When I started learning about USB-C, I was excited to standardize on cables instead of having all kinds of cables and having to travel with a ton of cables. However, years ago, I read about a Google engineer who analyzed USB-C cables to find out which ones had charging problems or could damage devices. Fast forward, many years later there is still no way to tell what cables are good and which ones are bad.

Now that Apple has adopted USB-C, I’ve read about what adapters to use to charge without breaking the bank. The article concerned me as the author recommend some adapters that were not USB-IF certified. Without any type of certification, there is no way to know if you’re going to get a cable that could cause a problem with your device.

In my research to find cables that are quality cables, I watched a video where various cables were put under a CT scan and analyzed. It was fascinating to see the varying quality of cables. The cheap cables may not last and if they break, they could damage your device. In fact, some of the cables directly connect the power without any type of chip managing power. I have a flashlight and a bar code scanner that charge via a USB-C plug. However, neither one can charge with a USB-C to USB-C cable plugged into a power supply! They came with a USB-A to USB-C which probably just wired the power and maybe a few other lines. The only way I can charge them using a USB-C charger is to use a USB-C to USB-A adapter and then a USB-A to USB-C cable. So even if I carried a few USB-C to USB-C cables and chargers, I couldn’t charge these devices. That’s pretty disappointing that manufacturers implemented USB-C in non-standard ways so my hopes of having a single set of cables has been dashed.

I’ve started acquiring USB-C cables and am making sure that all the cables are USB-IF certified (note that this appears to be self certified). Will that keep my devices from having problems? I have no idea, but it is at least lets me sleep a little better at night.

Last year, I wrote about ditching Paperless and storing all my documents in the Finder. This was driven by 2 main things. The first was I didn’t know how long Paperless would be around as it was getting kind of dated. And second I wanted to be able to see my documents and receipts on any device.

Now that I’ve been using the Finder for a year, I can say that the transition has been pretty seamless. My initial plan was to only use the Finder for new things and keep using Paperless for older documents. However, when discussing this with my father, I went ahead and wrote an app that took all of my old Paperless libraries and extracted the PDFs into folders just the way I wanted. So after the extraction, I had all my receipts dating back to 2006 accessible on my Mac, iPad and iPhone.

This is great and has come in handy when I want to find things when I’m not at my Mac or when I’m out and about (my wife has asked me what we paid for something and I was able to look it up in the store). With the Finder being able to search contents of the documents, it is pretty easy to locate a receipt or document. One thing that I still do is when I scan receipts using my ScanSnap, I have it OCR the documents. Unfortunately sometimes receipts are so cryptic that even with perfect OCR, a search may not turn up what I need. However, by stored the documents by year and month with the file name being the merchant name and date, I have a good chance of finding what I need. Note that while your can scan from an iPhone or iPad using the ScanSnap, it won’t OCR the documents, so I still scan all receipts that I don’t get electronically on my Mac.

Now back to my first reason for transitioning to the Finder and that was the longevity of the app. As of the writing of this entry, the website for Paperless has been offline for at least a few weeks and all email bounces. I have no idea what happened to the company and I hope the owner is OK.

If you’re still using Paperless and would like to transition to using the Finder, I hope my Paperless Extractor can help and bring you some piece of mind that you won’t be stuck when/if Paperless eventually breaks (all apps break at some point).

It was a good run, ReceiptWallet/Paperless!

Several years ago, I replaced the networking gear at my parents’ place with a UniFi Security Gateway, access points, etc. The setup has been working reasonably well and the only major issue was when the USG died and I had to replace it (turns out it was probably just the power supply, but I learned that too late). While the USG performed adequately (they only have a 100 Mbps down/10 Mbps up Internet connection), finding a replacement USG in case it failed was getting harder and harder (I had a spare on my shelf just waiting for it to die). Ubiquiti really didn’t have a decent replacement for the USG until recently when the UXG-Lite came out.

Prior to me seeing that the UXG-Lite had been released, a friend of mine sent me a UniFi Cloud Key Gen 2 Plus which I setup to replace the outdated UniFi NVR (no longer supported and no remote access was available) and CloudKey Gen 1. This allowed my dad to use UniFi Protect and view his cameras remotely.

Once I saw the UXG-Lite released, I immediately purchased one as it looked (for the most part) like a direct replacement for the USG. One of the requirements to running it was a newer UniFi controller which I had just installed so I was good to go. One of the immediate differences in the UXG-Lite was that it only had 1 WAN port and 1 LAN port while the USG had 1 WAN port, 1 LAN port and then 1 WAN/LAN port. I had originally setup my parents network with 2 separate LANs, but realized that all the traffic on 1 LAN was wireless so I could simply set a SSID to use a specific VLAN and still be able to isolate traffic.

Installing the UXG-Lite was a breeze. First I updated the controller to the latest version, then I forgot the USG in the controller and then adopted the UXG-Lite. All the settings were transferred and the whole process only took a few minutes. Since the USG was not powerful enough to handle IDS/IPS, I had that turned off. Once the UXG-Lite was setup, I turned that on just for some added piece of mind.

I also setup a WireGuard VPN into the box (not possible with the USG) and that seemed to work just as flawlessly as it does on my UDM-SE. I can’t imagine using it much, but it is there if I ever need it. The remote management of the network does all that I need to do without connecting directly to the network.

The UXG-Lite has been running for a week and I haven’t heard any complaints, so I’m going to call it a success. I was just looking for a modern replacement for the USG and that seems to be what it is. I’ve seen various reviews/complaints about the device, but in my limited testing I’m not seeing any issues.

