Rachael and I just won our first tennis tournament in the mixed doubles division for 2.5s. I only started playing tennis last year, but it’s a lot of fun. It isn’t too hard on my knees and has turned out to be a passion.
The Tennis Channel App on Roku – Crashes and other problems
I signed up for a year of The Tennis Channel on my Roku TV in March. At first, it worked pretty well, though I noticed the audio and video would get out of sync pretty quickly. Restarting the app would fix it until the next commercial break. That was highly annoying, and I learned that many other people were having the same problem with no resolution.
That said, I discovered that pausing and restarting the stream would fix it, so I learned to live with it.
However, a few weeks ago, the whole app started crashing as soon as I selected a stream to watch – either live or pre-recorded.
I tried all the usual troubleshooting steps: rebooting the Roku, updating everything, reinstalling the Tennis Channel app, but nothing worked. This was the case for my TCL Roku TV and two Roku devices connected to other TV’s in my house.
Frustrated, my wife called Tennis Channel Support and the person on the other end of the line said “many other people are having the same problem.”
They said they’d be sending an email to tech support, which we soon got a response from. The email asked us to do all the same troubleshooting steps we’d already done! I did them again just to be sure, but no, nothing worked.
I started asking for a refund for my unused ~8 months of service, but Tennis Channel gave me a dubious denial:
You are requesting a full refund, which we cannot approve at this time. Your subscription was made with your own personal email, indicating that you signed up and agreed to the terms of service.
Alas, I was not requesting a full refund, I was requesting the remainder of the year I paid for, which I am unable to use because their crappy app isn’t working.
So, I filed a complaint with the FTC, who suggested I also file a complaint with my state’s Attorney General.
Done and done. You should do the same if you are having these problems!
- https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
- https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/file-a-consumer-complaint-how-to-reach-the-attorney-general-in-every-state/
Update – The Next Day – August 6
Turns out reporting them to the FTC actually worked. A day later I got a refund for the unused portion of the year I paid for!
Thank you for contacting Tennis Channel Customer Service!
We can confirm that your membership under this email address is now canceled, so you will not be billed in the future. We have also issued a refund for the remaining months of your subscription.
Obsidian.md and Plugin Security
Obsidian.md is an awesome note taking system. However, any third party plugin you install has access to all the files on your computer. You must hope the developer is nice or that their GitHub credentials don’t get compromised by a bad actor who then pushes out a malicious update.
The barrier to entry to get a plugin added to the Obsidian marketplace is low, and performed only once. There is not follow-up security review.
Common retorts to these statements, and my replies:
- It’s the same thing as X app (VS Code, e.g.)
My reply: Yes, and that is also bad. - Plugins with many users are safer because they have more eyes reviewing the code
My reply: Yes, and they are the more attractive targets. A contributor need only enough time to push a bad update no one notices to infect thousands of computers. So like, 20 minutes? - I don’t put anything valuable or private in my notes anyway
My reply: How about the rest of your computer? Because that’s what they have access to.
In summary, if you use Obsidian, don’t use plugins until or unless they improve this situation.
Building Fully Remote Team Communication
I lead a team of eleven fully remote people, most of whom have never met in person, so I am always on the lookout for ways to build relationships, strengthen how we communicate with each other, and maintain some of the lost “water cooler chat” you get in an office environment.
I stumbled on this Gitlab Handbook that has some great tips for building what they call Informal Communication.
https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/informal-communication/
I really like the idea of postcard swapping, which uses something tangible you can hold in your hand to build connection across distributed teams.
Another team-building strategy we used when I worked at CNN were weekly co-working sessions, where we’d meet online for an hour while doing our normal work. This would facilitate all types of discussion, learning, and cross-collaboration. Sometimes, when conversation waned, just being quite and listening to the clacking of each others’ mechanical keyboards was enough to create a sense of belonging. Writing this article reminds me that I want to implement that on my current team!
Getting out of it what you put into it
It’s been difficult to make myself come here and blog.
Somewhere along the way, things on the internet changed. I used to enjoy writing updates in a blog post, letting friends and family know what had been going on around here, what I was up to, or even just what I was thinking. I knew that there were certain people who followed my blog pretty frequently and would often comment or even just acknowledge that I had posted something. It was a nice community feeling, and I would read other people’s blogs as well. Somewhere along the way this all shifted. I think it probably had something to do with Facebook becoming the predominant platform for people posting updates and being able to keep up with many more people in that format.
It’s a real shame though, because now I’ve gotten myself off of Facebook, off of Instagram, off of Twitter, and I’m largely just biding my time here and on Bluesky.
I find myself not wanting to share content or updates or news or anything like that. I definitely feel more more guarded about what I share online.
Perhaps it’s because of all the horror stories I’ve read about people getting stalked or swatted or whatever, just because they said something someone else didn’t like or disagreed with. I’ve been thinking often about how the internet really has precipitated the downfall of humanity. It’s pretty sad because I thought it was going to be an awesome thing for quite a while.
It definitely had an un-jaded, innocent adolescence phase. However, what happened was that once the World Wide Web became more and more accessible and was starting to be carried around in everyone’s pockets, everything started to change for the worse.
