I just figured out why my iPhone’s Face ID wasn’t working last night.
It’s my glasses.
I have two pairs of glasses. All through the work day today I was wearing my computer use glasses and Face ID worked every time. After work I switched to my regular use glasses and it failed. Huh. I took the glasses off and it worked. I put the glasses back on and it failed.
SONOFABITCH!!!!
ADDENDUM: I cleaned the lenses on my general use glasses and Face ID works again. Whatdayaknow.
I was up early this morning and had some chores to do. Between taking the trash barrels to the street and going up and down the stairs to do laundry (the avalanche of Bellana clothes are finally folded and put away) I somehow managed to register 10 minutes of exercise without even having done any actual exercise. The activity app is off to a good start today.
I’m not sure what was going on, but the FaceID on my iPhone stopped working last night. It was working before I started cooking dinner but I noticed it wasn’t working just after we finished eating. Weird. It didn’t work once for the rest of the day. Right now? Working fine. I’m not sure what happened.
Today is my sister’s birthday. Being facebook free, I sent her a text instead of a post on facebook. I hope that is acceptable. I’m not sure what the protocol is anymore.
Speaking of facebook (giggles), that was kinda fun yesterday. Sure, it pulled the nazis over to Twitter for a while, but I managed to avoid all of that and just have fun reading the faux panic. Sounds like Zuckerberg lost about six billion dollars in stock value. I assume most of that was due to the 60 Minutes story Sunday night, but whatever. It’s all connected to his wallet one way or another. Granted it was just stock value, right? He’ll probably make it back today. It’s not like it’s real money or anything. It’s not like he’s going to need to take a second mortgage to pay his bills.
Okay, time to go to work. We need to get through the day so that we can focus all of our attention on the Red Sox beating the Yankees tonight. It’s a moral imperative. 8:00pm tonight, or thereabouts, we finally get payback for that friggin one game playoff back in ’78. Sure we beat them in 2004 and handed them the most humiliating playoff loss in major league baseball history (giggles), but still… I want one game playoff revenge. Suck it, Bucky Dent.
I was able to sneak into the cellar and play the guitar twice today.
I got a lot done for 50/90, which was nice, but I reached the point on the second go-round where my hands just wouldn’t do it anymore. That’s actually not a bad thing. I really need to build up more stamina, but I’ll get there.
On a gear note, I have my little recording nook in the master bedroom that has my current recording pedal board and my little 15 watt Fender amp. My big use-with-the-band pedal board and my Vox 15 watt amp (and my 30 watt Fender amp) are all in the cellar because Covid was slowing down and I thought they would be traveling to Mike the Bass Player’s house soon… and of course that hasn’t happened because the universe has intervened. The upside is I could set all of that stuff up in the cellar to keep working on 50/90 while I’m locked out of my bedroom. I bring my new Les Paul and my MacBook Pro up and down with me, as there is no way in hell those puppies are staying down there in the humidity. I set everything up far away from the flood zone, but you may note from the previous pictures that none of the electrical stuff is actually on the floor. The pedal board is, but the pedals themselves are not. That’s for flood damage prevention reasons.
So that is what I am doing to keep 50/90 going this week.
I also wanted to start with the exercising again. I started a couple of weeks ago and then fell off the wagon. I wanted to start up again today, what with it being a Monday and the iPhone Activity app starting its week on Monday. Jen wanted to do the same thing and she totally kicked ass all day today. Me? I was at two minutes of exercise as of 7:00pm tonight. Looked like I was going to fail for the day. Well, screw that folks. I’m up to 17 minutes now with 3.5 hours left in the day. I’ll get to 30 minutes, you betcha.
Okay. I need to go get a bottle of water and do another few minutes of exercise.
Looking for the bright side of self isolation. It’s tough to find, but it might be out there. Probably not, but maybe I might be able to pretend.
First of all, my wife today referred to our basement as Lake Asshole without me prompting her. It is true, this stupid blog is corrupting people left and right. Insert maniacal laugh here.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled post:
One year ago today I posted a picture that I took with my iPhone. It marked the completion of the Flickr Photo a Day Challenge thing. 366 days (2020 was a leap year) with at least one photo. Success. I had tried that challenge a bunch of times and crashed and burned each time.
The next day (one year ago tomorrow) I still took another picture. The day after that I did it again. I wasn’t planning on doing another photo a day thing, it was just Covid-19 pandemic-land and I had to keep my locked down self entertained somehow, right? A few days into September there was a day where I did not take a still photo, but I did take a video of the cat doing something. Eventually I created an album on Flickr called “Not Doing a 365, but…”
Well… assuming that one video counts for a 365 project (notice I didn’t call it a photo a day this time, that’s a technicality, but it’s my project so I make the damn rules so blah), I just completed the 365 I wasn’t actually doing. That picture of the two wheel dolly I posted earlier? Yeah, that was the pic for day 365. So not only have I completed a photo a day thing after trying and failing over and over again so many times… I’ve now done it twice without a break in between. It’s not a 366 or a 365, it is a 731….
