Category Archives: Misc

Flip Phone

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It’s been two years since I bought my Unihertz Atom L phone. It was certainly an interesting experience but the lack of security updates meant I really needed to get off of it. My concerns around possible tarrifs pushed me into looking for something new sooner rather than later.

iPhone Options

I strongly considered going back to an iPhone SE or a refurbished 13 mini as they still seem to be the best small phones available. Like before, what stopped me was I could not find an audiobook app that has a sticky sleep button1. I really tried to find an iOS app that would work. I tested fourteen of them and none of them had a persistent sleep feature.

Unfortunately, this meant an iPhone wasn’t a good choice for me unless I wanted to go back to having a dedicated phone for sleeping. This is fine when I’m home but not ideal when I’m trying to travel light.

Android Options

*sigh* Well, mainstream Android companies clearly don’t believe in small phones. I spent so much time trying to find anything reasonable that was truly small. Android Authority has an article about The best small Android phones you can still buy in 2024 and they include the Pixel 9 which is 6 inches high (152 mm). My tragically small pockets do not make that a reasonable size.

With reluctance, I started considering flip phones. I really didn’t like the idea of having to open up a flip phone every time I had to use it. However, once I started looking at the modern flip phones I realized they have a screen that can be used when folded. Currently, the best flip phone options I could find are the Motorola Razr Plus and the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6. Exactly which one is better depends on which review you read and what exactly you want it to do. The Motorola phone is significantly cheaper and everyone agrees the front cover display is better. The Samsung has an overall better build and also offers 7 years of security updates.

While I felt I had a good feel for the actual specs, I wanted to touch them to see if I’d really be ok with a flip phone. The Sunday after Thanksgiving we flew back to California and after supper that night I ran to my local Best Buy to try out the phones. It was a little hard to compare them because the two phones were grouped apart from each other and the Motorola had a much clunkier security tether on it. This is particularly problematic when you’re trying to get a feel for if you like the size and weight. However, while the Motorola had a bigger screen, it wasn’t super noticeable when they weren’t side-by-side. The bigger difference is that Motorola automatically allows all apps to appear on the cover whereas with Samsung you have to install a special (Samsung created) app. However, I was able to play YouTube on both front covers to get a feel for how an app might work on a small screen.

Eventually, I decided to go with the Samsung. It felt marginally better in my hands and the security updates were a pretty big lure. I went home and did some last minute waffling before placing my order for the 256 GB version2. This is officially the most expensive phone I’ve ever bought ($850 pre-tax). I really hope it lasts for many years.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6: First Impressions

It’s a good phone. It has none of the weird quirks that the Unihertz phone had. My Do Not Disturb allowed my emergency contacts through flawlessly. The pre-installed apps also mostly seemed to Just Work. In addition, the battery is fine without me having to go do a lot of power optimization.

That said, I have more privacy concerns with this phone. For example, the default camera app will not open unless I allow it Nearby devices permission3. They say this is so it can capture sound from Bluetooth devices but I should be able to use the app even if I disallow that ability. To make things worse, Samsung doesn’t let me change the default camera app to something else that doesn’t require that setting. I really want my phone to have the option to lie to the apps installed and just send them fake data when they insist they need some specific permission. This is the most annoying, but not the only, example where I think the phone is trying to be too social with its environment. I spent multiple days going through every setting on this phone and revoking every permission I thought the app didn’t actually need. There were a lot.

This phone also comes with fancy AI which . . . well, I think AI is over-hyped at the moment4. It might have some potential in the future but I have both privacy and reliability concerns. The review I read about the AI made it sound more like a toy than anything actually useful. I’ve turned off all the AI features I can find.

With all that complaining out of the way, I still would buy this phone again. The flip form factor is working much better than I expected. As I mentioned above, Samsung requires an add-on to use most apps on the cover screen. However, once I had it setup, almost all apps work fine on the cover screen. The one exception is the web browser and that isn’t because of the browser, it’s because ads don’t resize to be small enough and end up taking the entire screen real estate 5. Here’s some examples of how they look (ironically, these images may appear bigger than the actual screen which is a 3.4-inch screen):

Screenshot of an audiobook player controls. All the basic audiobook controls are displayed including a play button, faster forward, position, and sleep timer. It also shows us that this is in the Willis-Connie folder and is in the middle of To Say Nothing of the Dog.

Here’s what Smart Audiobook Player looks like on the cover screen.

A screenshot of a social media post. It shows a cartoon figure of a white woman and says @kieas@sfba.social. We see there are 5 messages, 7 following, and 21 followers. The post is from December 1 and says Headed to the airport. Hopefully our trip home is smooth. Below are icons for reply, boost, favorite, bookmark, and more options. At the very bottom of the screen is a small square and a small back symbol.

How the screen looks when reading social media.

One other interesting aspect of the phone is it can work as its own stand.

Photo of a flip phone slightly open in a tent shape sitting on top of a cartography book. We can see the front screen which is showing a post by @cats_rio@sfba.social which says Look I'm busy. It's still on my list but have you seen my schedule? So much lounging to do. Those sunbeams won't chase themselves. And then shows a link.

I’m still getting use to having a flip phone but so far it’s working out better than I expected.

  1. I want the sleep timer to automatically activate every time I hit play. This allows me to wake up in the middle of the night, tap my earbud to start the audiobook, and then have the audiobook automatically stop at 15 min all without me having to open my eyes ↩
  2. I really wanted the 512 GB version but I couldn’t really justify the price difference since on my current phone I’m comfortably under 256 GB. ↩
  3. In Android 11 this was bundled with the location permission, so it’s good this has been pulled out. ↩
  4. I am particularly irritated when companies shift their developer time from creating useful features to creating AI “features” to make the stock sexy. ↩
  5. This was a problem I also had on my Unihertz phone. The screen was a bit bigger so it mostly worked but some websites were mostly unusable on that phone, which I took as a sign I shouldn’t use those websites. ↩

Looking for a New Laptop

In June 2023 I decided it was time to get a new laptop. Myfanwy, my most recent laptop, has been a very solid computer. However, she is eight years old, ancient in computer years. I don’t need my computer to do much, usually, and Myfanwy has met most of my needs. Except, back in June I was trying to use SketchUp to figure out some patio options and it was too much for my poor laptop1. This, combined with Rio slowly destroying my laptop’s bezel by persistent gnawing — she loves the rubber edge — finally pushed me over the edge into looking into a new laptop.

Normally, I buy refurbished units so I probably wandered over to Dell’s Outlet to take a look at what they had on hand. I can’t remember my exact train of thought but at some point I decided I wanted a laptop where I wouldn’t have to guess if all the components were Linux compatible. This led me to the System76 laptops which I was half-way talking myself into until Jaeger asked if I’d seen the Framework laptops. Apparently they’re very popular among his coworkers, at least the ones that don’t have Macbooks. I took a look and was intrigued. I really liked the idea of a laptop that would let me easily upgrade parts. However, I didn’t want a 13″ laptop. I like my laptops big and my phones small. Lucky for me, Framework was in the midst of trying to create a 16″ laptop.

