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Annoying Apple
I’ve used Apple products for a number of years. Years ago, I started using an iMac and liked it a lot. I also had an iBook computer and used it well. I had no issues with the actual computers but the problem was they didn’t play well with others…meaning, it didn’t work well in our home network of computers. The Scientist would spend hours trying to get things to work together. There was also the issue of expensive software, made worse by the added costs here in Australia. Eventually, I quit the Apple computers and the Scientist created a custom PC for me and that was that.
Meanwhile, years ago I also bought a PDA which eventually got stolen and was replaced with another one. A couple years later I got a much better one but then the PDA seemed to become pretty much obsolete and I was left with nowhere to go. I eventually decided to get an iPod touch as it did mostly what my PDA had done and it also stored music and played apps. I saved my money and paid cash for mine. Even though I had just bought my iPod, Apple expected me to shell out an additional $10 to get an update to the OS, which didn’t make me very happy at the time. But the worst was to come a week later when the next gen iPod touch was released and mine was on its way to being outdated almost immediately. I did get a couple decent years out of that one but then support started drying up and I couldn’t update any further. I’d already invested a fair bit of money on apps so I decided I’ve combine phone and iPod and got an iPhone on a one year contract. Luckily I got in at the right time and my current model is still being supported two years later. I won’t expect that for too much longer though.
In the early days, I was able to sync my email with my iPod and my iPhone quite easily. I used MS Outlook and with a couple tweaks all was well. Then Apple brought in its iCloud and everything fell apart. I have had trouble ever since with getting my information in Outlook to sync properly with my iPhone. Appointments would show up in one place and not the other. Same with contacts. Sometimes I would be able to find them and other times not. And somewhere along the way, I lost data on my computer as everything was syncing. It’s like it goes into a deep, dark hole and only re-emerges by chance. I still haven’t solved that problem properly so have had to take a different approach to recording information. It certainly doesn’t make life easier that way though.
Then yesterday came along and I my new Neil Finn cd arrived in the mail and I wanted to add that to my computer and my phone. Adding the song to iTunes was no issue. But for some reason my iPhone showed up on my computer but not in iTunes and not on a Phone Cleaner product I’ve been using. I spent about an hour searching for an answer and did happen upon a support page at Apple that told me what I needed to do. The particular problem was the driver for the USB had disappeared at some point. I think this may have occurred about the time I updated iTunes last as there had not been a sync since then. I had noticed this but hadn’t taken time to do anything as it wasn’t a major issue at the time. Anyway, it took about an hour or so to find and fix the problem and now it’s working again.
I will add that I have two iPads too, one which was meant to be used by Lego Lover for homeschooling but didn’t happen. It is now unofficially the property of Game Fanatic who uses it between all his other devices.
As my iPhone is already over two years old, I realise the continued support won’t be there a whole lot longer. The predecessor has already dropped off support for many apps. When the time comes that I have no further updates available, I am switching to something different. Not totally sure if I want to go to the Android or the Windows phone but I have had enough of Apple. Once the system is no longer able to be updated, I will likely use the current phone as a music player…like I did for my old iPod until I mistakenly left it at the gym and never saw it again.
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Messed it up
This morning we needed to make a money transfer overseas and tried to do it using online banking. All was going well until the end when it asked me to get a code from my security token. I didn’t have one and neither did the Scientist. We didn’t know they even existed at our bank. Â This afternoon we went to the bank to see about acquiring one or two of these devices so that we could put the transaction through. Both of us got a device but each had to be processed separately. When I got mine, I had to input a PIN and then repeat it. I did this at the bank and all was fine. Tonight I tried to use it and it didn’t work. I know what PIN I intended but have no idea what I actually used. I tried a couple other possibilities but those didn’t work. It locked up after the fifth attempt so I will have to return to the bank to have the PIN reset. It’s not really an urgent situation since the Scientist had no issues and was able to transfer the money. It’s just annoying that I seem to have input something different to what I was thinking.