….and counting.
September 1, 2019 through August 31, 2021.
Good heavens, what a nerd!
Happy August 1st, everyone! August doesn’t have a national holiday so this year I am going to try and make it feel better by acting like every day is an extra big deal. No I’m not. I’m just so happy that July and its constant rain is over. Granted, August might get constant rain too, likely will thanks to climate change, but for this one, sweet, shining morning, August is dry and I am happy about it.
I wore a mask at my mother’s house yesterday. Not all the time, just when I knew she was near me. We are both vaccinated, but she ain’t catching jack shit from me. The MA department of public health is recommending vaccinated people wear masks when they are indoors with other people around because we can’t tell who the morons who aren’t vaccinated are and if they aren’t going to do anything to protect their own health, then we the vaccinated have to do it for them. Because they are stupid. Because they are morons.
Thanks to the never ending pandemic of the unvaccinated we are still using instacart for groceries and they screwed up big time today. We had to go back for a second round. All in all I am happy for the service, they are right a crazy high percentage of the time, but every once in a while… We asked for hamburger patties and got pumpernickel bread. Riiiiight.
What else is going on on this fine Sunday morning in August that hasn’t seen any rain yet? I broke the music mold a smidgen today. We slept kinda late. Not super late, I was up at about 8:15, but for me that’s pretty late. I wanted to do some car music but the aforementioned instacart delivery was on its way, and I had some things I wanted to do before I left so I didn’t get into the car until almost 10:00. I do my car music in a movie theater parking lot, and due to the idiotic decision to re-open the state despite the never ending pandemic mentioned in the previous paragraph, the movie theater was going to be open at 10:00. I rolled the dice. I park in the back parking lot so hopefully anyone going in early to catch the delta variant and a movie would probably park in the front. My risk paid off.
I did park in a different area of the lot though. I recorded four songs. There were two technical problems but neither stopped me. First, I use Trello to track my progress. The songs I needed to work on are on a list called Complete Lyrics/Melody on a board called 2021 50/90. My normal workflow is to bring up the Trello app on my iPhone and use that to let me know which songs to work on. The last couple of times I’ve done this though, the iOS app wouldn’t refresh. It’s showing me the board from about two weeks ago. Nothing is up to date. I had to turn my iPhone hot spot on and bring it up on the Mac. That is annoying as all hell.
The second technical problem wasn’t a problem but I would have had I kept going. The temperature outside was in the mid-70’s but the sun was out and shining bright and damn if it didn’t get roasting hot in that car. I’d open the windows but then people would be able to hear me “singing” and ain’t no way that’s happening. About halfway through my little “session” the Mac’s fan kicked on and it never shut off. I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to go before it started to overheat but “fortunately” my voice ran out of gas after about an hour and I had to stop.
I did manage to finish four songs. That’s one more than I had planned. I had three songs with the guitars finished and I wanted to pick those off. I also had six songs with lyrics and melodies already written that don’t have guitars yet. A couple of those have MIDI guitar tracks acting as place holders. I did one of those.
So the plans for the rest of today include, but are not limited to, cutting some grass, recording some guitar parts, having a cookout for dinner (weather permitting, of course, though July is over so the weather will be glorious), and hanging out with my step son who only has a few weeks left before he moves to college.
Of course, as I type out that to do list I am sitting at my computer reading twitter, making fun of creationists, and thinking that it would be really nice to just sit and watch movies with Harry and Jen all day. That might be the better to do list.
Welcome to August, may it stay sunny and dry. Good luck, folks!
It’s been quiet here tonight. Dad has been okay. He hasn’t gotten out of bed which is good for my stress level but not so good for his recovery. He needs to get some strength back in his legs and staying in bed is not going to get him there. I’ll see if I can coax him up during the odd coffee break tomorrow.
My mother was in a lot of pain when I got here, but after her last round of meds she went to bed and has been sleeping soundly ever since.
I got a jump on the work day by setting up my computer and everything I need for tomorrow tonight. The last blog post was written on my MacBook while sitting in the living room. This one is being written on my work issued HP while sitting at the workspace in the dining room. That cheap little USB fan is running and as always it is glorious.
