Migraines
Nothing new. I'm on day 4 of a migraine right now and I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Other Health
I saw my endocrinologist yesterday. Per normal, it's tough when I have a migraine that day. Even going out early, it gets bad going outside in uncontrolled light and sound. My A1C was up a little more and just slid into the 'need to acknowledge and change treatment' range. My Doctor gave me the choice of adding two units of insulin each day and seeing how that handled it or doubling my Ozempic dose. When I started Ozempic, it was at the then max dose of 0.5mg per week. It worked well. After a couple visits (maybe a year?) my A1C started to climb again and since they'd approved the max dose to be 1mg per week, we moved to that. Both times I noticed a big difference. Mainly in my appetite, but that affected my weight and ultimately my A1C and daily blood sugars. So, now that I'm back up in the treatment level, and they've again upped what is an acceptable dose, I'm moving to 2mg a week.
Finances
Everything is fine here. Still waiting on SSDI for my 'Nuh-Uh' appeal but in the meantime I'm getting my LTD payments on time.
I looked into life insurance. At my previous job I had good life insurance with only a minimal bi-weekly payment. It was twice my annual salary, or about $180,000. I also paid for Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance which paid out quite a bit more, but only in limited cases (if my arm got severed, I'd get like $150,000 and if I died in a car accident my family would get $500,000). I want to make sure if I pass away that I don't leave any debt and have been meaning to look into this since it was clear I'd be without a job for awhile. I get $1,000 in life insurance at no cost through my credit union. The company that provides that hits me up at least once a month saying that I can up that to over $100,000 in coverage. So, I finally checked it out and found out that it would cost me, assuming I passed a medical exam, about $90 a month. It's not bad, but that got me to thinking... do I need to pay for life insurance?
Here's the thing. I paid off all my debts. If I pass away, my family will be on the hook for one month's worth of credit card bills. So, on a particularly frivolous month, maybe $2,000? No car payment, no student loan payment, nothing. I had to pull a big sum of money out of my 401K before the LTD kicked back in, and since I can't put that back into my 401k, it's just sitting in my savings account. That's $14,000 just sitting there. PLUS I have about $25,000 left in my 401k.
That all tells me that I don't need life insurance. Neither Mom nor my brothers are relying on my income. So I literally just have to cover bills and I have enough money saved back to cover bills. The only thing I need to do, is get one of them access to my money. I'm mom's access. I'm listed on all of her financial accounts and if/when she passes, I can simply withdraw the money into my own accounts for her funeral and other end of life expenses (she also is living debt free). The big problem for me is who to put on my accounts. Both of my brothers, R and B, have had problems with the credit union I'm a part of. I'm not sure they'd allow me to put them on my accounts. I could share it with Mom, but if it requires her going down to the branch office and signing anything, I'd rather not do it.
I don't know. It took me like 10 months to look into the life insurance thing. Maybe I'll get the account sharing thing taken care of within the next 6 months.
Family/Friends
No big news here. My brother R took my nephews up north to the cabin again. This time for a week with just the three of them. They've been having a good time so far, but I won't hear more about it until they get back on Saturday.
Entertainment
I buy a lot of movies. I currently own digital copies of over 500 movies. I've purchased them from Google Play, YouTube, Fandango/Vudu, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Xfinity. I'd absolutely hate if these were all available only on the purchased service, but thankfully 'Movies Anywhere' exists. If you link the accounts and it's a movie listed on Movies Anywhere, your purchase will be shared across any of the accounts they cover. So I buy a movie when Amazon has it on sale, but I can watch it on Fandango or YouTube.
This is great as I'd set up years ago my Google Play movie account to share it amongst my family. Both R and B can log into their google account and can see any of the movies on my Google Play account. They can even purchase movies to that collection. It just uses my credit card, which I'm fine with so long as they pay me back.
Most of the time, that works fine. R will buy a movie and I'll get the email receipt saying it's been added to my library. Soon thereafter, I'll get an email, a text, and an in-app notification from Cash App that he's transferred the money to me. I just have to log into Cash App and deposit the money into my checking account (it takes several days, but no biggie). And again, if it's on the Movies Anywhere list, I have access to it on my other services.