One thing led to another and in July I preordered a Framework 16. I ordered the same day it was announced and ended up getting in the 5th batch. The modular options were my downfall and I went a little crazy when ordering the options. It’s officially the most expensive computer I have ever bought and it costs more even than many Macbooks. What I ordered:

  • The base Ryzen™ 7 7840HS system
  • 180W Power Adapter (theoretically, one could get this somewhere else but it didn’t feel worth it)
  • Both the Graphics Module (AMD Radeon™ RX 7700S) and the Expansion Bay Shell (so I could slim it down when traveling)
  • 1 32 GB of Ram (this leaves another slot free if I want more later)
  • 1 TB SSD (I wavered a bit about whether I should get larger but at the moment it’s more than I need and I can upgrade later if necessary or get a second drive)
  • The basic keyboard
  • A numpad and spacers for when I don’t want the numpad (this is flat out just an indulgence but it might be useful when I balance bills and I am not docked for some reason)
  • Expansion ports: 2 USB-A, 2 USB-C, MicroSD, HDMI, ethernet, and headphone jack (I can only use 6 at one time but I wanted the option to slip in MicroSD, HDMI, and ethernet as needed. I’m still debating though if I should get more USB-C ports.)

Back in July the Framework 16 was estimated to ship in Q4 of 2023. However, it was a brand new product and the timing slipped. This wasn’t particularly surprising but I was disappointed I didn’t get a fancy laptop to play with over winter break. They did start emailing bi-weekly emails explaining exactly where they were in the process and I found them interesting to read.

During the delay, I started creating a migration plan for what I was going to move to the new laptop. In addition to replacing Myfanwy as my primary laptop, I initially thought it should also be able to run Windows. Anna is my 14-year-old all-in-one and currently my Windows computer for the rare occasion when Linux won’t work (i.e. iTunes and the occasional special PDF doc that needs a digital signature). Anna is barely functional at this point and it’s time for her to retire. Doing some sort of dual boot on the new laptop made sense. I had almost decided to go with two hard drives: one for Linux and one for Windows so I wouldn’t have to deal with partition nonsense, when Jaeger proposed an alternate option: a shared Mac Mini. He was already thinking about getting a Mac Mini both so he could have a personal computer that ran iTunes and so he could have a computer that ran his code. If he was getting a Mac Mini as a supplemental computer, it made sense to just buy one big enough to handle any reasonable iTunes needs I might have also2.

In January Framework shipped out review laptops and the reviews started coming in toward the end of the month. There was a fairly wide, range of reviews. Everyone thought the concept was fascinating but not everyone was convinced the novelty was worth the price. Some people questioned whether they wanted to cancel their preorders (which one can do without penalty). However, based on what I could see, it still met what I was looking for in a laptop.

Once the review models hit I started haunting the Framework community forums to keep an eye on when customers from the various batches received their computers. The very first report of a customer getting their Framework 16 computer happened on February 2 with more getting them by the first full week in February. However, there were numerous complications such as the factories shutting down for Lunar New Year and bottlenecks with specific configurations. In particular, “International English – Linux” keyboards were delaying shipments for some Batch 1 customers3. While waiting for the delayed components to arrive, Framework started shipping Batch 2 computers for those who didn’t have delayed components.

One advantage I’m anticipating with the Framework laptop is the ability to add relatively cheap add-ons to my Birthday/Christmas wish lists. For example, it’s designed to easily switch out the bezel. I don’t really love the colors currently available but I suspect that more colors will be added later4

Today Framework sent out an update saying that batch 5 should ship before the end of Q1. I’m tempted to take the day after it arrives off work so I can dedicate time to setting it up5. I have my USB drive ready with Ubuntu, I have a name for the computer, and I have a plan for what software I want to install and the files I want to transfer. I think I’m ready.

  1. I’ve been using SketchUp for years to model our houses and Myfanwy has been getting progressively worse at being able to handle it. ↩
  2. I have not completely given up on the iPhone SE. I have hopes that someday there will be an iOS audiobook app that meets my needs. If that happens, I want iTunes to be able to backup the phone locally. ↩
  3. As an aside, they do not currently offer a Dvorak keyboard. I’m not convinced I’d want one even if they did offer it but I was a little surprised it wasn’t an option given how many other custom keyboard options there are. Possibly they expect people with alternative layouts to get one of the blank keyboards. However, while poking around I learned that there were more people, at least on the forums, who were interested in Colemak keyboards, which I hadn’t heard of before. ↩
  4. The 13″ currently has black, gray, green, lavendar, orange, and red. Red might be interesting but I’d really prefer a blue. ↩
  5. Though, I have concerns it may arrive right before Julian’s birthday party, on the 23rd, which would be very bad timing. ↩

This Day On Twitter Update

In August of 2023 I was trying to decide what to do with my old Twitter posts and decided to start posting them in the format of “this day on twitter”. It’s been interesting to go through and see little snapshots of my life throughout the years. However, the Twitter updates are overwhelming the rest of this blog. As a result, I’ve decided to move all the Twitter posts off my home page. Instead, you can get to them by clicking the This Day on Twitter menu link.

I haven’t tested yet but I believe, based on how I made the code changes, that the RSS feed will still contain the Twitter updates.

Update: I’ve confirmed the RSS feed does still contain the Twitter updates. They’re only hidden from the home page.

Isolating

5/30/2023 Update:
Jaeger and Calvin and now both testing positive for COVID. So, we gave isolation a shot but clearly didn’t do it quick enough. I guess that goes under lessons learned.

Original:
Of the houses we’ve owned, our current one is one of my favorites (probably a toss-up with our Gunbarrel house). However, there’s one feature that has always baffled us. On the ground floor of our house there is a 4th bedroom with an en suite bathroom1. For some reason, this en suite bathroom has an exterior door that takes you to the side of the house. It’s not near the garage or laundry room and isn’t particularly near to where one would put a hot tub. Till this weekend, we could never figure out what you’d use the door for.

Partital view of the bathroom from the bedroom. There is an exterior glass door in the bothroom with a shade covering the window.

Unfortunately, this weekend Julian and I contracted COVID for the first time since the pandemic started. Jaeger and Calvin were both testing negative so we decided that Julian and I should try to isolate. After some thought, we concluded the ground floor bedroom was our best option. It’s primarily Jaeger’s office but doubles as our exercise and guest bedroom. We have a sleeper sofa and the room is big enough we could bring in Julian’s mattress.

Current bedroom setup. The bed part of the sofa has been setup. To the left, on the floor, is Julian's mattress which he is sitting on with his back to the camera. At the foot of the sofa bed is an office desk with two monitors. On the opposite bed from the camera is a white dresser with plants sitting on top.

We moved one of our air purifiers right next to the interior door 2 and are keeping the interior door closed. Julian and I enter and exit the room exclusively via the exterior door. I am still going into the main part of the house, primarily the kitchen, but for limited amounts of time and fully masked. We’re taking all our meals outside. The sky has been pretty gray but surprisingly warm.

Outside patio. There is a square outdoor dining table with two chairs. Julian is in one with his back to us. Several feet away is a green card table with another two chairs. Jaeger is sitting at this table with his back to us reading his phone. Julian is eating pizza and on that table is also a mug, a book, and a Kleenex box. Underneath the table is a trashcan. On the green card table is another mug.

