This post is mainly for me, so that when I consider switching, I can look at it and see where the pain points are (at least for me)

Everything works for me on both platforms.

IPhone

– iMessages and FaceTime are proprietary, so I have to remember to turn off
– In CarPlay, for whatever reason, the phone responds more consistently than Android Auto
– WhatsApp backs up to iCloud, so if I go back to Android, I lose the messages in WhatsApp, even though they are backed up.
Haven’t found a way to back up to Google Cloud instead,at least on iPhone.

Android

– I can originate and reply to text messages in the browser. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.
Bad because it is a security risk. Good, because I am most frequently at my computer, and it makes it
very easy/convenient to reply to text messages. This is the main feature that brings me back to Android.
– In Android Auto, my phone frequently doesn’t respond to ‘Hey, Google.’ Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.
Inconsistent. Mostly works, but when it doesn’t it’s a major pain, as I rely on it when I am in the car.
– WhatsApp backs up to Google Drive, so I can’t restore if I move back to iPhone.

For now, I’ve decided (painfully) to stick with iPhone. For now.

I believe the tiny house experience was a roaring success.

We found that we could live in a tiny space.
We found things we would need to change in order for that to work, but it is doable.
We loved where the tiny house was located, on a small ‘lake’ in a Thousand Trails campground.

Will we go tiny moving forward?

Great question.

I priced out a tiny house that would work for us. $114,000. Including delivery.

I want it to be on a piece of land, maybe 5-10 acres in size. So add $50-$100k above the $114k price. Plus the cost to install utilities.

Might not be a feasible idea. But, it was a grand experiment, and I believe we will be back. I’d like to go back for a week or so. Mainly because it would be nice to relax for a week and not have to worry about anything, including rushing back to ‘civilization.’

Probably next year. We shall see.

I do recommend this place. Was a great experience and a quiet getaway.

Leaveworth Tiny House Village Leavenworth, WA

We are spending the next couple of days in a 250 square foot tiny home in Leavenworth, Washington. It has a small ground floor, with a bathroom, a kitchen, and a great room.
The upstairs has a king size bed and a double bed.

Would it work for us long term, full time?

I’m not sure. I think we could, given a few changes.

I need a space to work.
Laurie needs a space to use her computer.
I think the bathroom is fine, but she’s not so sure it is big enough.
This is day one.
We will see.

I’ll have video and pictures when we get home.

2020 has been quite the year for car shows. 99% of the have been cancelled.

But this morning, I got up early and drove to Olympia to the 2020 Northwest Chevrolet C10 show at Cricket Field.

Lots of trucks. Lots of “other” cars/trucks as well. People were distanced, but friendly. Good time had by all.

Nice to get out and see friendly faces. I’ve been to shows where people aren’t very friendly (ahem, Corvette owners, I’m looking at you), but this show, like my favorite show, the Jeep Show at XXX Drive-In in Issaquah, these people were very friendly.

A few photos you might enjoy.

2020 C10 Show

For the past several years, after the demise of my beloved Lumia 1520 phone which ran Windows 10 Mobile, I have been using an iPhone. But it isn’t really my favorite, given some of the issues I have had, both with it’s usage of iCloud and just some other random weirdness.

For the past month, I have been using a Galaxy Note 8, which is an Android phone. It does almost everything that the iPhone does, minus two things. Plus, it allows me to do text messaging from my computer. Which I can do on the iPhone, but only if I have a Mac. Which I do not have.

It’s been an experience making the switch. Because I had used iPHone for so long, many of my contacts only sent me messages using iMessage. So I had to deregister my iMessage which was tied to my phone number.

For me, it’s been working almost flawlessly, and I am 95% sure I will stay with the Android platform.

Time will tell.

2020 has been a strange year. It started out with my father passing away from lymphoma. Then, in March, my mother-in-law passed away suddenly from (what we believe) was a stroke caused by dementia.

