Expanding storage

Everyone knows that junk expands to fill the storage space allocated for it.  And often overflows.  We didn't think that our 3 car garage would be too small but with the addition of bicycles, scooters, lawnmowers, and most recently power wheelchairs and power scooters, we are feeling the pinch.  So this weekend we installed a partial solution to the problem - a pulley hoist.  Available from Costco.com at about $15 per hoist, it's a very straightforward, easy to install solution.  Normally, I would have installed this equipment but my balancing problems makes that dangerous.  After installing the first pulley I asked Carolyn to finish the project.  

Here's the finished job with everything in their new places.

iPhone learning curve

Y'know sometimes I get the feeling that I learn things in a different way from other people.  Or maybe I'm just a slow learner.  We got new iPhones the day they came out last year and have been using them pretty much daily.  I have probably close to 134 apps loaded on my device and frequently use maybe 40.  But only yesterday did I finally discover the "Search iPhone" screen.  Or maybe I should say only yesterday did I finally find out that screen did something useful, very useful.

Those of you with iPhones know what I'm talking about.  It's the blank looking screen that you get if you press your Home button (the only button on the front of the iPhone, just below the screen) twice, slowly.  If you're like me, whenever I got this screen (always unintentionally) I would quickly stroke the screen from right to left to get to my collection of apps.  If I thought about it at all, I might have assumed that I could enter the name of an app rather than look for the icon but why would I want to do that?

Well, Carolyn and I have been organizing our apps and creating several app groups in the hope that we could more efficiently find the ones we wanted.  The immediate reward for all our work is that we can't find any of the apps in the groups because the icons are now too small!  Aha! I said to myself, that is what that Search iPhone screen is for.  I was looking for the Zillow app so I pressed the Home button twice, slowly then entered Z.  Voila.  Zillow came up on the screen.  Also showing on my screen was a friend Bob Zambelich, a music album Dr. Zhivago, and four more apps that are part of the Zumobi network.  This screen is magic.  It is virtually Google for my iPhone!

Last week I downloaded an e-Book from the Sacramento Library but it didn't end up where I expected it and I couldn't download it again until the 3 week borrowing time is over.  Now I decided to enter the title of this book on this search screen.   Once again, magic!  I don't have to wait three weeks.

Now I know that some of you will yawn and say "so what" because you've been using this screen all along.  I wish you'd have told me.  And if there's at least one person who has just learned something new about your iPhone, you're welcome.

Our fall vacation

She may not be calling it a "bucket list" but that's what Carolyn is putting together.  The big project for the upcoming month of September will be a grand tour of several midwestern and southern states that we may have traveled through but didn't spend a lot of time in.  And the main reason for the visit won't be the tourist attractions but the people we're visiting and staying with along the way.  If you're not one of those people, I apologize.  There just isn't enough time to visit everyone.  If you are on our list and we've already told you we're coming, I apologize.  You're stuck with us.  No backsies.

There will probably be many changes before our actual departure date.  For example, our planning map above shows the route we might have taken if we drove the whole distance.  That would have been 5,907 miles.  But the train and certainly the airplanes won't be following these routes.

The agenda currently goes something like the following:
Board the Amtrak passenger train bound for Denver and take a day and a half to cross the California Desert and climb the Rockies.
Visit with Carolyn's brother Ray and his wife Jeannie.
Fly to Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Pick up a rental car.
Visit with Ron and Barbara, dear friends from my days working at Harbor Regional Center.
Drive to Branson, Missouri.
See what Branson has to offer music and entertainment buffs, such as we are and maybe take in some of the archeological sights in the area.
Visit with Shannah and Kathy, dear friends from my days working at Alta California Regional Center.
Fly to Panama City, Florida.
Visit with my cousin Marilyn and her husband.
Fly home where we can collect our thoughts, organize our pictures, and send out the thank you cards.

With gas prices skyrocketing a long trip like this doesn't seem all that prudent.  On the other hand, we may never make it if we don't do it now.

We're already getting excited.

Me, a solo? You've got to be kidding!

The director of the group I sing with every Tuesday morning approached me this last week and asked if I would prepare to sing a solo number with the group.  You could have knocked me over with a cotton ball.  You see besides being shy I have a relatively soft voice.  And my Parkinson's Disease is making it even softer.  But Donna is not one to take a simple "I'd rather not."  Instead, she said, "Go ahead and pick one out.  It's not like you can't say no later!"  So I asked  if there were any restrictions and she said it should be a number that is in her collection of music, my collection, or just something we know.  In other words, pretty much anything.