One of the things this experience is emphasizing to me is how much we underutilized our outdoor spaces. I like interior design so I’ve thought a lot about how various spaces in the house are used and what we can do to optimize their utility. However, I still haven’t figured out how to encourage use of our outdoor spaces. I think if I came up with a plan I could keep an eye out on Craigslist for good furniture. I just haven’t come up with a plan yet.

Overall, we have a pretty nice setup and Julian is loving getting unlimited screen time. Rio seems to be the most unhappy about the whole situation. We discovered when my parents came over that she doesn’t like strangers at all. She mostly stayed upstairs for the brief time they were here and even when she did venture downstairs, she’d run away the instant she saw either of them. After they left, she had one normal night and then Julian and I moved downstairs. She clearly did not approve and spent a significant amount of the night meowing at our door. While the rest of us eat outside, Rio sits by the sliding glass door and mournfully watches us.

Rio, our black cat, sitting on top of a white bookcase filled with cookbooks and surrounded by plants.

I had a really bad cold about a month ago, probably brought home by Julian, which caused me to miss almost a week of work so I’m tired of being sick. However, so far I’m doing pretty well. I’m on Paxlovid and have the weird metallic taste side effect but none of the others3. Yesterday I wasn’t feeling great but still had enough energy to read a couple of books. Today my physical energy is a bit lower than normal, and I have a fair amount of coughing and runny nose, but I think my brain is back to functioning. At the moment, I think I’ll be working tomorrow.

One of the advantages of remote work is, as long as I’m feeling ok, I can work while sick without infecting anyone else. Today Jaeger and I swapped our office setup, with the exception of the monitors and desks, so we’re ready for tomorrow. I have four meetings tomorrow, which isn’t ideal with a kid in the same room, but I expect Minecraft will keep Julian suitably entertained. I’ll also have a great view.

Small three-tiered water fountain in front of a hedge surronded by outdoor plants including a very young persimmon tree and some California poppies.

A little to my surprise, our precautions appear to have paid off, at least so far4. Neither Jaeger nor Calvin have any COVID symptoms and Jaeger just tested negative again today.

  1. According to the permits, this bed/bath is one year newer than the rest of the house. ↩
  2. We own four Winix 5300-2 Air Purifier purchased back in 2019 for wildfire season and I have never regretted their purchase. Normally, we have them running in auto mode but right now all of them are running at full blast in addition to having windows open during the warmer parts of the day. ↩
  3. It turns out a piece of dark chocolate helps mask it. ↩
  4. As a typical teenager, Calvin mainly lives in his room so probably had the least amount of exposure. However, Jaeger slept right next to me the night before I tested positive. ↩

Thoughts on Remote Work

I have a long history of working from home in various ways. At my first library I worked from home for seven years. My next two libraries weren’t as work from home friendly but I was usually able to do it once a week1. I’ve been in my current fully remote position for two years.

I have been disgruntled for years over how few employers consider fully remote workers to be a viable option. There are clearly some positions that are more compatible with fully remote work than others. There are also some people who prefer being fully remote more than others. One of the few silver linings of COVID was that many employers had to figure out how to make remote work feasible and their employees managed to do good work even with all the complications that the pandemic brought2. I am very annoyed with companies who are now trying to bring their people back to work in-person when it’s not for actual work purposes. In my view, neither “strengthening our community and sense of connection” nor compensating for managers who can’t manage remotely, are sufficient reasons to require in-person work. These issues can be dealt with in other ways.

Now that I think about it, many of the benefits of remote work compensate for a society setup to make having kids hard for two working parents3. This is a problem that I feel many top executives do not have either because they have a spouse that stays home or they have an army of support workers for their home.

Once we had kids, having both Jaeger and I work was never the easiest option for our family. However, I desperately need to work. If I don’t have interesting problems to solve, my mental health rapidly deteriorates. I assume Jaeger is similar. At the very least, he does not want to stay home full time with the kids either. Remote work helps bridge the capacity gap between working outside the house and being a parent.

In San Francisco I was working 40 hours a week and commuting down to Mountain View Monday-Thursday. On my commuting days I had no free time. I’d wake up and leave the house by 6:30am and would return around 6:00pm. I’d feed the kids, get them ready for bed, and then immediately go to bed completely exhausted. I had a shorter commute in Seattle, and it was better, but I still didn’t have much buffer if something went wrong at work or home.

Many daycare hours are limited and are barely open long enough to both pickup and drop off kids within an eight hour work day. They also require driving, rather than taking mass transit when it’s available, because available daycare slots and job locations never seem to match. Several of our preschools had a large number of holidays when care wasn’t available. In San Francisco, we dealt with this by having an au pair, who is limited to 45 hours of work a week, and supplementing with preschool. Due to cost, and other factors, this is not an option available to many people. Even with the support of an au pair, I had a panic attack in the Millbrae BART station one day when I was reviewing the preschool calendar and realized they were going to be closed the entire month of July4.

Working remotely allows for much more flexibility around childcare options. When working remotely the only commute time I need to factor in is the time to get to the daycare/preschool. Holidays aren’t as big of a deal because even with tiny kids I could usually get in a significant amount of work5. When the kids get sick, I don’t have a mad scramble to find alternative care or take the day off and, it turns out, kids get sick a lot. So far this school year we’ve had one or both of the kids home sick for a total of 11 school days (no COVID, just regular colds). Some of this was probably delayed exposure due to everyone being more careful during the early COVID years. However, I distinctly remember Julian being regularly sick when he started preschool.

Schools are another institution that work best when there is a stay at home parent. One of the reasons Calvin went to private school in Colorado, even when I was only working 20 hours a week, was because our public school’s kindergarten hours were incompatible with complimentary childcare options. Even once you hit first grade, the school day usually ends between 2-3pm. Some schools offer after school programs and some don’t. Those that do rarely guarantee you get a spot when you enroll in the school. It’s very hard to find care for kids to fill the gap between the end of the school day and the end of the work day.

Working remotely allows me to pickup the kids from school and then continue working for the rest of the day. Depending on the age of the kid, you may still need extra care but it opens up a lot more options.

Speaking of more options, having two fully remote parents is amazing. For the first time since we’ve had kids I feel we’re actually close to a 50/50 split in kid/house work. Most days I drop the kids off at school and Jaeger picks them up. I no longer have to make the choice of starting early, skipping lunch, and/or working late to fit both my child and work obligations in the same day6. I just work a normal work day and it’s amazing.

I was so disappointed when Apple and other tech companies started walking back their remote work options. Yes, in many ways tech workers are incredibly privileged. However, I strongly believe that having more permanent remote workers would increase the overall diversity of tech companies. In addition, it might provide more relief for the partners of those tech workers. I really appreciated the Thoughts on Office-Bound Work some Apple employees put together.

