I have a few m.2 SATA Samsung drives that I needed to securely erase. It’s a tricky thing to do, surprisingly, especially when you’d prefer to not do a long pass in the manner that you would with hard drives.

For those unaware, Samsung has a built-in tool with the Magician software to create a USB boot disk to securely erase an SSD. With a 2.5” drive, where the SATA and power are separate, dealing with a “frozen” drive involves starting the utility, selecting the drive, unplugging the power lead from the drive, powering it again, and then proceeding with the quick, secure erase.

When the drive has an edge connector like an m.2 slot, this isn’t possible. In the course of trying to replicate this process I tried many things, including other computers. None of this effort was successful, however, and I needed a hybrid approach.

It occurred to me that someone must make an adapter that would make it possible to connect an m.2 SATA drive to a standard SATA port. There are reasons for doing this, though I’d have a hard time coming up with many, but I’m glad that such a thing exists. It’s cheap, and worth having around for not only tasks like this, but as a neat tool to keep on the shelf just in case.

A brand called ELUTENG makes this:

It’s SATA III and can adapt to all four of the m.2 module lengths, from 30- to 80-mm. The drive slides right in and the included hardware and screwdriver can fix a drive in place if wanted.

So, I picked one up, and it does the trick just fine, making an m.2 into a 2.5″ analogue and letting me securely erase these drives using the Samsung utility. It’s brutally utilitarian, and that’s exactly what the task needed. It might also be useful for use in an SATA-only system at some point, and with m.2 SATA ports being a little more unusual, that might be a thing in the future.

For those curious, this was using an older NUC, where I was able to disconnect the power from the motherboard using the cable connector below:

For the full details and part number for this item, which I did not receive for free, see below

I was a vehement believer in the “Internet of Shit” as devices with wireless capabilities were sweeping into the home. It seemed like, and is, a bad idea to just add whatever crap device to your wireless network in the hopes that it will do a trivial thing. This goes from lightbulbs to water shutoff valves, and everything in-between.

That changed a few years ago, and I’ve come around to using _some_ IoT devices in the home. The current extent of this is lights and power switches. Nothing crazy. What I’d like to go over is what, how, why, and who. The start was simple, and then sped up, then got fun. It went from one vendor to four, but all work within one system, which is the most important part of the whole arrangement. I chose to have one master system that would control everything, and it is not HomeAssistant.

I stand by the statement that Apple’s stance on device security, and security in general, is a result of their not being able to do literally anything on the web. This was an important pivot, and it’s why I eventually came to respect Apple for a few reasons. There are issues with the company’s polices, but they hold the line in most cases, and bend to good policy when they’re wrong. It was only when Apple really got their HomeKit system solidly in place did I figure I’d try some home automation and devices.

The biggest reason I went with Home. is that the core principle of the system is that it can work without talking outside of the network. No secondary apps should be necessary to add and use the core functionality of a device. A lightbulb, wall switch, camera, or any other device can be added and configured without downloading an app from the manufacturer. This requirement means that fewer Apple Home devices are out there than Alexa or Google, but it also means that when those device manufacturers abandon them, or disappear completely, the devices are still useful.

Because of this standalone model, you must have a device that manages everything. Until recently, it was possible to do this with one of three device types. An iPhone can not be a hub, but an iPad, HomePod, or AppleTV 3rd generation or newer can be. I had an iPad available, so I used it for the task to figure out whether or not IoT was something I wanted to keep using.

I started with some WeMo smart plugs. They are cheap and easy to get, and are frequently found used for half their normal retail cost of $30. An update to their firmware meant that they could be used with Apple Home, if they were an early version, but with some complications that I may get in to. These did require some fiddling, and getting the WeMo app, but that wasn’t something I felt uncomfortable doing as the brand is one of Belkin’s, and they’re known very well in the industry for making good products and being forward thinking.

Once I went through the laborious process of adding the switches to Home, which was complicated because these older WeMo devices didn’t have the QR code on them, I got to making automations that would do simple things, like turn on two lamps in the living room at 45 minutes before sunset and turn off at night. It was something that Apple had baked into the Home app, and it was just a few changes and selections that made it work. This was all fun and good, and I eventually aded 5 of these switches, plus one bonus from another brand, which are still present in the house doing normal things, but interestingly they don’t need to turn on lights anymore.

I don’t remember when I got the first HomePod mini, but I figured that the newish device would be a good replacement for using the iPad, and I wanted to add a speaker to the home for simple functionality. I added it to the kitchen area, then added another to the bedroom, and a third to a basement area. I found it fun to cluster these together and play music throughout the house, but it’s a feature that a person will likely do once and never again…but they can. HomePod being a hub is a good thing, because the devices get OS updates and features get added behind the scenes, all managed in the Home app’s settings.

