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Fit my Bit...

About 3 weeks ago I decided to get a low-end fitness watch. It was amazing. Why? Because it could record my blood pressure while the watch was sitting on my desk.

That went back and I ordered a medium priced Fitbit watch.

Expecting better results, I again questioned the accuracy. While 2 times around my community is three-quarters of a mile, it was able to record lots more calories burned than the first watch. It rained one morning and I sat on the corner of the bed strumming guitar. To my surprise, it recorded I had some 1,200 steps and burned lots of calories, more than a brisk around the condos. That model didn't have the ability to check blood pressure. It didn't mater... I returned it too!

What I disliked about both 'fitness' watches is the amount of information they requested of me. I realize height and weight statistics helps it make correct calculations for walking and running. I wasn't a willing participant for food intake, amounts of liquids, messages when I need to be active and at rest.

I cleared the data, personal information and deleted the apps from my phone. Maybe one day I'll train for the Olympics or a local marathon and would reconsider another fitness watch. For now, my answer is no...
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Car shopping... again

Last year I was internet shopping for a new car. Something a little larger than what I currently own. There's nothing wrong with my car, I just want to up-size. With 42,000 miles, the factory tires have enough tread for a few thousand miles more. The problem is the interior noise when driving on the highway is noticeably louder. Less rubber, more road noise.

I bought tires for my previous car a little over 3 years ago for around $600. A few months later I changed cars. Today's prices for new tires with mounting, road hazard and free flat repair is going to run around $1,000. If I'm going to change cars... now is the best time or I'll be buying tires. At that point, I'll wait another year before car shopping again.

A few months ago I went through the motions trying KIA, Hyundai, Nissan, Toyota and Subaru. Nothing jumped out as my #1 choice. They each had some nice features, but none had all the features I really wanted. Strange... the things I think are important aren't many, but to get those items, it requires additional feature packages costing thousands more.
Okay, I'll get over that.

The dividing line is a cross between a hatchback to a small SUV.
Who/What are the possibilities?

Subaru Crosstrek, is a car that's jacked up a few inches. It's big on safety features but weak on the electronics. I do like the old-fashioned hand brake. This is a possible for simplicity.

Honda H-RV is an SUV, bigger for 2023 than the previous model. Lots of features, I didn't like the height of the front hood. The car had an offensive odor, possibly from the leather seats. Maybe that will go away. Good availability, I could have one in the model and color choice within a week.

I'm ruling out both KIA and Hyundai. Beautiful cars, I don't think they are going to last 10 years. That's what I'm seeing in reviews and from personal experience.

Today, I went to Mazda and tried a Mazda3 hatchback and the CX-30 SUV. Both are nice. The SUV has sufficient horsepower, but it was tame both in steering and braking. I tried some rough driving and it wouldn't accept it. Slamming on the brakes didn't happen. It stopped quickly, but the car is very computer controlled and rides like a larger vehicle. I do like the ground height. Seats were firm but comfortable.
The hatchback handling was more to my liking. Quick lane changes and jamming the brakes produces a quicker stop than the SUV.
Both cars have nice seating, but lacked on the 'visual' of the electronics. I'm told the GPS map needs an upgrade. Both have a large (but different) center console, not to my liking and their choice of color is limited. Priced within my budget... Mazda is near the top if I had to choose.
Also, Toyota keeps sending me emails to buy my car... but they have nothing to offer me this year. Three months now they said I could test a Prius Hybrid but all coming in are pre-sold and no chance to test drive or actually sit in one for comfort. They are taking NON-REFUNDABLE deposits to order one with a 2 to 3 month wait. It won't be a Toyota this year.
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The disappearance is noted...

I'm curious why a few recent blogs have disappeared. I noted numbers on my blogs for reference. Two days ago, I had 1,671 blogs and this morning, it's 1,666.
The list of total system blogs showed 71,200 and now it's down to 67,956.
Trimming the fat?

The first thought that comes to mind is storage and bandwidth. At some point, blogs and forum posts will become enormous and the cost of keeping data for years and years becomes expensive. CS is a free site and the need to eliminate some data would become a possibility.

Just a thought... It was mentioned (in a blog) that blogs that didn't comply with the wishes of administration would be deleted. I tried looking for that blog... but it disappeared too!

laugh

(updated)
Blog # 1,667
System blog # 67,957

67,259 on 4-18-23 at 7pm
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They don't come back...

The problem with any dating site is they need to have a reason for new members to return.
They don't come back if there isn't anything to keep their attention. Dating is the number one reason for the bait. While it's great to have a place to post videos, poems, recipes and photos, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can do the same thing... on a larger scale and while you say you're not there to date, many of the profiles on those platforms do exactly that.