I noted something odd while trying to do the transfer this morning. My last name was listed incorrectly on the international transfers page even though it is correct on other parts of the account. This apparently has something to do with when this was enabled. I don’t recall ever using this service before so it all seems a bit odd. I do recall that the spelling of my last name was the same as appeared on some other account of sorts at some point. I can’t recall what other account this was but I’m fairly sure it was something that required quite a bit of ID at the time and that at some point the name was corrected. Of course the problem with my memory is that it’s fairly imperfect and apparently deteriorating more than I’d like.
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Defective
This morning I turned on my computer as usual and played some of my usual daily puzzle and card games. While playing minesweeper, the right button on my trackball mouse suddenly failed. This is the trackball I just bought in January. With the current level of chaos at my desk, I was concerned about finding the receipt but it was still there. I’ve been having issues for a few days now when I start my computer and the cursor just wouldn’t move at all when I got to the start screen. I wasn’t sure if it was a software or hardware problem causing this to happen but since it seemed to work on the second go, I carried on. Anyway the Scientist tried the trackball on his computer and had the same results while I had no issues using his mouse on my computer. I called up Kensington to report the fault and the process was quite easy for my part. After providing some information to the customer service representative, I was sent and email referring me to an online portal. I had a bit of delay due to some information in the email that wasn’t really necessary (about non US customers) but got logged in and was able to send a copy of the receipt through along with my shipping address. Within a couple hours I got another email saying a replacement is being shipped out and will arrive in 10-14 business days. So far, I’m quite impressed.
This reminds me of my experience buying an earlier model of their trackball from a Perth company, but using an online store. I bought it and it eventually did get to me but did not have the wrist rest that was supposed to be included. I contacted the local company and after considerable hassle did get a replacement. They didn’t want the original back even though the trackball was perfectly fine so I had two trackballs but only one wrist rest. I can only suppose that they followed a similar process on their end and this is just how Kensington operates.
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Replaced
After three months, I finally bought a replacement for our stolen gps. I was waiting for something decent to go on sale and this weekend a local electronics retailer had a pretty decent special. I bought a Garmin back in 2010 when I was in the US and left it with my mom. That one was cheap but it worked pretty well for us. At the end of 2010 we bought a TomTom model with hopes it would serve us well. In many ways it was quite adequate but there were a few issues. My biggest complaint was it took ages to pick up the satellite signal after it was started up. While this didn’t pose a problem most of the time, there were a few occasions when I really wanted to have it going quickly. This time I bought another Garmin model and it seems much better than either of the two devices I’ve used before although we’ve not used it properly yet. We did try it out in the car today and found that it was quite quick to pick up the signal, even before we left the driveway.
What also impressed me about this model is how much nicer the online interface is compared to TomTom. I had trouble with the TomTom from early on when it refused to accept the code for additional maps when I registered. I eventually did get it sorted out but nothing really worked very well when using it. Aside from taking a bit of time, the Garmin website looks nice and is quite efficient at doing what it’s supposed to do. I look forward to testing this one out properly in the near future.
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It’s the weekend-odd and ends from the past week or so
A couple weeks ago the Scientist and I both installed Windows 8 on our computers. Last weekend, I had a problem where my computer wouldn’t move out of sleep mode and something must have gone wrong because no amount of recovery would work. Eventually it was decided to do a clean installation and also to replace the hard drive as it was kind of old and started to get crowded. The installation went fine and I’m still trying to install some of my missing software. I ran into some troubles when I tried to load my outlook mail files and have yet to find the most recent files. I do, however, have files going back five years or more. Most of my email in recent years has gone through my gmail accounts so I should be able to retrieve most things but it doesn’t feel right for it to be missing.
I finally replaced my stolen camera last weekend too. After buying the required items from the computer shop, the Scientist and I ended up dropping in to Camera House in the mall. It’s not the one we usually visit as it’s a bit further away from the local store, but it seems to be one of the better stocked stores in the chain. It happens that the model I wanted, an Olympus Pen PL-5, Â had just come in a couple days before and hadn’t even made it out of the box yet. I looked at it and also the “mini” version plus the Canon G15, which is very much like the camera that was stolen. I even had a quick look at a another Canon but that one was really not what I was looking for. I eventually bought what I’d expected to buy and brought it home. When you’ve used cameras from the same company for a few years, it’s a bit weird to be faced with totally different operating systems and controls. I found it overwhelming at the start because it really is quite different than any of the others I’ve used. But I’m getting more used to it and learning the controls little by little. Hopefully I’ll be up to speed with it before the next birthdays and holidays.