So far I’ve focused on the benefits I get from remote work as a mother. I mentioned them first because they are by far the most important for me. However, remote work also offers other perks which include:

  • I like people but I also find them exhausting. After a day of interacting with people I need several hours, or more, to recover.
  • I have more control over the temperature at home. While working at Mountain View the thermastat in my work area was broken for several months. It was regularly in the lower 60s (17C) in summer. I had a space heater, wore a down coat, and had fingerless gloves. During my 15 minute breaks I’d go outside and try to warm up.
  • Open floor plans are the norm these days but I would not work well in them. Due to some incidents in middle school, I do best when I have my back to the wall. (This is not just true at work, in restaurants I also try to pick the chair that doesn’t allow people to sneak up behind me.) The typical advice when needing to concentrate in an open floor plan is to wear noise canceling headphones but that would mean I would have even less ability to hear people coming up behind me.
  • Related to above, my job involves many Zoom meetings (often 4-5 a day) with people all over the state. This would not be fun for a desk/cube neighbor.
  • More flexibility for everything. When I worked at Mountain View I had to leave at a specific time either to catch my train or to avoid traffic (if I drove). I couldn’t keep working even if I was in the middle of an interesting/important problem. This last week I was in the middle of something and kept working on it, off and on between dinner and other stuff, till around 9pm. Mind you, I rarely work that late under normal circumstances, but I appreciate how easy it is when I want/need to.

Since having kids, my quality of life has been drastically better in the jobs where I am a fully remote worker. Remote work isn’t the best option for everyone but I believe it should be an option for those that can do their jobs without going into the office.

  1. My third library did move almost everyone to fully remote work when COVID arrived and stayed that way until I left but it was clear that administration was not comfortable with this. ↩
  2. Working fully remote from home during a pandemic is nothing like it normally is. Until COVID, anytime I worked from home my kid(s) were either in daycare/school or being watched by an au pair. I did not interact with them at all during my normally scheduled paid work time. I’m still astonished that anyone with little kids managed to accomplish anything during the pandemic. ↩
  3. Note, my viewpoint is that of a mother with kids and a very good family income. However, the benefits of remote work are not limited to issues that affect mothers/families. See Remote Work Boosts Employees With Disabilities, Research Shows for another perspective. ↩
  4. It looks like the subject of my email to Jaeger after that was “Morning Unhappiness” where I list possible alternatives including “change jobs”. This, ironically, is what I ended up doing. At the time, I did not consciously factor the July childcare break when accepting the Seattle job but the stress of figuring out childcare in San Francisco was regularly overwhelming. ↩
  5. Yes, this usually involved giving the kids lots of screen time but a few days a month aren’t going to kill them. ↩
  6. True, when we had au pairs they did the pickup/dropoff of the kids but you don’t magically get all that time back. Having an au pair (or nanny) means you have the overhead associated with that to deal with instead. ↩

Using Mastodon

I first heard about Mastodon in 2017. Yanthor was also intrigued and he got me to take the next step and actually join octodon.social, a Mastodon instance. I stayed on Octodon for a bit but wandering.shop had more people talking about books so I eventually migrated to that instance because I found the local timeline more interesting. I don’t post a lot, particularly compared to others, but I’ve been a regular user since November 2017 and I have seen many people come and go over the years.

As I mentioned on Twitter, I’m slowly edging away from my account there. However, I don’t use my wandering.shop account in the same way I used my Twitter account. I do post life updates on wandering.shop but what I really love to talk about in that space is books, usually science fiction or fantasy. After some thinking, I’ve decided to use my old Octodon account as a general Twitter replacement.

If you are interested, there are a couple of different ways you can see what I’m posting on my Octodon account:

  1. The easiest option is to just go to my public timeline whenever you think about it. This is probably the easiest approach.
  2. If you want to get slightly fancier, you can also get an RSS feed of my local timeline. This is probably not a good option unless you already use an RSS reader for other things.
  3. If you want to be extra special fancy, you can get your own Mastodon account.

Mastodon options for posting toots.

General Mastodon
If you’ve never been on a Mastodon instance before, I imagine there’s a lot of terms in my prior paragraphs that doesn’t make sense. A Brief Mastodon Guide for Social Media Worriers is a good introduction for beginners. However, below is a summary of some of the details I think are pertinent.

Unlike Twitter, there is no one Mastodon. Instead, there are lots of Instances which know how to talk to each other. Many people explain this as being similar to email. Gmail users can email Yahoo users who can email Outlook users. However, unlike email, the community and culture of specific Mastodon instance can vary widely and is often based on specific shared interest. For example, code4lib.social tends to be a place for techie librarians/information professionals while mastodon.art people post a lot of art. Most of these instances have some sort of rules they require accounts to follow, for example here are mastodon.art’s rules.

If you use a Mastodon instance similar to how you use Twitter, your instance doesn’t matter as much as long as you stick to your instance’s rules. However, one fun thing Mastodon has is local timelines. Timeline icon.This is where you can go and see what everyone else is publicly talking about on your instance. This is also why it’s particularly fun to find an instance centered around topics you find interesting. However, it’s pretty easy to move instances so it’s fine to start with a larger one like mastodon.social until you find a more interesting one1. It’s much easier to move instances than it is to change email addresses.

Content Warnings
Mastodon etiquette will vary from instance to instance. However, it’s generally considered good manners to use content warnings when you suspect someone may be bothered or annoyed by a topic. Common topics to content warn include things like politics, traumatic events, graphic pictures, mental health, etc. However, the specifics do depend a little bit on your instance and the other people you follow. For example, food is often content warned on my instance and often they’ll explicitly content warn if it’s non-veg. If you go look at your local timeline, you can often get a feel for what people content warn and what they don’t.
Content warning icon.
You can also use content warnings to discuss spoilers which allows people to enjoy book/movie discussions without accidentally learning major plot points ahead of time.

Post privacy options: Public, Unlisted, Followers only, Mentioned people only.
I also use content warnings when I’m talking about things that don’t really fall into the general interests of my instance (such as parenting or kids). However, I just realized that’s probably not the right way to do it. I probably should have also been using the “unlisted” feature where my followers can see what I’m talking about but it doesn’t appear in the local timeline. I’ve been using Mastodon for five years and am still learning new things.

While I use content warnings heavily at wandering.shop, I’m planning to use them much less frequently with my Octodon account. Instead, I’m going to try keeping my posts primarily unlisted so they don’t ambush people in the local timeline. My thought is that keeping things without content warnings will probably be easier for the family member who just wants to see updates without a lot of clicking. This is an experiment so we’ll see how it goes.

Alt Text
The other thing that is strongly encouraged is to provide alt text for any images you post. There are a fair number of users that use screen readers and they really appreciate alt text being added. Here’s a good guide on entering helpful alt text.

Mastodon App
When using a desktop, it’s really easy to load and use Mastodon in a browser window. Personally, I suggest enabling the “advanced web interface” view. However, there are various apps available for use on mobile devices. Since my transition back to Android, I’ve been using the “official” Mastodon app. Which, it turns out has quite a few limitations. I just started using Tusky which lets me post unlisted and also allows me to easily see the local timeline.

Hashtags
Mastodon doesn’t allow searching on your posts unless you hashtag them. If you want to be found by people with common interests, hashtag your posts. If you don’t want to be found, don’t hashtag topics. When Elon Musk first threatened to buy Twitter we had a lot of new users. I did an introduction post and listed my general interests. All of a sudden, my timeline got much busier than I wanted. This time, I’m keeping quiet and not hashtagging anything. I’ll probably start hashtagging more once things get quieter again.

Support
If you end up sticking around, and can afford it, make a small contribution to help support your instance. Most instances have a way to give money, such as a Patreon account.