Blogs and forums generally detract from the dating process and you find yourself spending hours in hopes of finding someone, but percentage wise, most bloggers don't date.
I get a few hits a week of looks, likes and messages. They are mostly from women, new members under the age of 35 and a portion of the profiles disappear while a high percent never return.

Scanning the 'New Women in Everywhere' list, I found by page 5 the amount of members who don't return out weight those who do. 50% failure and they have been here less than a week. What is the reason for this and can it be changed?

I used to think a dating site with a chatroom was the place to be and make quick communications that were better than reading blogs and forum threads. Not many dating sites had/have live chat. One place I hang out at actually has a chatroom with never more than 2 or 3 people. Usually, it's guys waiting like sharks for a woman to appear!
laugh
So that isn't working. At least, not on that site.

What we do here is private.
I don't see who you are looking at and messaging.
You don't see who I'm looking at and messaging either.
One site actually had those statistics on the member's profile.
You knew up front who received the most messages, if they actually read them, replied or deleted messages without reading them!
It was only a few seconds to realize it wasn't worth messaging someone who habitually deleted unread messages.

Take the bad with the good. If I remember correctly, you were nagged if you didn't actively message other members and those statistics were on your profile for all to see, so you can look at a member's profile and know if they were actively communicating with other members. I've got to say, the scary part is it revealed who you were messaging with!
I don't recall how long that lasted and I don't want someone to know who I'm interested in. That was worse than High-School dating.

Dating site expectations are too high. You're not going to find a soulmate if they are one in a million, because you may have to go through a million to find one!
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Kokomo and the return of mic...

Many thanks for CelticWitch keeping the flame for miclee who disappeared from CS a year ago. Sadly his enormously long blog disappeared and not archived to sail away into the night. If I recall, that was his 2nd marathon party-style blog of the same subject. Fun.

To everyone's delight, mic made a cameo appearance that squelched any rumor of his P_SSI_G (I'd like to solve the puzzle) so on a high note... maybe in the style of mic, here's the Kokomo blog reincarnated!

From 1988, it's the Beach Boys with Kokomo...

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Travel Bug...

My dad was born and raised in New York City. He and some of the kids in his neighborhood, joined the Navy during WWII and traveled across the Pacific Ocean a few times. He returned home, married and started a family. An amazing fact: he was aboard the battleship USS Missouri where Japan signed a surrender in 1945 that formally ended the war.

When it was time for vacation, I remember lots of road trips of a few hundred miles to upstate New York, Canada and a few trips to Miami to see relatives.

Around the time I was 6 years old, my parents decided to travel by car to California. The uncle who lived in Florida, reenlisted in the Navy as a career and traveled the world. He was stationed in California and moved his family there. They invited my parents to stay with them. The thought was a great idea to get out of New York City. Also, my dad had some Navy friends living in California, so that made the idea more attractive. Our stay was short. Less than a year later and fate had both families locating to Miami, Florida.

Most of the family travels as a kid brought us through the Southern route across America. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and a few days in Las Vegas! I think I've seen enough endless stretches of desert and mirages. The best memory was the leather fringe jacket purchased at an old west tourist attraction in Tijuana. I wore until it literally fell apart! Miami became my home. I only traveled when necessary and really not for enjoyment.

As a musician, I traveled the East coast a few times, including two tours into Canada. The money was good for a while, but things soured and I was glad to be home, started back at college and anchored myself for many years.

My brother took the Army as a career and made lots of address changes in the US and about 6 years in Germany. My parents traveled to see him at least twice and one had a stop in Italy... Rome and the Vatican. My mom was okay with travel, but it was my dad who had the travel bug!

I've been on a few cruises to the Caribbean, usually sponsored by the company I was working for and twice to Grand Bahama to manage a project assignment for hotel interiors we were contracted to do.

At least 4 trips to Ohio to see my brother... I couldn't wait to return home each time. Probably another Ohio trip is in my future this year.

Ten years ago, one trip took me half-way around the world. Door to door to a major city in South China was about 32 hours and I lost 10 pounds during that trip as I didn't consume food on the flights. Me, food and travel don't always agree. I decided to become semi-retired just as COVID hit, so my travel plans to return were dreams up in smoke.
I'm working on a few long-term projects right now and it won't be this year, but there's hope for an extended visit next year. At least 2, possibly 3 months stay to make it worth my while. My interest is meeting two grand children that I've only seen on video chat. The trip will have meaning and not to satisfy any desire to be a travel bug!



Blog #1,673 and system blog # 71,206.
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The Clarence Thomas fan club...

In the past few weeks, Justice Clarence Thomas has become quite popular in some circles. As of Friday evening, he racked up 786,000 signatures that call for his impeachment.
Justified? 786,000 people think so.



News link:
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Fleeing to Russia...