Monday morning, I logged onto the computer early to buy tickets for the Neil Finn-Paul Kelly concert happening next March. I really enjoyed the one-off show they did last year so I imagine the next one will also be pretty special. It was kind of funny because I happened to comment a couple weeks ago that it looked like we wouldn’t be seeing and Finn-related shows this year. While that is true, this tour was announced just a few days later and now we have the anticipation of the next show. I’m hoping to take my new camera with me and try it out on the low lighting of the venue.
A couple days ago I was taking our family friend, an intellectually disabled man, to the library and gym as a carer. While at the library I decided to check out a couple of books. I haven’t used this card for a while so it was necessary to update details. It was a bit of a shock when the librarian read out my alternate contact as my friend who died earlier this year. This really surprised me because I do recall using her as a contact for a couple of libraries. But it was weird feeling to have her name pop up like that. Today would have been her fiftieth birthday so I’ve been particularly feeling her absence today. Her name also popped up on Facebook as she had an account that she hardly used. I keep thinking I should remove her name from my friends list but it doesn’t feel right to do that for some reason.
My shoulder is starting to feel better now. I’m still taking pain tablets daily but I was able to drop down to just one a day this week. It’s been hard having to avoid exercises using these muscles but I’ve mostly managed it so far. All going well I should be able to start moving back to my usual exercise next week. I’ll have to be cautious, though, because I seem to suffer more pain hours after exercise than I do while doing it. Meanwhile, my legs have been getting a pretty good workout on the cardio machines lately. To end on a really positive note, the woman who owns the gym has said she wants to do before and after photos of the Scientist and me in January as we’ve both made some good progress since we started. The Scientist has already lost 10kgs since the end of August. My weight hasn’t dropped a lot but my other measurements have gone down pretty steadily and it’s obvious by the way my clothes fit.
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The odd personalities of the gym’s machines
I’ve been meaning to write about some weird stuff that happens with the cardio machines at the gym. Aside from the rowing machines, all are made by a company called Lifefitness. They all have some interesting features and all allow you to connect your iPod and record workouts on a usb key. We went out a bought a couple of very cheap usb keys to do this and use it any time we used the machines. Anyway, on to some weird stuff.
- The day the gym opened, not even a couple hours after we got our keys, we went to try out the machines for the first time. They have one upright and one recumbent bike available. I went to try out the upright bike and it didn’t work. The start up screen for the computer it uses would never come up after the machine started. I understand a succession of repair attempts were made on it and I think it was finally replaced. Not a good sign on day one though.
- I’d used the recumbent bike a few times and recorded each workout on my usb key ver the first week or two. Maybe it was coincidence but about the same time the upright was fixed/replaced (about a week or two later) the recumbent bike started recording workouts as being on an upright bike. It still does this two months later. The two bikes are right next to each other so I think maybe it has an identity crisis or something.
- A month or so back I started back to using my Polar heart monitor. The benefit of this was I didn’t have to hold the handles to get a heart rate reading. I found this really good on the treadmill as my hands go numb if I keep them on the handles too long. So that was a good thing. But when I started using the heart rate monitor, I found the cool down times after any workout on any of the machines suddenly switched to a ten minute cool down. This is never necessary as my heart rate always drops sufficiently within five minutes. And on the treadmill you are nearly at a standstill, going at 0.8kph. This had been consistent until a week or so back when a couple of the machines had reverted back to more reasonable cool down times. This isn’t consistent across even the same type machines. The cross trainer I used today was correct but the treadmill and bike both gave me ten minutes. I will just add that the Scientist doesn’t have a heart rate monitor and never finds the cool down times are increased to ten minutes.
