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Entertainment, News, Playstation (Sony)

Lego Worlds – A review

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Hello, my name is Jim and I’m an addict. Yeah, I’m a grown-up… And still I play with toys. Legos are all the rage these days–even in the movies. So when Lego Worlds was recently released for the PS4, I jumped on it almost immediately. I’ve had the Early Release version for the PC on Steam for quite some time, but I only played it once in awhile. It was a really cool open world system, and you just dove in and started playing around with objects and characters, building and breaking things, etc., etc., much like Minecraft. I find many games a bit difficult to play on the PC unless I have my Steam controller optimally configured for that particular game, and in the case of Lego Worlds on Steam, I just wasn’t able to get it working to my liking, and often gave up trying to get it to work properly for me. So when the PS4 version was released, I knew that, finally, it must have a controller configuration good enough to work with on the PS4, so I gave it a shot.

I don’t know if the Steam version ever received the same treatment that the PS4 version now has, but there certainly wasn’t Tutorial levels and gameplay like there is on the PS4 version when I was playing it on Steam! My initial experience with the PS4 version was totally new, and it’s really interesting how it first teaches you the basics, giving you lessons along the way, and as you progress through the tutorial levels you learn more and more about how everything works, more items are given to you, and you basically (at least in my case) become addicted and want more and more eye candy, game candy, object builds, blocks, gold bricks… The tutorials end after 3 or 4 different worlds are “completed”, then you unlock the main “game” that in-turn unlocks everything else. The ultimate goal being to reach 100 Gold Bricks, which unlocks the ability to create NEW worlds of your very own. So this is all sort of a huge “training ground”, or a giant tutorial if you will, to prepare you for the open world creation freedom that is to come–which then, I imagine, works somewhat like Minecraft, where you can either start with a blank world, scarcely populated or completely blank, and build upon it whatever you will. Except that with THIS game, the tools at your disposal are far beyond anything I’ve ever seen in Minecraft!

But getting that far (100 Gold Bricks) is still on my horizon, so I can’t really say for sure how that part of the experience is yet (hence the “incomplete review” title). I’m at 71 Gold Bricks as of this writing, and climbing daily. The pace at which you gain bricks varies quite a bit, from what I’ve seen though. What happens after the tutorials is the ability for you to generate random worlds, then travel to them, explore and plunder them, all in an effort to gather everything you can from the world. This includes completing quests the characters on that world ask of you, finding chests filled with objects (including Gold Bricks), exploring, tackling troublemakers (who will come up to you and taunt you with the game piece they’re holding, then run from you as you try to tackle them to get the piece) and just plain trashing everything you can to gain studs (every Lego game’s currency). When you “Discover” an object in the game it gets added to your inventory, but you can’t actually “use” the object until you purchase it in the game using some studs. The value of each object in the game is pre-defined–for example it might cost 2,500 studs for a particular in-game vehicle–so if you pay that to unlock it, you can then deploy that vehicle anywhere, on any world, and use it in whatever way suits you. Or, perhaps an object is needed to complete a quest, and you have it… Use it and get rewarded with even more studs to use in the game. Added to all of this is the expansion of world sizes you can play in. You start out with just small worlds (as if that doesn’t overwhelm you enough), but after obtaining so many Gold Bricks you unlock Medium-sized worlds and everything is a lot bigger. Then, further on you unlock Large-sized worlds, and then, finally, Huge-sized worlds.

This very open-ended random-world generation makes things pretty interesting, and definitely a one-of-a-kind experience for everyone, and your own personality and tendencies come into play quite a bit. For example, there’s some really neat dungeons in the game, which are filled with traps, puzzles and monsters… Get through those successfully and you’re rewarded with many huge piles of studs! This is all really fun to play around with, but a smart kid just in a hurry to reach the end-game knows that with all of the tools available at that point in the game, one could simply pull out the landscaping tool and level the entire dungeon in one fell swoop.. or use to bazooka to blast right through the walls to the treasure. I considered this myself, briefly, before deciding to take the high road and experience the dungeon like I assume it was intended. Maybe later on I’ll come back and play around with leveling it, even if only to see how it was built and to possibly use some of it’s traps in the free world-building part of the game that I haven’t gotten to yet.

The game isn’t without it’s little quirks and bugs though. But I’d expect as much for a project this vast. There will no-doubt be updates to fix it up, I’m sure. One complaint I have might be a bug, but I’m not really sure. Right now it’s just an annoyance for me. Another family member found an awesome random world and wanted me to try it out. There’s an option to enter a random world “seed” on the main world selection screen, so I assumed this would allow me to enter the number he provided and I could then play that same world. So I entered the number, it appeared to show it in the mini map, but when I travel to the world, it’s a completely different random world! I can’t seem to get it to accept that exact number sequence, though it does allow me to see a preview of it. Very annoying. I can’t find a solution (or others even complaining about the same thing) on the web yet, so I think it’s just a bug that hasn’t been discussed yet.

So that’s the game, in a nutshell. I’ve been through the desert, the old west, a few very hot lava-filled planets, a few made of candy, some desert islands with interesting surprises, many caves containing buried treasure among other creepy things like spiders, scorpions and even zombies and swamp monsters, cloud cities and have even found many underwater treasures–including sunken shipwrecks, sharks, fish and even a few underwater cities. I can tell that the creators sure spent a lot of time either manually building whole areas brick by brick or wrote one heck of a procedural engine to generate worlds! It seems they are endless in their quantity, somehow. Like Minecraft, it boggles the mind. And, in the process, it feels like by the time I’m up to the 100 Gold Bricks needed I will have amassed hundreds of “discoveries” consisting of vehicles, characters, animals, insects, weapons, objects, and even whole “brick builds” (one-click mass-builds of large objects that assemble themselves before your eyes, instantly), and I will have learned quite a bit about the Lego world and what I am capable of as a “Master Builder”. I can see there’s also a lot of artistic skill needed as well, so for me things are going to take a lot longer to get right if I’m going to create any Lego Worlds of my very own. I’m sure going to want to, after spending this much time working through the entire game.