Mastodon is made up of flawed humans
Some people come to Mastodon expecting utopia. However, Mastodon is far from perfect and it has many of the same problems that Twitter does. Unfortunately, people get harassed on Mastodon instances just like they do at Twitter. However, your instance has more control over what it allows through and so moderation is sometimes better on Mastodon (and sometimes worse). Like Twitter, you will also have very well meaning people who just don’t think before they say something hurtful. Or, a mob of users may gang up on someone because of a innocently meant remark.

That said, I generally find Mastodon to be a more pleasant experience than Twitter. If I’m tired of hearing about election news, I can easily scroll past it because people are content warning it. If I don’t have the energy to handle someone else’s bad day, I don’t click into their content warned post. If I need something good in my life, I go search for #catsofmastodon or #florespondence2. It’s not a perfect place but I still enjoy using it.

Additional Reading

  1. Because of the Twitter drama a lot of the smaller Mastodon instances are currently overwhelmed. As a result, quite a few of them have chosen to stop allowing new users or have switched to only allowing new users to join if they have an invite from a current user. However, they often open back up once things calm down again. ↩
  2. If nothing appears when you click, it’s possible the server is currently overloaded. Again, this will even out when most people go back to Twitter. ↩

Rio

This last August I started dreaming about cats. They would randomly show up in my dreams and just hang out, purring. Then I would wake up and be sad not to have a purring cat next to me.

It’s been over a year since Willow died. She’d been with us for almost sixteen years and had lived in every house we’ve ever owned. It was both sad and weird to not have her around. For quite a while it felt a bit overwhelming to think about getting another cat. However, once I started dreaming about them I figured it was time.

I talked to Jaeger about getting a new cat and he was fine with the idea. I was thinking about looking for a bonded pair, so the cats could keep each other entertained. However, Jaeger leaned toward one cat. Regardless of the cat numbers, I didn’t want to do anything hasty. Every so often I’d go online to look at the cats available at the nearby animal shelters and wait for inspiration to strike. I had some basic criteria: I wanted a cat who was cuddly, a good purrer, and didn’t hate children1. However, I looked at the lists of cats and couldn’t figure out what would cause me to choose one over another.

Last Friday I was getting ready to take the kids to school when I noticed a cat outside our front door. I decided to go out and see if the cat would let me pet it. It did but, as I was petting it, I noticed how thin it was and how matted its fur was. The cat looked like she was in pretty poor shape so I took her inside, so she wouldn’t wander off, with plans to post on Nextdoor and/or take her someplace to see if she was microchipped. She looked kind of rundown but had beautiful markings. A very handsome cat. Also, she was obviously use to people and was very friendly.

It turns out she was a neighbor’s cat. Jaeger had seen her once before, though she seemed in better condition at that point. My hypothesis was she must have been sick which is why she looked like a stray. The neighbor who responded wasn’t actually the cat’s owner so I didn’t get the full story. However, the neighbor did say that the cat is allowed to roam oatside. Based on that, I didn’t feel like I could keep her trapped in our house. So, I let the cat out and she happily trotted off back down the cul-de-sac and clearly looked like she was headed home. I haven’t seen her since. We fed her while she was here. In retrospect, she didn’t eat an excessive amount, just some of the wet food. In any case, I assume if she actually was hungry she would have come back for more food later and she hasn’t.

I was a bit disappointed because I thought maybe the universe was sending me a cat and that turned out not to be the case. However, it did emphasize that I really wanted a cat. I took a look at the animal shelter pictures again and came across a cat named Waylon2. Waylon was around one year old and described as very affectionate, loves snuggling, and purrs enthusiastically. Also, he was an orange cat. Nimrod3, my very first cat as a kid, was an orange cat and he’s the standard I judge all other cats against. He was very vocal and had a wonder purr4. I decided it was a sign and talked Jaeger into going down to the animal shelter with me on Saturday.

Saturday afternoon we loaded the kids into the car and headed off to the animal shelter. When we got there, they asked us what traits we wanted in a cat and then took us around pointing out some cats who might meet our criteria. We came up with a list of five cats and then went back to the desk where they looked them up and gave us some brief information about each of them. One of them we excluded based on past history as it seemed like she became stressed around children. That left us with four cats that seemed like good candidates.

The first cat we visited was named Evanescence. She was just over one but had already had a litter of kittens5. She had caught Jaeger’s eye because she was enthusiastically trying to interact with us when she was in her cage. However, in the visiting room she mostly ignored us, running back and forth between the two glass doors. It seemed she wasn’t interested in us as much as getting out and exploring things. Understandable, but it didn’t give us enough information to know if she’d be a good fit.

While we were waiting for our next cat, one of the volunteers asked if we wanted to hold the cat she was holding. We said sure. On the upside, the cat sniffed Julian’s hand and didn’t instantly recoil. However, she wasn’t quite what we were looking for so they took her back. Unfortunately, she had a cold so we all had to tromp into the bathrooms and wash our hands before we could see the next cat.

The next cat was named Motherboard and I’m fairly certain she ended up on our list because Jaeger liked the name6. Motherboard seemed pretty promising. She was affectionate and seemed to like Julian a great deal. However, I still wanted to see the others.

The next cat we visited with was Rio. She won me over pretty quickly with her very loud purr. She was also the only cat who was interested enough in Jaeger to actually jump up into his lap7. After visiting her, I was fairly certain she was going to be our choice. However, we hadn’t visited with Waylon yet, the cat that enticed me into the shelter to begin with.

When we visited with Waylon it quickly became apparent he was not the right cat for us. It’s true he was cuddly but more in a “please hide me from the world” sort of way. The volunteer handed him to me and he jammed himself into my arm and tried to ignore that the rest of the world existed. If we didn’t have kids I still might have considered him. However, we felt that even fairly well-behaved kids would probably be too overwhelming for him.

After seeing all the cats, Rio was the clear winner for our family.

Black cat standing with upright tale.

We brought Rio home and I let her out in our master bathroom. I had closed all the master bedroom doors but had left the door between the bedroom and bathroom open. She sniffed around the bathroom for a few minutes but once she got into our bedroom she headed straight under the couch and refused to come out. She stayed there all afternoon. I finally managed to coax her out around 11pm after the kids had gone to bed and the house had quieted down significantly. However, once she was out, she seemed fairly comfortable. Unfortunately, I noticed that the bottom of her left eye was swollen and she was sneezing a lot. This wasn’t too surprising, as quite a few cats at the shelter had colds, but the shelter hadn’t tagged her as a sick cat.

I went to bed around midnight and she quickly followed me into bed. I learned that she really liked burrowing under the covers. I had heard of cats sleeping under covers before but my cats never had so it was a novel experience for me. She is a fairly well mannered sleeping partner, at least for a cat. She kept up a nice purr but didn’t do any meowing during the night. She also didn’t insist we stay awake and entertain her by raking her claws across my face (Cat5 would do this).

Black cat peaking out from under a duvet.

Given Rio had slept with us all night, I thought she would be more comfortable on Sunday. However, as soon as we got up she disappeared under the sofa again. My original plans for the day included cleaning the master bathroom. However, I decided that many smells might make Rio even more nervous so decided to skip until next weekend. I spent a good portion of the afternoon sitting on the sofa hoping she’d come out but she stayed firmly underneath.

Jaeger had gone to a concert and Calvin went to a Renaissance fair with a friend so it was just Julian and I. After supper, we watched Netflix’s “Inside the Mind of a Cat” which we both found pretty interesting. Among other things, it talked about how cats like to be treated so I’m hoping Julian picked up some useful dos and don’ts.

