I've always had computer monitors, but I never owned a TV before in my life. Recently, I became the owner of a 43" 4K TV. Since I don't usually watch cable television, I connected it to my computer as an extended display, primarily using it for gaming. I couldn't get the TV's native 4K resolution to render in 60Hz though. After looking through the display adapter's settings, I concluded that my HDMI cable didn't have enough bandwidth to support 4K60. In effect, I was probably using a [HDMI 1.4](https://www.hdmi.org/spec/hdmi1_4b) cable. I later found there is [no way to determine](https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/is-there-anyway-to-detect-what-version-of-hdmi-cable-my-cable-is.3167678/post-19601026) what kind of cable is being used, since there's nothing in the spec that requires a version number to be printed. So I continued using the TV at 1080p 60Hz since I figured that was easier on my GPU anyway. After a while though, I decided to dig deeper since running 1080p on a 4K TV...feels kind of weird. I found a nice [tool](https://glenwing.github.io/adapters/?output=HDMI&input=DP) that helped me find out that I'd probably need an active DisplayPort to HDMI adapter to get 4K60 support. After purchasing one and connecting it from my computer, I found that the refresh rate was still stuck at 30Hz. I looked through the TV settings to see if there was any option to change the HDMI version from 1.4 to 2.0. There was nothing. I checked if the HDMI port supported 4K60. All ports supported 4K60. I saw an option for [EDID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identification_Data) buried deep in the TV settings. There were two options: 1.4 and 2.0. I didn't know what EDID was, but the numbers seemed to make sense. So I changed it to 2.0, and suddenly 60Hz was unlocked.

I'm no keyboard expert, but I've used my fair share of keyboards throughout the years. I've always loved using compact wireless keyboards because they reduce desk clutter substantially. But then in 2017, I received my first mechanical keyboard as a gift. This was my first time using a full-size wired keyboard in a long time. I had a hard time adjusting not just to seeing wires on my desk again, but also the amount of space the full-size keyboard took. However, the MX Brown switches felt so good that it was almost worth it. 

Despite the ongoing pandemic, I am currently privileged enough to still be able to work from home. As a software engineer, most of my work can and could always have been done outside of the office. Yes, it makes collaboration a bit more different (a lot of communication is now asynchronous). In addition, not everyone has the right environment at home for remote work (no office furniture, distractions, no air conditioning, abusive partner, etc are all things that affect one's ability to work effectively at home). But for the most part, engineering work can be done outside of the office. Three months ago, my manager offered to let me work from Taiwan in order for me to be closer to my support network of family and friends. So, that's what I've been doing for the past few months. I figured it's worth writing a bit about my experience so far! Taiwan is handling COVID-19 somewhat effectively. There are currently 12 active cases, and for the most part, besides a bit more social distancing and face masks, life is relatively "normal". I wake up at 4:55 AM every day and am "at work" by 5. I have very few meetings with my team now, even with these working hours. At around 7, I make breakfast and take a break for half an hour. With the office supply stipend given by the company, my workspace is very ergonomic, and the only thing I'm missing is a second monitor. At 12, I eat lunch with my parents. 90% of the time, my laptop is closed by 2:00 PM. Afterwards, I go to the gym. When I'm done, I have around 5 more hours left of my day.

At the beginning of the year, I decided upon using [OneDrive](https://onedrive.live.com/) as my cloud backup solution. OneDrive is more of a cloud *storage* provider, but it can also be used for backups with some simple tweaks! I was originally deciding between [Backblaze](https://www.backblaze.com/), [Dropbox](https://dropbox.com), and [Drive](https://drive.google.com). I wasn't too happy with pricing for the latter two. Backblaze seemed interesting with its "just-backup-everything" approach, but I later chose OneDrive to also get Office 365 for free. One of the problems I immediately ran into was the fact that OneDrive is a storage provider and not a backup provider. OneDrive installs itself into the user folder in Windows. From there, you can just drag and drop any files you want into the OneDrive folder, and it'll automatically be synced with your account. This is simple and seems to work well in most use cases. However, for people who already have their important pictures and files and documents in a preexisting folder hierarchy, this doesn't work well. In addition, if you're like me and have a small `C:\` drive for Windows and one or more large HDDs for storing files, you'll know how nearly impossible it is to just move everything into the OneDrive folder—especially considering that OneDrive is 1TB of storage space!

If you're here often, you may have noticed that I redesigned this website recently! The previous design was created [*six years ago* in 2014](https://www.michaelcheng.us/stuff/9). Here's a slight refresher on how that looked.