Why You Shouldn’t Query Raw Data—And When It Makes Sense

I was recently asked why it’s not advisable to query raw data directly. The question caught me off guard at first, but it made me think deeply. Raw data is often viewed as the foundation of analytics, yet querying it without proper processing can lead to inefficiencies, inconsistencies, and potential misinterpretations. In this post, I’ll attempt to explain why querying raw data should generally be avoided, when it’s necessary to do so, and best practices …

Read moreWhy You Shouldn’t Query Raw Data—And When It Makes Sense

Evolving Passwords: Transitioning from Bitwarden to Apple Passwords

You can tell 2025 is shaping up to be a year of change for me—first transitioning from Quicken Desktop to Simplifi, and now moving from Bitwarden to Apple Passwords. Our family’s password management journey started over a decade ago. Back then, my wife and I used a password-protected Excel spreadsheet to store all our credentials. While rudimentary by today’s standards, it worked effectively at the time. Over time, I decided to self-host Bitwarden in my …

Read moreEvolving Passwords: Transitioning from Bitwarden to Apple Passwords

From Quicken Desktop to Simplifi: My Migration Experience

I recently made the leap from Quicken Desktop to Quicken’s Simplifi app. Transitioning from a traditional desktop-based tool to a sleek, web-based app has been a BIG change. While both products are under the Quicken brand, there isn’t a built-in migration path between them. This means starting fresh, which can be daunting for longtime Quicken Desktop users. Why I Switched to Simplifi I’ve been a loyal user of Quicken Desktop’s Deluxe version for several years. …

Read moreFrom Quicken Desktop to Simplifi: My Migration Experience

Create an Airplay 2 Player

Our house came with outdoor speakers installed but there wasn’t a way to play music on those because there wasn’t any audio receiver connected. These are passive speakers so would require an amplifier (or full blown audio receiver) to power them. Buying a receive is an overkill so I was looking for amps. While looking for amps, wanted to get one that has Airplay capabilities, but unfortunately those seem very pricey. Therefore, I decided to …

Read moreCreate an Airplay 2 Player

Plex hardware encoding with Intel Arc A380

UPDATE: The instructions in the original post were for Ubuntu 22.04. If you already have Ubuntu 24.04, you can skip all this as long as you can see your device under /dev, it should show something like /dev/renderD2128. I do recommend installing the compute packages from Intel’s repository # Install the Intel graphics GPG public key wget -qO – https://repositories.intel.com/gpu/intel-graphics.key | \ sudo gpg –yes –dearmor –output /usr/share/keyrings/intel-graphics.gpg # Configure the repositories.intel.com package repository echo …

Read morePlex hardware encoding with Intel Arc A380