Pros

• Easy setup
• Integrates with the rest of the UniFi line of equipment

Cons

• Lacks second WAN/LAN port

Summary

If you’re looking for a replacement for the USG3, the UXG-Lite seems to foot the bill. While the UX (UniFi Express) has also been released, it wouldn’t meet my needs in the case due to using UniFi Protect to run cameras. If I hadn’t needed that, the UX may have worked. Remember that the UXG-Lite still needs the controller running on another piece of hardware so if you need an all-in-one box, this isn’t it.

I no longer have to worry about trying to replace an outdated equipment when the USG eventually broke. I’m still a huge fan of UniFi equipment and while it may not be commercial grade, it works for my home needs and being able to manage my parents’ network remotely is a lifesaver.

This past summer I was reading 3D printing posts on Reddit and saw the mention of “bin stores” where people were purchasing filament and other 3D printing accessories for cheap. I started looking at what a “bin store” was and learned that they are stores that buy up Amazon (and other company) returns by the pallet load and sell the contents by spreading them out on tables that have lips (i.e. bins) to keep in the products. In addition to returns, the stores sometimes have items that didn’t sell so there may be multiple of the same item.

I was quite intrigued by the concept and mentioned it to my wife and she was also curious. I looked at a store about 20 minutes from our house and we went the next day. The stores that I’ve found use a similar strategy where they re-stock once or twice a week, have a higher price per item the first day, i.e. $10 the day after restocking and then reduce the price each day until re-stock day. Some stores will clean up the tables before re-stock day and sellable merchandise they take down to Mexico to sell.

Walking into the store, we were overwhelmed to see how much random stuff was for sale. We quickly realized that we had to be good shoppers by actually looking up the products that interested us to see if they were a deal or not. Some things for say $7 that sell new for $10 aren’t that much of a deal; however, something that sells for $25 we can get for $7 may be worth it.

After our first excursion, we decided to go back on the day after re-stock to see if there was better stuff. We got there early and had to wait in line before they opened. While waiting, we talked to a man that says he looks for just tools so that he can resell them and he mentioned another store to also check out. We went to the other store which was huge and spent several hours there looking around. We developed a system where my wife was on one side of the table and I was on the other and we’d go down each row so that we could see if there were any treasures in there.

As each trip is an adventure, my wife and I have been going every few weeks to kill some time. We also stop by the Grocery Outlet next door and do a little grocery shopping. Some of our trips are more productive than others; my son came with us once and picked out a Sony professional microphone that retails for about $250 that he picked up for $7. He sold it on eBay for $95! We’re not always that lucky, but have found some interesting products that at $5 an item (I like $5 day is it is a good balance between impulse buy and decent mix of available products.) are worth the trip.

Here’s a small sampling of what we’ve picked up for $7 or less:

• Non-contact thermometer (human and surface)
• Strainer that clips on pot
• Bluetooth barcode scanner (I wrote an app for this that lets me easily scan items and look them up on Amazon for use on future trips)
• Shoe orthotics
• Foot stretcher (for my plantar fasciitis)
• Fidgets for my wife to use at her school
• Grabber tool (for picking up trash and hard to reach items)
• Brita water bottles (built in filter)
• Webcams (can be adjusted whereas the one on my monitor always cuts off the top of my head)
• Name brand kitchen scissors
• Bluetooth hygrometer/thermometers
• HDMI capture device

So while we’re enjoying this new “hobby” and have picked up some useful items (we usually put stuff in our cart and at the end go back through and ask each other if we really need/want it and if it is worth it; we tend to put back a bunch of items), I’ve started to think more about the return problem.

These bin stores don’t seem to have a shortage of merchandise and the stores we’ve been to are only a small sampling of stores across the country that are doing the same thing. I’ve pieced together what happens from some articles as well as what I’ve seen at the stores. When an item is returned to Amazon (or Kohl’s or Target), a number of things could happen to it depending on the seller. If things are sold by a third party, I’ve read that the seller can either pay to have the return sent back to them or basically just eat the cost and have Amazon “dispose” of it. In addition, if things don’t sell, they may be in the same situation. Shipping costs money and it may cost more than the item resulting in items being “disposed” of by selling by the pallet load.

In some cases, items may be resold if they are new and unopened. However, this has a cost associated with inspecting and restocking the item. I don’t believe that this problem is going to go away any time soon. While it is great for my wife and me to have a treasure hunt adventure, the environmental costs in both shipping the products and disposing of what doesn’t sell even after the bin stores is huge. If companies move towards charging for returns and discouraging returns, that could reduce this slightly.

However, there is still the issue of producing things that don’t sell. For instance, we routinely see metal signs with various slogans on them and it is obvious that they didn’t sell. If a company makes them, ships them from China to Amazon to sell, it may take a few months to arrive. Then they try to sell them for a few months; in the meantime they are producing more. If they don’t sell, they may have part of the initial inventory to get rid of as well as the additional items produced before they were told to stop. Local manufacturing could cut down on the lag time and cut off production sooner, but using the theory “if we make it, we can sell it”, creates more products that people may not need.

Is there an easy answer for reducing the waste caused by returns or over manufacturing products that aren’t purchased? Unfortunately no. I try to do my part my thoroughly researching items before purchasing and rarely return items. This is especially true having seen where the returns end up and thinking about the impacts of my decisions.