Category: Tech

Whirlwind Morning of Errands

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Last night I checked the weekend weather forecast and it was showing rain for today so I thought we might as well get my vehicle emissions test done first thing in the morning. They opened a few minutes early so by the time we were done it had just turned 7:30 am.

On the way home we decided to stop at Tony’s Fresh Market which replaced the Valli Produce we used to shop at years ago. It looked much nicer inside even though the basic layout was nearly identical. Testament to what a little updated flooring and lighting can do. We ended up getting $50 worth of food there which included some fresh salsa and deli items.

When we got home Joe checked one of my tires that was making a noise from what he thought might be a rock (I heard it recently as well). Turns out it was a nail, so off to Discount Tire we went, hoping it wouldn’t be busy since they had just opened a half hour early. Wrong! We were told the wait time was 2+ hours so Joe made an appointment to bring it back in a few days to have it patched. The guy noted the tires could use replacing too which we already knew.

We stopped at the library and then decided since we were out we might as well head over to Target so Joe could pick up a prescription.

At the store I was telling him about this Newsweek article – Foreign hackers are actively targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, including water and wastewater systems, using artificial intelligence-powered tools to identify vulnerabilities and gain access to industrial control systems.

I wanted to buy some bottled water (which we haven’t done in several years) just to be on the safe side in case something does happen. He said Costco would have the best price, so we decided we would go on Monday. Well, that is, until we were leaving Target and saw someone with a lot of water in their cart. Was this the universe telling us to get the water now? We thought so, and Costco had just opened a few minutes before, so we headed over.

Before we went inside we decided to check out their Tire Center since Joe had been planning to replace both my battery and tires soon. Neither have ever been replaced and I’ve had my Crosstrek since October 2017. We ended up getting a battery right then and there since they carry a better brand (Interstate) than the Everstart he had been eying at Walmart, and it was cheaper to boot!

Once we got inside the warehouse I bee-lined over to the AT&T kiosk with the iPhones to get a feel for what the new one will look like. If the predictions are true, the iPhone 18, which comes out next month, is going to be the same size as the iPhone 17. The AT&T rep was really nice and showed me how his personal iPhone 17 Pro compared in size to the iPhone 17 Pro Max by placing it on top of it. There is a very slight difference in width, but the majority of the difference is in how tall the Max is. I personally find no benefit to that, so unless the iPhone 18 Pros differ, I plan to get the base Pro but not the Max version. They both should have the same exact cameras (of which there are three).

Oh and let me talk about that for a bit. I have an iPhone 11 which is going on seven years old. It has two cameras and only has a 2x digital zoom. The iPhone 17 Pro by comparison has a 4x optical zoom. The rep showed me how he could zoom in on a shopper very far away with clarity. I was wowed. Not to mention the latest iPhone camera has 48 megapixels compared to my phone’s measly 12MP. I’m definitely going to be spending money on storage in the new phone with that photo size, but it would be worth it if I could take more nature photos than I do now. I would still need my SLR for birding treks, but I bet the phone would do pretty well for everything else.

I’m getting very excited at the idea of getting a new phone soon. As much as I love my current phone, Apple is dropping support on it with iOS 26 and the battery is to the point it needs replacing, so now is the best time to upgrade even though it’s going to hurt to drop what I’m guessing will be $1500 thanks to the chip shortage. Hopefully I can get another 7 years out of the new phone to make it a more digestible $225 per year. But I digress….

Costco had more water out than usual which made us feel like something might be going on, so we grabbed 3 cases (40 bottles in each) instead of just 1 or 2. I really hope we won’t actually NEED it!

When we got home Joe started working on a late breakfast while I did a little research to find the best place to get new tires of my car. Costco is cheaper than Discount Tire (our usual go-to), especially when you factor in Costco’s free installation. Furthering my research, I learned that Costco rotates their tire sales by brand every 2-3 months, and was able to confirm the Michelin tires we want go on sale this Monday. Therefore, waiting just a few days to place the order will save us another $80. Gotta like that!

Speaking of money saving and stuff, we got a check from State Farm for $105 as part of some cash-back dividend they received.

I’m also getting a credit to my CC for an overpayment on a medical procedure.

Money in. Money out. Repeat until you die.