New news about the 'Merchant of Death' arms dealer Viktor Bout who was recently traded with Russia for the release of Brittney Griner. It's reported he sent a telegram to Donald Trump asking him to flee to Russia to escape the charges in New York that his 'life is in peril'
In Russia, he could find safe haven and rebel against globalists.

Blog tagged comedy/humor as it's the funniest thing I've heard all week!

Just to think, Trump could board his private jet in New York with a flight path to Palm Beach, Florida and 'suddenly' make a left turn and head across Europe to Moscow!








Link:
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Samsung DeX...

I bought a refurbished Samsung phone last year to replace one that was around 5 years old. The old phone had a worn battery that needed to be charged a few times a day if I used the GPS and made a few hours of calls. There is a factory authorized service center not far from me, that could order a battery, but they needed the phone 2 days to do the work. I'm not okay with that so the total change was less restrictive.
Cloning one phone to the other was easy and It took a while to get to get all the apps set up the way I'm accustomed. One new preinstalled app was Samsung DeX. Normally when I connect the phone to the computer it's to upload photos or do a backup with Samsung Smart Switch.
This morning, when I connected the phone to the computer, DeX automatically came up. Okay... What's this? It's a projected version of my cellphone. I can drag and drop photos easily now. Lots of new stuff to explore... I just need to copy a few photos to my desktop today.

Thanks Samsung... I think I'll be using DeX often now!
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'Watch' this again...

As followup to my 'Watch' this blog, about the number of people wearing watches that connect to their cellphones, I decided to buy a low-end 'fitness' watch just to check it's operation. I'm highly skeptical these devices could be accurate, at least in the ones that are inexpensive, but I'm giving it a try.

First step with any of these watches is charge the device. That gives you time to read the instructions and download the app that connects it to your smartphone. Allow time to be familiar with the settings for both the phone and watch. It defaults to metric, so I changed things to Imperial, including Fahrenheit for temperature. Only my doctors record my weight in kilos.

Since I wear no jewelry and haven't for years, I found it annoying to have this fitness watch attached to my wrist. It's already hitting the countertop, edge of doorways and anything I come in close proximity to. I expect lots of scratches on the bezel within the first week. That makes me wonder about all the people wearing diamond studded watches the size of a Frisbee!
That would equate to the women wearing 'inch-long' fake eyelashes. If you do it long enough, it becomes part of you. Kinda like Paul Stanley (KISS guitarist) wearing six-inch high platform shoes on stage must have required weeks of practice elsewhere.

Okay, I've had the watch on for 12 hours and it's reporting to my phone some statistics. Blood pressure at it's highest 127/64 and 81 beats per minute, currently 53bpm. Temperature 98.0 F, blood oxygen at 98% and I burned 11 calories.
laugh

I'm most curious about the sleep status. The first night shows 3 hours and 50 minutes with 1 hour and 30 minutes being in deep sleep.

Although the device is water resistant enough for swimming, I'll remove it for my morning shower.

Later today, I'll compare the blood pressure and beats with my stand-alone blood pressure monitor.
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Antoine Baril: One man band...

While surfing YouTube last year, Antoine Baril came on my radar as the one man band playing songs from top rock groups like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The Yes group, Genesis. It's amazing how well he plays all the musical parts. Keyboards, bass guitar, guitar and drums.
Based in Canada, he's got access to the same instruments the original musicians used including the actual Moog synthesized Keith Emerson used on stage and recordings.
It's worth a listen.

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Finding messages...

In the 'old' days, If you had to contact someone, the first line was to actually visit them in-person or write a letter, affix a stamp and mail it. After telephones were invented, you could call them. If they didn't answer, you would have to call again (and maybe again) until they were available to answer the phone.
A generation later, someone invented an answering machine, giving you the ability to leave a recorded message that you hoped they listened to. The bad part of that was listening to a tape playback of 20 messages to get the one that was important. You also had the ability to send a FAX if they had a machine connected to their phone.
Technology changed and email became available. This eliminated the need for mail and FAX messages.
Add cellphones a generation later and communication improved as people carried a phone with them and didn't have to 'wait to get home' to listen to messages. Shortly after that, text messages became a strong part of cellular service. Instead of calling or sending an email, you could type out a message for instant delivery. Icing on the cake added photos to your texting.
That gave rise to several applications to handle texting including Whatsapp that allows for group texting and video chats. Competition is Signal app doing nearly the same thing but it's private so the information in the app isn't visible on the phone.

Where am I going with this?
I'm communicating with lots of customers, suppliers, coworkers who are all on different platforms. When I have to research 'who said what' or where a link or photo is, I'm checking through different locations. Lost time searching for details, drawings and messages. I dislike Gmail but it synchronizes on all my devices so I'm forged to use that as my main means of communication.
The office uses Streak for sales and marketing, Asana for managing the projects from start to finish and Quickbooks to track the money... that's more than I want to deal with.
No choice. It's the hand I'm holding right now.
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