Category Archives: Software Tips

How to Fix the VMware Workstation “mksSandbox” Crash (ISBRendererComm Error)

Leave a comment

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 with it. You start it back up, it runs for a bit, then it might crash again. 😢 Very not cool! This happened to me on a Framework Desktop system with AMD CPU, Ubuntu 24.04

Read more Software Tips

How to Remove McAfee WebAdvisor and That Popup on Windows

Leave a comment

TL;DR: To remove McAfee WebAdvisor, uninstall “WebAdvisor by McAfee” from Settings > Apps & features. You have to SCROLL to find it b/c the “Find a setting” search does not filter the app list. Click through the “we’ll miss you” retention popup and you’re done. I just use Windows Defender as it is much less obtrusive and generally very capable. I booted my Lenovo Legion 7 (16ACHG6) for the first time in a while and was greeted with this not

Read more Software Tips

Claude Code Rate exceeded.

Leave a comment

If you are getting “Rate exceeded.” when trying to re-authorize your Claude Code instance, it is probably because Anthropic’s servers are having API/login issues: Specifically, if you haven’t been heavily using Claude and you get kicked out of Claude Code with reauthorization required… for me every time it has been server issues  on anthropic side and the eventually resolve. Still, that is small consolation if you are trying to finish up a project or get work done! Claude has been

Read more Software Tips

Claude Project Instructions: Examples & Templates (2026)

Leave a comment

TL;DR: Claude project instructions tell Claude how to behave inside a specific project. Here’s a starter template you can paste right now: Customize the bracketed parts for your workflow. That template covers 80% of what most people need. The rest of this post gives you more examples and explains when project instructions are the right tool vs. profile preferences. If you’re looking for Claude’s account-wide custom instructions (the ones that apply to every conversation), that’s a different feature. I have

Read more Software Tips

Quicken Categorizing Downloaded Transactions Incorrectly? Here’s the Real Fix.

Leave a comment

TL;DR: Quicken’s auto-categorization guesses categories based on payee names and often gets them wrong. The fix: disable auto-categorization in Preferences, then set up Renaming Rules and Memorized Payee List entries so Quicken categorizes based on your explicit rules instead of its own guessing. Takes about 60 seconds per vendor. The Problem If you use Quicken Classic for Windows to manage your finances, you’ve probably run into this: you download transactions from your bank, and Quicken helpfully assigns categories to them.

Read more Software Tips

Claude AI Custom Instructions: A Real Example That Actually Works

4 comments

TL;DR: Here’s a custom Claude instruction that works well for most people: *Just a note about the “unlimited resources“, Claude tends to UNDER estimate what it is capable of, and maybe even what you are capable of. Like when it estimates a task will take 4-10 hours or multiple days of sessions and then proceeds to knock it out in a few minutes. SO, sometimes it helps to be a bit aspirational in your instructions. 💪💪 Why this works: Claude

Read more AI, computer tips, programming, Software Tips

CTRL+V to paste images & screenshots not working in Claude Code? [SOLVED]

8 comments

So this took me a minute to realize, and if it saves even one person some frustration, it’s worth a post. I’m working in Claude Code, trying to paste a screenshot or image like I can in VS Code with Claude Extension:CTRL+V… nothing.Try again. Nothing.Different image. Still nothing. A few thoughts are running through my head? Turns out… nope. I was just using the wrong shortcut. The magic combo is: ALT + V After which you should see something beautiful

Read more Software Tips, tech tips

Getting Z-Image-Turbo Working in RuinedFooocus (AI)

Leave a comment

Getting Z-Image-Turbo Working in RuinedFooocus (The Settings That Actually Matter) If you’ve been following AI image generation tech, you’ve probably heard about Z-Image-Turbo: a 6 billion parameter model from Alibaba’s Tongyi MAI team that’s been making waves. It generates photorealistic images with impressive prompt adherence, runs on consumer GPUs with ~10-16GB VRAM, and does it all in just 8 steps. Pretty wild stuff! 🔥 I’ve been testing it in RuinedFooocus and wanted to share some tips because, spoiler alert, the

Read more Software Tips
« Older Entries