Lighted keyboard arrived!

First impressions…me like! Looks like the picture I previously posted. I said it before…why didn’t I do this sooner? No more straining my eyes at 4AM to see the characters. No more retyping my password over 5 times because each time I’m sure I pressed the right key.

No manual or even url where you might find a PDF.

The keyboard already became unresponsive until it was unplugged then plugged back in. However I was playing with the FN key and the “F” keys. So perhaps some key combo caused it to not respond. Yes…exactly! FN F11 is lock toggle.

The box actually say Linux but it wasn’t mentioned on Amazon.

So here is what I’ve leaned on my own (also read some reviews) that mentioned some things.

The * below is actually not an asterisk but is larger and more resembles the sun. It’s next to the FN at the bottom.

* – On/Off
FN * – Solid/Fade
FN Pg Up/Pg Dwn – brightness [not intuitive, I would have guessed +/-]

Ordered a lighted keyboard

Why didn’t I do this sooner? I often get up when it’s still dark and I like subdued lighting. Except I keep typing my password wrong…and other things. So I switch on the overhead light, which is annoying to my eyes, type the correct characters…then turn the light off. These keyboards are often pitched to gamers. But I think/hope it will work well for me. The keyboard characters are Large Print also. The one I ordered has rainbow colored lighted keys. I saw one with just white keys, which would have been fine, but you couldn’t turn the lights off.

New 2FA app consideration

Bitwarden asked what 2FA app do you use, on Twitter. A couple of user recommended open source 2FA apps, I should look into, to replace FreeOTP who quietly made some good updates to their app. However they didn’t tell me about it, causing me a lot of problems. I last talked about it here.

These…Aegis and 2FAS, look interesting and were recommended by a few users.

OpenVMS

Just a little note about this OS. As a fan of DEC and vintage emulation, I was excited to hear about OpenVMS. I actually contacted a recruiter out of college specifically to get a job working on a DEC PDP 11/70 hopefully running RSTS/E, but not a requirement. However that is what I was familiar with from college. I chose this recruiter because I noticed that she frequently posted DEC jobs. This was way before the Internet and using a recruiter was common. A short while later, I got a job with a company that had two 11/70s running RSTS/E and was very happy. After a few years we outgrew the PDPs and being a DEC shop, I was hopeful we might migrate to a DEC VAX. However the head of the department with a banking and mainframe background decided on IBM. Which probably was the best choice for the company. Especially considering we dealt with a lot of EBCDIC data tape files from big companies. I went on to have a good career with IBM mainframes. Most of my schooling was on IBM mainframes so the transition wasn’t hard for me.

But I remained a fan of DEC. However I will probably never get to play with OpenVMS, because of their registration system. As I understand it…and I could be wrong, they have to bless you with the privilege of using their OS. You have to join and contribute to this or that. I would like to learn OpenVMS, but I’m not a joiner. And the whole idea of them evaluating me to see if I’m worthy of their precious OS doesn’t sit well with me.

Even if I was young, I would most likely have a hard time today working in the computer industry because of all the emphasis in teamwork. If you work for a company you will always in some regard be part of a team. But in my day I along with other programmers would get an assignment and basically work on it all by our lonesome…until it was done.

I can and do run RSTS/E or MVS under emulation, just because I want to. I’m not required to explain why I am interested…to be allowed the privilege.

it’s slightly disappointing however it’s not like I was going to get a job using OpenVMS. And there are always plenty of other new things to learn in computers.

It really was fun learning MVS then seeing how close it still is to the latest top IBM OS…Z/OS. My professional IBM background was with DOS and VM not MVS. However my schooling going on almost 50 years ago was with MVT. As a testament to IBM a lot of the utilities that I ran in school still run today under Z/OS.

Fitness watch

I found my old inexpensive Letsfit Fitness Tracker, Activity Tracker Watch, I purchased in 2019. Charged it but date/time was wrong. Needed phone app to set date. App want’s logon info which I don’t have and it wasn’t required when I got it, otherwise it would be in my password manager. No…that was for the letsfit app whatever that is. I needed the veryfitpro app. had to unpair/repair then it worked…date set! However for some reason part of the strap below left was broken off and it’s very short. I only see watch band replacements for different models. I can buy a new updated Fitness watch for around $35. GPS would be nice…but not available in budget fitness watches.