Alarms, MDs, Taxes, Cash, iPod affront, and IE

So... another one of these.  Just a post with a lot of little things to muse about, but nothing really worthy of it's own post.

Alarm Clock:  I finally ditched the alarm clock this afternoon.  Getting to this point wasn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be.  The first hurdle is battery usage.  I can use the hell out of this phone... I can deplete the full battery in less than a day.  But that's not a normal day.  On a normal working day I don't even go through 50% of the battery.  I most certainly don't want to charge the phone every day when its only down to 58% battery left.  As I understand it, lithium ion batteries can get a memory of that over an extended time and eventually I'll ONLY have that much battery available.  So on some (if not most) nights, I'll want to use the phone as a clock/radio without charging it.

The clock itself is VERY dim and shouldn't use much battery.  The audio will use much more, but that will only be going for an hour.  Hell... I can actually take that down to 30 minutes if I really wanted to (I don't).  Here's how the experimentation worked:

Night 1:  The battery was almost dead, so I plugged it in (I didn't have the wireless charger yet).  I played my "Sing me to sleep" playlist on shuffle, and set the phone to go into 'Daydream' mode where it shows the clock.  It worked just fine except the phone was lying flat on the desk... I couldn't see it without pushing myself up on an elbow or reaching out and grabbing  the phone.


Night 2:  The only problem with playing the music, is that I use my phone to listen to podcasts on my way home from work each night (Star Talk Radio hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson).  I don't 'finish' an episode as I'm pulling in, so by playing music the previous night I lost my spot in the podcast.  So before cueing up my nighttime chronometer/symphony, I downloaded a second music player (Rocket Player).  At night, I'll use rocket player to listen to music for an hour (it has a built in sleep timer), while when driving I'll use the Google Music Player for the podcasts.

When I was ready for sleep the battery was still up to 60% charge.  I had received my wireless charger/dock (the TYLT VU) earlier in the day and thankfully it's big enough so that I can set the phone on it and NOT charge.  A simple move to center the phone, and it will start charging just fine.  I more or less did the same things... started up the music (this time using rocket player with the built in sleep timer), and started up the daydream mode manually.  I then set t he phone on the dock so that I could see it and drifted off to sleep.

The problem came a few hours later.  I woke up and the phone was dark.  The screen had gone off.  If I would have given it even a moment's thought, I would have known that was going to happen.  Daydream mode is designed for when the phone is plugged in.  So I moved the phone over to the charging position and restarted the daydream mode, and difted off to sleep.  When I woke up the daydream wasn't displaying the clock.

WTF!

It turns out that on the Nexus 6, when it's fully charged using the wireless charger, the phone completely stops charging.  Most Wireless charging phones will go into a trickle charge mode.  It would still technically be charging, so the daydream would keep on going.  But not on this phone.  Nope, this one gets to 100%, stops charging and two minutes later shuts off the screen (to converse battery power).

Grr

So today I made it my mission to find a solution.  All I needed was an app that would display a clock in a dim mode, and not allow the screen to shut off even when on battery.  Enter Night Clock.  It took me quite while to find this app, but it works just as I need it.  It displays the time, it does so in a very dim way (I won't be able to tell if it's dim enough until tonight), and it keeps the screen on.

I even set it up on my desktop, playing music for an hour and keeping the screen on and it only ate up about 15% of the battery.  I figure I'll only need about 30 or 40% of remaining battery juice to get thorugh a night.  If it's lower than that, I can just slide it over and have the phone wirelessly charge.

With a working solution, I unplugged my alarm clock and tossed it on the bed.  I think I'll call up my niece tonight (or send her a text... the kids today like texts right?), and see if she wants it.

---------------
Doc:  I visited my doctor today for my follow up.  Technically this appointment was to be only about diabetes, but I brought in my headache journal as well.

The good news on the diabetes is that my daily blood glucose readings are slowly going down.  I even plotted it out in a graph to show him (he was overly impressed with my organizational skills... come on dude, it's Excel!).  When I started taking my daily blood glucose levels (on my own glucometer) they were 216, 214, 278, and 209.  The last four days they were 168, 140, 222, 129.  Those are all taken first thing in the morning.  The whole scale is like that... there are errant high and low numbers, but overall it shows a continued decline.  If I keep this up, I should be down to 100 or even 90s for an average by March.

He scheduled an A1C in March, and a three month follow up in April.

On the heachaches... well he was almost as happy as I am with the results.  I still get occasional headaches, but where I would be fairly quick on taking some meds, I don't even bother now.  I haven't taken acetaminophen or ibuprofen since January 16th (at least not for headaches... I've taken some ibuprofen for back aches).  He said that if we ever needed too, that we could still go higher on the propranolol, but I have no reason to go higher now.  My difference right now is like the difference between night and day.

---------------------

Chatting with E:  While driving home last night my good friend E called me.  He's the one that recently moved out to San Francisco.  I had already heard the bad news... the job he moved out there for has dried up.  Technically he still works for the company, but he's only getting partial payments until they get back into the black or get a LOT more angel funding.  That really sucks as San Francisco is more expensive to live in than Manhattan.  I read recently that it's the MOST expensive metropolis to live in in the USA.