Lights may have come next, when I looked and found some LIFX bulbs to try. Home compatibility was a must, and they came with little cards to scan to easily add them to Home. I put these in the bedroom area to free up one of the switches and then realized that I could ask Siri to change the brightness of the bulbs. It honestly hadn’t occurred to me previously because the lights were controlled by switches, not the bulb itself. I changed a few scenes so that when the bedroom lights went on they weren’t at full brightness, but perhaps %60-70.

A big change came when a local decided that they’d had enough of their Hue system. A hub and what ended up being over 20 bulbs was mine for a price that I could not turn down. This did introduce another app to the mix, but I was again confident that Philips, one of the largest electronics manufacturers in the world, would do me right. The difference between the LIFX bulbs and the Hue bulbs is that Philips uses a hub, which connects to the network, and is a bridge between the two systems. The core change is that bulbs communicate over a different network, not using the normal wireless channels, meaning that network congestion isn’t an issue. The person I got the system from found out very quickly that 20+ bulbs using their home wireless was a problem. But it wasn’t mine.

The Hue app is pretty good, and I was able to very quickly and easily set up rooms and get them added to Home. This changed the game throughout the house, from the porch to a closet under the stairs. Sure, I now leave all of these light switches on and there’s more power usage, but the Hue bulbs use a minuscule amount of power per light. These bulbs were only the normal sized, normal temperature, with no colors or any other fancy features. On, off, and level. That was all easy to configure and set up first in the Hue app, but then fine tune in the Home app. Once again I would set up things in an app, but then could leave it closed for months at a time.

Later on I decided to add some first-generation HomePods to the system, for their use simply as audio in the living room. They were supremely over built in many ways, and very serviceable if they failed, but also very easy to find used at reasonable prices. Amusingly the first two that I was able to get were the white, then black, so I have a salt and pepper set. I kept meaning to get another white one, but I’ve kinda settled into the set I have. I was able to easily pair them together for AirPlay from phones, tablets, and computers. It’s something that I use many times a week, and sometimes per day.

With one of the HomePods I got an iDevices switch with an integrated light, which has been kind of fun to use. It also helped to get its app, as the very early ones like WeMo didn’t have the QR code for setup. I now use it as part of the hifi system for my amplifier, and it does a great job.

While at a local reseller of items I got an LED strip, which was really very fun to set up and use. Two meters of RGB lights in Home is pretty simple, and I know it can do more fun things in the manufacturer’s app, but I really only need it’s more basic functions. Colors and brightness are the core uses for me, but I did have some more fun when another batch of devices came along later.

A very good friend was moving from a Philips system to other pastures and offered me a very valuable trove of items to spruce up the home. Four RGB bulbs, two of the ambient bulbs, two wall switches, a multi switch, and another LED strip were shipped to me. I had a bit of thought and put these in the most used placed, where I’m at either daily or weekly, and where a different color or tone or hue would be a good thing. The living room once again got its bulbs switched out, and now it can be very interesting in there. Same with the bedroom, and the studio. That’s where the second LED strip went, and it makes a fun accent to the vibe I’ve created.

One of the reasons for using the Hue app outside of the Home experience is that it offers several dynamic scene options for RGB. For example, I have the LED strip in the studio set to emulate a fireplace, so it’s very red, with yellow and orange flickering. I can also have a similar effect with the other RGB or ambient, temperature-changing bulbs. It really did add spice to some rooms.

So, what’s next? I’m not sure. I’ve only just recently mounted those two wall switches. They have on, off, and two dimming buttons. We decided on locations to put them and this has brought down the calls to Siri a bit, but that’s fine. Sometimes a manual switch is just easier and more reliable than a speaker either hearing or comprehending what you’re asking. It seems like it’s come around full circle, but sometimes that’s the process.

At this point I’m satisfied with what we have set up. I think that more accent lights, such as the ones from Nanoleaf, would be fun to add in the office space. I’ve avoided things like in-wall switches because this house has very thick copper wiring and my delves into the walls previously have led to a lot of sore fingers and cursing. Add to that the complete mystery of how the breaker box is zoned, and, well, remotes it is.

There are few things that I’d change, but the biggest is that Home was able to incorporate some of the more niche features of something like the light strip and bulb’s RGB color scenes, like the fireplace. I understand why they don’t, because those are vendor-specific, but I’m hoping that one day Home will add such things. We’ll see what happens.