The snag is that Google Play Movies is kind of going away. You can only buy movies on Google Play Movies via the web (but it's a pain in the ass to watch movies that way) or via a Google TV interface. Now, everything else can see the movies in YouTube as the Google Play Movies account is the same as the YouTube account. But they've somehow screwed that up.
Last weekend, before he went up north with our nephews, R bought the last Harry Potter movie. He bought it via Google Play Movies and it's listed on Movies Anywhere. So it should be available not only on YouTube, but all of my other services, right?
Nope. It's not even available in YouTube. I'm not really concerned as I have no personal interest in watching it, but that might change one day and I may want to watch it later. So for now, I have to list it in my spreadsheet (yeah, I have enough movies that I keep track of them all via an Excel spreadsheet) as it SHOULD be on all the services, but is specifically only available on Google Play Movies. And Google Play Movies plays like shit on the web and hardly ever works on my Nvidia Shield (Android TV that works a LOT like Google TV).
New Tech
I wear a smart watch. I know I talked about my first few smart watches when they were Pebble. I know I also talked about it when I went all in on Apple products and moved to an Apple Watch. After the Pebble and before the Apple Watch I had several Android Wear (Wear OS) watches. I never found one that I loved. Either the build quality was shit, or the battery life was shit. My last one has been fine. It's the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra GPS from 2021. It's built rather cheaply, but good enough. It's main feature was it's battery life. Normal Wear OS watches will have a brilliant bright and lovely screen. When you're not looking at it, it will turn off to save battery. If it stayed on all the time, it wouldn't last more than a few hours. But as one reviewer says, I need my watch to be a watch at all times. That means if I sneak a look at my watch and don't do the overly expressive "Bring My Watch Up To My Face" movement, I want to see the time. So, they have a 'always on' display that shows minimal information with almost or no color in a dim mode. That mode generally gets Wear OS watches to a little over 24 hours of life between charges.
Now, I should say what I use my smart watch for. I can't use it at work (that was a whole big thing with the prison and it's just easier to have a 'dumb watch' for telling time. I now have six of those so I can change up my style. No, the smart watch is for 'my' time. Right now that means going out to the store, going to play D&D, going to the movies or visiting with my brother B, or vacationing/traveling. I need it to tell time, give me alerts from my phone especially when driving, and it has to be able to read my Google Keep notes as that's where I keep my shopping lists. When I go shopping I like to bring up my wrist and see what's next. I can even check off the box when it hits my shopping cart.
What made the Mobvoi TicWatch so good at battery life is that instead of having that ambient or 'always on' mode, it actually had a separate screen. An old school LED screen that showed the time and a few other things, but it looked like any other dumb watch. When you wanted the full on full color beautiful Wear OS display, you simply tapped the screen or hit one of the buttons. With that mode on most of the time I could always check the time but also use it for Google Keep notes and phone notifications. And it lasted well over a day (it could go for almost two days with the way I used it). In my normal day to day use, where I'm hardly ever out and about, I could charge it up full, turn it off, and then use turn it on for specific uses like shopping or a trip to my brothers. That way it would last without another charge for four or five days of use. Sure, it was only on for a few hours each of those days and there was sometimes days or weeks in-between uses, but it worked fine for me as I could still use it while on vacation for over a day at a time.
The more recent versions of the TicWatch (both the 4 and 5 have since come out with the 6 right around the corner), haven't offered anything new except for the newer versions of the Wear OS and the newer chips. The new chips were nice as there was a low power one for most tasks and a high power one for stuff like maps or videos. It all worked to extend the battery out longer. I was frankly fine without them though as my watch worked fine. And then I got the update. They finally, after three years, 'updated' my TicWatch 3 to a newer version of Wear OS (version 3.5 from version 2.0). And you know what? Wear OS version 3.5 runs like hot garbage on the watch. The battery life has gone to shit, and I lost the one watch fast that I absolutely loved.