I’ll be sure to come back and complete this review or write a completely new one after I have completed the 100-Gold-Brick goal and am able to create entirely new worlds in the game. At that point I’m sure I’ll know even more about it and have much more to say. Now I’m going to head back into this Atlantis-looking underwater world I just found… I sure wish I could hold my breath for longer though… maybe I’ll find a or earn some scuba gear soon.

The Finish Line – Update added 3/24/2017

I made it. Last night, after sitting at 98 Gold Bricks for a day, I jumped in and made the push to 100 and made it. I saved the last 7 minutes of my gameplay if you’d like to watch it: https://youtu.be/NFaPjYGQ39c. As a subtext to the video: I had a trapped, frightened gingerbread person stuck on a rooftop. He/She had a gold brick, and if I could save them I would get my 100th brick. I had previously tamed several pigs, so they were following me around at this time. After some playing around with the landscape tool I managed to get the character to drop to the ground. As the gingerbread character pulled out its gold brick to throw it to me, he was attacked by my pigs and killed! NO BRICK FOR ME! Nazi Soup Pigs. But soon it happened again–another frightened gingerbread person in the same area… So I immediately took action, usied my scimitar, and sliced me up some tasty bacon to get that elusive last gold brick!

Obtaining 100 gold bricks gives you the rank of “Master Builder” and also unlocks the option to “Create custom worlds” in the game. So I played around with that option for the rest of the evening (and this morning before work) and I must say, the options are nice. I was a little disappointed at first when I couldn’t find an option to just start with a completely “clean slate” – just a blank, empty world, flat, with nothing in it – but I soon found that this was probably not an oversight, it was most likely done on purpose. You can, as they say, “create the Lego world of your dreams”, and if you desire a blank, flat world, well… go for it! It’s doable. Just do it.

Technically, you can’t actually “Create a new world”, as the voiceover announcer describes it at the end of obtaining 100 gold bricks (as you hear him say in my saved video). That’s deceiving, and I think it was actually a mistake. the game itself shows the option as “Create a custom world”. This is a bit more accurate, because you can only choose the individual Biomes, Animals, Characters, Vehicles and the world size you would like, then click the “create” button, and what it does is give you a world seed of that size, with those options set. It’s still a pre-defined world, with a seed you can share with any other Lego Worlds player. Your version of it might be just initially populated a little differently than anyone else’s, based on your preferences.

But this was a very interesting design choice for the game, as you’ll see. I set out, then, so create what I just mentioned above: A flat world, like a clean slate to start with–no animals, objects, or anything–sort of a complete beginning–so I know exactly what’s in that world, and everything in it I know came from me. The various tools available in the game are very fun to learn and use, so it’s not a problem at all. I chose the smallest world size, and just one “open prairie” biome, so the world would be as easy to flatten as possible, with the least number of objects to have to destroy and clean up. I used the “flatten” landscaping tool to level everything down (or up) to the same level, making it all flat. I guess I should say “am using”, as I’m still actively working on this world as I write this. My initial world came with many vehicles, animals and characters spread all over it, including a quest area or two, so I have plenty of work to do. As I level the landscape, animals on it will shift up or down to meet the ground and keep travelling on it, and I’ll select them and “remove” them to pop them out of existence. Sometimes I’ll run into a character or animal I haven’t discovered yet, requiring me to complete a quest first, before I can work with that particular animal or character. This is a fun side-objective, and it also provides you with more characters, objects and animals to use in the game. It even makes the dullness of simply flattening everything on the entire map much less so.

So create the Lego world of your dreams is fun, and there’s plenty to do along the way, so get busy. There are even plenty more gold bricks I can obtain as well as secret “Legendary” puzzle pieces which can be assembled to reveal even larger “Legendary Gold Bricks”, as well as many other things. It also seems like I will never have every single object, animal, character or vehicle in the game, so opening chests and completing quests can always earn me something new and unexpected along the way–especially with the possibility of downloadable content and add-ons that are sure to come later on. So I’m heading back in now, gotta keep flattening. Haylie wants an empty landscape to build her dream world on the next time she visits. This concludes my review.  I really like this game.

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Oooh…shiny!

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Wow, really enjoying the new phones and services so far on Verizon!  Who knew we’d ever be able to get voicemails in TEXT format and even receive faxes on our regular cell phone numbers!?!  I feel like I’ve been missing out.  Not that I use faxing a lot, but we use it at work, and I sometimes need it for personal business, so maybe it’ll come in handy.  Sure would have come in handy a few years back when I had my small business.  It’s interesting how it works:  When someone sends a fax to your cell phone number (I didn’t believe this would even work until I tried it myself) you get a voicemail that tells you there’s a fax for you.  The voicemail system gives you the option of immediately printing the fax if you’re checking your voicemail from a fax machine, or you can enter an “alternate destination”, which can be the number of ANY fax machine.  So I entered the number the fax machine I was near and in comes the fax!  Why I, of all people, am surprised by this, I don’t know.  I guess I just never conceived of a solution like this.  Could be pretty handy.  Now if it could just take that one extra step of converting that fax to a PDF and actually placing it ON my phone, now THAT would blow my mind.