Our "theme" this semester is "moisture".  As soon as I got home I started looking through my music books, quickly finding three numbers that at least brushed against that theme: Singing in the Rain, September in the Rain, and Catch a Falling Star (save it for a rainy day).  If I can get it to work, I'd really like to do Catch a Falling Star with some or all of the group singing the backup (echo) part.  Should be an interesting experience.

A mailing list by any other name is......

...still just a headache.

Forty-two years ago when I was managing the computing resources for a large metropolitan hospital, I had to allocate almost 25% of my programming resources for maintenance of our mailing lists.  They took up so much time and they seemed deceptively simple.

Jump to the present and I'm still plagued by the mailing list problem except that now it is a personal list and it is called Contacts.  And it is still deceptively simple.  I mean its a list of names of people I know,  show know, or once knew together with one or more pieces of useful contact information such as phone number, physical address of home or office, and email address.  So why do I have such problems that a contact I need on my phone is only on my PC or one that I would like to add to a group on my PC is only on my phone.  Depending on the device and the program I use to access the data I have either 2411 contacts, or 1410, or 715, or 2350, or ...well you get the idea.

When we got our iPhones I was certain this would be a solvable puzzle.  There are so many applications written for the iPhone that surely someone has figured it out.  Well, half a dozen programs later I'm not sure that's the case.

Duplication is probably the worst problem followed closely by outdated data that isn't easily recognized as outdated.  But when I tried to attack those problems I found I couldn't even get the different programs to recognize the same NUMBER of contacts.  Without that agreement I could spend 4 hours cleaning out 200 duplicate entries just to have a different application add them all back again.

Not that it wasn't a learning experience.  It was that. Let me see if I can summarize my feelings about each of the apps I tried.

Saline:   Undisputed winner of the naming contest.  What would you expect to be the best SOLUTION for a problem with contacts - a Saline Solution.  On its face this program does a lot from merging duplicates, to mass deleting of contacts meeting certain criteria.  But the changes didn't seem to transmit  consistently through iTunes to the PC contact file with Outlook.  It was one of the first apps we tried so I may have given up early.

Dup Remover:  That's what it does and that's all it does and it does it automatically.  It does save the debris in the "trash can" hopefully allowing a redo.

Contacts Duster:  This program likes to do things automatically but you have the ooption of making a backup before you start deleting or merging contacts.  It also allows you to export contacts in large vpf files.  Unfortunately, it's not clear how to restore a backup or export vpf files.  Macs handle these files much more reliably than Windows.

Contact Sync:  I like the way this program is organized: you upload your contact file to a work area in the cloud. This provides an automatic backup.   Then you make the changes needed either automatically or semi-automatically.  This is done on the PC and is a much more open process than the other programs.  Unless and until they start charging for this cloud workspace, I will probably use this cleanup utility the most.

I get the feeling that I'm still missing something, like a 500 page manual on how contacts are stored and accessed.  But I've already spent too much time on this project to do more now.

Another horse in the stable

Some of you are aware that we're in the middle of planning a cross-country vacation this fall to see some dear friends and relatives that are just too far away to visit often.  We've gone through several ideas already and will probably exhaust many others before the time comes (September).     We've considered driving the whole trip or flying between all our visiting points.  Everyone has invited us to stay in their house rather than a hotel and we've considered that as well as staying only in hotels.  However, one thing became very clear early on:  My mobility problem is going to be a problem no matter how accommodating our guests are or which transportation method we use.  I don't want Carolyn pushing me in a wheelchair and my power chair doesn't transfer well.  Sooo............. this is a long introduction to the newest horse in the Loveridge stable:

Sorry, the horse I'm talking about has four wheels, not two legs.

Last weekend, Carolyn and I went out looking for something that could easily transport me in homes and tourist areas while at the same time being itself easy to transport.  We saw big wheelchairs, little wheelchairs, big scooters, little scooters.  And finally settled on something like this.  But a new scooter was in the range of $2,000 so we told the very nice salesman that we didn't need a scooter for a couple of months and would like to use that time to see if any used machines came on the market.  He assured us that it happened rarely but certainly happened.

Two days later the store manager called to say that coincidentally a scooter was just turned in that matched our needs perfectly at a price that was 40% off new.  We didn't know if this was a month-end bargain or not.  Doesn't matter now.

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Carolyn and I together can lift Big Red into our van or Highlander without taking it apart.  But it's really no trouble splitting it into pieces, each of which weighs 40 pounds or less.  And the pieces will usually fit in the trunk.  It doesn't need a van.  

Welcome home, Big Red.