After I put Julian to bed, I went back to our bedroom and Rio came out and sat on my lap until my bedtime. I went to bed and she happily followed me like the previous night.

Today, I got out of bed at my normal time but Jaeger and Rio continued to sleep. After I came back from dropping Julian off, I went to our room but couldn’t find Rio. I started wondering if she had escaped out of our bedroom. However, I eventually found her under the duvet. It turns out what I thought was a wrinkle was actually Rio. Her eye still looks bad to me so I called Willow’s old vet to see if I could get an appointment for today. However, the vet was out sick and they weren’t accepting any new animals. I called a couple of other places and none of them were accepting new pets. I was starting to panic when I finally found a place accepting new patients. They had me fill out a form and will contact me to schedule an appointment “within 48 hours”. Not as fast as I would prefer but at least it’s better than nothing.

Rio seemed much more comfortable in our bedroom today than previous days. She wandered around a fair bit, included a brief visit to my office. She spent the majority of the day under our bed. However, she seemed more relaxed than the previous day.
Black cat sitting in sunlight on purple armchair.

Now that it’s evening Rio is once again out. She’s currently sitting on Jaeger’s lap. Though, she did spend a bit of time chasing the laser pointer. So far I can verify she’s a very cuddly cat and has a great purr. Given she mainly has emerged in the evening, we have yet to see if she’ll get along with Julian. I’m crossing my fingers. Regardless, she seems a good fit for Jaeger and I.

Black cat in front of box.

  1. Cat5 and Willow both predated our kids and never completely forgave us for having human children. Our children and our cats coexisted by keeping a respectful distance from each other. ↩
  2. I keep accidentally calling him Waymo ↩
  3. When we named him, we had more familiarity with biblical references than popular culture. He’s named after the great hunter in the Bible. We didn’t intend to give him a derogatory name. ↩
  4. He also was a very good hunter. My parents had a mole problem prior to his arrival but Nimrod took care of it. He also attacked an opossum, at least once, that was as big as he was ↩
  5. A distressing number of one-year-old females had already given birth. ↩
  6. When the shelter gets a mom and kittens they try to name the cats according to a theme. However, the shelter was running out of good names and had resorted to somewhat bizarre names such as Ketchup and Mustard. ↩
  7. Most of the visiting rooms only had 2 chairs so Calvin and Jaeger sat in the chairs and Julian and I sat on the ground. This meant that Julian and I tended to get more interaction with the cats. ↩

Office Upgrade

We have been living in our current house for over a year. I think it’s on its way to being my favorite house. This is a relief as we’re hoping not to move again for at least another decade. I started with a solid layout plan prior to moving in. However, the longer we live in this house, the better feel we have for our needs. As such, we’ve been making incremental changes.

My office is one area that’s been going through regular small adjustments. The major components of my preliminary SketchUp plan mostly worked.
Sunroom layout. Desk on right side in front of windows. Seating area on left side with purple chair and end table. The room is long but relatively narrow so I chopped it up into two areas: an office area and a seating area.

We never got the plant stand I was originally envisioning but I’m not sure it really would have fit well anyway. We do have a coffee tree, curry leaf plant, and mint plant in the sunroom. While the three plants live in my office, Jaeger takes care of all of them. I kill plants but Jaeger clearly has a green thumb. He keeps acquiring more plants and they all seem to love him.

View of the sunroom office from the bedroom door. Can see old desk and chair as far well sitting area.

Sunroom with old desk.

I wanted blinds for the windows but the people I talked to said the skylight frame wasn’t deep enough. So I went for regular curtains for the vertical windows and foam core board, as needed, for the skylights.

I also ended up adding a tall, but narrow, bookcase next to the hallway door that contains office supplies and my romance books.

View of the sunroom office from the far corner. Can see old desk and chair as well as bookcase and hall doorway.

Sunroom with old desk and bookcase.

However, the most expensive upgrade I made just a couple of weeks ago. I finally bought an Uplift desk, similar to Jaeger’s and a desk treadmill.

We’ve recently switched up our evening schedule to include Julian in family TV time. Up to this point, I’d finish the dishes and then try to go for a walk or use my old treadmill prior to watching TV with Jaeger and Calvin at 8:00pm. However, to include Julian, we needed to move TV time to 7:00pm. I was having a really hard time trying motivating myself to do any level of exercise after watching TV. I do usually go for a walk during lunch but that doesn’t always work for my schedule and, in any case, it’s not a particularly long walk. Of course, there’s the option of getting up earlier but I’ve really been enjoying not having to get up till 7:00am.

In any case, I started mulling the conundrum around in my head trying to think of solutions. Back in 2013 I bought a cheap treadmill and used existing materials in my house to create a treadmill desk. This worked surprising well and, as an even bigger surprise, the treadmill still works and has survived five moves. It’s not in the best of condition but it still works. However, it’s currently in the downstairs bedroom, which Jaeger uses as an office, and wouldn’t easily fit in my office. I didn’t want to trade offices with Jaeger and I believe the feeling is mutual. So, I figured I’d see what’s available on Craigsilst. Craigslist did have desk treadmills for sale. Though, they felt kind of expensive for Craigslist. On a whim, I looked on Amazon to see what an official desk treadmill cost and was surprised by how cheap they were. Back in 2013, you couldn’t get a treadmill desk for under $1,000. To be fair, I think the good ones still cost over $1,000. However, I wanted to prototype the idea before spending a lot of money on it.

That said, a desk treadmill also requires an adjustable desk because I didn’t want to end up with two desk areas again. I’ve become too attached to having two large external monitors. I was less hesitant to spend money on an adjustable desk. Jaeger has had his Uplift desk for over a year and still likes it. I really like the memory options to automatically raise and lower the desk to predefined heights. So, once I figured out exactly what options I wanted, the desk was pretty easy to order.

The treadmill took more thought. There’s now quite a few cheap desk treadmills available but all of them had a decent number of reviews complaining that the treadmill broke in less than a year. After waffling for a bit, I decided that this treadmill was good enough.

Both the treadmill and the desk arrived fairly quickly. The treadmill didn’t require any setup which was lovely1. The desk took a lot longer but it wasn’t hard, just a little tedious.

So far, both the desk and the treadmill are working out great. I store the treadmill under my bed when I’m not using it. First thing in the morning I’ll pull out the treadmill and walk on it for an hour or two, depending on my meeting schedule. The fastest the treadmill will go in the desk treadmill configuration is 2.5 mph. I’d like it to go a little faster but it’s adequate to create a light sweat. At a minimum, I’m burning more calories than sitting at the desk. To my surprise, I can actually work while walking. I originally thought I’d mainly use it when reading email or other documents. However, it turns out I can also comfortable type while walking. Ten minutes before my first meeting, or after 2 hours if my morning is miraculously meeting free, I stop walking and store the treadmill back under the bed. It’s a minor pain to move it every day but I like having it completely out of the way when I’m sitting at the desk.

Sunroom office with desk lowered to sitting height. Desk chair is in front of desk.

New desk in sitting position.

Sunroom office with desk raised to use with treadmill. Treadmill is in front of desk with chair off to the side.

