George from Tulsa is back with some ideas on what might be causing Denise’s high bandwidth usage. It’s a great list of things to check out. Denise comes back with a great success story on the issue and then a walkthrough of her recent upgrade of her Mac mini to an SSD with some great advice. I get a word in edgewise with these two and talk about how I added language support to Podfeet.com and how we FINALLY got our AppleTV working on hotel WiFi so Steve could watch the Olympics.
Hi this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias. Today is Sunday August 14, 2016 and this is show number 588.
From time to time I ask for help on the podcast, like two weeks ago when I knew my grandson was about to be born. That’s when Pat, George, Denise and Allister stepped up to the plate to make sure you still got a show. Well this week Steve and I went down to San Diego to spend the week with Lindsay and Nolan and new baby Forbes. Nolan was going back to work and Lindsay really wanted us to help her get things done. Maybe it wasn’t always the cuddling (there was lots of cuddling) but also the little things like cleaning up the dishes, going out for bagels, getting the dogs out of the house so she could nap, or cutting the plants back from the front walkway.
I didn’t ask for help this week because I figured we’d have enough down time that I’d be able to squeak in some time to do some writing. But George and Denise both sent in reviews again this week without me even asking. That act gave me the gift of spending more time with my grandson. I didn’t have to stress about when I’d get some writing done. I could simply lay on the couch and stare into his eyes, or walk him around the back yard introducing him to the plants. They gave me the gift of time. I feel so grateful that we have a community that in our own very geeky way pulls together to make a great show for everyone.
Chit Chat Across the Pond
I did manage to squeeze in a Chit Chat Across the Pond this week. I knew it would be tricky to schedule, so I asked good friend Chris Ashley from the http://smrpodcast.com if he could be on the show and be super flexible on timing. He came through like the champ that he is. We talked a little bit about the new hotness in the Windows 10 anniversary edition, integration of Android with Windows, the Ring Video Doorbell, and whether he should get his baby girl an iPod Touch or an iPad mini for her 7th birthday. As always Chris was delightful. I hope you’ll go check out Chit Chat Across the Pond in your podcatcher of choice.
Fotomagico on ScreenCasts Online
This week Don McAllister posted my video tutorial on Fotomagico 5 from Boinx. Fotomagico is a phenomenal slide show tool. I had a great time learning and teaching it. If you aren’t a subscriber to ScreenCasts Online, you can get a free 14 day free trial at screencastsonline.com or you can watch a preview of the tutorial at http://www.screencastsonline.com/mac/show/0570/. If you’ve got an iPad, check out the ScreenCasts Online Magazine. You’ll get my tutorial, more video tutorials from Don and written articles by other Mac luminaries.
Since George and Denise got their reviews done this week before I did, I’ll let them go first!
Blog Posts
George Pulls the Pig’s Tail
After I posted George’s text, Denise made a comment back on the blog. It’s pretty interesting so let me read it to you:
Agree with all your points. In our particular case, we have no kids in the house and we are not big streamers. We are still subscribing to DirecTV and get most of our entertainment there. I cancelled Netflix, and we don’t use Prime Video either. We’ll occasionally watch some short youtube videos or Lynda.com, are not big online gamers, and we’re not home most of the time. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s an extraordinary love of audio podcasts.
Occasionally when I talk to my ISP, I get someone there that treats me like I’m dumb, and then I have to explain I have a Master’s degree in Telecom. (The tech equivalent of screaming “Don’t you know who I am?”) The only benefit of that is they stop sending me goofy white papers on how usage is calculated.
At one point I became so frustrated with these nasty grams from my ISP on our bandwidth usage after getting flagged WHILE WE WERE OUT OF TOWN and everything was off that I reached out to the execs. They sent a squadron of techs over here that just rolled their eyes and said everything was fine. (I suspect management thought we were running the equivalent of a 24×7 LAN party.)
We kept a log of what we did online for a few months and everyone agreed that we were not excessively using bandwidth, but no one had any idea what to do other than swap out the modem. As you can imagine, the net effect of that was zero. At one point, one of the Sr. Techs came over and told me straight up that their bandwidth management software does not work, and we had a fascinating conversation. Smart guy.
This has gone on for six years. And yes, I do see spikes when Apple releases a batch of new OSs, and also when I kicked off my initial BackBlaze backup (that nearly gave the ISP a heart attack spread over several months.)
Anyway, it gets funnier. Apparently, they’ve given up. Allison and I were chatting earlier and she discovered that not only had they dropped the price of my 200/20/450 package $20 per month, but they also dropped the cap.
I’m about to subscribe to Netflix and go to town.
I love that the ending of this story was so happy! Later in the day Denise sent me a message that her husband was dancing around the house like they’d won the lottery. Ok, now we can hear from Denise with a NEW review.
Denise on Upgrading to an SSD on a Mac mini
There pretty much isn’t an upgrade more fun than an SSD these days. Thanks for sharing your success Denise!
Go ahead and Ask – aka Language Support on podfeet.com
How to Use an AppleTV on Hotel Wifi
That’s going to wind this up for this week. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter @podfeet. Check out the NosillaCast Google Plus Community and our Facebook group at podfeet.com/facebook. If you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.
Tried similar methods a few times but none of them worked like they said it would, but your does. Awesome.
Great article, just installed an SSD on my Mac today. Denise is correct, briliant fun.