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!

Garmin Not Turning On or Having Issues Powering On? Replace the Battery

I am not a big fan of Garmin car GPS units. They are a valuable tool, especially when I can't use Google Maps or Waze on my cell phone -- but the company has chosen to put out their car GPS (nuvi) products with really crappy batteries.

I bought a Garmin 2599LMT unit about a year ago. In recent weeks, it started keeping a battery charge for fewer and fewer days. I'd charge it, and in two days, the battery would have discharged. I'd have to turn on the car and use the car charger, since plugging the unit with a USB cable in the house would make it think it was attached toa computer, and it would not charge (I've since learned that putting it on a USB charger that puts out at least 2 amps solves this problem).

A few times recently, the Garmin would not turn on, but once I connected it to the car charger while driving, it would start up. It was not there when I needed it, and it was dangerous fumbling with all the cords and the Garmin unit when I was driving.

Finally, a week ago, it died completely. I could not get it to turn on. I decided to see if replacing the battery would solve the problem, so I looked at videos on YouTube, then bought a battery for my Garmin unit on Ebay for $15.75. The battery came in yesterday, it was easy to install, and the Garmin unit worked immediately! am now a happy camper; the new battery seems to be holding a charge and the nuvi 2599LMT starts up right away.  (Update 6-14-18: installing this new battery has solved all the problems -- I can use the Garmin without the charger for about 30 minutes or more -- makes a huge difference in how useful the Garmin unit is). 

With any other electronic item, if the unit is plugged in, the unit will work, even with a dead battery. This seems to me to be a huge design flaw. Garmin surely can do better by fixing this flaw and supplying its products with better, longer-lasting, higher-quality batteries!

More Bad Websites

I've seen this absurd security question and answer on websites before.  It's obvious that this sort of question was coded into computers years ago and has remained since, with no one correcting the  contradiction in the question and the stated rules for the answers:

So, am I supposed to give a one-word answer to a question that demands two words? 
Or a two-word answer when I am told to "Use one word" in the instructions?

Sunrays and Diver in a Yucatan Cenote

A couple of years ago, I traveled with my former assistant and all-around good guy, Mike Ready, to dive the cenotes near Akumal and Tulum, Mexico.  Sev Regehr lives there and was kind enough to show me some of these incredible dive sites.  These images are of Sev in a  cenote, with sunrays (godbeams) streaming through the water.  Thanks, Sev!  Sorry it took so long to get around to editing these images. 

Calla Lilies, Monterey Coast, California

Spring on the central California coast is a wonderful time. The flowers come out with the sun.

Pacific Grove's magic carpet of flowers, however, has died out in some places. And the monarch butterflies are probably dying out: according to the Coast Weekly, "Volunteers counted just 500 butterflies in the P.G. Monarch Sanctuary on Feb. 18, the end of the 2017-18 overwintering season."

Wild Irises Starting to Bloom in a Georgia Bog

In late March, I flew on a plane again, for the first time since October 2016 (when I returned from South Africa).  I have not missed flying, and feeling like a prisoner (thanks airlines) much at all.  Instead, I've been driving back and forth from our "summer house" in Olympia WA and our regular place in Monterey, CA.  In the summers, I've been trying to visit swimming holes in Oregon, WA, and CA.  The ipad app "Swimming Holes of Oregon" has been an invaluable tool. 

I flew to Savannah, Georgia, to visit my old pal Andy.  Andy works as a field biologist for the Georgia DNR, always part time, as he does not want to work full time.  His job now and for the past 15 years or so has been to survey kites, a bird of prey.  Kites are rare -- not quite declared federally endangered.  He spends all day, every day, for four months boating and hiking to find kite nests and surveying kites.  There are not that many.  The rest of the year he travels or has held jobs where he walks around and looks for indigo snakes. 

Andy has been exactly the same since I knew him in the second grade when we used to wander around in the woods in Atlanta looking for snakes and turtles.  Still doing the same thing.  The government somehow lowered his pay from ridiculously low to insanely low!  He never has cared much about money. 

He always seems to get government or nonprofit housing.  I've visited him in a few places where he's worked, and the government housing has always been adequate, even really nice, in the middle of wildernesses -- perfect for folks like him.  I am kind of stunned to see how much money is spent on this, both state and federal funds, and nonprofit funds. 

He lives and works now in a swamp-filled, snake-infested wilderness reserve near Savannah with too many ticks and mosquitoes for me.  I attach a photo of irises in a bog there that are just starting to bloom.  These wild iris are just starting to open.  In a week or two it will be incredible.  I will have to come back at the right time sometime.  Mosquitoes ate me up, and three tick bite areas have lasted over two weeks now!  I think that it was almost worth the insect bites to see wild irises like this.  Insects don't seem to bother Andy at all.