Verizon also just started their “Unlimited” plan at the same time I was in the middle of switching to them.  I looked at the details though–particularly how they throttle down your speed after you hit so many Gigs of usage, and also the price bump of $40 more than their highest non-Unlimited plan (which is what we have) for our 3 lines.  I could see it being pretty popular, especially for families, but I don’t think we’ll have any problems with the 8GB+2GB+2GB+2GB we get per month (2GB bonus per line for life) without the throttling.  With that, and the unlimited full-sized photo and video storage capacity for as long as we keep using our Google Pixels, we’ll stay put for now.

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Cellular Changes

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We recently made some major cellular changes–both with our smartphones and with our cellular provider.  Over the past few years we’ve been paying over $300/month for our 3 phones, which pretty much comes to about $100 per phone.  This is with US Cellular (herein referred to as USC).  We’ve been with them since I can remember–well over 10 years for sure.  I’ve had them since before my dad passed away in 2008, and I can remember having them as early as 2005 (formerly known as Cingular) when my dad got a big “bag phone” for his van.  I believe he went with Cingular because my cousin worked for them and hooked him up with service and a plan.

So, figuring $300+ per month might be a bit much, in January I started looking at options.  This was our situation: We had 3 phones on a family plan sharing 12GB of data per month.  Two of the phones were paid for, the third is fairly new, so we were still making payments on our bill for that one.  So I can understand our bill being slightly higher than normal with an added payment for one phone.  Our issues on this plan: We have struggled several months previously with trying to stay under 12GB of data, but that was basically because Kevin didn’t fully understand what does and doesn’t use cellular data, and how to avoid using it all.  After a few months of close calls and one month of overage we got that under control and he’s been good ever since.  Since then we all started using “3G Watchdog Pro” on all of our phones to set clear limits and monitor our usage closely.  We also have a problem with USC when I’m in Illinois.  And that’s often, for me–I work there.  And I walk there, every weekday, during lunch, and like to play Ingress as I walk.  This only uses a small amount of data, but it’s pretty critical when you’re limited to only 100MB of roaming data per month before overage charges start.  I think this very low limit might have changed at some point in the past year or two though, now that I look into it more, but roughly a couple years ago I hit that roaming limit at least twice.  I was billed for it the first time, called support and explained my situation, and they reversed the charges.  The second time I had to pay the extra changes.  USC’s coverage is horrible in Illinois, even when roaming.  Those commercials that boldly shout that they have coverage “Out here…In the middle of anywhere!”… Total BS, and they now make me angry every time I see one.

Another issue we had was space…the final frontier…seriously though, 16GB or even 32GB today is just not enough.  Apps are aplenty, and many require room for files, whether it’s for their media, files, or other data they like to store, and you also always need space for apps to “cache” data, download music and movies, TV shows, etc., etc.  So all three of us would find ourselves flushing our cache files in Android (did I mention we’re all dedicated Android fanboys?), and trying to find and cleanup anything we can on our phones just to find enough space to install a new update or make our phones start running smoother.

So, with all those concerns I started hunting for options.  After a couple weeks of looking in my spare time, my options didn’t look promising.  With all of the carriers, a 32GB Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S7) seemed like the best choice, which is sad.  Nevermind the Samsung bloatware, the 32GB just isn’t enough.  Sure, you can add a 256GB SD card, and some people even say you can install apps to the SD card (by jumping through some hoops).  Others, however, say that Samsung blocks the ability to install apps to the SD card on the S7 for some reason.  Either way it sounded like a PITA, so kept looking.  I found that there’s an Apple phone with enough memory, but that’s not an option for me.  At all.  Then last week I found that Verizon and Google offer a 128GB Google Pixel phone, which is running Nougat (Android 7–the latest version of Android), so I started looking at carriers and plans.  I finally settled on Verizon and a plan, then ran the numbers–An 8GB/month shared plan which adds 2GB per phone on the plan, so that would be 14GB per month, for $70 for the plan and $20 per month per phone.  That’s a total of $130 per month for 3 new phones, not including the cost of the phones themselves.  Nice!  So then I looked at possibly financing the 3 phones on my bill as well, which came out to about $32 per phone per month.  Added together with the monthly phone bill the total monthly payment comes to around $226… still at least $75 less that what we were current paying!  Add in all the miscellaneous fees and taxes each month as well as full insurance coverage for each phone, and we end up at around $250-$260 per month.  That sounded awesome, so after discussing it with The Warden, we decided it was a go.  Even at $260 per month, it’s still over $40 cheaper than USC, and we’re paying for three phones.  After paying them off–hopefully sooner than the 2 years–our monthly bill will even drop about $96 per month!

An awesome salesman at Verizon named “Jeff” helped me every step of the way with getting this done.  He even provided his direct cell phone #, which I used several times when we had a few snags and questions, and he made it quite an easy and stress-free experience.  All three of us are now on 128GB Google Pixels now, and enjoying them very much.

The first evening, as I started setting up the new phones, I struggled a bit with the new Pixel Launcher, then decided it wasn’t worth it, and went once again, with good old Nova Prime, which has been our launcher of choice for years, and has spanned just about every phone we’ve had.  With that in place, and knowing the interface so well, things progressed much faster from then on.  The Pixel comes with a transfer cable so you can connect it directly to your old phone during the setup process, then it transfers everything–your apps, contacts, and all data–from your old phone and onto the new one!  My 64GB Galaxy S6 was almost full, and it took the most time to transfer…9 minutes!  I was expecting hours!  Granted, some apps still downloaded from the app store, for some reason, but I was still quite impressed.  Sandy and Kevin’s phones were much easier to do, since they use far fewer apps than I do.