Update: Leaked information for the iPhone 18 series points to a major main camera upgrade featuring a variable aperture (ranging from f/1.4 to f/2.8) that physically adjusts using moving blades. Reports suggest this advanced hardware might be exclusive to the larger iPhone 18 Pro Max.

Ugh, I hope that’s incorrect because I don’t want the taller phone.

Goodbye T-Mobile, Netflix, and Hulu, Hello Tello

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We’ve been with T-Mobile since January 2018. Over the years the cost has kept creeping up to the point where when they announced in July they’d no longer be giving a $10 kickback to any line not exceeding 2 GB of data, our monthly bill was $168. Ridiculous!

They justify charging so much because of the perks they provide, but Netflix was no longer free like it was at the beginning. As of this writing our portion was $13 even though they added free Hulu a year or so ago. Why they just couldn’t keep Netflix free when the value of Hulu was $13 is beyond me.

In addition, the T-Mobile Tuesday perks were getting worse. Gone were the days you’d get free food outright. First it was spend $2, then it was $5, etc. The value just kept dropping while the price kept increasing. Plus the offerings were becoming less and less appealing overall and only tempted us to eat more fast food than we normally would.

So we said that’s enough and decided to switch to Tello since I was already familiar with it after setting up my brother on it. Their rates are so reasonable and they use the T-Mobile network too. I switched my phone over in late July to make sure we wouldn’t regret it and when I didn’t notice any difference Joe switched his on August 8th.

I immediately checked our Hulu and Netflix accounts and while Hulu showed as cancelled, Netflix did not. It showed we’d start getting charged directly the following day, so I immediately cancelled the account to make sure that wouldn’t happen.

It feels freeing to have fewer streaming services so we can concentrate on what’s left and extract more value from it.

As it stands, we now have:

HBO MAX – $2.99 per month until December
MGM+ – free until 9/22
Peacock – free as long as we have Xfinity internet

Plus there’s always the Roku Channel and Pluto which surprisingly has a lot to choose from.

Not to mention our own streaming service, Jellyfin, that we watch our DVDs via.

The only thing we need to square away is our last T-Mobile bill. After there were no longer any lines on it, the bill that was issued on July 28th, which showed us pre-paying for service through August 28th, didn’t update to reflect us no longer having service with them. The customer service reps Joe spoke with gave conflicting information about whether in August 28th things would update to reflect the changes, so we removed our payment info from their site so they couldn’t automatically charge us, and decided to not pay that July bill until we see what happens. I’ve heard murmurings that T-Mobile doesn’t issue pro-rated bills, but if they think I’m going to pay them for services not rendered they have another thing coming. I harbor grudges against companies that try to do me dirty, so for their sake I hope they do the right thing adjust the last bill accordingly or we won’t ever consider them for service again in the future. Just ask Best Buy. They screwed with us over $20 and we went from shopping there nearly every weekend to never giving them another dime in over 20 years now. So if T-Mobile decides to screw with us over about $90 they will potentially lose thousands in the long-run. I guess we’ll see what happens, and I will post an update here at the end of the month.

Update (9/2/26)

You guys, you have to laugh at the absurdity of what I’m about to tell you!

Before porting Joe’s number over on August 8th, we went into the account and removed both Netflix and Hulu so nothing would show active. After the port was complete all we could access was the billing section since the account as a whole was cancelled.

I believe it was a few days later when Joe called T-Mobile to ask when the changes would reflect on the billing side and we’d get a final invoice. The agent claimed we owed in full for the latest bill and then we’d get a final one because she said we were billed in arrears. We challenged that assertion, pointing out how the bill clearly states “Charged in advance for bill period Jul 29 – Aug 28. Changes made after Jul 28 will be shown on a future bill.”

The agent then said the system would update and prorate the billing on the next cycle date of August 28th, so we could either pay the bill in full and we’d receive a credit, or wait until the update. We opted for the latter and turned off auto-pay, and boy am I glad we did because not only did the amount due NOT change, but they slapped us with a late fee!

Joe called them again and the agent said a few outrageous things – we never cancelled the account, they don’t prorate, and there was a $40 charge for Netflix. None of that made any sense, but realizing we were getting nowhere with the call center agents, we took to messaging T-Mobile on Facebook.

