Jeremys Awesome Blog

Google Fi Auto Connect Issues

Ok, so I use Google Fi (formerly known as Project Fi) as my phone provider. I have a Pixel 2 and haven’t felt the need to upgrade. Recently I’ve noticed issues with my service. Specifically, my Pixel 2 will connect to an H+ network or an Edge network in an area I know has reliable 4G LTE. So, what gives?

First a quick and dirty explanation of the Google Fi network based on my limited understanding 😁. Google Fi utilizes the TMobile (which I believe includes Sprint now) and US Cellular networks as well as WI-Fi to provide cellular service to their customers. Phones on the Google Fi network smartly switch to whatever provider has the best signal. At least that’s the idea.

Knowing that Fi uses multiple cell networks to provide service I wondered what network my phone was using. Using SignalCheck Lite I was able to determine that my phone was connecting to the TMobile network by default. In my area US Cellular beats TMobile coverage hands down. There is no competition. So what is the deal with my phone auto connecting to Edge and H+ networks?

Honestly, I don’t know yet. I strongly suspect a recent update to the Google Fi app or services set my phone to prefer TMobile regardless of network speed. Whether this was an intentional change or a bug in the auto-connect code, I don’t know. I’ve been able to temporarily fix this issue by forcing a connection to US Cellular using Google Fi dialer code: *#*#34872#*#*

Google Fi Dialer Codes

I pulled these codes come from this post on ArkieNet. I’m including them here just in case the post poofs from the internet in the future.

Note this paragraph from the original article:

The following options are only available for “Designed for Fi” phones. They will not work on the iPhone or “Compatible with Fi” phones because they are T-Mobile only. See which class of phone you have here.
ArkieNet

ALPHA CODE	DIALER CODE	DESCRIPTION
FI AUTO	##342886##	Set carrier selection to automatic.
FI NEXT	##346398##	Select Next Carrier
FI SPR	##34777##	Select Sprint for 2 hours
FI TMO	##34866##	Select T-Mobile 2 hours
FI USC	##34872##	Select US Cellular 2 hours
FI SIMON	##3474666##	Select Three (UK only)

ALPHA CODE	DIALER CODE	DESCRIPTION
FIXME	##34963##	Force reactivation
FI INFO	##344636##	Get information about the current network.
INFO	##4636##	Get general phone information.
DEBUG	##33284##	Phone Debug Options
PRL	##775##	Force download of Preferred Roaming List (Sprint)
PRL	*228	Force download of Preferred Roaming List (US Cellular)
FI ROAM	##347626##	Turn on International Roaming
SWITCH SIM	##794824746##	Switch to / from eSim.

Git Commits for the Current Branch

I had need to get a list of a simple list of all commits for the Current branch. This approach was simple enough and gave me what I wanted. I modified it to just use HEAD so that I can easily run it against the current branch.

git shortlog --no-merges --graph --abbrev-commit master..HEAD

This came from Alex who posted it on StackOverflow here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/61284456/296889

Issue with Mouse Auto Scrolling on Windows 10

Problem. I installed Adobe Premiere Pro and then all of a sudden my mouse starting automatically scrolling. This happened only in certain places. Like when opening the run command dialog, or when hovering over the Premiere Pro timeline. It did not happen in the browser unless I hovered over a section that had a custom scroll type listener.

The issue with auto scrolling was very frustrating. I was able to figure it out though. Here are the steps.

Right click on This PC in the file explorer menu. Select Manage.
Find and click the Device Manager
Expand the Mice and other pointing devices option
Right click the HID-compliant mouse entry and select Uninstall device.
Your mouse will stop working…
Unplug your mouse from the back of your computer, wait 10 seconds, plug it back in.
Windows should redetect your mouse and the problem should go away.

Alternatively you could try to “Update driver” instead of Uninstalling the device. I didn’t try, my problem was solved with the steps documented above.

Change the Display of the Tab Character in PHPStorm

Update 2022-02-18

You can now change the display of the Tab Character directly in the PHPStorm advanced settings. (Thanks to a comment by destinydriven!)

The Tab Character Rendering can be changed in Advanced Settings

Original Article

Recently the way the Tab Character is rendered in PHPStorm was changed. The character used to be rendered in a way that allowed you to see the entire tab character. However, after a recent change the tab character now displays as a single >.

