Shared Bits 7-Year Anniversary

Updated on 2025-10-13

Highlights of my life and seventh year of blogging; Oct 2024 – Sept 2025.

01 – Shared Bits

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Shared Bits visitor count began to increase quite a bit beginning in October last year. Shared Bits reached another milestone this year by exceeding 5,000 visitors per month for four months of the year. For the year, the average visitor count for Shared Bits was 4,053.

The visitor count for my post on homemade yogurt picked up nicely this year. The average visitor count for the post for the year was 152. The post had over 200 visitors each month for six months of the year.

I’m surprised by the visitor count for my post about my ASUS ET2322 AIO desktop computer. I didn’t think it would be as popular as the visitor count seems to indicate. The average visitor count for the post in only a four month period was 229.

In September of last year I finally caught up recording Shared Bits analytics data in the LibreOffice Base database I created. I later discovered that it was a good thing that I got caught up because the AWStats data is only being stored for one year. I haven’t made time to see if I can increase the amount of time the data is held before being purged.

In August, I received an email from Opalstack, the hosting provider for Shared Bits, stating that they had implemented a new operating system only available on new servers and that users could ask to be switched over if they were currently on a server running the older operating system. Shared Bits was on a server running the older operating system. I made preparations for the transfer and then I requested that Shared Bits be transferred to a new server using the newer operating system. The transfer took less than ten minutes.

02 – My Life

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Whew! What a busy year it has been for me this year. I thought things were supposed to slow down as you get older.

In December, I was awakened in the middle of the night by cold room temperature in the master bedroom. We were having trouble with our heat pump. I spent quite a bit of time dealing with the heat pump issue. You can read more about the issue here.

Also in December, a family member came to stay to help my wife out when she had a medical procedure performed in January. My wife uses the hallway bathroom on the upper level of our home as her bathroom. I had shut the water off to one of the faucets because the washers or o-rings were shot and you couldn’t turn the water off completely using the faucet. I wanted to replace both faucets before the family member came to stay.

I could have just replaced the washers or o-rings, but the shutoffs were installed when the house was built and the builder used cheap shutoffs with plastic stems. Additionally, the faucets came with permanent copper water supply connectors which were connected to the water supply lines using compression-type fittings. I highly prefer using screw-on hoses to connect a faucet to the water supply lines, so I decided to just replace everything.

I purchased a couple of nice-looking Delta bathroom faucets from Amazon in November. I successfully installed the left faucet. However, after installing the right faucet and testing for leaks, I discovered there was a leak coming from somewhere inside the faucet. So I had to uninstall the faucet and I returned it to Amazon. I purchased another faucet, but I put installation on hold.

In January, my wife had a medical procedure performed. I had to take on the responsibility of keeping the hardwood floors in the kitchen and foyer clean again. I also had to take my wife on less than a handful of medical appointments after her procedure because she was not able to drive.

I had tooth #32 (right lower wisdom tooth) removed in January. The tooth was deemed unrepairable by the dentist I had been seeing in 2024. I tried to tell the dentist that the decay in tooth #32, as well as tooth #17 (left lower wisdom tooth), was quite possibly due to tooth resorption because the decay appeared within a short period of time. The dentist didn’t seem to agree with me. He said that because both teeth were so far back in my mouth, I probably wasn’t able to clean them well. I thought that was a ridiculous response because I’ve had the teeth for forty-plus years with no issues until 2024. I chalked up the dentist’s response to not having seen me in the past. I’ve also had two other teeth that a prior dentist repaired due to resorption.

The dental surgeon who removed tooth #32 told me that the tooth decay was due to resorption. I also asked him to consider removing tooth #17 as it showed similar characteristics, but he said he didn’t see any sign of resorption and that the tooth could be repaired.

The dentist I had been seeing filled tooth #17 in October 2024 and while using a Waterpik to clean my teeth one day in December, the whole filling came out and there was brown coloration where the filling had been. I still think the tooth is slowly succumbing to tooth resorption.

We had three or four measurable snowfalls over the months of January-February. I was able to put my new snow blower to good use.

I came home from grocery shopping in early February and I placed my smartphone down on the floor next to the door leading to the garage while I put away groceries. Later, I tried using one of my Grip ‘N Grabs to pick up my smartphone by its sides, but the smartphone slipped out of the grip of the device. I then attempted to pick up my smartphone by grabbing the front and back of the phone with a bit of force using the Grip ‘N Grab. My smartphone began giving errors about a missing SIM card, which meant I couldn’t use the phone for communication purposes.

I was very concerned because the banking institution I was with at the time only provided logon authentication codes via a text message or a phone call. With the phone potentially on the blink, I couldn’t easily manage my financial tasks. Therefore, I began looking for a new phone.

I was with Tracfone at the time and I had just purchased an annual service plan, so I thought I could just order another phone from them and transfer my number and minutes to the new phone. Oh no…to purchase a phone from Tracfone required also purchasing a service plan. There was no other option available on the Tracfone site.

So, I began looking at other pay-as-you-go cellphone service providers and I discovered U.S. Mobile. U.S. Mobile sells phones or you can bring your own. I thought the phones offered by U.S. Mobile were a bit pricey, so I did some research and I discovered that you could get open-box phones for a good discount on eBay. I found a Motorola Edge 2024 smartphone from a seller in Florida and I decided to purchase it. I also later decided to switch to another financial institution that provided logon authentication codes via email as well as via text message or a phone call.

The CMOS battery died in my ASUS AIO ET2322 desktop computer close to the middle of February. I spent quite a bit of time dealing with the issue. You can read more about my ordeal here.

