iPhone 17 Pro Max Preordered!

I've been holding onto my iPhone 13 Pro Max because it's been adequate.  It's still running on the original battery, as well.

I've never preordered a smartphone before (or any product, for that matter).  I'd been thinking of upgrading but was not interested in the 14 PM, 15 PM, or 16 PM.  The 17 PM did get my attention, though.

I've been mulling over if I should upgraded to the 17 Pro Max.  I watched a few videos to try to make an informed decision and liked what I saw.  

Last night, I decided to consider the 17 PM, but the next issue was deciding whether to trade in my current phone.  I was thinking on keeping it but the 17 PM isn't a cheap phone, so I looked at what my carrier (Verizon) would offer me if I opted to trade in the 13 PM in addition to buying the 17 PM.  I found that Verizon offers $1100 for my 256-GB iPhone 13 Pro Max!  That's a huge sum to apply to the 17 PM.

I then looked at the 17 PM offerings.  The color options are minimal, and I settled on the Cosmic Orange.  As well, I messed with the configuration to consider how much my monthly payment would change (factoring in the 13 PM trade-in).  Initially, I wanted the 512-GB version, but decided to check to see the monthly price difference between 512-GB and 1-TB - the difference was like $3.  So, I chose the 1-TB version.

I could've cut costs way down just by sticking with the 256-GB version, but I've had issues with storage space consumption and wanted to at LEAST go up to 512-GB.  I only chose 1-TB when I saw that my monthly payment would only go up a few dollars.

What I don't like is that Verizon forces you to upgrade to the highest tier of phone plan to buy the 17 PM.  I had to change my plan (from mid tier to top tier), but really, the payment didn't increase by much.

So, I preordered a 1-TB Cosmic Orange iPhone Pro Max today.  It will ship on 10/3.  While I wait, I'll also research cases for this phone. [UPDATE:  I ordered the clear TORRAS Q3 case.]

I'm really excited, as most of the time, to cut costs, I end up settling for my tech.  As well, when I buy phones, it's historically been between releases, so I'm always a very late adopter.  When I bought my 13 PM, it was already on the market close to 2 years.

Sunnylife Hard Case for DJI Osmo Pocket 3

I've no idea why I never posted about the Sunnylife Hard Case.  

It's a hard case that works a LOT better than the OEM case in protecting the gimbal of the camera.

It protects more than just the gimbal, though.  It also protects the display screen (keeps it from rotating and protects it from scratches/impacts).

I've been using it for close to a year, traveling locally and internationally with it.

I decided to buy it because there were times when I was traveling with the camera, using the OEM case,  I'd open the camera bag and find that the gimbal had been pushed out of it's storage position.  When it's out of it's storage position, the camera lense can be scratched.

It absolutely locks down the camera's essential moving parts and protects the glass parts.

I highly recommend this protective case.

DJI Mini 3 - Strobe Light Works; Ordered External Remote ID Module

I got a bit of twilight flying last night.  It was fun, but I got eaten alive by mosquitos to the point that I was flinching a lot while trying to concentrate on flying and also watching the drone.

The strobe light works good but since it's on top of the drone, I don't see it (yeah, I get it...it's supposed to be for manned planes to spot).  I'm thinking of getting two more lights (red and green) and putting them on the front arms of the quad.

I thought the strobe light would affect handling dyamics of the quad, but I didn't notice any control issues.

I also found that Remote ID was broadcasting, although I couldn't see it within my phone's WiFi applet.  I did see an indication within the RC's menu (buried two levels into the menu - you'd think this would be one level down at a max menu depth, or at least showing Remote ID status on screen somewhere.

Initially, I thought that the Plus battery wasn't activating the Remote ID broadcasting - it was, but it wasn't noticeably apparent.

I also bought an external Remote ID broadcast module because it was cheap ($30) and because it would enable me to use the non-Plus batteries, which I really don't want to sell.

With both the strobe light and the Remote ID module, the drone is somewhat weighed down...I'm not really sure about adding the additional two red/green lights, although I'm sure the Mini 3 can handle it.

I got some good pictures last night but only one 10 sec video.  I thought I had more video footage found that one of the two files was corrupted.  I'll probably try again tomorrow, plus there's Labor Day weekend coming up, too!  I've also been adjusting EV settings in the photos and videos, too, although it's sometimes difficult to determine how much to adjust.  In one case, I dialed down EV for the one video I captured.  The sun was below the horizon but was still throwing out it's last light.  On the RC screen, it showed that some of the clouds were reflecting a lot of sunlight, showing the reflection as a "mask" of pixels.  I interpreted that to mean that I needed to dial down the EV and when I did, the "masking" disappeared!