Not to be outdone, as we entered into April, the world was struck by this election year’s virus, Coronavirus. As that was winding down at the end of May/early June, we had a stupid cop kill a black man in Minneapolis.

The protests began. Not to be outdone by protests, people decided that rioting and looting would be a great idea.

Now, in June, some cities are talking about defunding the police. While the government is trying to remove our 2nd amendment rights. Seems like those two things are counter-intuitive. If we don’t have the police, we should be allowed, via the 2nd amendment, to keep and bear arms to protect ourselves.

Facebook has become a cess pool, where you aren’t able to voice your opinion without someone bitching that you are wrong.

Oh well. I’m off Facebook, except to post for my company, which I rarely do, but I do sometimes.

It’s ok 2020. I’m tired. I’m frustrated. We need to be allowed to get back to our lives. Enough is enough.

I have an iPhone XR. I used it for quite a while, and use it extensively (hands free) with CarPlay when in my car.
I also have an Apple Music subscription. But they don’t play well together. Normally, I should be able to use the following command to play a song from Apple Music:

Hey Siri, play Hurricane by the Band of Heathens.

But the iPhone tells me that I need to be connected to wifi or cellular data in order to make that happen. The trouble is, I *am* connected to cellular data when issuing the command.

I also have an Google Pixel 2 XL, which is an Android phone. My car also has Android Auto built in, as well as Carplay.

I issue the command:

Hey Google, ask Apple Music to play Hurricane by the Band Of Heathens.

Starts playing immediately.

I just find it interesting that Apple Music plays better with an Android phone than an iPhone.

Everybody it seems is using Zoom now to do online video meetings. I’d never used it until today, when a former classmate set up a Zoom meeting for our class from 1984 to get together for a virtual ‘drink hour.’

Except Zoom failed miserably. It seemed to change passwords, and not allow people to log in successfully, and it just didn’t work well.

Thankfully, I had set up a Jitsi server (www.jitsi.org) as a test, because I had read so much about Zoom’s security issues, I wanted to see if there was an alternative that I could use for my own ‘online video meetings.’

That worked, after a few little hiccups.

It was nice to reconnect with Erica Webber, Jack Govern, Leslie Bray, Loralee Trujillo-Cortese, Mark Jensen, and Tim , who I don’t actually think was in our class.

But I’m old, I probably forgot him.

Thanks guys. Was nice catching up.

On the 8th of February of this year, I went to have what I thought was a boil looked at that was on my neck. Initially, I went to my normal local family care center. But it quickly (after an hour wait) became apparent that I had something that was “above their pay grade” and had to be sent to the local hospital emergency room.

After waiting there for a few hours (patience is a virtue when you are a patient), it was determined that my hydrocephalic shunt and drain had become infected and needed to be evaluated by a neurological surgeon.

Since my local hospital doesn’t have neurological surgeons, I was sent to downtown Seattle to a hospital that had one on staff. There, it was determined that I would need to have surgery to remove the infected shunt and shunt drain.

All well and good. But I had planned for a two to three hour visit at the local clinic. Not a six day hospital stay. Silly me. I had a fully charged phone when I started the day, but by the end of the day, things were looking a little grim on the power front.

Suffice it to say, after I was paroled from the hospital, I decided to build a small bag of pieces that I could easily carry with me at all times that would allow me to keep my phone charged.

– First, on the advice of a world traveling friend, I picked up a power bank
– Next, because you can never have too many cables, I picked up a three pack of braided lightning cables since I currently use an iPhone XR.
– Third, I picked up a wall charger in case I had access to a wall outlet but my power brick wasn’t charged.
– Lastly, I picked up a few micro usb cables, in case someone was with me who needed juice as well but didn’t have a charger with them. Always try to remember others and it was an inexpensive purchase

Today, I realized it would be good to have something to tote this all around in, so I picked up a travel case organizer to keep it all organized and together.

I will keep this in my car, and should I run into a situation where, like above, I’m stuck somewhere unexpectedly, I will have power and be able to help those around me.