Author: Neil

Microsoft Store Customer Support Is Awful

81299 hours 2 minutes 42 seconds. This is the amount of time I have now waited for the Microsoft Store to contact me regarding the $2600 order I placed on their online store. The one in which there are recorded chat logs of their service representatives unequivocally lying to me, several times, resulting in my purchase being cancelled and then delayed by several months.  I have read many stories online where others are having the same issues. This is status quo for the Microsoft Store.

In dealing with their antics, I had multiple service representatives tell me they would “personally” be contacting me with information and solutions to the errors they had made. Last I heard, my issue had been “escalated to a higher department” and they would be contacting me within 24 hours. The timer at the top of this page is how long I have now waited, patiently.

Continue reading Microsoft Store Customer Support Is Awful

Ethan’s Crib

My nephew, Ethan Badura, was born on April 29, 2015. In March, my sister asked my dad and me to build a crib for him.

Between my dad, Chrystina (my SO), and myself, we designed and built a beautiful crib for Ethan. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I didn’t clock how many hours it took, but if I have to throw some numbers around, it was at least 200 hours for myself alone.

My dad was a huge help. He bought all of the wood (and had to drive several hours to get it), helped with the woodworking, and had many great ideas for the trickier parts of the design.

Chrystina also contributed. She sketched the shapes of the critical components and then I modeled them to scale in SketchUp. We then tweaked it until we were satisfied. No decision was made without her approval 🙂 . She also did a lot of sanding and helped apply the finish.

It cost around $500 CDN in materials (rough-cut hard maple ($300), 1/2″ ply ($40), misc hardware ($60), General Finishes Java gel stain ($30), Oil-based satin polyurethane ($70).

Sleigh Crib Completed

See below for a build-log with pictures (and videos!) I took along the way from the initial design stages to the completed crib.
Continue reading Ethan’s Crib

Subaru BRZ Custom Subwoofer Enclosure

I made this sub enclosure to fit perfectly in the corner of my BRZ trunk. The enclosure houses a JL Audio 10W3V3-4 10″ 500W subwoofer. The sub is powered by a JL Audio JX1000/1D mono amplifier. Using a Parrot Asteroid Smart deck.

I made the enclosure entirely out of 3/4″ MDF. Could have attempted to make it out of fibreglass but I wanted to try shaping it out of wood. In total it took about 25 hours to make from start to finish. For choosing components and for the system installation, I had a lot of help from my friend Klucz; thanks!

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See below for more photos and info from start to finish. Continue reading Subaru BRZ Custom Subwoofer Enclosure

Aww yeah, thanks Nest!

So after my silly Garage Heist dropcam video gained moderate popularity, the fine people at Nest Labs decided to send me some free stuff! Everything I will need to thwart future heists.

The card puts it over the top. This really put a smile on my face today.

How to enable Bridge mode on a Telus v1000h/v2000h without root access!

I was cleaning up my network today and was frustrated that I couldn’t enable bridge mode on my Telus Actiontec v1000h modem/router to put it into a modem-only state. The problem is that Telus changed the root/tech passwords on firmware 31.121L.13 and nobody knows what they are. My buddy Mike told me to try editing the webpage source and I’ll be damned it actually worked!

Basic Instructions (if you don’t want to watch the how-to video below):
1. Go to 192.168.1.254 (or whatever your gateway is) and log in to the admin/telus account.
2. Go to the Advanced Settings tab and open up WAN IP Addressing.
3. Open up your web browser’s developer tools (F12)
4. Search for <tr id=”id_rfc_1483_transparent_bridging” style=”display: none;”>
5. Change “display: none;” to “display: block;”
6. Select the now visible Transparent Bridging option on the page, then Apply
7. You’re done! You can see that the bridge is enabled on the Status tab under Connection Status > ISP Protocol.