I still need to set up my CPAP machine in the living room. I will have to do it in the dark as dad is in there sleeping. I’ve heard the odd snore, so he’s definitely asleep. Mostly I am sitting here writing this because I am waiting for my iPhone and my Apple Watch to charge before I turn in. On previous trips here I would setup a power strip near the couch I sleep on and plug everything in there. It’s not easy to do now as we had a hospital bed setup in that room yesterday and all of the places I would sit things on while they charged have been replaced with piles and piles of stuff. I don’t want to sit a power strip or a laptop on top of that stuff as I’m not sure if any of it might be a fire hazard or not. Shoot me for being extra cautions. So now I’ll just use one plug for the CPAP machine and keep my phone next to the machine with an alarm set. Of all the times I’ve been here over the last couple of months, I have never actually needed the alarm. I’ve always managed to be up long before it goes off. That’s not necessarily a good thing.
I thought about trying to write a little music while I sit here waiting. I have the MacBook and GarageBand with me after all. No… I can’t get into it. I feel too uncomfortable with headphones on.
Okay. I am going to start the turning in process now. Wish me luck.
When I’m working at home I like to stream audio from my iPad to the HomePods in my bedroom office via AirPlay. Podcasts, music, sometimes radio, whatever.
The exception is baseball games. The MLB app for iOS lets you stream radio broadcasts for every game from every team’s local broadcast. If I use the speakers in my iPad it generally works all right. If I stream it to the HomePods… Not so much.
I set the iPad to AirPlay to the HomePods, then I open the app and connect to the Red Sox, WEEI broadcast and it doesn’t stream. It plays through the iPad speakers. Why? It also screws up the user interface so that switching back to the iPad (even though it’s actually coming through the iPad speakers) isn’t easy to do. You have to do a couple of extra swipes and taps before you can reconnect to the actual device that is already working.
A few process kills and a reboot and some magic tricks and eventually I get the app playing through the HomePods. Except that it isn’t. Instead of the live radio broadcast, which was streaming fine a second ago, it is playing television highlights from NESN. When I switch to the Boston Spanish broadcast it’s fine. When I switch to the opposing team’s radio broadcast it seems fine, when I switch back to the WEEI stream it’s NESN again.
I switch from my iPad to my iPhone and everything works fine. Thanks a pant load, MLB.
I completely missed everything from the last Apple event. There has been too much real life going on and not enough money to spend on gadgets anyway, so I didn’t go out of my way to find out the scoop.
My step son and my wife though, they are up to date. So much so that Harry’s four pack of Air Tags just arrived. It’s pretty cool. They are like Tile tags except they work within the iOS Find My app. You can make them beep and they can show up in the Find My map and they have a cool function where when you’re close it has a proximity thing that will put an arrow on your iPhone screen and point you in the right direction.
Pretty cool. I might get one for my keys and maybe one for my wallet. Granted, I don’t know if I’ve ever lost my keys or my wallet before but now that I have written the previous sentence it’s a guarantee that if I don’t get a pack of Air Tags I’m gonna lose everything.
>sign<
The ghost of Steve Jobs says, “jump, fat boy!” and this fat boy asks how high.
Our good friends at Federal Express dropped off a package today. It contained a shiny new series five Apple Watch to replace my shiny old series five Apple Watch. As I type this it is loading a backup file and pairing to my iPhone. I should have had a restore file from last week but the most recent one it offered me was from New Year’s Eve, four months ago. What’s up with that?
The battery was at about 60% when I took it out of the box. It’s on the charger now and it looks like it’s working. If the battery is in fact charging, then this should be the end of my Apple Watch journey. The pocket watch journey is still waiting on Amazon to bring me batteries. Tomorrow, I think.
Sleep was better last night. I went to bed ridiculously early. I was out cold by 9:30 or so. My AppleWatch says I woke up a couple of times but I only remember one. I was awake a bit before the Roomba kicked off its ride. I was sitting up and the cat jumped up and sat with me. As soon as Roomba made a noise though, she practically dove under the bed.
I managed a little more than eight hours of sleep. The heart rate dip wasn’t very high but it was okay. The restful sleep was also a bit less than I’d hoped but it too was okay. Much better than the hour and a half from two nights ago.
Here’s hoping my brain works a little better today than it did the last couple of days.
On a mostly unrelated note, I hung my AppleWatch on the charger next to my bed when I woke up this morning. It lit up green to show it was charging. It stayed there while I did my morning routine. When I was done I put it on again and the battery was at 48%. Huh. I put it on the charger on my desk and once again it lit up green. Then a minute later it prompted me for my passcode. Huh… not charging again. I tried again and it stayed connected. It’s up to about 75% now. My iPhone had a charger hiccup the other day too. Is this a trend? I can’t go to the Apple Store without a vaccine. This had best not become a thing.
