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how to make a KVM work best
Friday, April 4 2025
setting: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
Today was my second remote workday of my new job, and this time I was better prepared. I'd bought a KVM capable of switching a 4k HDMI monitor, keyboard, and mouse between two different computers. I set it up to switch the 42 inch 4k smart tv that serves as the main monitor on Woodchuck (my main laboratory computer) between that and my work-issued laptop with the press of a button. An immediate issue that I had to deal with was the problem of what Woodchuck's Windows-10-based operating system did with the windows on that smart tv when the KVM made it diconnect. Typically what Windows 10 does is to just move all those windows to the default monitor, where they pile chaotically overtop whatever windows are already there. This isn't ideal, but what else can it do? This seemed like the kind of problem that someone would've made a program to fix, much like how DesktopOK fixes the problem of Windows periodically scrambling the locations of desktop icons. So I did a little research (mostly I just asked ChatGPT) and discovered a program called PersistentWindows. It evidently saves the locations of all windows on all monitors and can restore those locations when a monitor that had been disconnected reconnects. This worked immediately and without any necessary configuration and completely solved the worst thing about using a KVM. Interestingly, Window 11 seems to automatically have code in it to do what PersistentWindows does, so I didn't need to install it on my work-issued laptop. This is, to date, the only thing about Windows 11 that is an improvement over earlier versions of Windows. Windows 11 still does lots of maddening things that should've been fixed back in the days of Windows XP, including scrambling windows desktop icos, defaulting to hiding the file extensions of known file types, and interrupting users with reboots that could easily be scheduled for the middle of the night.
In terms of work that I did in the remote workplace, one of my goals today was to finally get enough access to Azure Key Vault to make some progress on an intro task I'd gotten last week. The sysadmin had added me as an owner to an application, and that should've given me access. But Microsoft is terrible at naming things ("Windows," "Word," ".Net", ".Net Core," and "SQL Server"), and it turns out that there is a huge distinction between Application Registrations and Enterprise Applications, and (with a little help from ChatGPT) the sysadmin had added me to the application in question in the latter but not the former. Once that was ironed out, I had the access I needed. But then I had the problem of finding the actual secrets in the key vault. As I always, I turned to the oracular wonder of ChatGPT, but this time it let me down. So then I turned to whatever AI powers Microsoft Copilot, and it gave me the same useless info I'd gotten from ChatGPT. (It seems both had been trained on information from an older verion of Microsoft Azure.) Ultimately I found what I needed by old-fashioned poking around, the technology we all had to use back before the mid-1990s.
At the end of the workday, I immediately packed up the Chevy Bolt for another weekend with the dogs up at the cabin. Gretchen would have to miss out on that yet again because she'd be attending a birthday dinner with her friend Marissa down in Manhattan.
On drive northward this time, I didn't have to stop for supplies along the way, though I did end up stopping at the Stewart's in Middleburgh for some snack food, a six pack of beer, and a to-go cup of coffee.
It was a fairly warm day, even in the Adirondacks. Most of the snow near the cabin was gone, including all of it that had been in the driveway. Temperatures there were in the mid-50s and only slightly warmer inside the cabin. I quickly got a fire going in the stove, though there wasn't much otherwise that needed to be done, as all the systems were up and operational.
Eventually I took Charlotte for a walk down to the lake via the Mossy Rock Trail. The ice on the lake had begun to break up in earnest, with huge widening cracks running out towards its middle. After snapping some photos, Charlotte and I walked to the lake's outflow, where I got a good view of a mid-sized beaver who might've just been working on one of the outflow dams. (I'd also heard beavers swatting the water with their tails near the dock.)
Back at the cabin, cooked up some cavataoou noodles, to which I added a stir fry of mushrooms, onions, and tofu and some Rao's marinara sauce.
Later I used a little pump to circulate water from the gas-powered tankless water heater through the big tank of the heat-pump-based hot water heater. By pre-heating it this way, less resistive electric heat would be needed to heat it up and get it ready for use as the cabin's summer-time hot water supply.
Woodworth Lake today, with lots of cracks and voids in its ice. Click to enlarge.
These tracks on the ice suggest some sort of vehicle drove on during the winter. Click to enlarge.
This tiny brook, like the one that goes down the Backwards Cliffs Gorge, mostly just runs when there is lots of surface water. It dumps into the lake near our tree dock. Click to enlarge.
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