respublica

Just one more piece of technology

Dale is one of the speakers at a Lutheran district convention this week and when he called this morning he surprised me with a new idea. He is interested in us getting Apple watches. Now this came out of no where and I am not especially thrilled by the idea. It seems to me to be just one more thing that has to be always with us, but worse, one more thing that has to be set up.

Setting up means finding all the user names and passwords which is a real pain. But even more I wonder how much I'd like to be looking at a small display. I know people who have them and they are using it like an ipad or iphone. They can keep track of everything and everyone by looking at their wrists.

After doing a bit of checking I was surprised to learn that these watch also check fitness levels, heart rates, oxygen rates and even know if you fall. Do I want all this? I just don't know.

Update This

We seem to be in the season when every single app and computer program wants us to update. It's driving us over the edge. Many times I just ignore the "update now" notice because it takes too long and I have to dig around to find the user name and/or password for each one. Then after updating nothing is the same as I was used to.

Today Dale was wasn't able to use his Group Me app which he uses to get together on line with friends who are all base all fans. He was told he needed to update his system but he does not use this on the computer but on his phone. Neither the Group Me app or his phone needed updating. This means we have no idea why he is not able to participate.

As wonderful as computers and iphones are, these update interruptions are a pain.

This has been tech week. Also a garden explostion

For some reason several of our websites, mostly Dale's) had issues which would not let us update or post. It seems like something is going on with regard to changes in security, but the hosts do not make it easy to get things up and running again.

He has a blog which is really not publicized because I keep it to add each day's Meyer Minute he writes so as to keep an archive. This website needed his credit card updated since his had expired. This is normally easy to take care of, but for some reason it just would not do it. Since I take care of this sort of thing for him, I sent in a "ticket" with the problem to the hosting company. Thankfully they remotely fixed this and he's back up and running.

But, there was also an issue with the list server he uses to send out a mass mailing for his Meyer Minute. We have never had a problem with this company in all the many years we've used them. The best thing about Dundee is when you call someone answers the phone immediately. We got that straightened out. It seems the internet is not all that secure anymore so I was given a different way to get on the server.

Dale has also had a heck of a time with his MLB app. It stopped working and if you know Dale, you know he loves baseball and likes to watch White Sox games on his Ipad through MLB. I've emailed them, received a vague response which did not help. So in this case MLB will not work for him.

In other news, our vegetables have really gone crazy. Especially the tomatoes. I have several varieties and they all are producing big time with no bad spots on any of them. It's kind of a miracle. I finished digging the last of the potatoes this week and they are all just as fine looking as the tomatoes.

A gmail issue

We honestly don't know where to find the information we need to get Dale's gmail working. Last night he got out his older ipad while looking for an app he'd downloaded on it. He needed some information he'd highlighted from some book he'd put on this ipad and wanted to email it to himself.

But that device would not accept the currrent gmail password so he changed it.  But, when he got back to his phone and larger/newer ipad, these would not accept the new password.

I haven't found anything from google on what the deal is and how to fix it. He really needs gmail to work on his iphone.  Why is everything so difficult? Why is it working on one device but not the others.

Update one hour later. I finally got his two devices back on gmail. It was trial and error, hunt and peck until I finally got it.

All the updates

Does anyone else get weary of all the programs wanting to do an update? Lately every device I own wants to update. And, if the past is any warning, any update will totally mess how we use our programs.

Basically I ignore these demands for update until the device just goes ahead and does it on its own. And I'm ticked when I find this out. Everything wants user names and passwords...again. Like they don't know what they are.

It's annoying and irritating.

Getting wired

We are spoiled most likely with all of our tech things which keep us in communication quickly. But we learned there are still places which are very underserved by cellular towers, internet etc. And we are in one of those places. When we arrived on Tuesday there was absolutely no way to get ahold of anyone anywhere. No phone service no internet connection. We'd arranged from Collinsville in the weeks ahead of our trip to have a landline scheduled, Dish satellite hooked up and internet.

The problem was those who were to do this work expected (logically) for us to get their emails regarding times of arrival. And of course we did not. So Dale spent a good part of our first afternoon and evening and even the next morning, driving a half hour away to find cell service to answer them. It became exhausting. Spoiled we may be but these days you really need a way to call or email in emergencies.