This all happened earlier this year. I knew I'd get a new watch eventually, but since I could still limp along with mine I decided to wait and see what was coming out. I was going to wait and see the new watches form Samsung, OnePlus, Fossil, and Google. TicWatch had already taken themselves out of the running by having bad new implementations.
First up was OnePlus. This was their second generation watch. From the reviews I watched, they said it still felt like a first generation product. It was buggy and worked haphazardly on anything other than a OnePlus phone. I don't have a OnePlus phone, so that was out of the running. Next was Fossil. Or rather, the news release that Fossil wasn't making any Wear OS watches this year. Fossil made about a dozen Wear OS watches under a bunch of different brands like Michael Kors and Diesel. They were some of the most stylish watches even if they weren't the most technologically advanced ones. But I wasn't going to get a 'new' watch that was a year out of date, so Fossil was out of the running. Next came Samsung's announcement of their Galaxy Watches. I didn't hold out much hope as I understood that they worked great when paired with a Samsung phone, but were fairly well borked when used on other phones. As a diehard Pixel phone user, I didn't think it would be worth it. They impressed me, however, with their Ultra watch even though it was outrageously expensive at $699. It sounded great at their announcement, but I held off until I got reviewers that had used it for weeks. And thank God I did since it's a big hunk of hot garbage. As big and as expensive as it was, it didn't have good battery life and it worked even worse on non Samsung phones.
So that left Google and their Pixel Watch. As much as I love Google and their Pixel line of products, I really didn't like the Pixel Watch or the Pixel Watch 2. They were small at 41mm. All my previous watches were closer to 44 or 45mm. It also had mediocre battery life with some people saying it couldn't even last a full day. So I wasn't holding my breath but I'd see it when they unveiled the Google Pixel Watch 3 on August 13th.
My attention, a few days before the event, became quite sharp though as my TicWatch finally died. It won't charge at all. When they had their unveiling of the Pixel Watch 3, I viewed several of the 'hands on' takes. None of them are true reviews as these people only got to touch them for a few hours and have to go by what Google is saying. They'll have reviews out in a couple weeks. But it seemed to address everything I wanted addressed. First, they now offer it in a bigger 45mm size. It still looks small, but the screen at least is the same as it was on my TicWatch. They also claim through an improved chip and a bigger batter (because of the bigger size overall) that it will easily last over 24 hours. They listed a TON of new features for workouts and sleep tracking, but I don't use my watch for those things. It addressed the two things I needed addressed, everyone said it felt and looked good... so mine will be here on September 10th.
I got something new to play with it. I've always just had the Wifi versions of smartwatches. All of its connectivity would either come from the phone or from a direct connection to a wifi network. This will be my first smartwatch that has its own LTE signal. With my Google Fi plan, I get free smart watch use, so it won't cost me any more. It means that I'll be able to go into a store with my watch and look at my Keep notes without having my phone anywhere near me. Perfect!
Writing
I had the big update on Gamer Gurl a few days back. I've written a few chapters since then, but I've had a migraine so the writing has been hard. I probably won't write today even though I'm at a fun part because I'm having trouble even concentrating on THIS post. How could I keep distinct characters and a story narrative going when I'm struggling with punctuation, spelling, and basic grammar?
Continued Computer Issues
I think I've come across a solution to Apple Music stopping playing. I stopped using the mini player that gives me the big album art and instead used the one that shows me the upcoming songs to be played. When it stops, I can't click 'next' and have it move to the next track. But I CAN click on the next song in the upcoming list and it will start playing that song.
After doing that for a few weeks, I started to look closer at the songs that it was freezing on. I couldn't see anything wrong with them, but I clicked on one and removed the download. I download all the music to my computer so that even if I lose internet access I'll be able to play my music (plus I'm not just burning up bandwidth with streaming music). Once I remove the download, I can stream the song just fine. I can then download the song again, and it plays like brand new. I'm doing that on any song it stops on, but so far that's at least 10 songs and I'm afraid that something might have happened to like 10% of my downloaded music.
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