Some Notes on the Machines

My sweet Lori’s 2007 Ford Focus came with a “permanent” air filter, “suitable for the life of the car” by one suggestion. After we had had the car a while, I knew we wanted to keep it running long, long past Ford’s glorious preferences, so I started looking for options. One well-known vendor sold an aftermarket air filter box for about $480. This seemed a bit high to me for a mildly complicated piece of plastic, so I looked further. And lo and behold:

www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=8624632&cc=1433435&pt=11160&jsn=1

Highly recommendable, and $78 at this writing. I saw some reports which said it made things a tad louder; au contraire I must report, Sweet Lori’s little car is now quieter, much smoother, better power. Yahoo!

Here it is:

support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds012808-lenovo-system-update-for-windows-10-7-32-bit-64-bit-desktop-notebook-workstation

It’s also available via Winget: winget install "Lenovo System Update"

This can sometimes save a lot of CPU and/or disk cycles. In administrative CMD:

schtasks /Change /Disable /TN "Microsoft\Windows\Application Experience\Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser"
sc delete DiagTrack
sc delete dmwappushservice
echo “” > C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Diagnosis\ETLLogs\AutoLogger\AutoLogger-Diagtrack-Listener.etl
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection /v AllowTelemetry /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Lots of interesting recently-updated tools here:

www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000126750/dell-client-command-suite

AutoSizer:

www.southbaypc.com/AutoSizer/

really works remarkably well. Rather helpful if you bring up ticket note windows or anything else over and over again which need resizing. It repositions and maximizes as desired too. By default it runs by window class (my own preference!) but can address windows by title as well. Sits in the Windows tray nice and quietly and does its job. Lovely!

Newly updated as of this writing, I’m running it on Windows 11.

Here’s the download page:

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/download-app

This downloads an .MSIX, which one can usually double-click effectively. The link appears to be nicely static at this writing:

statics.teams.cdn.office.net/production-windows-x64/enterprise/webview2/lkg/MSTeams-x64.msix

And some Powershell to do the download and the install:

cd $env:TEMP
curl.exe -O "https://statics.teams.cdn.office.net/production-windows-x64/enterprise/webview2/lkg/MSTeams-x64.msix"
Add-AppxPackage -Path '.\MSTeams-x64.msix'
# placeholder for Enter

Very interesting:

www.tomshardware.com/how-to/bypass-windows-11-tpm-requirement

There are a lot of smileys out there now. But reliable display can be a question. The original is preserved:

The code is:

&#263A;

My favorite by far is draw.io. Online:

app.diagrams.net/

or cross-platform installable:

github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/

…

Two more I have used:

http://www.yworks.com/products/yed

https://www.calligra.org/flow/

As of March of 2024, there is clear success to report, and more to come. This is negatively ionized air, being sent into engine air intakes. Here it is:

ioninjection.ponderworthy.com