The new tab character is likely a welcome change for some. But there are others of us who really appreciated the old rendering. The new rendering does not indicate how much whitespace is taken by the tab character. For this reason I don’t find it helpful and wanted a way to change it back.

Luckily, recently, the JetBrains team threw in a small registry setting to re-enable to old rendering of tab characters. This setting is available in version 2019.3.2. Access this setting by pressing “Shift” + “Shift” while in PHPStorm. Afterwards search for and select the “Registry…” option.

A Comparison of default tab rendering in PHPStorm — A Comparison of styles – it’s nice to have options.

You’ll find the editor.old.tab.painting option about a quarter of the way down the list. Check it to re-enable the old PHPStorm tab rendering. You can breathe freely now.

The location of the editor.old.tab.painting within the registry. — The editor.old.tab.painting option is about a quarter of the way down the list

SSH Agent Service is Disabled

I’ve just run into an issue while trying to start the ssh-agent in PowerShell Core. The problem displayed was:
unable to start ssh-agent service, error :1058

For my own personal future reference, the problem was that the OpenSSH Authentication Agent service startup type was set to Disabled. The solution was to set the startup type to Automatic.

In Windows 10 you can find the list of services pretty easily. Bring up the start menu and type Services. You’ll see the Services app listed. Open the Services app and you will see a list of services on your machine.

The location of the OpenSSH Authentication Agent within the Services list. — Finding the OpenSSH Authentication Agent

Once the Services app is open, find the OpenSSH Authentication Agent service and set the startup type to Automatic.

💥 You win

PHP Get First and Last Day of Week by Week Number

I’m adding a simple post here with a PHP method that has helped me. This method calculates the beginning and ending of a week given the year and week number. The problem I’ve run into is that “first day of the week” is subjective. Some people believe the first day of the week is “Monday” while others believe the first day of the week is “Sunday”. ISO-8601 specifies the first day of the week as “Monday”. Whereas, most western calendars display Sunday as the first day of the week and Saturday as the last day of the week.

To add to the confusion, PHP’s methods themselves seem confused about what the first and last day of the week are.

For example:

$new_date = new DateTime;
// returns Monday, Jan 29 2018
$new_date->setISODate(2018, 5);

// returns Sunday, Feb 4 2018
$new_date->modify('sunday this week');

// returns Sunday, Jan 28 2018
$new_date->setISODate(2018, 5 ,0);

You’ll notice that the string “sunday this week” actually returns Sunday, Feb 4 whereas setting the date to the 0 day of the same week returns Sunday, Jan 28. I’m not saying that Sunday doesn’t happen twice a week… but Sunday doesn’t happen twice a week.

All this to say, the method below is the one I’ve found returns the most helpful results:

function get_first_and_last_day_of_week( $year_number, $week_number ) {
	// we need to specify 'today' otherwise datetime constructor uses 'now' which includes current time
	$today = new DateTime( 'today' );

	return (object) [
		'first_day' => clone $today->setISODate( $year_number, $week_number, 0 ),
		'last_day'  => clone $today->setISODate( $year_number, $week_number, 6 )
	];
}

Validate the Hash or Checksum of a Downloaded File

Every once and a while I want to validate the hash of a downloaded file. Most of the time these are MD5 hashes, but I’ve seen SHA as well.

Windows actually has a couple built in ways of generating the hash of a file. You can use certutil or, in powershell you can use get-filehash.

With Certutil

To verify a checksum with certutil use the following command: certutil -hashfile {FILENAME} {ALGORITHM} replace the FILENAME and ALGORITHM with your choices.

With get-filehash

This is my preferred method. No reason, maybe I like the order of arguments better?

Use get-filehash -algorithm {ALGORITHM} {FILENAME}.

That’s it!

Turn off Google Chromes “Switch To Tab” Feature

When I’m browsing, I tend to use tabs a lot. I clean up my tabs when I’m done with them, and I open new ones when I want new ones.

Recently, Google Chrome, introduced a feature which attempts to fix issues of tab proliferation by offering a “Switch to Tab” feature. This feature shows up in the Omnibar when you start typing something in the Omnibar that is similar to a tab you already have open.