The porting of our existing numbers to the new phones was also quite easy, once I got through a snag with Verizon’s website.  As it turns out, you have to have an account already setup on Verizon’s website in order to work with Verizon support.  I guess this is validation that you’re a legitimate customer of theirs.  I hadn’t done that yet, due to issues I had earlier on in the process, which locked my Verizon account before it was even fully setup!  I apparently provided Verizon (Jeff) with a PIN for my account, which was to be used for just this purpose, and totally forgot about it.  As a result, support couldn’t verify me, and asked if I could go to a Verizon store with a valid photo ID to verify my identity, then they could proceed with the porting of our phone numbers to the new phones.  They apologized quite a bit, but I totally understood, and it was my fault I didn’t remember the PIN.  I recalled afterword, once the Verizon store gave me the PIN # I set, that I did give Jeff this PIN # during the ordering process.  At this point the store also did the porting of the three numbers for me with ease, and it was done.  You simply provide them with your account # with your old provider along with your PIN for THAT carrier, and that’s it.  They said it can take up to 4 hours to fully process, then you’ll get a text message on your phone telling you it’s almost done, and you just restart your phone to complete the process.  It took much less than that for us, under two hours, and the first phone–mine, go figure–only took minutes… the text message was there by the time I got from the Verizon store to my house.

More pluses for Verizon:  I’m noticing that Verizon’s website is many times better than US Cellular’s… It’s a lot faster, easier to navigate, and so far it already has less glitches with logins and providing detailed account information I need.  Very nice!  There’s even a handy graphical data widget included with the “My Verizon” app that shows me how much data I have left for the month… Awesome!  And that’s another big thing–APPS… The “bloatware” (a.k.a. crapware) I have always seen come with our cell phones when we first get them–the stuff that eats up a big chunk of that precious little storage space they usually have–is no more!!  There were 3 little apps from Verizon installed–the others were all Google’s suite of apps, and ALL of them are completely uninstallable!  That was a shocker.  Sure, now that we have plenty of space on our phones, NOW we get the benefit of not having any uninstallable, permanent bloatware to have to deal with… Better late than never I guess!  That, and the fact that Verizon seems to have full coverage everywhere I go so far–even in Illinois–are big pluses in my book!  I can even play Ingress or PoGo in Illinois freely now, without worrying about getting hit with overage fees!

So that’s where we’re at right now, enjoying our new phones along with the extra breathing room 128GB gives us.  Verizon also threw in an extra 6GB of “rollover” minutes for our first month too, I just found out, which is really nice, since I have had to use a bunch of extra data I normally wouldn’t use just setting things up again.  I did most of this over Wifi, just to be safe on data usage, but it’s nice to know we have some extra room to start out with anyway.  The new phones are working great, and we’ve even noticed much clearer-sounding conversations when we talk to people on the new phones.  How much of this is the new phones themselves and how much is Verizon we’re not exactly sure, but it’s much better, and that’s just a good thing.  So that’s about it for now.  When and if we have any issues, I’m sure I’ll bitch about it here, so you’ll know.  Stay tuned.

Family News, News

Good Christmas? I’m hip!

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Since midday Thursday I had been in severe pain. It has something to do with my right hip or something in that general area. I had minor problems before this with might right leg going a little numb whenever I sat in my recliner for an extended period of time. To alleviate it, I would sit up or get up and move around, then the feeling would come back and I’d be fine again. No real pain, just a numbness–just an inconvenience seemingly just to keep me active and not being lazy for too long, I figured.

But Thursday, the day before my nice 4-day holiday weekend, I tried to walk for lunch. I made it about 1/4 mile when the pain started hitting me hard, and it was in BOTH hips this time. I went back to work the rest of the afternoon, and it started getting worse and worse, and spreading. By the time I got home from work, I ached all over. It was like I was getting the flu, except the pain in my hips was far greater than the other aching I had all over. I tried to lay down for awhile, but it was impossible to get comfortable, as each hip felt worse when I laid on either side or moved in the slightest.

Kevin had a doctor’s appointment the next morning and we had planned to go see Rogue One after that, but I wasn’t so sure at that point whether any of that was going to happen, the way I was feeling. I assured him that night, when he got home from work, that I’d try my best. We were both really looking forward to seeing the movie, the doctor not so much.

I took some Tylenol that night and actually managed to get a decent amount of sleep, though it was a bit rough. By morning I felt a little better. Still a lot of pain, but most of the aching was gone, then left hip felt fine again, but the right now still throbbed and was painful to stand on and just about the same to recline in my chair at home. I was kind of stuck with not being able to get comfortable at all. Very frustrating. It was a very rough time for several hours, but eventually it subsided after a couple more Tylenols and I was able to get some sleep.

The next morning was better, thank goodness, and I was shocked to be able to walking pretty good with only a little pain in the right hip & leg. The flu symptoms seemed to have almost completely disappeared. I woke up sweaty, so if it was a touch of the flu, maybe I was able to sweat it out overnight. So I figured at this point we were still on for the movie and Kevin’s doctor appointment. These went fine, and I was even a little surprised I was able to sit through the entire movie, stay awake, and enjoy myself! Being a huge Star Wars fan, I thought the movie was great!