I remember back in college I took a class on how to use the World Wide Web. It was a great introduction into internet culture, what it meant to have a flame war, what spam was, and what good netiquette was.
That’s a word you don’t really hear anymore. Netiquette. It’s a shame. Everyone thinks they have the right to just get very angry at everyone else now, and it’s taken a lot of the fun out of the whole thing.
Maybe if people had been required to take lessons about the internet in order to access it, and had to learn how easily you can be fooled by misinformation and how you need to be able to discern between what’s real and what’s not, we might not be in the predicament we’re in today.
So I don’t know, maybe I’ll take this blog down in the near future. Is anyone reading it? My web statistics say “no”. So this is pretty much an exercise in talking into the ether. I’m putting things into it, but getting out nothing.
The Toxic Utility of AI
If you’ve ever ventured onto the social media platform called BlueSky (which, I do love and is the only social platform I am on), or certain corners of other platforms like Reddit, you will likely have run across a very passionate set of people who disavow and berate anything related to artificial intelligence technology. They get so rabid in their attacks, they lose sight of the fact that AI actually has some usefulness when applied to certain situations that don’t invade privacy, don’t steal intellectual property, and don’t do things without asking you. However, if you try to point this out, you will get blocked, banned, ridiculed, and blasted for bringing it up. There seems to be no middle ground for these anti-AI people.
It’s very unfortunate. I wholly sympathize with a lot of their concerns. I don’t like the fact that AI is using intellectual property such as artwork, writing, music, and a host of other things that humans have created in order to train itself. I don’t like that this is usually done without asking anyone for their permission. And I don’t like that we’re in this situation where we have to claw back what AI has taken from us. I totally understand why that has pissed some people off entirely because it has pissed me off for the same reasons.
I recently saw someone on LinkedIn post that AI is just a glorified spell checker. And I actually agree. It’s not creative. It’s not smart. It doesn’t make decisions on its own. It relies on everything that it has been fed. So it’s really way less than it’s cracked up to be in many ways.
All of that being said, there are absolutely worthwhile use cases for artificial intelligence.
Personally, I’ve started using voice dictation with AI-assisted technology to help me speed up typing and relieve my aging fingers that have gotten slower and are usually aching by the end of a long workday. I’m enjoying that aspect of AI very much.
In fact, this whole article was written by me using a voice-to-text app called, VoiceInk. It does such an incredible job at recognizing my speech patterns, pauses, and corrections of myself. These things weren’t possible just a few years ago with any sort of voice to text application. And it does it fast.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts I’ve had bugging me and I decided to get them out there.
Cleaning Up Apple Contacts
Apple Contacts get out-of-sync and become a mess over time, especially if you have multiple email accounts and have amassed a collection of contacts over the years. This problem was driving me nuts for quite a while, so I finally decided to sit down and fix it. Since it wasn’t simple to research, but ended up being simple to fix, I thought I’d share the solution. I am drawing upon some guidance I found on Reddit, but adding some additional tips.
The solution is to get all your devices (iPhone, Mac, iPad, etc) to only use iCloud to sync your contacts. In my case, I had contacts split across multiple email accounts I had collected over the years, and they didn’t sync up. Some cleanup is required.
Pre-requisites
You need both a computer and your phone for this.
Solution
- Go to your iPhone Contacts app.
- Click the top-left corner where it says “Lists”:
- You will see all the accounts housing your contact on this page.
- At the top of this is is “All Contacts”, which is a collection of everything you see below. Long press the “All Contacts” line (this is the merged list of all Contacts from different accounts). You’ll see an option to export all contacts.
- Export the backup file (All Contacts.vcf) to your email or iCloud Drive or Airdrop. Whichever you choose, the goal is to send it to your computer and save it there.
- Log in to iCloud.com from a browser on your computer. This can’t be done from your iPhone.
- Go to Contacts in iCloud.com and click the + sign, then select Import Contact.
- Import the VCF file you just saved to your computer.
- This may end up creating multiple copies of some of your contacts, which is OK, because we will soon merge and remove duplicate contacts.
- BUT FIRST, you will need to stop syncing contacts for all the accounts you see on your iPhone and your Mac (and any other device), and only sync contacts to iCloud. Here’s what it looks like on the Mac:
- For each account listed, open it and un-check Contacts.
- Do the same on your other devices. Have them sync contacts only via iCloud.
- Back on your phone, load up the Contacts app again.
- It should notify you the duplicates it found. You can safely click Merge. It may take a little time to sync up, depending on how many contacts you have, but this should solve all of your problems!
LinkedIn is at Peak Enshittifaction
💡
These are my personal opinions, which exist in an entirely segmented realm of my brain and my existence than that of my employer. They are not associated.
This is a story about the enshittification of LinkedIn. You are probably familiar with it.
I’ve been on LinkedIn for about 20 years. It started as a useful way to demonstrate my work experience, connect with current and past coworkers, and build business relationships. It was useful as a digital calling card of sorts.
