I awoke yesterday morning with a drippy nose and I’ve been sneezing. Got a headache and the hint of a sore throat, too. I’m not sure if it’s allergies (which have been nasty-bad this year – something about the late start to spring got the flora out there all riled up – it’s astounding how the weeds started growing the past three weeks or so). This sucks – I hope it goes away – but at least I’m off today and can work from home tomorrow. Since I got all the requisite chores done over the weekend, all I really need to do today is laundry. Good thing, ‘cuz after a rather bright sunny weekend, it’s looking dark out there right now and they say we could have some heavy rain and t-storms moving in. So I guess I’ll be spending some time with a dog panting hot wet dog breath all over me. I Maybe it’s like this every year, I dunno. Perhaps winter gives me amnesia.
Some good news over the weekend. We’ve been down a cat for several weeks now, and I was frankly beginning to suspect that she’d found a better place to live (or, as my mother-in-law so reassuringly suggested, “maybe she was eaten by wild animals”). She’s been gone for several days before, and she developed an infatuation with one of the nieghbor cats and was hangin out over there for while last year, but she’d never been gone this long before. I thought maybe she’d gone to hang out with Boomer. But then she showed up on Friday night looking kinda bony but otherwise no worse for wear. She’s mostly been lying around, plotting her next big adventure.
So last week I got my new iPhone from work, and I’ve had a chance to play around with it, add a solid glass screen protector and a Spigen case for it (I get a kick out of the way that all the iPhone cases have a cutout for no useful purpose other than to display the silly little Apple logo on the back – I guess it’s not about the phone, it’s about the branding).
Anyhow, there are things I like about it, things I don’t like, and things I feel decidedly “meh” about.
So what do I like? I like the fingerprint scanner to unlock the phone. It seems to work really well, and I can push the button with my thumb and just leave it there until the phone unlocks. It’s pretty sweet. Not that entering a PIN is all that difficult. I also like the camera.
The phone is slightly taller than the 4s, slightly thinner, and slightly lighter. I only wish I could get taller, thinner, and lighter as I get older.
It has the “lightning” connector, meaning all the old 30-pin stuff I had (dock, charger) went to the wife for her work iPhone. I mean, it’s nice that it’s reversible and all that, but I can get a micro USB cable for next to nothing (not that I need one, because I have a shitload of them). The EU is enacting legislation that says all chargers for phones and tablets have to be standard – micro USB – by three years from now. It would be nice if the US would do the same thing.
I mean, imagine if every manufacturer of electric devices had proprietary connectors. So if you buy an LG refrigerator or an LG teevee, you need to install an LG outlet. And maybe the LG outlet is nice because you can plug it in upside down or rightside up or whatever.
But you decide to switch to a Samsung when it’s time to replace that fridge ‘cuz costs less and has more features (plus a microSD card slot). Or maybe you decide to stick with LG, but guess what? Their latest generation of appliances use a different kind of plug. So you either have to change the outlet or buy an adapter (which you have to pay out the ass for, because anybody who produces it has to license it from LG).
I’d take fiddling around to plug the cord in a certain way over having to get new cord every time I change devices.
I also don’t like the fact that I can’t change the default keyboard (or browser, for that matter) on the iPhone. I’ve become a big fan of Swiftkey, and even the Google keyboard is better than the Apple one. Supposedly that will change with iOS 8.
Most everything else with the phone is “meh.” Basically the same as it ever was. I can’t change the launcher (can I?) and I can’t just tap it twice to get to the lock screen or use any other gestures that I’ve started to get used to on the other phone. I can’t flip to mute it, I can’t just pick it up and put it to my ear to answer it, and I can’t just pick it up in landscape mode with the volume buttons on top and have the camera turn on.
No major gripes, really, and now that I have another phone, I haven’t bothered to set up all the stuff I used to have. Except for Evernote, and maybe LastPass, but I really don’t intend to use it for more than looking at my work e-mail and answering work-related calls. And it’s certainly good enough for that.
Ah, here comes the rain….
Our pet deer has babies!
