Kyocera Brigadier

So, I got this phone almost a year ago, so this is the not quite year in review.

I still really like it.

The biggest issue so far has been the port covers.  In order to make it properly water and crud proof it has these little hard plastic covers that cover all of the ports (charging/USB port, headphone jack), and these covers are attached to the phone by little plastic hinges.  I’ve managed to tear the USB port cover off its hinge.  And my Husband has come close to tearing off the headphone jack cover on his.  Now, this doesn’t mean that the cover doesn’t go back on, cause it does, infact it snaps back into place no problem.  But it does mean that every time I have to charge (or sync) my phone I have to remove this little tiny piece of plastic, that’s smaller than the fingernail on my thumb, and NOT LOSE IT.  I have so far managed, but I can see that being an issue in the future.

And I have to add that Android Lollipop and this phone….well, they work together, but not well.  Mind, I’m positive the problem is Lollipop and not the phone, as I know several other Android users, with different phones, who had issues with Lollipop, but still.

Having said all of the above, this phone is awesome.  I’ve dropped it onto solid concrete, from several feet in height, on multiple occasions, and the phone is still just fine.  No scratches, or dings.  Heck, the screen didn’t even flicker!  Not sure I’d want to try letting a car run it over, but it has held up to every bit of abuse so far with not even a blink.

In addition, the gripes I keep seeing in reviews about the camera…..

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That is one of the first pictures I ever took with this phone.  Those are ice crystals on the front porch railing.  No photoshop.  I didn’t even have to fiddle with the camera settings.  This is not a bad camera.  Not even a little!

I will say, the phone’s ability to tell when it needs to turn on the flash to take a picture is more iffy than I’d like, but that’s not exactly the end of the world either.

Overall I’d highly recommend this phone!


Broccoli

Pictures taken yesterday of my wintering broccoli:

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The garden rodents have discovered the warmth, like I was afraid they would, so I saturated the tires again in an attempt to disrupt their digging.  But otherwise its some very happy broccoli!  Infact, I’m going to have to redo the covers this week, because the two tallest stalks are pushing up against the top.  And as you can see we have the start of heads forming!

I’d hoped, with this warmup we had this week, that I could consider pulling the covers off entirely (as it is I reduced them to one layer yesterday), but the below image is the 10day forecast from Weather Underground:

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I’m still hoping that Saturday’s forecast will change, but so far the only changes have been to predict it to get even colder.  I’m not amused.  This lovely warm up has me wanting to kick into spring mode!


Stuff

The old trail camera finally gave up the ghost just over two weeks ago.  We knew it was coming but were hoping it would hold on for a bit longer.  Doing a bit of shopping and looking around and we found the Moultrie M-880 Gen 2 on Amazon for $89.  We bought two.

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Is it my imagination or is that deer on the small side for a critter that ought to be pushing its 1st birthday??

No sign of whatever produced those tracks I found on Christmas.  But I saw on Facebook that someone got a sighting of a Canadian Lynx down in Olean, end of January, which is only a couple-three hours from me……

I’m finally feeling human again, instead of a miserable wad of exhausted snot.  Sinus infections suck.  Coming on top of the viral stomach bug really really sucked.  I was starting to worry about how exhausted I was feeling, but I think I’m finally catching back up.

Course, being sick for most of two weeks means I’ve gotten almost nothing done on the projects I was hoping to get done…..I have the new vinyl tile to go down in the kitchen, got the laundry done before I got sick, but I haven’t touched the kitchen yet.

I need to finish figuring out what, if any, seeds I want to order, and start figuring out the starting order and how I’m going to do all that this year.

And I need to prep a new location for my little greenhouse, cause the wind this winter shredded my old one, so the former location won’t work.  Oh, and yup, set up a new one, since the old one was shredded.  I’d hoped to have a more permanent structure for my greenhouse this year, but life conspired against me last summer.  We just had a major thaw though, so if I can get the energy this weekend I ought to be able to at least get a spot figured out and cleared of debris.

Ran across this video on Facebook yesterday, take a minute to watch, its fricking awesome!

In other news, I found the political platform I want to vote for:

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(Links out to Amazon in this post are via my Amazon Associates account, if you buy something after clicking through these links I might earn a few pennies.  All linked to merchandise was bought with my own money.)


Windows 10 “Upgrade”

Yesterday I ran across this article.

For those of you who don’t want to read, I’ll summarize.  Starting immediately Microsoft will be downloading, to ALL computers, the installer for Windows 10.  It will be in your “Recommended Updates”.

I highly recommend the article though, at the bottom of it is a link to a Microsoft page with instructions on how to force off Win10 updates.

This morning when I got up my computer was yelling at me that there were 37 “Important Updates” and another 10 “Recommended updates”.  A check of what exactly the recommended updates involved (click on the update, on the right hand side will be a link to further info) and at least half of them were part of the update to Windows 10.

I’ve been keeping an eye on those since this whole thing started anyway, but I’m glad I had the extra heads up.  So here’s yours!  Check your updates and don’t just automatically install them!  Unless you WANT Windows 10, and I suspect you’d have already made that upgrade if you did……


I guess its my month to be sick

So I wrote the last post on Thursday last week.  By Thursday evening I wasn’t nauseous any more, woohoo!

And by mid-day Friday everything stopped running straight through.  Even better!

Unfortunately by mid-day Friday it was also obvious that something else was taking hold.

Those random sniffles I’d had for the last few weeks suddenly collected all at once into the sinus infection from hell.

Course, I didn’t realize how bad it was till mid-day Saturday, when it was to late to call the doctor’s office.  I suffered till Monday (yesterday) and called in, after some discussion of my symptoms over the phone they called in an antibiotic for me without me having to go back into the office.  Which is much appreciated.

Oh, and I love my local pharmacy.  They’re a big chain, but in a small town, and the latter shows.  About half an hour after the call from my doctor’s office I called down to see if the prescription was there yet.  It wasn’t.  I shrugged, looked at the clock and decided I’d give it a couple hours and try again.  About 45 minutes later I got a call from the pharmacy tech I’d talked to, my prescription had just been received, she’d remembered my  name when it came through, and was calling to let me know it had arrived.  EVER so much appreciated!  She got a very firm thank you!

I hate being sick!  I had all these things I wanted to do with this off time!