SSH keys prompting for password in MacOS Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave – FIXED

After installing Mojave I was prompted in Terminal and FileZilla for a password whenever I connected to my web server.  Since I use key files to connect I thought this behavior was odd.  This appears to be a MacOS issue as Apple has changed the behavior in Sierra. I solved it by creating the following…

Apple’s poor quality control let me down

I’ve been an Apple fan for a long time.  After years of running Windows, I switched to Mac in the mid-2000’s.  I love OS X and absolutely loved my Apple products.  Unfortunately, I’ve had at least 8 Macs (maybe more) since 2004, as well as various iPods, iPhones, and iPads.  To date, every single Mac…

Does Lastpass have a serious vulnerability?

According to one Google engineer, Tavis Ormandy, Lastpass has several obvious problems.  The technical details are probably above my pay grade, but this sounds pretty serious.  Here is his tweet: Are people really using this lastpass thing? I took a quick look and can see a bunch of obvious critical problems. I’ll send a report…

LastPass has failed me at least 50% of the time

Let me explain.  I have used LastPass for several years and always liked having a secure place for my passwords and secure notes.  I loved that it worked on all my devices including my phones and tablets.  I recommended LastPass to everyone I knew because I believed it was the most secure way to save…

Yosemite not displaying PDF’s properly in Preview – SOLVED

After upgrading to OS X Yosemite, Preview stopped displaying some PDF’s properly.  When launching a PDF I would get a gray screen followed by a black screen.  The only option was to hold the power button down to shut the machine down. After searching the Apple Discussion forums and submitting a bug report to Apple,…

My Kindle Won’t Charge – FIXED!

My Kindle 3 wouldn’t charge and no matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to work.  Then I tried using my iPad charger, and it worked! I had not used my Kindle in awhile and it would not charge.  I plugged it in for 30 minutes and I still got the “Empty Battery” screen….

My new favorite app is AirServer

AirServer is an app for that you run on your computer that turns it into an AirPlay server. When you run the app on your computer it enables you to stream music and video from your iPhone to your computer. I have two Apple TVs, as well as an Airport Express. When I choose AirPlay…

Share FileZilla bookmarks across multiple Macs

If you want to share your FileZilla bookmarks across multiple Apple computers you can accomplish this with Dropbox (or Google Drive, SkyDrive, etc.).  The key is to move your sitemanager.xml and bookmarks.xml files to Dropbox, and create symbolic links on each computer to point to those files. Show all files in Mac OS X Quit…

Gmail changes black links to blue in email newsletters

Google’s Gmail changes black links to blue links in email newsletters.  If you have your links styled in black by using either of the following, Gmail changes your links to blue without telling you.  All of your readers will see blue links instead of black.  Why do they do this?  Who knows, but the fix…

How I secure my WordPress blogs

Yes, this blog is run on Blogger, but I have several WordPress blogs. I got so sick of my WordPress blogs getting hacked that I finally started to password protect my wp-admin directory with an .htaccess password. That worked perfectly for awhile, until I discovered that I could not use friendly URLs with that setup….

iTunes cannot connect to store – Fixed

My iTunes could not connect to the iTunes Store. No matter what I did I could not get it to work, even after uninstalling and re-installing. I finally found a fix. In Windows, click Start and type “cmd” in the Run field. That opens a command windows. Type the following commands followed by hitting Enter:…

gcc command not found error in OS X Lion – Fixed

After installing XCode in Mac OS X Lion, I could not compile any programs using gcc. I had no Developer folder, and command line compiling returned an error – “gcc: command not found.” Here’s how I fixed it: In Xcode, go to: Preferences -> Downloads with “Components.” Find Command Line Tools, and click on install….