(no subject)
I get to go home from the 20th until the 2nd, and spend Thanksgiving weekend at Dad's. Life's pretty good. I'm getting better with the machines, even though it makes my muscles ache and I sometimes think wistfully about napalm, and I'm pretty sure I'm contributing to the global helium so-called 'shortage' (been trying to track down a leak in the helium system since bloody Thursday). I don't even have to worry about how to transport my stuff now that it's been augmented with a garbage bag full of the Great Toft Closet Cleanout, Volume II and a choice selection of garments from the local Goodwill, because since I'm running out to Grand Rapids on weekends Dad is OK with letting me stash my stuff up there on the 13th and retrieve it on the 3rd or thereabouts. This also means for those of you keeping score at home I'll have the Multilith up there for a weekend so as to put the local machines to bloody SHAME. The one thing I can do to surpass anything up there!
What else...got the packet for work insurance today, it qualifies as a "gold" plan by the ACA standards and it's about half of what I'd pay on the open market for similar coverage. That's good. No news on the car, that's not bad but it's a little annoying, I'll call again on Thursday/Fridayish.
The iPhone has now replaced my Triumph for sleeping and noise purposes as well. I'm deliberately trying to phase out the Triumph. Next up I need to find something for the iPhone that'll sync with Calibre, that'll allow me to phase out the iPod. YES that leaves me entirely dependent on a work device, but. I have even found that the stock headphones-with-microphone will fit nicely under my ear protection muffs so I can talk to family and listen to music while in the van and protecting my hearing--YES I checked, NO there's no law against headphones/earbuds in MI or TX--and it's a lot nicer of an alternative than the former, which consisted of my FM transmitter and a whole lot of volume on the van stereo. So all in all it's a device I can use for my purposes and for work purposes, I make virtually no voice calls, nobody personal knows the number, if I want to call out I have Skype set up, we have ~450 minutes which probably are monitored and 4.5 gigs of data which probably isn't. Not that I'm doing anything nefarious with it, but. Me as an Apple convert...mostly it's the responsiveness of the OS (thanks, appropriate specs) and the absolute precision of the touchscreen. I still want to try a Nexus 7 or a Galaxy S Note 3 or whatever the big one is, because I still think a phablet (what a wretched word...) with a SIM card and a bluetooth headset would be just about the perfect e-reader / mobile GPS / informatics device / communicator, but in the meantime it's nice to know that with modern hardware a satisfying convergence is possible. Also Siri is useful.
Although ads still absolutely enrage me, doubly so when I realize I can't jailbreak it, I can't root it, I can't opt out of being product.
What else...got the packet for work insurance today, it qualifies as a "gold" plan by the ACA standards and it's about half of what I'd pay on the open market for similar coverage. That's good. No news on the car, that's not bad but it's a little annoying, I'll call again on Thursday/Fridayish.
The iPhone has now replaced my Triumph for sleeping and noise purposes as well. I'm deliberately trying to phase out the Triumph. Next up I need to find something for the iPhone that'll sync with Calibre, that'll allow me to phase out the iPod. YES that leaves me entirely dependent on a work device, but. I have even found that the stock headphones-with-microphone will fit nicely under my ear protection muffs so I can talk to family and listen to music while in the van and protecting my hearing--YES I checked, NO there's no law against headphones/earbuds in MI or TX--and it's a lot nicer of an alternative than the former, which consisted of my FM transmitter and a whole lot of volume on the van stereo. So all in all it's a device I can use for my purposes and for work purposes, I make virtually no voice calls, nobody personal knows the number, if I want to call out I have Skype set up, we have ~450 minutes which probably are monitored and 4.5 gigs of data which probably isn't. Not that I'm doing anything nefarious with it, but. Me as an Apple convert...mostly it's the responsiveness of the OS (thanks, appropriate specs) and the absolute precision of the touchscreen. I still want to try a Nexus 7 or a Galaxy S Note 3 or whatever the big one is, because I still think a phablet (what a wretched word...) with a SIM card and a bluetooth headset would be just about the perfect e-reader / mobile GPS / informatics device / communicator, but in the meantime it's nice to know that with modern hardware a satisfying convergence is possible. Also Siri is useful.
Although ads still absolutely enrage me, doubly so when I realize I can't jailbreak it, I can't root it, I can't opt out of being product.