- On one occasion, I wanted to use a treadmill and had to go through about four before I found one that worked. The first one lacked a tv monitor for the cable, which wasn’t an issue since I listen to music on my iPod. But when I started working out, it started giving me some bizarre readings from my heart rate monitor. Even though my heart rate was low, it had me at 123 and the workout moved to another heart rate without me doing anything yet. Then it started showing my heart rate up around 200 and I knew that was totally wrong. After about three or four minutes I stopped it and tried another one. The second one didn’t work either and now I cannot recall what the issue was but I moved to a third one. This one just didn’t pick up my heart rate at all so I’d have had to hold on the whole time and made the heart rate monitor kind of pointless. Finally on the fourth try I got a machine that was willing to cooperate and I got through my treadmill routine.
- There are six treadmills at the gym and I had trouble with three on that one occasion. I chose the ‘good’ machine on my next treadmill workout. I put the usb key in at the beginning and did my workout as normal. When I went to save, the usb key wasn’t recognized as being there. I’m pretty sure it was picked up when I started. At the time I was recording all these workouts carefully so it was pretty annoying. Now it wouldn’t bother me as I don’t tend to use that information regularly but still save it when possible. I more recently tried to use it again and it refused to recognize the usb key right from the start. I now don’t use that machine. There is one machine I can rely upon to work properly for me so I have to hope it’s not in use when I need it.
- Going back to the cool down on the machines…my experience has generally been that the cool down continues for the full time allotted unless I quit the program before that. However on one occasion one treadmill decided my heart rate was low enough and stopped the program for me. And today the same thing happened on the cross trainer.
- The same cross trainer mentioned above also seem to have a problem with using metric units. Every time I use it, I have to change to metric. This one, I am sure is related to default settings somewhere but I don’t think I have access to those.
I find it fascinating there can be so many issues on so many machines already. These aren’t even the mechanical issues you expect on gym equipment and instead of related to the computers on board. Very weird stuff indeed.
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Yet another new gadget
I know I probably didn’t really need it but I bought a Kobo yesterday. I’d been contemplating an e-reader for a little while but there was no rush as I have been reading on my phone and iPad for a while now. My perspective changed once our local libraries started offering e-books for loan. The only contenders for my reader were the Kindle, Kobo, and Sony’s e-reader. I ruled out the Kindle pretty early on since the library doesn’t use its format. The Sony was far more expensive but I considered it if I could justify the extra expense. The Kobo Touch seemed to meet my needs pretty adequately but I wanted to try the devices out before making a decision.
The Scientist and I went back and forth between JB Hi Fi and Good Guys, which were in the same shopping center. One had both on display but the Kobo wasn’t charged so it took some time for a salesperson to get it connected to charge. We had to wait a while to try it out. The Sony felt really comfortable in my hands and navigation was quite good too. The Kobo seemed quite a bit heavier to me, which made me think more seriously about the Sony. But trying them both out, the Kobo did what I needed and didn’t cost the earth…That said, I found a cover for the Sony reader with booklight for only $15, which seems to be a bit of a steal as it was far more when I saw it at Target earlier in the day. Â We did a fair bit of traipsing about to check prices and then to attempt a purchase. This got old pretty fast as I was wearing thongs to keep a bit cooler on what was a fairly warm day and my knee started hurting after awhile. Eventually ended up buying at Good Guys as they were able to undercut the lowest price by $4 and they did actually have a single one available.
A while back, the Scientist got a Kindle and set up was really fast and easy. The Kobo was far more time-consuming  although not really difficult. Eventually, I had it up and running and worked out how to transfer my downloaded library books so I could read them on the device. So far, I’m really liking it a lot although I will find it even better once I’ve found a cover for it and don’t have to worry so much about scratches. It does have an odd system, though, of giving out awards for certain accomplishments. I was a bit surprised get an award for turning pages! Looking forward to reading lots more e-books now that I have a device more suitable for my eyes.
