-
I have a Samsung. At home, awake, my phone is on my desk. When I’m sleeping, it’s charging on my nightstand. Any other time it’s in my back pocket unless I’m making a call. I’ve been using cell phones for ~25 years, and have never lost one.
It’s kinda like my truck keys; they are either in the ignition while I’m driving, or in my right front pocket. I’ve been driving over 63 years and have never lost a set of car keys. My house keys are separate from my ignition keys, and are either in my hand unlocking the door, or in my left front pocket. I’ve never lost a set of house keys.
There’s no setup involved, other than forming the habits.
That’s a great thing, until someone mugs you, or the unexpected happens that you can’t control.
In my case, I was standing in the way (being a larger human) of someone smaller than me to prevent them from suffering injury at the hands of someone at least as large as me. When pushed, I fell. My phone fell out of my pocket, and before I could get to it, someone else on the same street scooped it up and ran.
Not everything in life is predictable. I’m glad that apparently you have never suffered something unpredictable. However, should you, none of your habits will save you, unless one of them includes a documented backup and restore procedure for your phone’s data, and any account names/numbers, passwords, secret questions, and so on.
I have had cell phones since 1998 (my first Motorola StarTAC!) Up until this year, I have never had a problem. I’ve never damaged one, I’ve never lost one, be it Nextel, Palm, Blackberry, Android, or iPhone (had them all). And then I had an event that was completely out of my hands, and the first thing happened. So that’s 25 years for me; right up until the end of January. Ensuring everything is backed up, regardless of good habits is still useful.
We are SysAdmins.
We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
We engage in support, we do not retreat.
We live for the LAN.
We die for the LAN. -
It is our practice to not to use our internet service provider’s modems / routers.
By purchasing our own we save on the “monthly rental charge” and can plug in a backup unit immediately if we run into a problem.
In the 800 Mbps modem category, in addition to their own equipment, our ISP has approved 46 modems manufactured by:
- Arris,
- ASUS,
- Hitron Technologies,
- HUMAX,
- Linksys,
- Motorola,
- Netgear,
- TP-Link, and
- Zoom Telephonics.
To protect privacy, all of our workstations, printers, and televisions are hard wired while we us WiFi for our internet radios.
I do the same. In fact, I tend to buy the dumbest device that will serve as only a modem (and support the throughput I need). I don’t trust my ISP to do my routing duties the same way I can nor to do wireless well, so I’d rather get a modem I can put into bridge mode, then hook up a router to do my wireless and wired things. So my modem is an Arris SB8200 which fits almost everyone’s compatibility lists. And because it has no wireless, xFinity can’t hand out my bandwidth as a wireless hotspot either.
If I was recommending to a regular user, I’d probably recommend a midlevel ASUS router that lists lifetime AiProtection as one of its features; this is like getting a poor-man’s firewall in that it will usually have gateway antivirus, reputational-defense, optional internet filtering, and basically the things a more expensive business-oriented UTM (Unified Threat Management) router-firewall does. They’ll also more likely have better wireless than any ISP’s router. And for an enthusiast, you can set up a VPN so you can connect back securely into your network from the outside, which is also a great way at having a protected connection if you’re connected to an insecure hotspot somewhere else (e.g., a coffee shop or airport) , as your traffic will be encrypted. You can also set the DNS servers to be secure ones from somewhere like CloudFlare or Quad9 so the ISP and others aren’t snooping your traffic, and some of these also offer a base level of malware protection by blocking known bad sites.
In my case, I have a Fortigate firewall and a Ubiquiti WiFi6 access point, but that’s also because I work in tech and often have access to expensive equipment for less or because I have certifications that put me in a special access program for them so I can keep educated on them. This is overkill in 90% of all cases or requires more configuration than most everyday people, (thus I don’t recommend it). But I’ll never be a fan of recommending people use only the modem the ISP gave them.
We are SysAdmins.
We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
We engage in support, we do not retreat.
We live for the LAN.
We die for the LAN.3 users thanked author for this post.
-
I had to do this myself six weeks ago. Having a password vault with all of my passwords, a full iCloud backup, and a helpful (and sympathetic) Apple Store employee really helped me get back on track when my iPhone was stolen. I also had FindMy enabled and was able to set a Lost Message and a command to lock and wipe the old phone.
As mentioned, I’d not 2FA app and anything to do with it are securely backed up in a way that can be easily restored. Just having passwords isn’t enough if all of them (as they should be whenever possible) are linked to two-factor codes you can’t get access too. Most of mine were, but not all; fortunately, I had easy access to help to get the ones I didn’t have reset. I am now periodically testing my ability to recover my 2FA in the event something goes awry.
We are SysAdmins.
We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
We engage in support, we do not retreat.
We live for the LAN.
We die for the LAN.1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Note that if you had Windows 10 21H2, and used the optional Windows update (as opposed to an ISO upgrade), the upgrade to 22H2 takes very little time. This leads me to believe the upgrade is very incremental unless you are several feature releases behind.
I’m testing with an ISO upgrade right now on one system. That is taking far longer. It appears to be going over the entire OS.
I have the target version set to 21H2 on all of the systems I manage, so they shouldn’t upgrade until it’s time. That said, I think it will be fairly quickly based on my above thoughts, unless there’s a show-stopper bug in the next 72 hours.
We are SysAdmins.
We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
We engage in support, we do not retreat.
We live for the LAN.
We die for the LAN.1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
Newegg turns up mouth-watering prices for SSDs with many interesting brand names, some of them familiar from their forays into other technology: Acer, Blixem, Fanxiang, Fledging, FYUU, GIGABYTE, Inland, KingSpec, Kingston, Leven, ORICO, PNY, Sabrent, Silicon Power, TEAMGROUP, Timetec, and on and on. Who are these companies? What kind of flash chips and controller chips do they use? I am not about to bet my reputation on a cheaper SSD with an obscure brand name.
Kingston – a memory manufacturer for decades. While I probably wouldn’t buy them for top-tier performance, their customer support (should it be needed) is excellent.
Silicon Power – I’m going to strike through what I said here; I found I may not be correct regarding their relationship with Silicon Motion (though they have used their controllers). They make some decent stuff.
Gigabyte – Would I use them? Probably not for an SSD, but one of the “big three” of motherboard manufacturers (ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte). And I’m picky; me not using them doesn’t mean bad.
Sabrent is probably not my first-choice vendor personally, but is also well-known in the enthusiast world for some of the faster SSDs.
None of these four are obscure, especially Kingston, but the others are industry brands. The remainder are indeed lower-tier items I probably wouldn’t use, just as I myself won’t use QLC SSDs; if they’re cutting prices on the flash memory (QLC is lower endurance), where else are they cutting?
We are SysAdmins.
We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
We engage in support, we do not retreat.
We live for the LAN.
We die for the LAN.3 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
Author
