Month: December 2015

Still Trying to Grasp Amelia is Two Today

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It feels like it Teagan was just born so grasping that Amelia turned two today is challenging to me.

It was funny to see Teagan & Amelia help MC bake a cake for Amelia yesterday.  I don’t know what was funnier.  That Amelia picked the yellow cake batter over the chocolate cake batter or that Teagan continued to try to change her mind to chocolate.  I was hoping Teagan would be successful because sometimes you wonder if a two year old really knows what she wants.  Well in this instance Amelia did know, and was insistent on the fact that she wanted the yellow cake box.

All I can say Amelia is I hope the cake is yummy later.  Happy birthday to my little smiley face!

Surprised by the availability of NFC payment

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I was shopping today and I was surprised at the number of locations that I went to that supported Apple Pay (aka NFC payments).  Along those lines until this week I hadn’t seen anyone asking me to use the chip in my card (EMV chip) eve thought the deadline that shifts the liability to the merchant and not the credit card companies if they don’t use the chip passed in November.

Of all the places I went to today the quick scorecard I had was as follows:

  • Macy’s, YES but I knew that already since I have used it before
  • Lego Store, NO however what was frustrating about this merchant was that they used the same terminal as several places I have shopped at that do take NFC payments.  To make things more annoying the terminal had a big NFC logo on its screen however I was told the system didn’t accept the payment type.  I did have to pay using the EMV chip.
  • Applebee’s, YES however I couldn’t get it to work.  They still get props for the fact that check out was via a tablet at my table.  It was still a regular swipe card but cool that I could have ordered food and checked out at the table.
  • La Maison Du Chocolat,  YES
  • Card store, NO.  Let’s face it this is a local Hallmark store that doesn’t even take AMEX so I didn’t expect anything.  They still used the standard swipe card.
  • Party store, NO, however I only bought something very cheap and paid cash.
  • liquor store, NO but at least they took AMEX.   For some reason I find many liquor stores that don’t take it however that is a different conversation/blog post.

Based on my experiences today counting the stores that should have worked with the NFC payments I was supposed that almost 40% of the stores supported the NFC payments.  That was higher than I would have guessed.  I am hopeful that 2016 will see a large increase in the number of stores accepting the chip technology.

Suck it Indiana Jones

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Suck it Indiana Jones.  I too have found the holy grail.  Well the Holly Grail for me in relation to my media center experience.  After searching for a solution that works that includes all my requirements I finally think I have it in one device.  My Apple TV 4.

That device in and of itself maybe was 1/3 of the solution.  For me a Media Center is not complete without my media library accessible via Plex or Kodi.  I prefer Plex since that is what I use as my server however I would have settled for Kodi.  Plex turned out to be available on the new Apple TV on day one.  It worked great.  The main other piece of the puzzle missing was the ability to watch live TV.

To save $20 a month I dropped my TiVo a few months ago.  I was just not using it enough to justify the expense.  MC loves her live TV thought so I needed a solution.  I bought a HDHomeRun Prime.  The problem has been I haven’t been able to find a good live TV streaming client that seamlessly worked on any device other than my old Sony Google TV.  My home built OSMC didn’t work very well.  It was very choppy video.  The Kodi setup I built on my Mac Mini worked ok for the live TV however it didn’t play my Plex content very well.  It also required switching HDMI inputs to get to my iTunes content.  That was a challenge when the HDMI switcher didn’t work and MC couldn’t get the girls their 15 minutes of Seasami Street sometimes in the morning.

I had been using the new Apple TV with the Sony Google TV as an overlay on the Apple TV.  I did something similar with the Google TV when I had my TiVo.  It still required two devices and two remotes to work.  It did work but is not very elegant.  I also want to rid myself of all Google devices so having to rely on the old Sony Google TV is an annoyance.

Today however everything seems to have changed for me. Yesterday I got an invite for a beta program of one app that will allow me to use the live TV stream from my HDHome Run natively on my Apple TV.  I setup the app today to give it a try.  It worked but it is clear that the app is still beta.  I am hopeful that this app will flesh out their issues and will work well.

In the mean time however as luck would have it I found another app in the Apple TV App Store that I hadn’t seen the last 3 or 4 times I browsed the store for live TV streaming Apps.  This time I found “Channels”.  For $15 it claimed to do everything I wanted in live TV native in the Apple TV.  I figured I would give it a try.  After some drama related to two step authentication and my Apple ID I was able to purchase the app and give it a test drive.  From the 15 minutes of playing around with it I am pretty impressed.  It doesn’t have the audio / video out of sync issues that have experienced on several platforms.

With this app if it continues to be functional I am able to par down my media center to just my Apple TV the front end, Plex running on my Synolog as my back end along with my Silicone Dust HDHomeRun for TV streaming (using a cable card).

Getting to this setup has been a multi year process of trial and error.  If it proves to be reliable I will be very pleased and hopefully the configuration will be simplified enough that MC and soon the girls won’t have any problems using it.