At security conferences, I’d quickly pull up the app on my phone and befriend someone I had just met and had a conversation with. We’d keep in touch and Like or comment on each other’s LinkedIn posts.
Admittedly, most of those connections I made would never become anything else. We didn’t continue any real-world conversations or reach out to each other at all. These “friends” just became reminders of a short conversation I once had at a conference or workshop. I started wondering what the use of this site was, yet, everyone seemed to be using it, so I found myself curiously coming back once in a while.
Persistent Outreach
I can’t pick out an exact point in time that it started happening, but there was a noticeable shift in the kinds of connection requests I started getting. Maybe it coincided with my job title changes as they evolved and became more desirable for marketers to reach out to. Maybe it coincided with LinkedIn becoming a marketing person’s fertile playground. I am not sure, but something shifted.
One change I did notice, and I never felt like figuring out why, is that I started getting Followers in addition to people asking me to Connect. Some people would Follow me and then ask to Connect later. LinkedIn never did anything noticeable to explain what this all meant, but it happened.
It was confusing, and I never felt like looking into it, so I just started ignoring them.
Sales Pitches
Everything started turning into sales pitches: requests to “run something by you,” get “10 minutes of your time,” show me an article they’d “really like your opinion on.” All in the name of making a connection –and possible sales lead– to meet a quota in SalesForce (most likely).
They even tried bribery in the form of sending me an Amazon gift card, just to meet with them for 30 minutes and hear their pitch. I know for a fact, based on experience, this would only lead to even more persistent follow-ups, “ticklers”, and pressurized tactics to sell to me.
I stopped going to LinkedIn as much.
Overly Persistent Salespeople
Within the last 2 years, I started getting connection requests alongside immediate follow-ups to my work email, and it became clear that I decided I needed to look into things – or shut down my LinkedIn account. Some setting somewhere must have changed, but I wasn’t sure what.
I was sure, however, that I had never put my work email address into LinkedIn. Yes, it was probably easy to guess based on who I work for, but this cold-calling tactic was sleazy and would immediately turn me off to any reputable vendors, especially when they had be annoyingly persistent by sending me multiple “just let me know if you’d like me to stop bugging you” types of emails.
In short: if you are a salesperson, please don’t do this.
Silent Privacy Changes
The company has implemented some invasive changes over the years, and didn’t bother to tell users – or buried the notices deep in their TOS that no one read. Their lack of privacy by default has always been concerning. Some of these were questionable, others, such as opting you in to AI training, were mind-boggling. There was even a short-lived lawsuit about that.
LinkedIn’s True Enshittification
The true indicator that we had reached the event horizon in the downfall of LinkedIn occurred sometime in the last year.
I logged in one day and saw that posts and comments had turned vitriolic. They had become like Twitter, like the comment section on your local newspaper’s website, or just about any thread on NextDoor these days.
People were making terrible statements with their employer’s name associated with them.
Yes, it coincides with the political climate in the USA and the general climate of intolerant “free speech” that has proliferated everywhere as a result. But in a setting of professional profiles closely tied to employers? Why risk your job, your customer base, or your reputation?
I will just say this about that: we are all humans, we all deserve equal opportunity to live, love, and thrive. You know, that whole “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” thing.
Live and let live. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A rising tide lifts all boats. You know…basic decency to others.
LinkedIn is now complicit in stifling these pursuits.
I am at a loss for any further words, really. Having left Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter within the last month, I am now shutting down my LinkedIn profile.
— willc
The Stars Served Up Some Love
Most of my family has fallen in love with playing tennis recently, and to a slightly lesser degree, watching it. So it was exciting to find out that a benefit event had been put together, bringing four big names in tennis and a few other random celebrities to Asheville. The “Stars Servin’ Up Love” event gave us some up-close, in-person observations of what the pros are capable of, and it was quite remarkable.
On February 2, 2025, Jessica Pegula (ranked #6 in the world at the time), Emma Navarro (#9), Andy Roddick, and Andre Agassi, all showed up and played some seriously awesome tennis, even though it was just an exhibition.
The celebs in attendance, and who also played some decent tennis, included Esai Morales (of Caprica fame), Pete Wentz (Fallout Boy), Jeff Probst (Survivor), and some dude from The Daily Show named Michael Kosta (sorry, I haven’t watched that show in some years).
They raised over a million bucks that day, and much to everyone’s surprise, all of the stars involved did it completely free! Asheville is still recovering from the impacts of the hurricane, and we will be for quite some time. I still drive by the debris, missing buildings, upside-down cars, and devastation multiple times a week…over 4 months later. The whole city still has downed lines, fallen trees, and piles of debris lining the streets. It is slowly getting better, but the reminders are all still there, and the tennis event was a welcome, unifying celebration of what selflessness can do to lift spirits.
Check out some pics from Stars Servin’ Up Love.
The Modlins
I took this old song, recorded on 4-Track cassette in 1997 or so, and gave it some modern treatment. I think it came out pretty good.
The Modlins were a prog-rock force born at Warren Wilson College in the 1990’s. Richard Wallace sang and played guitar, Justin Hallman played bass, and I, Will Chatham, played the drums.
This was one of my favorite songs we ever did.