We explained the issue and T-Mobile decided to just credit everything due so the balance showed as $0. I was rather shocked since we made it clear we were willing to pay for the 11 days of service (July 28th – August 8th) we used, but alls well that ends well, right? Not exactly, because crediting us doesn’t fix the underlying issue of poor employee training and a ridiculous billing system. Just because we got a good outcome doesn’t mean other customers will!

Unbeknownst to us, T-Mobile has a policy that they do not prorate the final billing period which I find completely absurd. It’s not like a streaming service where if you cancel you can continue to watch through the end of the billing period. When you port a number over that’s it, you have no service anymore with the former carrier. The fact that they can legally bill you for services not rendered is asinine. Not only that, but having to go the social media route because these companies don’t want to pay to properly train their call center agents is a terrible way to do business.

I can’t do much about the latter, but with the former I am going to be sharing my story with the FCC. Mobile carriers should have to prorate invoicing for services not rendered. And it’s not like they CAN’T do it, they just WON’T, unless it’s required by law. Otherwise they will continue to take advantage of consumers. Imagine how much money they are raking in from people who don’t challenge this ridiculous billing practice!

And I hope this goes without saying, but I understand if someone was financing equipment through their carrier then they absolutely need to pay for that regardless of when they cancel service.

Yelp Snafu

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On January 8th I tried posting a review on Yelp and got the following error:

I wondered if maybe the business that I had recently reviewed (downgraded from 5 stars to 3) got angry and somehow convinced Yelp to delete my account after 14 years and 700+ reviews.

Needless to say, I was very upset.

Some people take themselves too seriously on there, and while I do want to leave an honest review, for me it’s more about having a centralized place to track what we’ve tried, including photos, and keeping a list of places we’d like to try in the future. In fact, I have been invited to join Yelp Elite or whatever it’s called over the years but have no interest in it.

Yelp makes it particularly difficult to contact them which made the issue even more frustrating. Back when I wanted to ask them about adding a feature I couldn’t even find a way to do so.

I searched my e-mails to see if they had sent me anything, but the only e-mail I had gotten from them recently was in mid December about changes to their terms and conditions. I have a random secure password so I was doubtful my account was hacked.

Getting nowhere, I took to Reddit to see if anyone else was having issues and low and behold they were, and they were (rightfully) pissed off. I found an e-mail someone on Reddit used to contact them so I sent one there inquiring what happened to my account.

In the meantime it came out that they were suffering database errors or something that was causing people to think their accounts had been deleted when they hadn’t (which explains why I could still see my reviews on businesses I knew I had reviewed).

On January 10th my account was restored, but I didn’t get an e-mail from Yelp until the 12th:

Thanks for reaching out.

Please note that our engineers were aware of the issue of being unable to access your account and it should now be resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

If you experience any further issues accessing your account, please let us know so that we can further assist.

Thank you for your understanding.

I have been building my own database of our favorite restaurants and what we’ve ordered, whether it was good, and what we’d like to try in the future, if anything, in case Yelp goes kaput at some point. I also downloaded my Yelp account data. I guess I will have to do that periodically while I cautiously continue to use them.

New Microwave

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Thursday I noticed our microwave was humming when not in use. I thought that didn’t seem normal and found out that it was an indication of something failing internally. It’s 23 years old, purchased back in 2002 at Walmart when we were still in our apartment, so it’s the only microwave we’ve ever owned and it has worked flawlessly. It even looks great after more than two decades of use. The idea we’d have to part with it was bumming us out.

Due to its age many parts are unavailable, but a door sensor still is, so we ordered that from Amazon on the off chance it was the culprit. Joe switched it out on Friday and sadly it did not stop the humming. We came to terms with the fact that we’d need to buy a new one and for the past few days have been unplugging it when not in use since it’s something we use daily and was in fact still working fine, but was now a fire risk.

Normally I would have done a ton of research and plugged all the data into Excel to figure out the best model to get, but with the way I’ve been feeling I just didn’t care that much. I was originally thinking of getting another GE, but I read on Reddit that the Panasonic inverter ones were better so I focused on those. Plus GE pissed me off after we bought our refrigerator and learned they designed it so that only their expensive water filter would work and therefore couldn’t buy third party ones for much cheaper, so I didn’t want to give them my business anymore. I found a Panasonic microwave at Costco that I was considering since the price and features were right, but I wasn’t crazy about how it looked.