For now I am pleased with the turn of events that gave me my holy grail of media centers!

Trying New Scotches

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Recently I’ve been trying new scotches when I go out with friends. Some of my friends have pretty good taste so I’ve been getting great recommendations. One new scotch I am liking is Lagavulin 16. I had it several times when we were out and liked it. I liked it so much that I ended up buying a bottle. It was reasonably priced compared to some of the other stuff I bought.

Previously I purchased some Highland Park 12 year old. I tried the 15 when I was out and liked a lot. The liquor store near my house didn’t have 15 and at the time I didn’t remember if it was the 15 of the 12 that I liked so I just picked up a 12. It was good but the 15 was definitely better. I need to find somewhere nearby that sells it. The meantime I’m happy to drink it when I’m out.

Another scotch I found interesting was Bowmore. I can’t remember the age. I like the Highland Park better however I could see myself picking up a bottle of Bowmore in the future as well.

I hope to continue my exploration of different scotches into 2016.

Please Take My Money Macy’s

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There was a time a few years ago that I wanted to start a blog titled “ please take my money”. It was going to highlight all the instances where companies for some weird reason made it difficult for you to actually give them your money to buy something. My first case was a situation I had with AT&T regarding canceled contract and number porting. In the end it was cheaper and easier for me to actually not do business with them. Shortly after that there was another situation that I today can remember but it got me thinking about writing about this stuff.

Flash forward to today I am at the mall trying to buy holiday gifts. I don’t normally go to stores and this was a last-minute situation so general I wasn’t pleased however in all but one instance the experience was surprisingly stress-free. Before all the stress-free parts of the day came Macy’s.

I was in Macy’s to pick up a gift for a babysitter and someone else. I was luckily able to find what I needed rather quickly and got online to pay.I was a bit concerned since the line was pretty long. It was one of the last shopping days before Christmas so I expected lines. I didn’t expect was such a long line to be served by one person when there was at least two registers. To add insult to injury several store clerks came and went to the unused registers to do who knows what and to have quick conversations with the one clerk working. None of those people decided to help customers waiting in line. Instead I waited 30 to 45 minutes for transaction that should take most maybe 10 to 15 minutes. I understand corporations need to cut costs however situations like going to physical stores. It also emphasizes why I shouldn’t. I thought the argument of brick-and-mortar store is you get personalized service? In this instance the service was substantially less than if I would’ve ordered something online ship to me.

 

Waiting in line

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Waiting in an enormous line at Macy’s.  If stores wonder why people don’t like going to them a ten person deep line with one register open is the reason.  Add to that some other checkout person came by and started another register only to do one thing and leave.

The iPhone 6S Plus

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When the iPhone 6+ came out I was intrigued with the bigger size however I opted for the plane old iPhone 6. After about two months I decided to try the 6+ on my work line. I had it for all but a day and returned it. At the time and used to a lot of things one-handed. I tried the galaxy note in the past as well and it was too big. I stuck with my 6. Flash forward to this year and when the 6S came out I opted for it over the plus for the same reasons. I ended up selling my Nexus 6 that I was using for my work line. That was also a big phone but significantly cheaper then the plus. I was using it more as a media device than anything else. As much as I like the device having one device is android among all the others that were iOS didn’t make any sense. For a time I returned to my old iPhone 5 as my work line however the size of that screen was becoming very annoying compared to larger 6. Since I was getting by with the next six as a media device and hearing several people work enjoying the larger phones I decided to take the risk and get another plus for my work line/media device.

After about a day I wanted to give it a try as my main phone. Swapping between phones my Sim card was harder than I thought it would be. It was not as simple as swapping SIM cards. I had to re-associate my iTunes account and phone number to each phone.

Once I started using the plus as my main line I was surprised to find that I liked it. There were still limitations with regards to what I can do one handed. What I realized however was that now that my kids were slightly older I was not as concerned about pushing strollers or carrying a baby in one arm needing to answer the phone. It still uncomfortable to use in some situations because of its size however the advantage of the larger screen in other aspects of day-to-day use have so far been outweighing the downsides. It’s interesting how much a year or two makes your requirements change just enough.

 

My week using the iPhone 6S plus has my main phone is evolved into indefinitely using it as my primary. I’m curious to see how long I keep it up or if I decide to switch back. I’m hoping to like it and I just sell the 6S. Of course I do that I have to figure out what to use for my work line. The challenge I have is the work upgrade options are pretty paltry so I would have to either get something that’s not so great or pay out-of-pocket for something else.

Apple Pay on a Vending Machine???

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I still cannot use Apple Pay or any NFC card at the vast majority of stores yet as I was dropping off T for school today I noticed the vending machine in the lobby of the Y accepted credit cards.  Upon further inspection it flashed the NFC logo and Apple Pay logo that it accepted that too.  I suddenly had to resist the urge to buy a Snickers bar!