New desk in treadmill position.

So far I’ve only used the desk once to stand, but not walk. That was an after lunch meeting where I figured standing might help me stay awake. Though, I think I fidget too much when standing.

At the moment, this looks like it’s going to be a nice long-term solution. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do if/when this treadmill breaks. Now that I’ve confirmed the concept is working for me, I’d be willing to pay more for a better quality treadmill. However, from what I’ve seen, the more expensive treadmills are also longer. They may not fit with my current office configuration, which I could change but would rather not, and they’re also heavier so may be hard to store out of the way. Hopefully, this treadmill will end up with an unexpectedly long life, similar to my first treadmill, so I won’t have to figure it out for a long time.

  1. I’ve put together and taken apart my old treadmill numerous times and it’s always a huge pain and I always end up with mysterious left over screws. ↩

Oven Repair

I’ve always dreamed of having a double oven. Granted, most of the time one oven is perfectly fine. However, every so often it’s really convenient to have the ability to either bake more things at the same time or to bake multiple things at different temperatures. Thus, I was really excited when we bought this house to finally have two ovens. One is a wall oven that is part of a microwave/warming drawer/oven combo and the other oven is part of a range.

After some experimenting, I determined that I preferred using the wall oven most of the time. The wall oven’s temperature was more consistent and it’s also nice to not have to bend when pulling things out of the oven. So, except when I needed a second oven, I used the range’s oven primarily for storage of my cast iron cookware.

For Jaeger’s 2021 birthday I baked a cake in the wall oven and it turned out beautifully. Then, immediately afterward, I put the Garbanzo Pot Pie into the oven and, 30 minutes later, discovered my oven no longer baked. Not fun but I really appreciate it waited to die till after the cake had finished.

Unfortunately, the wall oven is a Thermador and I discovered there weren’t any Thermador technicians on this side of the mountain. I did find someone over in San Jose willing to come out but he was booked out till late October. Fortunately, we had the range oven so this was mildly annoying but not especially inconvenient1.

The oven repair person came out at the end of October and told me that the element was fine which meant that the control board was probably dead. Unfortunately, Thermador doesn’t make the control board for this model anymore. So, my best bet was to pull out the control board and send it to a company that specializes in fixing oven circuit boards. I asked for a recommendation and he told me to just Google for it and something would pop up. This didn’t inspire a lot of confidence as many things pop up on the internet when one searches for random things, including scams. I did do some initial searching and confirmed that this was a thing that people do. However, it seemed like a lot of work and we did still have one working oven.

Jaeger and I alternate major holidays with our families. This year is Thanksgiving with the Logans. After some discussion, everyone decided to meet at our house. Given Thanksgiving is one of the times when having a double oven would be particularly useful, I started thinking about trying to get ours fixed. Except, I didn’t get around to doing anything about it until the microwave died.

The microwave is integrated into the oven system. Originally, it was a Thermador microwave but at some point it had been replaced with an LG microwave. One day Jaeger was microwaving something in the microwave and there was a loud pop. We don’t know exactly what happened but after that the microwave no longer heated anything. Unhelpfully, it would go through all the motions without providing any error message.

Unlike the oven, we did not have a backup microwave. To make things worse, our counter space is limited and doesn’t have room for a counter microwave. Jaeger poked around and discovered that the trim around the microwave came off and he could pull the microwave out without an excessive amount of effort.

Given both the microwave and oven were no longer working, I contemplated just buying a new wall oven. However, wall ovens, at least fancy ones like we have, don’t appear to come in standard sizes. I also learned that the equivalent Thermador oven, now a “triple oven“, would cost around $10,000. I could switch to a different brand but I couldn’t find one that looked like it would fit the current space in our wall. There are companies that will take a wall oven and customize the wall niche so it fits the new oven. However, I couldn’t imagine that would end up particularly cheap either.

We decided to fix the immediate problem, no microwave, and continue to procrastinate on the oven. Then I learned that the space provided for the microwave is a bit small by today’s standards. None of the official built-in microwaves I found were the right size. Eventually, I discovered there was an equivalent LG microwave to our old one that, while technically a countertop model, had a trim kit option to convert it to a built-in. I didn’t love the buttons2. However, at this point it was obvious it was our only option.

We got the microwave oven and confirmed it fit. However, the old microwave had metal pieces screwed, and duck taped, on in order to make it fit the Thermador space. We’d need to transfer the metal to the new microwave before we could install it back into the oven system. I started taking pictures of how the metal fit together, so I’d be able to recreate it on the new microwave. However, after I finished taking pictures I decided that since we already had part of the oven system taken apart, I should at least evaluate the difficulty of dealing with the control board.

I found a website, circuitboardmedics.com that claimed to be able to rebuild boards for our oven model. However, their website said that if we had a low heat problem, we should send in the relay board also. I sighed, and found a video on extracting the relay board. This video was for a double oven but the process is essentially the same except all four anchor screws are in the single oven and I blessedly also only had one relay board to extract.

Closeup of brightly colored wires plugged into circuit board.At first, I was hoping I could just take off the front panel and get everything from there. However, it quickly became apparently I was going to need to pull the entire oven system out about a foot in order to get to the top screws. For me, my essential tools were my camera phone, needle nosed pliers, and a step ladder. I turned off the two oven circuit breakers, took many pictures to document everything as thoroughly as possible, and started pulling all the wires out of the boards. It was quite a project and ended up taking longer than I expected. However, at length, I had both the control and relay boards disconnected from the oven.
Labeled plastic bags with screws.

As required, I prepaid for the service, hoping desperately it wasn’t a scam, and then mailed the company the oven boards. It arrived at their facility on September 26 and they shipped it off on September 27. It arrived back at our house on Saturday, October 1. While it was nice to have back, it also meant I needed to find time to try install the boards back into the oven.

New microwave sitting in mircowave slot with extension cord hanging out.

Here is how we used the microwave while waiting for the oven boards to come back.

Oven system pulled out about a foot from the wall.

Pulling the oven away from the wall to access the top.

Loose wires haphazardly arranged on top of the oven frame.Sunday afternoon, when I should have been cleaning, I decided to tackle the oven. It turns out that putting the wires back on is substantially easier than taking them off. It wasn’t nearly as painful as I expected. For the most part, I had taken enough pictures for me to recreate where the wires went. However, I wasn’t quite detailed enough in some of the early pictures so I also ended up looking at the oven circuit diagram to double check a few of the wire placements.

Relay circuit board with many colorful wires.I installed the relay board, then the control board, and finished by connecting up the control panel. Then I pushed the oven back into its hole, though I didn’t screw it back in. I pulled out the kitchen fire extinguisher, double checked it was rated for electrical fires, and then flipped the circuit breaker back on. Nothing exploded! The oven clock started to placidly blink. Definitely a good sign. I tested a couple of features that had been working previously, such as the timer and oven light and then, with some nervousness, set it to bake at 350 degrees. This oven usually takes around 10 minutes to preheat so I hovered and watched. Once it finished preheating I opened the door and it felt about right. Though, I suspected that this approach is as fraught as parents trying to gauge if a kid has a temperature by using the hand on forehead method.

