Broken infinity
Wall art from a local cafe
I’ve been using this set of questions for a couple of years now and find them quite beneficial. Thought it would be worth re-posting them in advance of the NY.
Sunset
My wife and I dumped, I mean left, our kids with my MIL and have taken a short drive for a night away. We’re not even doing anything special but it sure is a nice treat! 🥃
I bought our son 7 Wonders Duel, a card-style game for two, as one of his Christmas board games. We’ve played two times so far and each won once. This game lives up to its strong reputation - it’s a blast to play.
Thanks to my lovely wife, I am now the happy owner of a second HomePod. I’m adding it to my study so I’ll have a pair set up for stereo. 🎶
Merry Christmas to all 🎄! Best wishes for some golden moments and Happy Hanukkah to those celebrating that holiday this week.
Globes
From the local coffee shop
I suppose I am the only person who wishes the MacBook Pro had a pre-heat feature for those really cold mornings of lap usage 🥶
Based on my time at Best Buy today, having them fix their battery replacement on my iPhone X, AirPods are a huge success as gifts. I saw a ton of people picking them up from the pre-purchase desk. Apple Watches were a distant second. Don’t think I saw 2 of anything else.
Updated: Analysis of Best Buy vs Apple for in warranty iPhone repair 📱
Now that the nearest Apple Store is 1.5 hours away, round trip, I decided to try Best Buy’s authorized service to do an in-warranty replacement of my iPhone X battery. The Best Buy is about 5 minutes away so it would save a ton of drive time.
It took the guy that waited on me 45 minutes from the time he started until he finished checking in my phone for the repair. This doesn’t include any time in line. Other staff seemed more competent.
The good news is they completed the repair in the estimated time window of 3 hours. The bad news is that I noticed after getting home the case and screen aren’t fitted together properly. The bottom left corner of the screen is elevated above the case. I imagine this means the water resistance is non-existent now.
I really don’t want to give up my phone for another half day but I don’t think I have any choice but to return and hope they can get it right on the second try. If so I will still probably have saved on drive time but at the cost of heightened annoyance. I don’t think I’d trust them with a phone again.
Update: I returned to the store today and of course the same guy that faced so much trouble checking me in was at the counter. But by luck and much more competent woman became available. She got me checked in immediately, walked the phone to the back, and returned to tell me they would have it fixed in about 15 minutes. True to their word they did and the phone is back to normal. I had been afarid I’d have to leave it again so I was quite relieved to be in and out in under 30 minutes.
The battery in my iPhone X has entered the “degraded” stage and needs to be replaced. Since the nearest Apple stores are fairly distant I’m going to try using Best Buy (arranged by Apple). Hopefully I won’t regret this - but a battery replacement seems easy enough. 📱
This is great news for home automation, and something I did not expect to see. These 3 companies rarely cooperate.
Google, Amazon and Apple (plus others) have created Connected Home Over IP, a new working group managed by the Zigbee Alliance
Over the past few days I setup a S3 Glacier bucket as an offsite backup for our Mac and Windows machines. It was quite easy to do with the Arq app. A digital insurance policy.
Lovely sky while out exercising today. ☀️ ⛅️ 📷
Lazy Dog.
Missing Someone
Haven’t posted a photo from this local indie coffee shop in a long time. ☕️ 📷
Duino Coffee.
I ran into a weird problem on our 6+ year old iMac. I got through to an Apple Support agent with no waiting and she spent almost 2 hours trying fixes but ultimately had to escalate. Getting this kind of free support on a way-out-of-warranty device warms my heart. 🖥
I’m thinking about setting up iDrive of Arq+S3 Glacier to provide a “last resort” offsite backup of my files.
N.B. I have multiple backups.
I’ve been lifting a lot of fairly heavy items for the past week. Tonight my aging back is strongly suggesting I cease-and-desist for awhile.
Today’s achievement: successfully renewing my driver’s license which had to be done in person this time. Stood in a line outside the office, waiting to get in, for an hour and then waited inside for another hour and a half. At least the weather was good.
First thing I did on our new Sony was not enable networking
Beyond the risk that your TV manufacturer and app developers may be listening and watching you, that television can also be a gateway for hackers to come into your home,” The FBI warns.
On the plus side we were able to remove our 52” LCD from it’s wall mount (80 pounds!) and install a 65” LCD. A bit of a trick because we only have 1” to spare on all 4 sides of the new TV. The bad news is our 6 year old A/V gear can’t handle 4K HDR. Time for a new receiver. 📺
Today’s word, integrate, brought to mind the Micro.blog community and the efforts to be welcoming and provide equality of voice. Diversity must increase but I think the opportunity is here and I appreciate the efforts to date. #mbnov