It’s an interesting idea, but not useful to me. I find that it negatively impacts my experience using Chrome. Things that use to work (example, right arrow copies selected tab url into current url bar) don’t work with Google Chrome’s new “Switch to Tab Feature”.

I like to think I’m knowledgeable and responsible enough to switch tabs when I want to switch tabs, and open new tabs when I want to open new tabs. That said, I’ll be disabling the “Switch To Tab” feature.

To disable the “Switch to Tab” feature in Google Chrome first find the omnibox-tab-switch-suggestions flag in the Chrome flags menu. (Psst: it’s here: chrome://flags/#omnibox-tab-switch-suggestions). Then… select “Disabled” from the dropdown options.

Restart Google Chrome and you should be free of that annoying “Switch to Tab” feature 👍🙂

Clean up Previously Merged Git Branches

First things first, I tend to build up a lot of local branches. No, I don’t pro-actively remove them from my machine. (Who does that extremely smart thing? 🙄) At work we use GitHub and Windows. As such I use posh-git to perform almost all my git interactions (you should too cause it’s 👌).

Our current process is:

Create Feature Branch
Create Pull Request
Squash and Merge Pull Request
Delete Feature Branch from Remote

Any developer can have any number of feature branches out at a time waiting to be merged. As we are using a “Squash and Merge” process our branches are not *actually merged*. We delete the original branch after the squash.

But that doesn’t really matter to you. Come to think of it, it doesn’t really matter to future me. What does matter is, how can I remove local git branches that aren’t on the git remote anymore? (Remote meaning GitHub, Gitlab, Bitbucket, etc…). No, we aren’t talking about the remote tracking branches that are removed by pruning. Otherwise, one could just prune, no?

I continuously search for this, so I’m documenting it here so I NEVER HAVE TO SEARCH EVER AGAIN 😤

First of all, the answer to the question comes from this question on StackOverflow.

git checkout master; git remote update origin --prune; git branch -vv | Select-String -Pattern ": gone]" | % { $_.toString().Trim().Split(" ")[0]} | % {git branch -d $_}

If you are in a position where you Squash & Merge then you will need to replace the git branch -d with git branch -D. This will successfully remove all “:gone” branches from your local machine.

If you are using linux, and not powershell, you can use the following command taken from the same question on StackOverflow.

git branch -r | awk '{print $1}' | egrep -v -f /dev/fd/0 <(git branch -vv | grep origin) | awk '{print $1}' | xargs git branch -d

But Why?!

Any git branch you have checked out essentially has three branches.
1. The remote branch on GitHub
2. The remote tracking branch on your machine
3. The local branch you do your work on.

When we push a feature branch live (merge a pull request) we delete the “remote branch on GitHub” (#1 above).

When we run `git fetch origin –prune` we remove the remote tracking branch (taking care of #2) above.

However, taking care of #3 above often requires manual clean up. That’s where the piped command above comes into play, it takes care of cleaning up branch #3.

Disabling Autolaunch of Programs after Shutdown

Last year around this time of year, Microsoft added an Autlolaunch feature to Windows 10. This feature will automatically relaunch certain programs after a Restart or Shutdown of Windows. You’ve likely seen this happen most often with Chrome.

The feature was originally introduced to make Windows Updates feel more seamless, and less invasive. The idea was that, while yes, Windows Updates automatically restart your computer, at least it keeps the windows you had open open! That’s good, right?!

No. That’s not good. That’s annoying. We who restart our computers like to know that they are starting from a fresh state. Those of us who don’t restart our computers like to keep a billion random windows open and probably fill our desktops up with icons. Desktop Icon pointillism art is a thing.

After an extreme amount of backlash from users Microsoft decided to adjust the way the Autolaunch feature worked. This is documented in this thread. You can *disable autolaunch* by disabling the “Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting my device after an update or restart” setting. You would think Microsoft might make a completely different setting for “Automatically re-launch previously open programs on startup”. But – for now that’s not the case.

Disable Autolaunch — You can *disable autolaunch* by disabling the “Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting my device after an update or restart” setting.

Above we have the description of how to turn off autolaunch, below we’ve got a picture of where this setting is.

Enjoy not having Chrome automatically start when you reboot your computer 😊