Bloody fawners! Likely the spawn of some young buck long gone who will expect to live off of the rest of youse.
I hope so. It’s better than having them become orphans when some asshole
shoots their mother in November.
I haven’t been in the mood lately to type much, so today I figured I’d hammer-out a line or two.
Yesterday, I went to the local Rite-Aid and grabbed some non-prescription allergy medication. It was a new product from Mucinex that I ended-up getting. There were two packages side by side that had two different tablet counts but with the same price. I figured that was a little weird and grabbed the package with the higher count. I’m no genius – obviously – but I knew what the better deal was.
So I get back to my car and tear open the box and find that the tablets are gigantic. Like, I had to question myself whether or not I could swallow the things whole or if I’d have to break them in half. I figured I could manage swallowing it but it wasn’t pleasant. The zyrtec tablets I’m use to are so small that if you drop them there’s a good chance you’re not going to find them without looking for a few moments or longer. With the Indian based Mucinex, you won’t have that problem.
I’m on day two of the new allergy tablets, and I hope by the end of the week my sinuses start to feel a little better and my eyes become a little clearer.
http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/rise-and-rave-1.1852822
OK, I don’t wanna hear any more bitchin’ (at least not if you live around here).
Google Now FAIL! Got a “What to Watch” card tonight suggesting I’d like to watch “The O’Reilly Factor” because it’s “similar” to Real Time with Bill Maher.
Ha!
Robert Reich has an opinion piece over at Bill Moyers’ site re: Walgreen’s desire to move its corporate HQ to Switzerland to avoid paying US taxes, and why, if they do that, they shouldn’t be allowed to use their money to influence US elections.
One of the comments on the story reads:
Does that make any kind of sense to any of y’all out there. Is it one of these “if you put the punctuation in it makes sense” things? Like that that is is that that is not is not is that it it is?
‘Cuz I can’t figger out where to put my periods and commas and whatnots.
Also, John Kerry took my shoe.
Oh, the shame. I replied to the comment above with “Auf Englisch, bitte.” Whis is German for, “in English, please.” And the Moyers people deleted both my comment, and the original comment.
The Moyers comment policy is:
Was I bad? Was that a personal attack on my part? It was intended to be humorous, not offensive. Also, why delete the original comment (being incoherent doesn’t seem to be against policy).
I feel so dirty.
Perhaps it is Ms. Word Salad Palin who posted that. It certainly sounds like her.
PJ, are you and Granny alright? I saw you had a tornado tonight???
Hoping to see a Wednesday check-in soon.
Yeah, we had a bit of weather roll through last night. Didn’t do much where we’re at, but a tornado killed four people and wiped out some houses and lots of people were (and are) without power. Lots of trees down in places. All I had to deal with was a terrified dog but fortunately it didn’t last long and it wasn’t in the middle of the night so I didn’t have him sitting on my chest and panting.
I was sitting outside and had my phone in my pocket, when all of a sudden I heard the “emergency warning” tone coming from someplace, and then the tornado warning. I couldn’t figure out where the hell it was coming from at first. I had no idea my phone did that.
Where I work, the power went out moments after I got to work this morning. It came back on at 1:00, but by then I’d gotten tired of waiting and came home. So I get to finish out my late night working at home – a good deal, really.
So glad you all avoided being hit. The government sends those warnings on your phone, I do believe. We get them here, too. We had an amazing pelting rain shower with more lightening and thunder than I’ve ever seen/heard before. Lightening hit right next to our house. Three houses in the metro area burned down early this morning from lightening strikes. There wasn’t much wind, which is a bit unusual. Pj’s pups would not have been happy with the noise. When it storms, our little guy goes under our covers and is perfectly content. The others don’t seem to notice.
Yeah. Sadly, two of the people killed were a 35 year old woman and her 4 month old baby. Any deaths are sad, of course, but when an infant is killed, well, it’s that much worse. I’m sure “god” had its reasons, though.
Storms are unfortunately indiscriminate. It is very sad. Not sure how folks handle that loss.