Awesome Phone and Plan for Frugal Folks

I updated my phones to a Google Pixel and Red Pocket T-Mobile and Verizon one-year plans.  The phone is great as are the Red Pocket plans.  I bought my phones used off Ebay but I also recommend the site Swappa, especially if you are a seller. 

Red Pocket has been great so far. I am paying $180 per year ($15 per month!) for unlimited talk and text, with 1Gb of data per month, with my choice of Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint networks from Red Pocket.   You can buy their (longer-term) plans on Ebay and they will send you SIM cards for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon (you have to call Sprint).  Be sure that if you buy a plan, it includes SIM cards along with the plan.

I activated my wife's and my phones easily on Red Pocket.  She is using the Verizon plan and I am using T-Mobile, which I've been testing for the past two months and works just about everywhere I've needed it -- up in Washington State and in California.  T-Mobile's network seems pretty extensive now (as opposed to before) and it even works at my summer home in Washington State (where it did not work previously, and I was forced to use Verizon or a very low bar Sprint signal).   I chose T-Mobile because Red Pocket's plans allow phones to be used as a wifi hotspot if your phone is Android and the network is AT&T or T-Mobile.  With Verizon, you can use your phone as a wifi hotspot only if your phone is an iPhone. 

My Pixel phone is old but good -- and it's not really that old either.  It's on Android 8.0, and it started bugging me with System 9 update notifications.  I searched the web but this was the only article I could find that solved the issue:

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-prevent-the-buggy-android-pie-update-on-your-pix-1828336344

Hide android system 9 notification:
To prevent the update from displaying, simply hold down or slide the banner from the notification menu to open to Apps and Notifications settings, and turn off the notifications from Google Play Services.

Similarly, you can do this by opening the Systems Settings, then Apps and Notifications, then Notifications.

Scroll down to the Google Play Services app and tap to open its settings page, where you can turn off notifications.

Turning off Automatic System Update:

Tap the “Build number" option 10 times in a row and you’ll put the phone into “developer mode.”

In the Developer options, scroll down to find the Automatic system update setting. This is normally turned on. To disable, tap the slider icon so that it grays out. You’ve now disabled automatic updates.

These steps should keep you on the version of Android your Pixel is currently running, and away from Pie for now.

Thanks, Lifehacker website and the writer!

Evolution of the Portable Camp Chair

I think it is hilarious, and a comment on our consumer culture, to see the increasingly complicated designs of portable camp chairs.  Go, Capitalism, Go!