Microwave on floor with metal pieces duck taped to the top.I screwed in the oven to the wall and then started putting the support metal pieces onto the new microwave. To my surprise and relief, it mostly fit and only needed duck tape in the same places the previous microwave had needed it. Once its metal appendages were attached, Jaeger helped slide the microwave back into the oven slot and we snapped the decorative trim around it. Everything now looked normal again.

While I was fairly certain the oven was heating up correctly, I wanted to confirm. I decided to try baking King Arthur Flour’s Chocolate Breakfast Muffin as I make it a fair amount and I know it’s a reliable recipe. Once the batter was made, I dropped it into the muffin cups and put it into the preheated oven. I got the muffins out to test at 22 minutes and thought it wasn’t quite done so put it in for another three. In retrospect, it probably was done at the 22 minute mark as they ended up a tad on the dry side. However, the recipe did verify the oven was baking as expected!

The new microwave cost around $240. The control and relay board repair cost around $340. Not cheap but much better than what a complete replacement would cost. I’m really happy to have my wall oven working again.

Microwave, warming drawer, and oven all put back together.

A working oven and microwave!

  1. Though, one thing I absolutely hate about the range is, in order to preheat faster, it turns the broiler on. This messes up how I do sweet rolls which involves making them the night before, putting them in the fridge overnight, and then in the morning putting them in a cold oven which then gradually heats up to its normal baking temperature. The first time I made sweet rolls after switching ovens I ended up with blackened bread. ↩
  2. Among other things, it only has a +30 second button and no quick 1 or 2 minute buttons. ↩

Armored Phone: Part 2

Monday
Monday started with my alarm not waking me up. Fortunately, my alarms almost never wake me up because I hate alarms and always try to wake up before they go off. However, this time I had not cancelled the alarm because I wanted to confirm it was working. It was not. I decided it was probably some quirk with the Do Not Disturb mode. I set the Wake Up time to 2 minutes before I normally set the alarm under the theory that even if it doesn’t audibly sound immediately, once it went out of Do Not Disturb mode I would probably hear the alarm. Then I moved on with my day.

Except, I next noticed that my 7:55 alarm hadn’t gone off. I live by my alarms. My 7:55 alarm makes sure that I deliver Calvin and Julian to school on time. I start each work day by reviewing the meetings on my calendar and setting a 2 min alarm for each meeting1. I set alarms for Calvin’s late afternoon coding class and Julian’s swim class and every other thing that I need to make sure I attend on time. When I got back from dropping of the kids I tested the alarm and it seemed fine so I decided that it was probably a one-time quirk and set my meeting alarms for the day. Unfortunately, it was not a quirk and I almost missed my first meeting of the day without my reminder alarm.

At lunch time, I poked around at the various settings and thought I fixed things. At least my alarms worked for the rest of the day.

Supper brought new complications. The audiobook which I had started Sunday was no longer in the Libby app. I thought that was weird as I knew I hadn’t returned it. I’m a late adopter to Libby, having stuck with the original Overdrive app for years, and only switched to Libby when they officially announced end of life. It seems a little buggier to me than the Overdrive app was. For example, sometimes when I try to listen to an allegedly already downloaded audiobook, it just spins until I give up and switch to a podcast instead. This had started prior to changing to Android so I gave the early check-in problem a 50/50 chance of being due to an Android glitch. I wrote a note to the library about the problem, and also contacted Overdrive support directly, and then checked the book out a second time2.

Tuesday
My wakeup alarm once again failed. I did a little more searching which is where I first ran across rumors of battery optimization being to blame. Except, I thought I had already turned off any battery optimization. That is “Battery Saver” and “Battery Manager” were off.

I decided to download a different clock app and see if I had any better luck with it. I eventually settled on Talking Alarm Clock Beyond. After downloading and opening it up, the first thing the app told me to do was to go into the “Battery optimization” part of settings, which is not under the Battery menu, and make sure the app isn’t optimized. Turns out it was, which might have been why the prior Clock app didn’t work. I appreciated the app warned about this problem but I was also irritated that Android made it so intuitive to find. In my testing, it appeared that alarms were working.

I decided to screencast each time I opened up the Libby app. I specifically wanted to make sure the early return problem wasn’t being caused by Android Auto. I listened to the audiobook at lunch time with no issues. When I went to pick up Julian from school, my audiobook also existed in my account, though we listened to a different audiobook on the way home. Then supper time came. I started the screencast, opened the Libby app, and discovered my book was gone again. I sighed, appended the screencast files to my Overdrive ticket, and checked out the audiobook a third time.

Tuesday evening, with hopes that the alarm clock problem was solved. I emailed Unihertz tech support about the problem I had with starred contacts not coming through when Do Not Disturb was on.

Wednesday
My wakeup alarm did not go off. On the upside, Unihertz support had responded with some suggestions of some settings to check for the Do Not Disturb issue. I glanced at it and decided I’d explore it more in the evening.

I was hoping the alarm issue was just a wakeup alarm and the other alarms would work. Alas, no. At this point I was seriously considered bailing and just using the phone as a replacement for my bedtime phone and getting another iPhone SE as my primary phone.

During lunch I pulled up the instructions on what to check for Do Not Disturb and discovered yet another setting that can keep apps from working in the background: App blocker, under Intelligent assistance. When I turned that off, all sorts of notifications that I had been missing, but were a lower priority than my alarms, started working. This included my work’s authentication app. The authentication app not popping up had been slightly annoying but since I always knew when I sent a push, I had just been working around it by opening up the app ahead of time. In any case, App blocker was to blame.

Back on the Libby front, my audiobook disappeared sometime prior to me starting supper. This time I sighed, gave up, and did not check it out a 4th time.

That evening I turned of Battery optimization and App blocking for everything. However, starred contacts still couldn’t get through Do Not Disturb. I created a screencast for Unihertz support of every setting as well as a demo of the Do Not Disturb issue and emailed it off.

Thursday
My alarm went off!! Starred contacts not being able to message me was annoying. However, my alarms not reliably working would have been a deal breaker.

In less fun news, Unihertz had escalated my ticket and a developer had responded essentially saying that the Do Not Disturb problem is an Android 11 bug, they weren’t going to release Android 12 for the phone, and they recommend I not use Do Not Disturb. I responded by pointing out that, as far as I could tell, the Android 11 bug had been fixed by Google back in 2020 and I was hoping even if they weren’t going to release Android 12, they could at least incorporate the Do Not Disturb patch into an update for the phone.

I also got a response back from Overdrive saying the reason the title kept auto returning is that it wasn’t suppose to be on the library’s website to begin with. Annoying, as I was multiple hours in at that point, but at least it wasn’t a phone bug.

By this point, I had gotten the phone into a usable condition for me. It still has some quirks but they’re ones I can live with and being able to use one phone for everything is really nice. I also really love the size. I thought I’d get annoyed by how thick it is but so far that hasn’t been a problem at all. However, it’s not a phone I can recommend to anyone else. The amount of tinkering I had to do for basic functionality is appalling.

  1. Yes, I realize using the calendar notifications in the usual method to do that. However, calendar notifications aren’t noisy enough for me if I’m deeply involved in troubleshooting something. ↩
  2. Books randomly returning themselves is a problem because often the library will lose access after around 15 checkouts and have to “buy” the book again. If this was a bug happening to a lot of patrons, it’s a problem the library needs to report so Overdrive can fix it quickly. ↩