This isn’t going to be a purely tech-focused entry, but the first part of what’s likely to be a series. It’s more of an out-loud guide for myself and possibly for the benefit of others.

I’m one of very few people I know of whose spouse and I both had living parents, still married, at the start of 2024. The other is a sibling, or was in this case, as 2024 was a tough year for parents in the family. It’s not that we didn’t see this coming, because it is mortality in the simplest terms, but two of these losses were brutal. Needless to say that, in early 2025, that first statement can no longer be said.

For my brother’s family I was able to rescue data from a mobile phone and PC, then transfer multiple Video 8 tapes to a digital video format and share them more broadly. This is something that I enjoy doing, because a tape is a great place for a backup, not the original copy. Those videos and photos and files are shared and accessible to the family, while the digital devices have been sanitized and moved on to new owners.

For my spouse’s family’s needs, it was a little bit easier as the change and passing wasn’t as fast. We were able to, as a family, make decisions and get the proper settings changed in order to make sure that data and access was not lost. This side of the family uses iOS and macOS exclusively, and those platforms along with iCloud have features like Legacy Contacts that enable access to data if there’s ever an occasion that immediate access is lost. This was easy, and included two of the siblings in the family. We also did something similar with the Google account they used, to ensure that access to the iCloud’s email address was secure. This is important because so many necessary services like internet, banking, utilities, and other household needs are attached to email addresses and phone numbers.

2FA is a good, or great thing, but boy can it be tricky when you want to do simple things sometimes. For example. I was trying to enable a feature in iOS but there was an old iPad mini on the account. This device was using iOS 12, which didn’t support the feature, so it had to be removed from the iCloud account before it could be enabled, which is a bit strange, but understandable. However, when I tried to remove this device, I was unable to use the passcode. After several tries I had to add my face to the device and only then was I successful. Very odd, and possibly controversial, but for other reasons that I won’t go into here.

With all of this set up, we also decided to change the phone passcode. It had been left in the hospital with the person, and family members, but there was an incident where data was removed from the phone. Yes, it was a conversation with another family member, and all data was removed from the conversation. I consider this a violation of trust, as only one side of the conversation is truly private. This prompted us to change the phone’s passcode and not share it, which then caused some controversy. Be prepared for this, but also have just cause.

Along the same lines we did change the password for the computer in the house, which only had a password to keep younger grandchildren from installing programs on it unattended. I can’t say that this has had any controversy related to it, but suffice it to say that the sole person whose issue it was with this can probably assume that one step was too far.

The next steps have been slower and more deliberate. We now have the Apple and Google and internet provider’s logins and passwords saved on the legacy device and that of the still living spouse. As of iOS 18 and macOS 15 there’s a new Passwords app available. It’s very good at the 90th percentile of what any user would need in one app, and we’re putting this to use by making sure that the login data is stored on iCloud and is now shared between accounts and with other family members. One interesting feature I found only last night is that you can set up a passkey in a shared folder on another account. Neat.

I highly recommend using Passwords, even if you’re used to LastPass, 1Password, or other apps. I’ve been very satisfied with the transparency it’s enabled, especially in regards to what was a massive number of wireless access networks I’d connected to in the last 15 years. I must have deleted over 100 networks that I’d long forgotten about. This is wise because there are MITM attacks using devices like the WiFi Pineapple that can be very harmful with these devices and their willingness to connect to anything that looks familiar.

The Passwords sharing feature is something that we’re just starting to use. It does encourage Family Sharing, where you can share passwords with all members of the Shared iCloud storage. We opted to not do this, but to be more specific with the iCloud users and passwords to share. So far it’s working well, and we’ll be making changes to which passwords are shared and the accounts that have access to them. I quite frankly feel much better about using this as a method of password sharing versus a standalone app because many companies you know of also have been in the news for the wrong reasons. Share wisely.

Part two is likely going to deal with what you do when a family member passes and you want to maintain their accounts and communication, but their spouse isn’t even as technical as they are. It’s going to be interesting.

I’d been given an older Netgear wireless DSL/Cable router years ago. This included the box, which was nice, because I planned to sell it for $dollars$ and it usually presents nicer when you have things like that. I naturally forgot about it until it was unearthed months ago. I listed it and waited, as one does.

Eventually someone will come along and want/need the old, outdated thing you have. Or so my experience has taught me. I recently sold a pair of AirPort Extreme routers for OK money, but have also sold other 802.11n routers in the recent past which no one should use.

The WNR2000 isn’t special. It’s one of the upstanding type, so maybe that’s unusual, but it’s a black rectangle with lights on it, so pretty standard in that way. This is the v4, which isn’t important unless you find yourself in the situation I did.

