sholnay

haha! wow memories.

The only cheat I needed was my bindings, which I stored on my website so I could download at the cafe ;)

While I was in Tokyo a couple months ago, I put my common black/clear umbrella in the ramen shop rack. Upon exit, I was forced to grab another as mine had been nabbed. I felt horrible grabbing someone else's umbrella (though I still did haha)! I feel relieved to learn this is ok.

Just to provide a counter experience, there are so many moments in my life that I find more enjoyable now by "low bandwidth" consumption. Washing dishes, cooking, weekly and even daily yard work, dog walks, commuting of all sorts, exercise. I can fill all of these moments with news or laughter or critical thought or just another voice to have in the background keeping me company in what would otherwise be a very singular task.

With that said, I'm not a music person, I never have been, so I don't turn to music often for entertainment and don't really find much joy in it. I also learn extremely well from spoken word and visuals and much less-so from written (probably why I like youtube videos that explain things).

> It's pretty clear what's happening here: the author prefers music to podcasts

So true. It seems like people fall pretty hard in to one or the other, music or talk. People like the author here doesn't seem to understand or accept this? Or he just has a word count quota. I fall in to the talk side of things, my husband falls in to the music side of things. He gets to arrange all bbq, get-together playlists and I get to arrange our road trip queues that keep me awake at the wheel.

> I was considering writing out a response to each of his points but it's honestly not worth my time.

I, too, want to talk at length about this. Ultimately, that would cut in to my podcast time so I'll just grumble to myself and leave my reply at this.

I had the exact same issue and I still get angry thinking about the phone call I had with a support manager at apple. He blamed me, or possibly my backups. His solution was to factory reset the phone and to never restore my phone or my backups. He seriously wanted me to troubleshoot the issue, app by app, on a clean phone. I can't even imagine how long this would take, weeks? He told me that even if I take it to a store, they probably won't replace the battery because the app says it's fine.

Thinking back, I remember how I basically had Stockholm syndrome with my phone. The performance was incredibly terrible. Swiping on the screen took two or three attempts, opening any app took 2 or 3 touches for it to register. Scrolling was stuttered in any app. I remember my partner deemed my phone unusable (it was 3+ years old, so I certainly expected some sluggishness). I had just built in muscle memory to use my phone, swipe swipe, press press press to open an app.

Sigh, and I'm still with Apple.

>when it comes to recreations, vacations, day trips, road trips

>>That's fairly accurate. We don't have a ton of touristy crap, but that's no big deal for me.

I get what you're saying (though Texas definitely has a fair share of tourist traps). I think it's worth mentioning this is potentially a large lifestyle component for some (possible deal breaker too). The difference between California and Texas is vast.

Texas has extreme weather compared to the west coast and it should not be ignored. There is less geographical variety through the entire state, and what variety there is can potentially be very far (Dallas to Big Bend Park is an 8 hour drive!). If you enjoy the outdoors and outdoor activities and your only reference is California, you may be surprised in the summer when the temperature does not cool in the evenings like a coastal city (even on the gulf coast). The gulf coast water temperatures in the summer can be 90 degrees! A July beach trip in Galveston is not enjoyable and potentially deadly just from temperatures. No mountains or large points of reference can be dizzying. Living in an air-conditioned bubble for 8 months of the year can get frustrating. If you live in southern California, you can go from the beach to snowy mountains in the same day. You can drive an hour or two and be in some of the most beautiful coastal cities in the country, or wineries with some of the best wine in the country. You can go hiking in December without a jacket and you can go hiking in July and need a light coat. You can basically switch any month of the year and still be comfortable. Obviously there is some hyperbole in my examples but the main points stands.

It's worth mentioning that if none of that matters much to you, then you'd enjoy Texas a great bit. There is a ton of culture. Depending on the city, there is a mishmash of everything social you could want or imagine. Food is great and cheap (or expensive, they can suit any taste or appetite to spend money or not).

>Acceptance of LGBT lifestyles

>>Did you live in the country or something? Never seen a problem with it here. In any of the urban/metro areas it's no big deal.

I have a good friend who still cannot come out at work for fear of mistreatment - in the city. I agree that it's generally friendly and accepted in the cities but nowhere near the same as the west coast. I'm gay and I've lived in California and Texas and there is no comparison on the two in terms of acceptance. I would hesitate to hold my partners hand or come out to new acquaintances in Texas. Not so much in California (or the west coast in general). You may not see it but the pressures exists and the difference is real.

>Very church oriented

>>So? I'm an atheist and I've never had any problems with it. You'll only find a problem if you're actively combative with people about it. Otherwise most people don't care.

Agreed, I've never had problems with it, but it is more in your face. There are benefits to being atheist in Texas, travel is lighter and shopping/etc is much easier on Sunday mornings. I got asked what church I attend much more frequently. I've also witnessed more extreme views in Texas that I don't appreciate, but this is what shapes a person, so it's not all bad. One anecdote comes to mind: Driving to work at 7am and seeing a large line of people (maybe 100). Turns out they were all protesting abortions outside of a clinic. Normally I wouldn't think much about them but they held giant signs of unborn bloodied fetuses and encouraged their children to hold signs and yell violently as well (kids no older than 5, 6, 7). This scene affected me more than normal because a family member recently needed a late term emergency abortion which these people found despicable.

Anyway, I lived in Texas and found my way. I met some of my best friends there and know they will be there for life. I made do with hot and cold weather. I enjoyed the amazing food options and wonderfully low cost of living. It's central to the US so getting to the east or west coast is not a big deal. Airports are huge and you can fly a lot of places direct. I've seen some amazing storms in Texas, more lightning than I thought was possible, and some great sunsets.

I encourage people to keep an open mind about Texas. There are great people there and it offers a lot of opportunity, but it's not for everyone.

I was using a 6 Plus up until a few weeks ago. Every upgrade caused serious performance decreases and I avoided iOS11 entirely (anticipating an upgrade to a new device). My partner upgrades yearly and I gave up all phone tasks to him when we were out together as my performance was so bad. Unlock? slow. Open chrome? 2-3 seconds. Open safari? 2-3 seconds. Fancy webpage? Forget it. We use google keep a lot, it basically didn't work on the 6 Plus. Sometimes the app would load quickly, sometimes it would take minutes or not load (or maybe if I kept waiting, it would eventually?). Scrolling in the app hardly worked. Screen touches became more hit or miss. Reflexively, I built in a 2-3 tap routine for most screen touches as it took that many for them to register. Scrolling any sort of content was difficult, stutter-y, and inconvenient. Siri didn't work - but I'm not sure if it does now either. I also had all animations off in an attempt to squeeze some performance.

Anyway, whatever apple did or didn't do, worked. I upgraded to an 8 Plus and couldn't be happier.

I run in to others who have version 6 phones and have no problem, so I don't know why I'm an outlier. Part of it is probably my storage habits, I was almost always within 5-10% of capacity. Now I have 256gb version and am hoping I don't get near the limit so that this phone will last me 3 years.

Yep!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6i1VVikRu0