it seems that the new sharing subsystem for Wayland is called PipeWire. In my quest to debug it end-to-end I found this handy guide for debugging screen sharing in Wayland, the “It doesn’t work” Troubleshooting Checklist.

One of the steps is to check the pipewire service itself:

systemctl --user status pipewire

And mine was up-and-running but was returning this warning in yellow:

no modules loaded

That led me to this post: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/using-pipewire-instead-of-pulseaudio-in-slackware-15-a-4175693980/page9.html

Yes it was for a different distro (Slackware) but one of the pieces of advice seemed sound:

Long story short, remove every little file from /etc/pipewire if exists and reboot the system.

I’m not sure why the folder was there with an old config file in it. Likely from when I was on 20.04 and tried upgrading PipeWire to try to fix zoom (which didn’t work).

I deleted that folder (actually moved it to a temporary place first), rebooted and it did the trick. Screen sharing is back on! Good thing because my job depends on it 💪

← Summary Only

I recently took a trip to Scotland. I didn’t plan ahead to add international calling because I thought I could disconnect for a week. Sometimes the world has other plans.

After landing in Glasgow I turned on airplane mode and left wi-fi enabled. Not surprisingly, I received a couple iMessage texts from some of the Minnesota Brass staff.

What did surprise me is that I was able to send and receive regular text messages as well. I wondered if it was because I had enabled Wi-Fi calling. My suspicion was confirmed after I enabled it on my wife’s phone and text messages came pouring in 😩

Continue reading →

Wi-Fi calling to the rescue

It came in extremely handy when British Airways automatically canceled our flight home. An aside about British Airways:

BA is an excellent example of a company that has automated too many things. Our flight from Glasgow to London got moved by 20 minutes. We received an email stating that it had moved and if everything was OK, no action was required. Behind the scenes the automated systems at British Airways determined that the time to make the connecting flight was no longer sufficient and automatically canceled our return trip (without notification).
We tried to remedy this by walking over to talk to the BA baggage and ticketing agents directly at the Glasgow airport. But they’re just contracted workers that can check in luggage, they can’t do anything when it comes to reservations. The only option was to call.
We spent 4-hours on the phone calling and re-calling British Airways to remedy the situation. Calls of course were routed to their call center in India where it was extremely difficult to get through (usually a 20-30 minute hold time) and once we got through they were very eager to get us off the phone, stating that “the team is working on it.”
The fastest way I got through was to call American Airlines once they were open (who was the US partner for London -> Chicago). Then I gave them my ticket number and they transferred me to the BA support line, and somehow I was magically at the front of the BA support queue.
Ultimately half of our party got home on the original flight, and the other half had to stay an extra day.

Enabling WiFi calling on iOS

For iPhone, WiFi calling is available on every major carrier. Turn it on under phone settings:

Once it’s enabled you’ll see a “<Carrier> Wi-Fi” message at the top when you’ve got a good wifi connection.

You’ll need to verify your home address for emergency calls. Keep in mind that if you’re on wifi with the cellular network disabled, the address reported to emergency services will be the address you entered (likely your home address). So if I dialed 911 in Scotland they’d think I’m calling from Minnesota – be careful!

When making calls over wifi with your cellular service off, it will be like you’re dialing from home. No need to dial any extra country code stuff. Just mind the timezone differences 😎

← Summary Only

Dude… you’re getting a Dell(?)!

The last 4 laptops I’ve owned went like this:

2004 – ThinkPad
2009 – Dell
2014 – ThinkPad
2019 – Dell

Whenever I had the Dells I would tell my wife: “Remind me to get a ThinkPad next time.” I wish I listened to my own advice. They’re well thought out – ThinkPads just get a little more love when it comes to design and build. While they’re not without fault, they are generally better than your average laptop.

The Dell laptops I’ve owned have felt cheap and both have gone in for repairs. The good news is, Dell support is pretty good about fixing things. But I wish I didn’t have to send them in for repairs. Sidenote: my old ThinkPads have made for excellent loaners during repair periods. Dell really should be cheap and cheerful, but the whole experience leaves me feeling a bit “meh.”

Continue reading →

The latest issue on my 2019 XPS 13 is that the keyboard appeared to be getting out of whack. I noticed the control and function keys were sitting at different angles.

Then I realized: my battery is puffed. I confirmed it when the lid wouldn’t close fully.

After reflecting on the situation, I realized my laptop has spent the better part of 1.5 years (since COVID started) operating on AC power. Normally on my ThinkPad I’d use TLP to keep my normal battery charge at around 60-80%. But those features aren’t available on my XPS:

$ sudo tlp-stat
...
+++ Battery Features: Charge Thresholds and Recalibrate
natacpi    = inactive (laptop not supported)
tpacpi-bat = inactive (laptop not supported)
tp-smapi   = inactive (laptop not supported)
...

Other TLP features (like disabling wifi when plugged into the wired network) do work on my XPS, so I leave it installed & enabled. For battery management, you must use Dell’s own Command Configure tool: cctk

There’s a great write-up on the XPS 7390 over in the Arch Linux wiki.

So I set up cctk to keep my (new, now replaced) battery at 80%.
sudo crontab -l

...
@reboot /opt/dell/dcc/cctk --PrimaryBattChargeCfg=Custom:75-80

And I have a shell script that I can run to bring the charge up to 100%:
vi ~/bin/full_charge.sh

#!/bin/sh
sudo /opt/dell/dcc/cctk --PrimaryBattChargeCfg=Standard

Do yourself a favor – next time get a ThinkPad.

← Summary Only

Justin Foell

Technology, Bicycling, Hobbies, Kids, Life.

Category Archives: Business

Sony MDR-V6 Headphone Jack Repair

Disassembly & Prep

Soldering

Test & Final Assembly

Unblock Port 5060 on Comcast / xfinity

Approach 1 (trying to fix the problem directly)

Approach 2 (playing the game)

What’s really going on?

Remove /etc/pipewire

PipeWire Debugging

Don’t have an international plan? Try WiFi calling

Wi-Fi calling to the rescue

Enabling WiFi calling on iOS

Dell XPS Developer Edition Battery Puffed