When I was alerted that it had sold, for $dollars$ I figured that it was a good idea to power it on and check to see if I’d reset it. What I was greeted with was a flashing amber light after a few moments. This seemed to be a bad thing, and the NETGEAR%% wireless network that was listed on the back wasn’t showing, nor were the lights on the front that would indicate that wireless or WPS were working. Oh boy.

I seem to have recalled booting it up and trying to update the firmware, but that’s not to be trusted. Maybe this is why I was given the router? Honestly, that didn’t matter. I’d prefer to sell a useful item rather than alert the person who had paid for it that a refund was in order. Some time could be devoted to this, and I am not uncomfortable in these situations when there is a solution to find.

Lots of searches and a few videos later, I was pretty sure that Netgear had a solution. I found that this was either a power issue or corrupted firmware. I was using the beefy 12V 1.0A Netgear adapter that it came with, so that wasn’t it. So, how do I fix this firmware thing? Well, Netgear didn’t make it easy, and as anyone who has ever done any firmware hacking with routers knows: versions matter.

I found an insightful video detailing how to use an old protocol to transfer the firmware to the router using TFTP. I hadn’t used this in a very long time, since the days in school of sending files to Cisco routers. I was pleased to see that usable TFTP programs existed, so I could at least skip the command-line syntax minefield. What was frustrating , however, is that Netgear didn’t seem to make this easy. Sure, the firmware was right there, including many older versions back to the one it shipped with. However, instructions were not clear.

Then I stumbled upon the right search phrase and voila, here we go.

The instructions are pretty clear, except for one step, but otherwise I was pleased at the result. I followed the steps here to send the latest firmware file to the N300 WNR2000v4 and it’s back up and working:

https://kb.netgear.com/000059633/How-do-I-upload-firmware-to-my-NETGEAR-router-using-a-TFTP-client-on-Microsoft-Windows

The process is quick, if you make sure to not PUT before you should. I tried this, and then realized the directions wanted me to restart the router. After following those steps, PUT acted fast and the router restarted. After a few minutes I was greeted with a solid light, and then the wireless and WPS lights. I checked and found that the NETGEAR%% network was available. Going to 192.168.1.1 on the device connected to the router displayed the setup page. Just to be sure, I powered it off, waited, powered it back on and was relieved that it booted again.

Now it’s in the mail, headed to its new owner, thoroughly reset. I have a little more knowledge of how to do a recovery of this nature, and a new tool to try and remember.

Today we shut off zZq’s jabber server after 12 years. Unsurprisingly GTalk/Hangouts started off offering federation with independent XMPP servers only to disable it early 2017 after most people had migrated to Google. Sadly this more or less rendered zZqIM useless. Only 3 users regularly logged in, which didn’t justify the cost of the server to keep it running. The last holdouts have finally migrated to Hangouts.

With the money saved we will most certainly use it for alcohol and pour one out in honor of another lost friend.

zZqIM circa 2006

I have tried, and when the iPhone X is replaced by a newer, larger version, I’ll be back, but till then…

The iPhone 8 Plus is larger than I want it to be, but the screen is more important than FaceID, or the swiping gestures, or the one and only time I sent an Animoji to someone.

the [PRODUCT]RED iPhone 8 Plus is perhaps the best looking iPhone of all time, and it will be mine. If I’m going to pay an extra $10 per month to be in T-Mobile’s Jump! OnDemand plan, I’m going to use the hell out of it and have zero regrets.

The “RED” phone on the 8 and 8 Plus has a black bezel, which, let’s be honest, is THE RIGHT COLOR. White bezels are for basic people who like Rose Gold and Silver and whatever other weak colors are out there that aren’t Space Grey.

So, the minute I can switch from the wonderful, but just-a-bit-too-small iPhone X, I’m going to. Likewise, the minute I can switch from the 8 Plus to the X2 Plus (or whatever it’s called), I will.

Long Live zZq Day! (otherwise known as Presidents’ Day in the United States)

May all of your brick walls be turned into doors safely.

Our old friend, companion, antagonist, driver, and general ally veruus passed away. He fought against Leukemia, which had gone undiagnosed for a few years. Extensive treatment followed, and a bone marrow transplant was scheduled before he succumbed to the condition.

Ben attended many Black Hat and DEF CON conferences and lived between Utah and Florida.

Most of us can hope to be as memorable as he was, for better and worse.

Old School – Austin, TX

Who knows what will happen…

This is quite a day to be changing things, I agree, but on the contrary, it is a day for change.