During Kevin’s doctor appointment (we have the same doctor) the doctor asked how I was doing, so I explained my symptoms. I said I had pain and aching in my leg, but hadn’t mentioned which one. He asked “Is it your RIGHT leg?” and I said yes. How he knew which leg, I have no idea, but I should have asked. He said to let him know when I’d like to come in for an appointment myself, and he’ll probably have to schedule an MRI to see what’s going on.

The following day was Christmas Eve, and we spent most of the afternoon and evening at Matt & Anna’s. We had a good time and great food, and everything was very nice. The next day, Christmas, we spent at home, just Kevin, Sandy and I, opening presents and relaxing, then had a nice Christmas dinner that Sandy spent most of the day preparing. All in all, everything turned out very nice.

Sometime on Monday, December 26th, as I sat in my recliner with the pain and numbness coming and going a bit, I realized something. My WALLET was in my back right pocket–as it always has been since I was a teenager–and this hurt along with the rest of my right thigh and leg. Suddenly that light buld went on over my head and I hit the Interwebs in a flash. Sure enough, it’s a thing. Sciatica. Look it up for yourself. Hip Pocket Syndrome.  Why didn’t my doctor mention that possibility? I don’t know.

So I’ve removed my wallet from my back pocket, and since carrying it in the front pocket doesn’t help much either, according to the articles, I’ll stick to other options from now on. I’m so used to making sure it’s there by feeling for it though, it’s going to take some time to adjust and not panic when I realize it’s not there any more. I’ll get used to it. Now I need to focus more on exercising that leg and stretching more to try to reverse the damage. Hopefully it’s not permanent. If all goes well, and the recurrences of very bad pain and almost inability to walk at all go away, I’ll know for sure that the wallet was definitely the issue, no doubt.  I know I shouldn’t self-diagnose, but if that was the issue and it gets better now, it’ll sure be a lot cheaper than an MRI and several more doctor visits–my copays are rediculous.

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Cell phone quandary

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Ok, here comes another one of those cell phone & tech complaints. Matt’s been trying to get me to switch to his provider, which offers unlimited everything for cheap. It sounds like a great plan, and I could probably even get a good deal on new phones for Sandy, Kevin and I, but there are a few hurdles I’m very concerned about. For one thing, since Kevin recently upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S6, he’s still making payments on it, and will be for another year or so.

Another issue is with switching to new phones. Sandy and Kevin probably wouldn’t mind, but I only see Android phones with up to 32GB of space on them. These days I need at least 64GB just so I have enough space for everything I use and a little breathing room for music and videos. I looked into the 32GB Samsung Galaxy S7, and Samsung disabled Android’s ability to install apps on the SD card for some reason, which limits app installs to just the internal 32GB space. I would have to root my phone in order to be able to do this, and that would void the warranty. Why they added this limitation, I have no idea, but it renders the phone useless to me, that’s for sure. They even added the SD card slot back to the S7 model too–the S6 doesn’t have an SD slot at all–so to me, it makes absolutely no sense. You give the users back the SD slot you took away in your previous model, then you cripple it by only disabling the ability for users to install apps on it. Brilliant.

Apple’s iPhone comes in 64GB and 128GB versions, sure, but don’t even get me started on why I won’t switch to an iPhone again. Those roots are buried deep…much too deep for me to even think about trying to dig up at this point in time. I’d rather wait for a decent Android phone to come out with more memory. I even have a few hundred dollars worth of apps I had purchased back when we were an iPod family with flip phones and each carried TWO devices around with us–one as a phone and one as a media device.

So here I sit with a higher-paying plan on a different provider with a 14GB-per-month data limit for 3 phones, two of which are 64GB Samsung Galaxy S6’s. Matt argues that if I have the unlimited data plan, maybe I wouldn’t need 64GB of space. I can stream music and video all I want, any time. That’s true. Maybe I’m old-school, but I still think it’s better–and much faster–to have as much data that you use as possible stored locally for the most efficient use of that data. This is where I’m at right now, not sure what to do next, if anything. We have managed to go over the 14GB limit a couple times, which became a big headache, but the first time the extra charges were forgiven after a lot of begging to support. These days I try to monitor our usage pretty closely so I can catch it before it gets out of hand each month. Of course, the time wasted on checking this once a day is probably worth something as well, so I need to keep that in mind as well, as I sit and wait for a better Android phone to hit the market.

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Giving thanks

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I kept thinking about this post, over and over, wondering just what to write, knowing I’d probably leave out something or someone important, and that would bug me.  Do I just thank everyone and everything I can?  Just the “really” important stuff, or go on and on, giving a sermon about what Thanksgiving is supposed to be compared to what it has become today?

Let’s just get that out of the way right now:  I am thankful for my family, my friends, my job, and just the ability to have one more day to enjoy it all.  The older I get, the more I realize just how precious our time is on this planet.  It can be taken away in a flash, be it an accident, disease, or on purpose.  One day you’re here, the next, maybe not.

Many people say “Live each day as if it were your last.” We can try, but human nature causes us to revert back to our regular behavior quickly, and we soon forget that “golden rule,” and drop back into our old routines,  And depending on exactly how you interpret that golden rule, it could be as simple as being happy and enjoying every moment, or you could be overdoing it and risking everything to make sure you complete everything on your bucket list before the inevitable happens.

Just try to enjoy the time you have, whichever way you have to, and be thankful, especially today, that you’re able to.

News, Playstation (Sony), Technology Links

PS4

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I recently got a PS4.  The world of console gaming has changed quite a bit, so I figured it was about time I started catching up…at least for a while.  I’m sure I’ll soon be behind the times again and this brand-new console will be considered “old”, but until then, I’m going to enjoy it!