I'll upload some screenshots to my server and will post the picture here (will do this tomorrow).

Although I love night flying, unless you've a specific focus, it gets boring really quick, as it's difficult to see things when it's not so much ambient lighting.  

Status on Night Flying

I've yet to fly the Mini 3 with it now being registered.  I received the Plus battery yesterday evening and it was raining here, so I'm currently in a hold pattern for flight.

I did test the Plus battery, though.  Mine is NOT a DJI branded Plus battery, but it still shows extended capacity.  One thing that threw me is that I was trying to determine if Remote ID was enabled and broadcasting.  I did notice that the Flight Checklist shows, "Remote ID functionality normal (code: 1B080003)" within the remote controller UI.  I also tested to see if that disappears when I use the normal batteries - it does.  Based on that, I'm assuming that the Remote ID is being broadcasted.

As well, I went ahead and bought a Remote ID broadcasting module so that I can use the non-Plus batteries.

I've noticed that it's clear skies right now and it's 5 PM EST, so it looks like I'll be able to conduct a dusk test flight today!

I'll Be Registering My Quad Drone with the FAA

Most folks don't care for registering drones.  I get it - folks don't believe in over-regulation.

For me, I don't want fines and there are times when Murphy's Law fucks with me, so I want to ensure that if a LEO visits me, I'm doing things legally.  I don't think the current regulations in the US are over-bearing and you won't catch me doing the stupid things that many non-licensed drone pilots do. (Flying beyond VLOS, flying in fog, flying at 1000 ft, harassing wildlife, etc...)

I want to fly at night.  I've seen videos of folks flying during fireworks displays, and the footage looks incredible.  Even non-fireworks night footage looks very crisp.  

I want to give night flying a shot.  The only thing is, to fly at night, I need a strobe.  After researching, the lightest strobes I can find are 6 grams.  My drone, a Mini 3, is 248 grams.  The legal limit for non-registered drones is 249 grams.  So, to fly at night, and because a strobe will but the drone over the 249g limit, I need to register the drone.

This isn't a huge deal to me.  Flying is a privilege, not a right.  I've no problem registering the drone.

Because I'm registering the drone, that means I can use the Plus (51 minute) rechargeable battery.  I'd been avoiding that battery because it would've put me over the weight limit, as it's heavier than the normal Mini 3 battery.  

So, I bought a strobe and a Plus battery.  The strobe is arriving tomorrow.  The battery is arriving Monday.  I can register the drone tonight and be flying with the strobe tomorrow night!

UPDATE (8/22/2025):  I've registered the drone (at the FAA Dronezone website).  It was a bit tricky, as I registered it before the Plus battery arrives (which is tomorrow), which meant the Remote ID on the RC display would not show.  Dronezone was asking for that bit of information.  Remember, the Remote ID is only activated when using the Plus battery.  DJI has RID support documentation that helped me get through the process.  This was more clear than any of the other (many) janky web pages that explained the process, as most of those pages were outdated with erroneous details.  I basically had to use the device's serial number when registering the drone with the FAA (the serial number IS the Remote ID).  I paid a $5 fee for 3 years of registration, which is the standard fee and duration.  I used a label maker to create a label that has the registration number; I stuck it to the side of the drone.  One thing, though:  I can no longer use the non-Plus batteries (they're not cheap, either), or buy an external RID module, which costs more than one battery.  I can sell the batteries to recoup funds from having to buy another two Plus batteries, I guess.

Mac Mini - USB/Mouse Issue?

Maybe two or three months ago, the mouse that I use with my Mac Mini stopped working when I unplugged it and plugged it into the Mac again.  It's a Corsair Dark Core RGB SE gaming mouse.  I've had it since the pandemic (not long, as far as mice go).

No matter what I did, the mouse wouldn't work.  I've a spare micro-USB to USB-A cable (that's what it uses), so I thought I'd try to see if swapping out the cable would fix the issue.  It did not.   I then tried other mice and they worked - these were just Dell wired mice.  When I tried the Corsair mouse again, it worked.

 Today, the Corsair stopped working again...same deal - I unplugged it and tried to plug it into a different USB-A outlet.  I tried all the same things and it eventually started working again.  Then I purposely unplugged it again.  It stopped working and will not activate again.

Right now, I'm using a wired EVGA X17 mouse as a temporary solution until I can get another Corsair.

Either my Corsair's battery (it's a wireless mouse that has wired capability) is dead or there's something internally wrong with it.  I'm leaning toward it being the battery - maybe it needs a charge to work, even when wired?  Batteries are finite items.