The Dish guy was right on time the next day and a really fun person to talk to. He got it all up and working and so we at last had tv. The next day came the guy from Dish who hooked up the internet which meant another one of those Dish things on the roof.

We have not heard from the local phone company about that service although we got a bill. They aren't too efficient here with that kind of thing judging by the crazy emails from the office. So phone calls are kind of iffy right now but having internet helps with that.

Funny thing is, well not funny, but yesterday saw a lot of rain and wind. Of course the Dish TV went out and is still out. We've heard this happens a lot. But the internet dish right next to it is still working, thank goodness or I wouldn't be writing this.

We will get used to a different way of going about our time here including a 25 minute drive to any grocery store.

Freeing up space

I was checking my iPhone this morning to see how much usable memory I had and how much I'd used and from what. I don't do this as often as I should and freeing up space does help the phone run better. I knew some things take up more space than others, but it still comes as as surprise to learn just what they are.

Text messages take an inordinate amount of your phones memory. Some apps do the same.

Here is where I began today:

I'd used 37 gigabytes out of 64 available. A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes.

 

Here are the biggest apps users of memory. It's amazing how much space texts take up.

After about 15 minutes of deleting some texts, apps I see how the numbers changed. Oddly I believed photos would be the biggest space hogs, but no. I have many more texts and photos to go through and delete later today so much more space should be free.

Where oh where have my messages gone?

What day is this? Ok, Tuesday. Well, sometime Sunday I realized I wasn't getting text messages on my iPad. They were coming in fine on my iPhone, but stopped on the iPad. This has never happened before and I have no idea why. I've googled this, but the answers are mostly nonsense, at least to me. But I did make sure both the phone and pad were connected to the iCloud. I haven't messed with any of that, the texts just stopped showing up on the ipad and I use that more often during the day than my phone.

Now what I see at the bottom of the messages is a notice that iCloud is downloading messages. But it never finishes, the download bar stays about 3/4's of the way and why all of a sudden shouldn't they just appear as always. I get a fair share of texts during the day from our kids and from Dale and other family members so this annoys me.

It's not the end of the world but the mystery bothers me.

What a morning

Yesterday Dale went out and bought a new secondary monitor after his original one died. He needs two for the work he's doing and especially for all the zoom/adobe connect online virtual meetings he is a part of. Well, he could not get the new monitor to connect to the computer. Nothing like a tech problem in the early morning when he has a virtual meeting at 10. I went down to his basement office and tried my best to see if I could connect them, but no.

So I called my sister (a tech expert) and between the two of us doing Facetime on our phones, we were able to finally (45 minutes) get them set up. At first we got the two monitors communicating but the windows page was on the new monitor not the computer. It took some doing to finally get them where they were supposed to be thanks to some British tech guy on the internet.

Dale was so relieved and happy he cleaned out a closet full of his coats and hats which he knew I was frustrated with. It was pay back. 

But then....he came to find me to tell me his keyboard had stopped working, the main space bar was stuck in the down position and wouldn't pop up. What next? He thankfully decided to run out and get a new one.

Tech stuff is a miracle actually, but when it breaks down, it makes life a pain. Maybe later today one of the TV's will go out. Things go in 3s right?

No volume, he said

We still haven't had our smart tv replaced which was broken by the movers, but having the Roku set up in the bedroom has been very handy. But I had to laugh at Dale's vague understanding of most tech things. He got rather addicted to watching a Netflix series on the history of ancient Rome while we were still at the seminary. Once we got the Roku going this week he was thrilled to go back to watching how horribly the Romans killed each other. That was my impression on the series anyway.

So last night he went up to the bedroom, pulled a chair in front of the tv and watched all this again. Each episode is 45 minutes long and I'd guess he watched two last night. I went up to see how he was doing and was surprised he was sitting so close to the screen and he said, "the sound is really low on this series for some reason, the only way I an hear it is to sit right next to it. He couldn't find the volume control on the actual tv. When he finally shut it down for the night I went up and looked at the Roku remote and sure enough, there was the volume up and down control on the side.

Too late for him, but there is always another day.