One of the big changes with today’s consoles is digital versions of games.  Every game can now be purchased as digital, which means you no longer need a CD or–God forbid–a cartridge–to play a game.  When you purchase a digital game, you simply download and install it directly on your console’s hard drive, and can play it whenever you want.  This also means you can install it on multiple consoles, and as long as you’re a user on that console, you can play it there.

Today’s games can sometimes be ENORMOUS, however, so the digital versions can consume a lot of hard drive real estate quickly.  Even most disc-based versions of today’s games require installing to the hard drive anyway though, due to the speed advantage it provides when loading and playing the games, so there isn’t even much benefit gained by having a disc-based game over a digital version.  If fact, these days I find it much less convenient to have to insert a disc to play a particular game rather than just choosing it from a menu to play–just like today’s digital movies.  I haven’t played a physical DVD or Blu-Ray disc in AGES, it seems like!  But that convenience doesn’t come without a price: SPACE…the final frontier… Having all digital games will quickly consume all of the hard drive space you have on your console, requiring you to either upgrade to a larger-capacity hard drive or you’ll have to remove older games you aren’t currently playing to make room for the new ones you want to play.

Luckily, right now hard drive prices are ridiculously cheap compared to what they were in the past and the amount of space they provide.  It would cost me less than $100 right now to double the size of my PS4’s hard drive, and eventually I’ll probably do that.  Right now I’m at about 50% full on my 1TB drive.

Sony also makes the process as painless as possible, only requiring the removal of one screw to pull the hard drive out and replace it.  Re-installing all of your data and games is another story.  You can’t simply copy your installed games from your old hard drive, even if you install it in a drive enclosure and connect it to your PS4 via USB.  Sony doesn’t allow this.  Only your game save data and settings can be backed up and restored from USB media.  All of your games and addons have to be re-installed from the Playstation Store…or they can be transferred over your network from another PS4 system.  The latter is the easiest option, if you have another PS4 on your network.  The data and game transfer is blazingly fast–much much more so than re-downloading everything from the Playstation store–so if this is an option for you, it’s definitely recommended over the re-downloading option.  Remember when using this option, however, that anything that you haven’t purchased yourself–like any games or addons that were purchased by another user–will appear as “locked” on your PS4.  You will have to either purchase that content for yourself in order to use it, or that user can still use that game or addon when they are using your PS4.  You’re also free to uninstall or delete any locked content on your PS4 at any time as well.

There is one odd way that two PS4 users can share purchased content, but it only works with exactly two people–and you better trust that person very much too, because you’d be opening up your entire account access to them.  You just have to activate the OTHER PS4 (the one the other person uses) as your PRIMARY PS4, and activate YOUR PS4 as the other user’s primary PS4.  Then you just use your account on your PS4, like normal, and since it’s his primary PS4, his purchased content is playable by all users on your console and you can play your own purchased content on it as well.  And because his PS4 is set as YOUR primary PS4, he can play his content on his PS4 as well as yours.  It works great.  But like I said, just make sure you trust the other user completely, because they have full access to your account and content!

News

Trump Trump Trump

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Everything’s Trump.  We all know he won, all the polls were wrong, and everything’s turning upside-down.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  We have until noon on January 20th, 2017 before he takes office and all hell breaks loose.  We’ll see what happens.  I’m not complaining.  The guy is in, enough people wanted him in to change things up, and there ya go.  Democracy.  It’ll be interesting, to say the least.  Let’s see what happens.  There’s lots of creative ways to use the word “trump,” and this is just the beginning.

Baseball, News, Sports

2016 World Series Champions

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Wow, game 7 of the World Series last night was amazing.  It had everything you could ask for in a baseball game, and never let up.  It was a perfect ending to the series, and it’ll go down in history as something special.  It’s rare these days for such a GOOD thing to be in the news.  Sad to say, but it’s true.  It’s great to see everyone celebrating and enjoying the big win (except Cleveland and the Indians).  Just look at anything on the internet and you can’t miss it popping up somewhere.

Everyone’s tired today at work, but we have a good excuse.  Unfortunately we have to come back to reality all too soon and move on.  We have to get back to finishing off an insane election that I don’t think will make any happy, no matter which way it turns out, because, unfortunately, I only think it can come out one of two ways, and I don’t think either of them are the RIGHT way.  But it’s coming to a close early next week, so hold onto your hats, it’s going to get messy!

I’m going back to reading my Stephen King books.  Unfortunately, none of his stories are as scary as what’s about to happen to the country next week though!

News, Playstation (Sony), X-Box (Microsoft)

I’m not old, I’m “classic”

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xbox-360-elite-wcontrollerWe recently dug out our old X-Box 360.  We hadn’t used it in a few years, though it was still hooked up to a TV.  Again, like our PS3, the hard drive had gotten full, so things started getting difficult, and it ended up just going unused as we moved on to other things.  I considered selling the console, and even went as far as to gather up all of the info about it, including the 26 games for it that we have on discs, and I posted it on our Slack Team’s site.

But after a day with no response–during which time Kevin discovered about 11 or 12 more games on discs that I had missed–I also found that I have about 70 more games that I purchased as digital downloads from X-Box Live that were on the hard drive!  I should have considered this before posting the ad I guess.