So he's barely making rent and putting food on the table.

Talking to E reminded me of a quick dicsussion we had on Dee's blog.  We were talking about tax burders and how nobody considers themselves "Rich" enough to warrant paying more in taxes.  E is a fine example of how that system works.

I make roughly $70,000 a year now (between base pay, shift premium, extra holiday pay and mandated overtime).  That's a pretty damned good salary!  BUT with my student loan debt, I can't afford to move out of my Mom's house.  I could probably BARELY swing it, if I wasn't paying her anything... but that would be the ultimate dick move.  She supported me fully while I was going to school so the absolute VERY least I can do is pay her back the $250 a month I leeched from her for three years.  I also pay her cell phone bill (she paid mine and that wasn't part of the $250), and I'm buying her a car for roughly $250 a month.

I make more than many people, but I most certainly do not consider myself Rich.  I DO, however, think that I should be paying more in taxes.  E, by comparison was making well over $100,000 a year at his previous job.  As I understand it, he took a significant pay raise to move out to San Fran.  We don't talk money in that specific of a sense, so I don't know the exact amount, but if I had to guess I'd say he was making close to $180,000 a year before the bottom fell out.  That's over twice was I was making, but for him it's not all that much.

He owns property in Chicago (purchased just before the bottom fell out of real estate.  No it's not worth what he owes on it), he rents in San Fran, and is paying his own student loan debt (he has a Masters Degree, but still owes a bit less than I do).  In addition to that he's paying his wife's student loan debt and her current tuition (she's going for her Masters).   Put all of his bills together including what he owes his parents (they were paying his Chicago mortgage while he was going to school in Beijing), and he was barely scraping by at $100,000 a year.

So yeah... he makes way more than most people, and still doesn't have 'a lot' of money.  We were making vague plans to travel this year.  We hadn't decided, but it was either going to be somewhere in south east asia (he's fond of Thailand), or central america (Costa Rica has cheap flightgs).  But now he just can't afford it.  So I'm thinking that sometime in late Spring (April or May?) I may be flying out to San Francisco.

One thing that really threw me for a loop... the city evidently has micro climates depending on what altitude you are at.  He's on the edge of town, fairly high up so the temp rarely falls below 40 degrees where he lives.  I kind of expected that as it IS California.  But it also doesn't get much above 70 dergrees even in the summer.  Man... I might have to consider moving out there.  Starting pay for inexperienced nurses in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is $75,000 a year... experienced nurses get significantly more!

---------------

I just asked my brother R if he wanted my iPod Touch.  He's looking for a good music system for the Van.  He has a nice stereo, but it's years old and doesn't have Bluetooth connectivity.  So his Galaxy S4 will only work if he takes it out of his pocket and connects it with a cable.  He hates that and doesn't bother with it any longer.  So I figured the iPod Touch would be fine.  It's only 8Gb, but that's plenty for his collection of classic rock.

Have you ever heard of a brand whore?  Someone who buys almost anything from a particular company just because that company made it?  Well, R is the opposite.  He's an Apple brand antiWhore.  He won't use anything that they make.  Here I am offering him an MP3 player that happens to have an Apple logo on it, that will be exactly what he's looking for... an MP3 player that is still worth at least $50 (according to a quick ebay search)... and he's going to turn it down because it's part of the Steve Jobs cult!

Ah well... I love R.

----------------

Tax Returns and Internet Explorer: So I heard at work that we can now go online and get our W2s from the State.  I have to admit that the State is pretty good about this whole digital thing... my pay stubs are available online about a week before I get paid!  Now they have the W4s up and ready to download a full week before they start mailing out the hard copies.

But I can't get mine.

It seems that the State isn't ALL that good at this whole digital thing.  The State's 'self service' area for their employees has three parts.  The first is accessible from work.  If you aren't logged into one of the state's computers, tehn you can't use that.  That area has its own username and password, and evidently I didn't write mine down.

The second is simply for the pay stubs.  I access that part all the time to ensure that I get paid for all the overtime I work (not a lot, but hey it's still money!).  The third part is where you can get the W2 from home... and it requires Internet Explorer.  I've tried everything I can to get Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to get into that area, but it insists on using Internet Explorer.

The problem on my end is that something is wrong with IE on my system.  No matter how I try to get into IE, it loads up Chrome instead.  I try in the desktop mode.  No beans.  I try in the start screen.  Nada.  For all intents and purposes I don't have Internet Explorer... which we all know just isn't possible.

A quick search online and I find that hitting the windows key and the R key brings up the run prompt where I cay type in iexplore and get internet explorer up and running and....

DAMN IT!

The state's website requires Internet Explorer... versions 7, 8, and/or 10.

I have 11.

Thankfully between begining to write this post and now, the mail came in.  In the mail today?  My W2 forms!  So I'm going to cut this a little short and start filing my taxes!

C


















Oh... and I'm just going to put this down here.  Out of the way.

No muss, no fuss.