J.D. Hodges
Every man has a story, this is my story.
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Latest posts
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Claude Code “Prompt Cache Has Likely Expired” (What It Means)
Summary: Claude Code’s “prompt cache has likely expired” notice means your session sat idle longer than the prompt cache lasts. As of Sep 2026, by default, that’s 1 hour on Pro or Max while you’re within your included usage, and 5 minutes if you’re using an API key, a cloud…
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Open WebUI Web Search Not Working? It’s Off By Default (and how to fix it!)
Summary: Open WebUI ships web search off, and there are two separate ways to turn it on. For one chat: click the four-diamond Integrations icon right of the + and flip Web Search on. For every chat: Settings > Interface > Web Search in Chat, set it to Always, then Save.(not…
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Best Running Watch for High School Cross Country (2026): What I Bought My Kids
Q: My son and daughter both start cross country practice at their high school this week, and I want a running watch for each of them. Their coach is fine with music during daily distance runs as long as nobody is carrying a phone, so the watch needs to hold music and play it to…
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Claude Code or VS Code Still Showing Opus 4.8? How to Switch to Opus 5
Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5 on July 24, 2026. It is the new default model on Claude Max and the strongest model you can pick on Claude Pro. So why does the model picker in your VS Code panel still say Opus 4.8?! Before you go digging through your account or your plan, check…
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RTX 5090 R vs a cheap 4060 for render fleet usage
Summary: I generate image-to-video (i2v) clips for a software project on a small consumer level GPU fleet: a flagship RTX 5090 and a cheap, always on RTX 4060. On a controlled raw render test the 5090 is about 5x faster per clip. But in a real overnight run where the two cards…
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Why Your RDP Session May Be Slow on a Fast LAN (The 56 Kbps Trap!)
Summary: My Remote Desktop session into an old ThinkPad got progressively laggier. Ping said the network was perfect (1ms between host and client with no variation). Performance counters said the server was idle. I was about a day away from buying replacement hardware out of…
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Mac Prices Just Went Up: What Happened on June 25 and What I’d Buy Now
Summary: Apple raised prices across almost the whole Mac line on June 25, 2026. The general consensus is that this is due to a RAM shortage, and Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Microsoft all did similar things. A lot of the good sub $1,000 deals are gone for now: the MacBook Air M5 that…
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How to Set Up a SSH Connection in Claude Code Desktop
Summary: Claude Code’s desktop app can SSH into a remote machine and run sessions there against your repo, MCP servers, and ~/.claude config. Setup is a four-field dialog, assuming ssh user@host (where user is your username and host is the hostname or IP) already works from your…
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Is the BCBS Settlement Payment Email Legit? (May 2026)
Q. I just got an email from distribution@bcbssettlement.com telling me I have a virtual Visa prepaid card waiting from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Subscribers Settlement. Is this real, or is it a phishing scam? A. If is is from that email and matches the info below it is real.…
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How to Fix the VMware Workstation “mksSandbox” Crash (ISBRendererComm Error)
Have you ever been working in a VM, everything’s fine, then dialog pops up like this: VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (mks) ISBRendererComm: Lost connection to mksSandbox (3796) After that your VM is crashed and is powered off. Whatever you were in the middle of, gone…
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Codex CLI feature protip /statusline
TL;DR: There are a few ways to check your ChatGPT Codex usage, including: the web analytics page (covered in yesterday’s post) and the Codex CLI’s own status line, which can put live 5-hour and weekly percentages right at the bottom of your terminal session. The CLI method is…
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How to Check Codex Usage in ChatGPT (Plus, Pro and Credits)
Summary: ChatGPT’s Codex has its own usage analytics page at https://chatgpt.com/codex/cloud/settings/analytics, separate from the main ChatGPT settings. You need to be logged into your ChatGPT account first. The page splits your Codex usage into three meters: a 5-hour rolling…
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MacBook Neo GPU Compared: A18 Pro vs Snapdragon X2, Radeon, Arc, and RTX 5060
The MacBook Neo is Apple’s $599 fanless entry Mac, built around the binned 5-core-GPU variant of the A18 Pro. I covered its CPU, thermal behavior, silicon economics, and 8 GB RAM tradeoff in the main MacBook Neo benchmarks article. This post is the GPU companion to that piece,…
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The History of ThinkPad: From IBM’s Bento Box to Lenovo’s Portable Workstations
Note: this post is published but still in progress. Spot something missing or amiss? Comment at the end 👍. This is a long article. If you just want three paragraphs, this is it: Few laptop families display their lineage as visibly as the ThinkPad. Since IBM introduced the…
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Codex /goal feature (TESTED)
Summary: Codex’s new /goal mode lets you hand it a long-running task and walk away. From there it loops plan → act → test → review until your stop condition is met, or your weekly quota taps out. Currently it takes a two-line config edit to enable, then prefix your prompt with…
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The BeBox: One of the Most Beautifully Overbuilt Computers of the 1990s
Late 2000. There is a grey and blue tower PC on my dorm-room desk like nothing anybody who walks into the room has ever seen. The Be logo on the front, a 3.5″ floppy peeking out the bottom of the drive bays, and the vertical grille that hides two columns of green LEDs…
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“Unable to Load Usage Limits” on claude.ai? Use /usage in Claude Code
TL;DR: I went to claude.ai/settings/usage this morning to check my Claude Max (5x) plan limits and got a red error box: “Unable to load usage limits. Please try again later.” Anthropic’s status page banner read All Systems Operational, but Settings > Usage was still erroring for…
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The Mother-In-Law Method for Claude or ChatGPT
A Reddit post called “The Mother-In-Law Method” is making the rounds in r/ClaudeAI right now. The pitch from u/Ancient_Perception_6: prompt Claude to review your code as if it were written by your mother-in-law, the one who insulted your cooking and your “weird-looking feet.”…
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Best Laptop for Claude Code
Feel free to comment (at the bottom) if you have any questions! Summary: If you came here looking for the best laptop value for Claude Code in 2026, you can’t beat the MacBook Air M5 at $1,199 to $1,255 on Amazon for the 16GB / 512GB model as of July 2026 (the exact price varies…
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Best Way to Cook Corn on the Cob
My favorite simple way to cook corn on the cob: simmer shucked ears in water, a cup of milk, and half a stick of butter for 7 to 8 minutes. The kernels come out sweet, rich, and tender. Most people will not need extra butter at the table. Quick recipe facts Serves: 4 to 6 Prep…