So I took the X-Box 360 and moved it out to the living room and set it up again so I could thoroughly go through the system and catalog its entire contents.  After doing this, and actually finding many “lost treasures” in the form of classic games from my youth, I decided to promptly pull the ad and keep the X-Box 360.  The 70+ digital games alone would be quite a chunk of cash (at least for me) to throw away, let alone the 30+ disc-based games that we had purchased.

I loaded up a few of my classic favorites yesterday, just to try them out, and quickly found myself enjoying them all over again, not wanting to close them until finishing “just one more level.”  The hard drive did start sounding pretty loud after the system was on awhile though.  It’s the system’s original 120GB hard drive.  It’s pretty maxed out with everything I purchased back in the day, leaving 2.2GB of free space on it… barely enough to hold another decent game.   And of course, you know me… I immediately jumped on the interwebs and found a replacement internal hard drive.  The largest internal drive I could find, that matched the older X-Box 360 model I have, was 500GB for $40.  So I grabbed it.  In a few days I should be able to upgrade and then have plenty of breathing room to work with on my “refurbished” X-Box 360.

Just like with the PS3, I justify it by stressing how cheap the games, parts and accessories are for these old systems… And they play all the good old classic games I love.  I hope the 360, as well as the PS3, last for many more years.  I’ll probably try to keep my youth alive as long as possible!  Let the old-times roll!

News

Thriller

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My favorite Michael Jackson song (and video) is “Thriller”.  I memorized the Vincent Price lyrics years ago, for some reason, and recite them occasionally during haunting seasons.  Here they are.  See if they jog your memory.

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y’alls neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse’s shell

The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller
The evil laugh that Vincent Price does at the end of the poem & song is great.
Happy Halloween!
Halloween, Holidays, News

All Hallow’s Eve

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It’s coming up fast.  Trick-or-Treating…haunting season is upon us.  I’ve watched a few scary movies–including Stephen King’s IT–to get in the mood, and remind me of what all the creepy clown crap is about.  Silliness is all.  At least it’s a distraction from this presidential election mess… now THAT is scary!

Kevin stopped trick-or-treating a couple years ago, so we have no more kids to walk through the neighborhood begging for candy.  Kinda sad, actually.  I really enjoy seeing everyone in costumes, out walking around, having a good time.  Especially Christmas Lane in Kenosha.

These days, with no more kids to take out trick-or-treating 😦 I like to take Socks out, in-costume, and walk through Christmas Lane during trick-or-treating, just to enjoy seeing the costumes and decorations all around.  Since we live only a few blocks from there now, it’s an easy walk for us.  So that’s what Socks and I will be doing this year, on Halloween, 5pm-6pm.  Trick-or-treating is 4-6, but I get off work at 4, so I can’t get there until 5pm.  It’s sad it’s only 2 hours now.  I remember it being a much longer period of time most other years, going well into the night.  But with all of the safety concerns with kids out in the dark, they probably feel it’s much safer this way.  But I just don’t see why they can’t have it start a few hours earlier, so it’s longer, and still have it end at 6pm, when it starts getting dark… Maybe there’s not enough people home from work to hand out candy if it was earlier…?

News

Bad Boys, Bad Boys

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I typed this up back on 12/01/2016 when I was laid off from work, and often drove to the Job Center to look for work and to walk indoor laps when it’s cold out.  For some reason I never published it, I only saved it as a draft:

I got pulled over by the KPD this morning in Carol Beach, just after pulling away from the shoulder on 7th Avenue, on my way to the Job Center.  Right away I noticed it wasn’t just one, but two squads, so I pulled to the shoulder again, thinking they were going to fly by me on a call, but they didn’t, they were actually pulling me over.  I thought quickly about all the possible problems they could have noticed so quickly and nothing clicked.  My license is fine, the car is registered, it’s running fine, and even all the bulbs were checked during my last oil change.  The officer got out and stood behind my car at a distance, looking around inside my car through the rear window, right hand on the butt of his holstered gun.  He said something, but my windows were up, so I couldn’t hear him.  I rolled my window down and said “What was that??”  He asked me to place both hands on the top of the steering wheel, so I did.  Then he approached the driver’s side door and asked why I was parked on the shoulder back there (while still looking around inside me vehicle).  I told him I was using my cell phone.  He said “OK, that’s fine.  Did you happen to see a man walking around in the area, possibly carrying a gun?”  I said no, I hadn’t.  He said they had a report of a suspicious person in the area.  Then he said I was free to go, and thanked me for my cooperation.

I guess they probably thought that maybe I had picked up this suspicious person while I was pulled over, or had seen something.  It was a totally justified traffic stop, but it stood to remind me of just how dangerous their jobs really are.  I could have been carrying, or doing something illegal and been paranoid, or unstable.  You just never know.  I certainly don’t think I could ever do that job.  I’m glad there are others who can though, and are ready, trained, and willing to protect the rest of us.

News

Mysterious plastic doodad

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goodwill-thingKevin recently found this plastic thingie on his bus.  We didn’t know what it was, but I knew how to find out.  So I took a picture of it with a solid background and used Google Image Search to find out what it is.  Google showed similar images found on the web, and we quickly learned that it’s a earbud cord hanger.  You wind your earbud wires around it to keep them from getting all tangled up in your pocket.  Kevin is using it now, and it works.

News

Election 2016

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Everyone asks where I stand on the presidential election.  My answer is “as far away as possible.”  This year’s election is, by far, the worst I’ve seen.  It’s always been a mess, from what I’ve seen, and there’s always been mudslinging in both directions, but I don’t think it’s ever been this bad or this nasty.  And I believe that’s because Donald Trump never imagined he’d be in this position.  He’s clearly not cut out to be a politician.  At all.  So there’s all this ugly past history of his that keeps popping up, and in turn his campaign keeps digging for something worse on Hillary Clinton, resulting in the fiasco we have now.