This morning we went to Target to pick up a prescription and decided to peek at their microwaves and there was one Panasonic left that was the same style as Costco but with a different color scheme (Costco was black around the door with stainless on the control panel whereas the Target one was stainless around the door and black on the control panel which I liked better due to all the fingerprints you’d see on the stainless). Target’s price was $10 more than Costco but we had just gotten a $10 off coupon at the pharmacy for Joe getting his flu shot, so it ended up being a little less with the Target card 5% discount.

It’s similar is size to the old microwave – about an 8th of an inch shorter in width and slightly taller, but capacity wise it’s slightly larger (1.2 vs 1.1 cubic feet) and a little more powerful (1250 watts vs 1100). I don’t love the split color scheme or the reflectiveness of it, but oh well, I will get used to it like I had to do with our refrigerator. Sound wise I find it to be a little deeper, and it was annoying me this morning, but the old microwave was irritating my ears lately too.

Other things I do not like about the new microwave:

— The keypad is so dark yet reflective it’s difficult to read the text on the buttons.

— Because the door is stainless steel, fingerprints quickly accumulate. We will have to adjust how we handle the door, but using the bottom or top so as to not leave marks. I’m glad we didn’t get the Costco version where the stainless steel was on the buttons (although at least those can be read easier).

— The cooling fan is so powerful you get a cold breeze on you if you’re standing in front of the unit while it’s running. Unlike the old microwave where the vents were on the left side but toward the back of the unit, this one is closer to the front. There must also be fans on the bottom of it because the breeze seems to be coming from the left bottom half of the unit. It’s quite weird. I don’t recall ever feeling any air on me when the old unit was running.

— The unit is very lightweight compare to the old microwave so every time you use it, it shifts on the stand.

— The inside is dark which makes it feel less inviting.

— The bulb is a white-light LED which makes that cold and uninviting feeling more noticeable.

— The running time on the display is shown as a decimal instead of a colon. The colon only appears for the clock.

— After pressing the 30 second button, you still have to press start (old unit would start after a brief delay (to make sure you weren’t going to press the button to add more time)).

— After cooking is complete, a zero remains on the display for a minute before going back to the clock even if you’ve opened the door to remove the food. No one thought to program it to reset once the door has been opened.

It does heat up things more evenly than the old unit, though, so there’s that. I just wish more thought was put into the design. Everyone is trying to make appliances look sleek yet forget about the user experience.

We are slowly going from all white appliances in the kitchen to stainless steel. Personally, I don’t care for stainless due to how easily it is to see fingerprints and other marks on it, but there are more options in stainless appliances than in white these days. In fact, I couldn’t find a Panasonic white microwave with an inverter or I would have considered it.

Oh and in case you weren’t aware – “inverter microwaves offer continuous, graduated power for more even cooking, better preservation of food texture and nutrients, and improved energy efficiency compared to traditional microwaves, which use a full-power, on-and-off cycling system”.

Streaming Stupidity

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Determining when you’ve finished an episode of a series, and then displaying the next episode in your “continue watching” should be Streaming Services 101… and yet Peacock and MAX just can’t seem to handle this simple concept. You have to literally start the next episode and then exit out, otherwise the end of episode you just watched will be what appears in the “continue watching” section the next time you log in. Why these two services can’t figure out that if you’ve reached the credits, that means you’ve completed the episode, is beyond me.

And MAX takes it one step further by placing you at the end of the episode you just started watching, thus confusing you further and making you question where you really left off. This happens even after turning off auto play! I’ll let it finish the episode and take me back to the series page, and yet the already watched episode is forced upon me next time. Whhhyyyy? This is such a simple programming fix!

Apple gets it. Hulu gets it. Netflix gets it. Why can’t these two streaming piles of you know what fail at something so spectacularly simple, and why aren’t more people complaining?

I started using Just Watch (an app and online service) just to track my place in series because of this nonsense.

In addition, if it’s a TV series I can borrow from the library, I’ve started doing that vs watching it on MAX because it’s just too infuriating. We had unknowingly skipped episodes of the shows we were watching on that service because of how stupidly it operates. And if you check Reddit, people have been complaining about this for years and yet nothing has been done to rectify it.