Maybe I won't get another Corsair wireless mouse, because if I do, this will happen again.  I also have a Corsair wireless mouse at my cubicle at work...it's the same age and it hasn't died.

I'm unsure what to do.  I don't want to use the Dell wired mice - those feel disposable.

UPDATE (8/22/2025):  I forgot that I've some cheaper but just-as-nice-as-Corsair mice.  One that I love is the Venus Pro RGB MMO wireless mouse.  They're cheap ($30) and have lots of buttons.  I just now ordered another one to replace the Corsair Dark Core.

Pihole Down! Pihole Redeployed!

Yestereday, I was vegetating on my phone and noticed a lot of ads were being presented to me.  Normally, I get minimal ads due to using Pihole...not today, though.

When I logged into the admin panel to check on it, nothing seemed amiss, until I tried to run queries against the logs.  The whole admin panel seized up and would not recover, so I decided to shut down the docker instance and re-run it...it was failing.  The specific error that I was focused on was, "SQLite3: statement aborts at 4: [DETACH ?] no such database: disk (1)".  Now, I don't usually conduct maintenance on the Pihole instance since it's containerized (via Docker).  I'm thinking that the DB got full and the container nuked it, but I didn't want to spend a lot of time troubleshooting it.

What did I do?  I just created a new folder named "pihole-REBUILD" and copied my compose.yml file to it, then I ran "docker compose up -d".  After that, I had to access the pihole to run a password reset command.  Once that was done, I was able to log in.

Because I couldn't remember where I backed up the pihole config files, I basically have to start from scratch, but I went to https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists/blob/main/sources.md and copied the blocklist sources from that URL, then posted them to Pihole as blocklists (total was 11,342,549 domains blocked).

After that, I visited a bunch of sites, trying to generate block logs...and saw nothing.  I couldn't determine why the Pihole wasn't logging.  I ended up doing a bunch of internet searches and found this and this.

I basically had to go to the Settings section, then the DNS section, and set the interface settings check box from "Allow only local requests to Bind only" to "Bind only to interface eth0" (this was hidden until I noticed a small "Basic" web link - clicking it changed the mode from Basic to Advanced, and I was then able to see those config options).

I also opted to limit logging to 2 days max.

Once I did that, I immediately noticed that Pihole was seeing and blocking things.

I'm not sure why the DNS issue wasn't something I'd seen before, as I've been running Pihole awhile now.

I'll admit that it was super quick (relatively) to deploy a new instance of Pihole.

Instead of waiting a day for it to fail (my daughter said it failed yesterday morning - I didn't notice it until 11 PM, but I also didn't work at home yesterday), it may be time for me to look for an AM/HM Docker container setup.

UPDATE (7/26/2025):  I've had no Pihole outages since I redeployed the container and since I adjusted the logging limit.

UPDATE (8/2/2025):  Had an outage tonight, the exact same type of outage as past times.  I found that this isn't related to Pihole.  It's a bug in systemd.  This is a known issue but I'm not sure why it's happening on my home server and not my Linode host (they're the same version - Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS).  I may change to a different distribution for my home server, because this is ridiculous.  When it occurs, the system is so slow that I can't remedy the issue.  As well, it rejects all attempts to reboot using the 'reboot' command.  I couldn't restart services, either.  The specific error I saw was:  dbus: [system] Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.login1': timed out.  In almost all cases I've read of, a reboot is required.  As well, this has been seen as far back as 2016 (like 9 years ago!).

I Hate YouTube!

You know, I hate Youtube. I hate YouTube for a variety of reasons.

The main reason is that YouTube will not let you block certain channels.  There are certain channels I hate but Youtube keeps feeding them to me.  There used to be a way to block channels are at least tell YouTube that you weren't interested in viewing content from a particular channel.  That changed awhile ago.

As well, they won't let you block individuals so that you don't see their comments.

I've been trying to use Rumble for viewing videos.  Rumble doesn't have as much traffic as YouTube.  As well, Rumble has no importing utility - it's an absolute pain to move videos from YouTube to Rumble.

As well, I've been trying to grow my YouTube channel but I do not want to be having to post every other day just to ensure I've adequate traffic.  YouTube's algorithm is making a slave of folks and I'm not even monetized.

I pray to God that YouTube gets slammed with some type of overreach charge in the future.  They're so large that there's no competition.

UPDATE (7/26/2025):  I'm pushing all of my content to Rumble now.  I'm also attempting to export all of my Youtube content so that I can import the videos to Rumble.  I'm also linking the Rumble content when posting to Wordpress.