Who am I voting for?  I’m not saying.  I feel this is a private decision everyone should make on their own.  Publicly announcing your “side” only alienates you from certain groups of people, and these days it can bring out the worst in some people.  I’ll vote, that’s for sure.  Everyone should.  And early–the polls on election day this year will most likely be pretty busy, and we just might have a record turnout, so I’m going to vote early to avoid as much of it as possible.

Either way, we all know one of the two major candidates will win no matter what happens, and that’s sad.  The options this time around are just too small, in my opinion.

News

Creepy Clowns

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pennywise-in-my-living-roomThe whole creepy clown phenomenon is silly.  They say Stephen King started it with Pennywise from “IT” (shown here, as I’m watching it this morning as one of my haunting season favorites).  Well, IT (the book) was published September of 1986 and the movie came out on November 18th, 1990–30 and 26 years ago, respectively.  Wow, am I old.  Still, let’s move on.  It’s not just me, listen to the Master:

 

 

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Hey wait a minute. Now that I think about it, the book came out exactly 30 years ago… and in the story, every 30 years the creature–IT–returns to Derry to kill and abduct more children! OMG, now it’s all making a little more sense if Stephen King is responsible for starting this thing!

Family News

Ah, clarity…The Focus returns!

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The Ford dealer called me at work yesterday and said he had good news – the Transmission Control Module came in for the Ford Focus–now, instead of in November as they originally said.  He said they’d possibly get it done today (yesterday), but maybe not, but it should be done by the end of day tomorrow (today).   Then last night while I was out walking the dog, he called again and said it was done and I can pick up the car.  They’re open until 8:30pm.

Sandy and I picked it up after she got home from work at about 7:30pm, so that’s it for that issue.  The car is running fine again, and we both have wheels.

Family News

Sandy’s Car

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Sandy was at a client’s home last Tuesday evening, got done, and was about to leave when she found that her car wouldn’t start.  A message on the display kept repeating “Parking Aid Fault – Service Required” every time she tried to start the car.  It would just click and show that message, the car wouldn’t start at all.

So she called me, I googled the issue and found that it’s a common problem effecting this make and model, and the problem is with the Transmission Control Module.  The module needs to be replaced in order to resolve the issue, and based on user comments online, some people have had to wait (and others still waiting) weeks and even months for a replacement!  Yikes!  So I told her to call State Farm for a Emergency Roadside Service tow and I’m on my way to pick her up.

Since then her car has been at the dealer.  After two days they were able to look at the issue, and called us back explaining everything we already knew, and that the TCM is on backorder until early November!  The tech explained to me that this is a common problem with this part on this model, so Ford has extended the warranty to 150,000 miles for the part, and it’s now in such high demand that they can’t keep up, which is why it’s backordered.  The tech said he’d update me weekly, and said it might take less than a month, but that’s the longest it should take.

So we’re down to one car for the moment.  Sandy’s using my car most of the time, since her job involves driving to multiple clients each day.  I have a co-worker driving me to and from work in the mean time.

Her car sure has had it’s share of issues since we bought it!  I guess you live and learn.  We’re just glad we also got the extended warranty!

News

Weekend in review

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Over the weekend we went to Haylie’s birthday party, then I went to see a movie with Kevin: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.  It was a fun movie, though very odd.  But that was expected, coming from Tim Burton.  That guy is out of his mind–in a good way!

On Sunday I gave the dog a bath, Sandy cooked, I ate a bag of Asian Nut Crunch throughout the day, which was nice, though the name sounds more like a martial arts move than a snack, and in the evening we watched both the Presidential Debate and the Packers game, which were on at the same time.  We DVR’ed both, and flipped back and forth.  Wow, what a fiasco this election year has become!  I won’t even get into it, everyone else is saying plenty enough!  The Packers game was very good though, and balanced out the evening nicely.

Now we’re going into Week 2 with having only 1 car…but that’s another story.  I’ll post that one shortly.

News

Changes are afoot!

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I decided to change things up here and hopefully talk more.  A couple people actually read this thing!  Others probably got bored and left long ago because I very rarely posted.  I can understand that.  Especially when I promised so many times in the past to work on that and post more.  Then I just went back to my old ways again, after posting a little more frequently for a short time.  If you’re still here reading this, you’ve seen the pattern and are probably saying to yourself “yeah, yeah, heard it all before, blah blah blah…” So no promises this time.

It’s hard to know exactly what’s ok to publish and what’s not for any given topic, issue, etc.. It’d be much easier (and safer) to just post fictional content instead of my real life stuff.  There’s a thought.  I certainly don’t mind the simplified layout – just a flat-out barely-formatted website with no ads or images (unless I add them to a post).  Not sure about you, but I like it.  It might not be all shiny and flashy to attract more readers, but I don’t care.

So what prompted the changes THIS time?  Money.  My annual bill came for my hosting services, and if I’m going to keep the site up, I need to try again to get back into it and do something.

What bugs me the most about the site, however, is the inability to allow users to freely post comments.  As soon as I allow public comment posting (well not “as soon as”, but days or weeks after) my site comes under attack by all the malicious bots in cyberspace and it quickly becomes riddled with fake comments including viagra ads and links all over the place.  So I have to keep it locked down to registered-user commenting only.  And even with that, they still get in, registering fake user accounts, logging in and leaving the same stupid comment messages.