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Plugging away here
It’s now over a week and I still haven’t shaken this bug totally. I have now moved on to the blocked ears and coughing stage,. And I still have some tonsillitis although it seems to have improved a bit today. The problem with the blocked ears is the my hearing become quite poor and I can’t understand people. Last night I went off to the tai chi class and the assistant instructor was working with our group as he had none of the beginner to teach. I like him but he speaks very softly at the best of times and I was struggling to understand him.
Meanwhile my germs have infected the rest of the family, The Scientist hasn’t been hit too hard as yet but he may suffer as much if it drags on. Both boys are in the middle of nasty sore throat and Game Fanatic is coughing even worse than usual. You’d think it was still winter with all of us getting sick. And the weather has been close to winter-like too, with relatively low temperatures for November. Of course, before we know it we will be sweltering again.
I reinstalled Windows 7 on my computer the night before last after having issues for months since my last installation (when the motherboard or cpu died). The good news is everything looks all shiny and new and I have cleared out heaps from the computer. The down side is this hasn’t exactly fixed the problem. I suspect my fairly old hard drives may be part of the problem and it might be worth a change in the near future.
A couple weeks ago (or more) we bought some tomato plants at our local supermarket to plant in our large above ground planter thing. They have been sitting on our outdoor table for all this time and one of them was nearly dead due to the stem partially breaking and also lack of consistent moisture. I had the planter partially ready to use but needed some more compost and some chicken manure to finish it up. I went off to our local mega hardware shop down the road and got the items I needed plus another regular tomato plant and a grape tomato. I bought some basil seedling to plant with them, came home and got it all planted out within half an hour. And I didn’t really get too dirty either, which was surprising.
Obviously something was wrong if I wasn’t dirty after gardening for a while. We had a fair bit of rain earlier in the week but the past couple days have been dry and mostly sunny. And all that tall grass has been right in my face, waiting to be cut…so I pulled out the lawnmower and finally got most of that cut down. It only took a few hours with all the breaks I had to take. We seem to have far more space out there now than we did before. At the end of all that, I was quite dirty and had to wash my hair for the second day in a row as it couldn’t be avoided. Now I’m quite tired and sore but it feels good to have all that work accomplished. And now I actually want to be in the back yard. Except for the area just outside the door where we still have a mess and there is still a bit of wildness. I didn’t have the energy to clear that out today so might tackle it next week some time.
Now if I can just get certain sick young guys to just go to sleep, I can toddle off to bed and rest the weary body. And hope I haven’t set back my recovery.
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New
Our Australian webhosting company changed their personal plans and we worked out it wasn’t that cost effective for our family. As my personal plan is due to expire in the near future, we decided to look at the options for hosting plans and have chosen a US-based webhost to try out for a year. In addition to the new webhost, I have also added a new domain, which is hopefully easier to share since it doesn’t have the almost unheard of .id.au. I have done most of the setup on this new host but may make some further changes. A major plus for the new webhost is we will have plenty of space and I’ll be able to post photos in my blog posts instead of linking to them.
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Broken
The monitor for my computer died yesterday. One minute it was working , then the screen went white and that was it. The Scientist did some tests with other monitors and computers and it had definitely called it a day. So we went out and now I’ve got a bigger and hopefully better monitor. It was interesting to note that all of the monitors at the shop, bar one, were bigger than the one that just died. That one was a pretty big one when I got it no more than a couple years ago. Now the standard seems to be 21 inch or greater. So I’m the first in the house to have a 23 inch monitor and also the first to have an HD monitor. Here’s hoping this one will last a bit longer than the last one.
In other news, my left  foot has been in pain since early yesterday for reasons currently unknown. Although I did some exercise for a couple days, I wasn’t moving in any way that should have caused an injury and my feet were on the floor throughout. The pain covers the top left side of my foot, going up to the ankle and got worse after I continued walking on it. By last night it was throbbing and I ended up taking paracetamol (Tylenol) and later on, naproxen, to get some relief. I ended up falling asleep early last night and woke up without the throbbing pain, but it still hurts when I walk on it. I guess I will stay off it as much as possible today and hope for improvement by tomorrow or I’ll have to see further help.