Fortunately, I had fixed my ASUS AIO desktop computer because the hinge on my ASUS Zenbook laptop broke the day before I got my ASUS AIO working. I have never had a laptop hinge break on me, so I had no idea how to fix it. I did some research on YouTube and I discovered a number of videos on repairing ASUS Zenbook laptop hinges by using JB-Weld and other epoxy adhesives. However, I haven’t made time to attempt to repair the laptop. The disassembled laptop is still sitting covered on a folding table in my home office.

I received notice from our lawn treatment company towards the end of February that the prices would increase so that they could continue to offer a “fair wage” to their employees. The email I received stated that the price increases were a biannual event. I decided to cancel the service. The crew from the company usually weren’t here for any more than 15 – 20 minutes, except for the September treatment which included core aeration and overseeding. We were paying almost $100 per treatment, five treatments a year.

I never was completely happy with the company. They would come out on windy days sometimes to do the treatments, so the fertilizer and pre-emergent herbicide (when applied) was probably blown away. They would also sometimes come out a day or two before a heavy rain, so the treatment was probably mostly washed away. I complained a few times about the treatments being applied on windy days or before a heavy rain and the reply was usually “it should be okay.” That reply was garbage in my opinion.

I have been feeling better enough health-wise lately that I felt that I could do what the lawn treatment company did and for a much lower cost, except for the core aeration. Additionally, I could pick the right day to apply fertilizer, pre-emergent herbicide, fungicide, or lime since I don’t have a schedule and a number of customers to take care of.

In March, I spent quite a bit of time trying to find a fertilizer to use on our lawn. In the past, I used fertilizer from Espoma, but they stopped selling their lawn fertilizer with phosphate in our area because it is not supposed to be used due to environmental concerns. I tried their lawn fertilizer without phosphate and I didn’t think it was anywhere near as good as the fertilizer with phosphate.

I went to a local garden center that I’ve shopped at for years and I discovered fertilizer by a new-to-me company named GreenView. GreenView offers a fertilizer and pre-emergent lawn product specifically targeted for spring application called GreenView Fairway Formula Spring Fertilizer with Crabgrass Preventer. The product is a slow-release granular formula that continues working for up to twelve weeks.

I applied the fertilizer and pre-emergent product over two separate days within a one-week period. I applied the product in sections and then I watered each section in, being careful not to walk over the areas that had been fertilized or watered. It was a bit of work, but the results were worth the effort even though the product does not contain phosphate. The lawn looked nice until the heat of summer came. Weeds also became a problem when the pre-emergent wore off. Next year, I’ll have to remember to apply a long-lasting pre-emergent in June or July so that I don’t experience the trouble I had with weeds this past summer.

The following image is of my front lawn this fall about three weeks after applying Greenview Fairway Formula Fall Fertilizer that should give you an idea about how good Greenview fertilizers are.

I had planned to wait until I saved up enough money to purchase a computer replacement. However, I still hadn’t gotten around to attempt to repair the broken hinge on my laptop and the slowness of my desktop computer was getting on my nerves. Both computers were over ten years old. I had concerns about my desktop computer developing another problem due to its age. Therefore, in June I decided to go ahead and purchase a new desktop computer system using money I had set aside for healthcare expenses. I purchased the following items:

• ASUS PB63 mini PC
• LG 27-in 1980×1024 LED monitor
• Crucial 2 TB PCIe NVMe 2280 M.2 SSD
• Creative Pebble Version 3 speakers

Toward the end of August, I discovered that development of the Tint2 panel had ceased by the official developer. Tint2 had also started crashing on my Debian Unstable and EndeavourOS installs possibly due to the upgrade of the glib2 package. All of that coupled with the fact that both Openbox and Tint2 were not going to be ported to work under Wayland led to my decision to use a desktop environment that I could count on to be around for the foreseeable future.

My initial thought was to use XFCE, but then I read about Enlightenment. According to what I read and the few YouTube videos I watched, I thought Enlightenment might be a more desirable option. So I installed Enlightenment under my Debian Stable install and I played around with it for a day.

Initially, I was impressed with Enlightenment, but then I began to encounter really bad bugs. When I started the Audacious audio player, no app icon appeared anywhere in the panel. Starting Gnome System Monitor showed that the app was running though. App icons for running apps in the system tray on the panel would just disappear. App icons for running apps disappearing from the panel led to my decision that Enlightenment was too buggy to be used for my purposes.

Therefore, I installed XFCE under my Debian Unstable installation in September and I played around with it for a bit. I then installed XFCE under my EndeavourOS install and I played around with it for a day. My experience playing around with XFCE convinced me that it would work well as a replacement for Openbox and Tint2.

I’m now running XFCE as the desktop environment under all of my Linux installs. I’ve uninstalled both Openbox and Tint2, as well as other apps that were specifically installed for use along with Openbox.

I drained and flushed our water heater toward the end of September. I mistakenly thought I needed to shut off the main water supply, which results in air entering the plumbing system requiring bleeding the air from the system. Some of the faucets in our home were installed when the house was built, so they’re fairly old. Each time in the past when I’ve bled air from some of the faucets after shutting off and then turing on the main water supply, the initial stream of water coming out of the faucets had black coloration. The black coloration meant that the washers or o-rings were wearing out.

The following day after using the only sink with a faucet in the master bathroom, the water would not shut off completely. I ended up having to shut the water off using the shutoff valves. I had removed the other faucet in the master bathroom back in 2015, but I never made time to install the new faucet I purchased the same year. So I had to put some other projects on hold to install the new faucet so that there would be a working faucet in the master bathroom.

I also took the opportunity to finally install the right faucet in the hallway bathroom; reference the second December event earlier in this section. Installation was quick and went without an issue since I had experience installing the faucet.

Post header image courtesy of InspiredImages on Pixabay.

2025-007