A typical Saturday

 Very little in our lives is "typical" but today was close. We do our YouTube shows on Sundays. Not every Sunday, but we've done 223 episodes over the last 7 years, so I have the routine fairly well down. I come up with the topic and Jim creates the show on Thursday or Friday - it shows up on YouTube and is scheduled to go live in the future. I start pulling my thoughts together about what I want to teach, then on Saturday, I start the lesson plan. 

This episode will be one of our "HodgePodge of Tech Tips." One of the tips - How to transfer photos from a real camera to your phone - would be very hard to demonstrate live, so I spent some time today making a video that we can play on Sunday.

Here's the notice I sent out to our email list:

Hodgepodge of Tech Tips

Where to put Emergency contacts on your phone, transferring photos from real cameras to phone, backing up phone photos with a USB stick, using Google Photos to delete, when LastPass doesn't work right, magnifying your phone's screen, scanning QR codes, and more...   What: Episode 224 What does this button do? Where: YouTube here. Also livestreaming on our Facebook page here. When: Sunday Nov 28, 2021 at 2pm Eastern, (1 Central, 12 noon Mountain, 11am Pacific, 8pm Berlin, and 4am Monday in Sydney ) Topic: Hodgepodge of tech tips Can't join us live? No worries, the same link will take you to the replay recording.

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Jim made breakfast of french toast with strawberries - my favorite. Then, for dinner, he continued his experiment with making pizza. It's getting better! I think I could even call this crust, "thin and crispy" - that's how we like it.

We went for our walk around the neighborhood. It was a gorgeous day  outside.

And, I ended the day watching the Amazon Prime show called Goliath. It's a really good show, starring Billie Bob Thornton as an attorney. Each season tackles a big case, this season - 4 I think - took on big Pharma and Opioids. Wow. I watched the finale tonight. I won't spoil it but just say that the courtroom scenes were riveting, and it really makes me want to know more about where we're at in real life. I had a good friend who died after getting addicted to Oxycontin. So wrong.

New phone

I bought my Samsung note 9 phone about 3 years ago thru Verizon. It's still perfectly good, but I like to have the latest and greatest. Three years is about the maximum for that, so I've been thinking about what new phone I want. 

I also have an iPhone SE. That's a whole other story. I actually love that phone. The people we teach are equally split between iPhone and Android and the bulk of the Android folks are Samsung so I feel the need to have a Samsung. I'll let Jim have the Google phone (pixel) even though I may think it's the best.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 phone

I decided I would get the Z Flip, it's a folding phone and I like the concept. It would be fun to have something different. I think I would use the ability to set the phone on a table and take a selfie. When it's folded, it would fit in my pocket - no need for a case because the screen is protected when it's folded. The camera and other phone functions are no better than my 3 year old phone.

Jim drove me to the Verizon store today and I checked out the flip. I also checked out the S21 Ultra, Samsung's current top-of-the-line "Flagship" phone.

 

Uh oh, there goes my decision on the flip.

 The S21 Ultra phone's camera swept me off my feet. It has 4, yes 4, separate lenses, from ultra wide angle to 10X telephoto. I tried the display model and the 10X zoom could read a sign across the street. Yikes! Gotta have it.

They didn't have any in stock so it will be delivered next week. Oh boy!

A very happy Thanksgiving

 I wake up every morning with a smile on my face because life is so good. Today - Thanksgiving Day - is no exception. I reach for Jim, we hug and kiss and smile at each other. Today will be a great day. We're going to Jim's sister's house for Thanksgiving dinner, and she's doing all the work - we're just bringing the wine. 

We tell each other a few of the things we're grateful for - technology is high on the list. Zoom, that has allowed us to continue our teaching to small groups even though we couldn't get together in person. It also allowed us to do presentations to groups that we would never be able to do live. Smartphones and photography which give us something to teach.We have each other, we're both healthy (even the doctor says so - we had a checkup this week) we love our home, and we have the wherewithal to travel when we want.

The time came to get ready to go. We decided to take the RV. It's about an hour drive to Jim's sister's. It's good to exercise the van and it's been sitting for a while. We pick up Devon and make to Jim's sister's about 3.

Smells good! The pilgrims are prepared!

Brother and Sister

The feast

Feeling Retired

 Jim and I have referred to ourselves as "Semi-Retired" for a few years now. Now I'm working on getting rid of that "Semi." Today is a great example.

I got up at 8:30 and made coffee, then sat down at the computer. Looked at emails, watched a few YouTube videos on the current news. Jim made a delicious scrambled egg with spinach, onions, and cheese breakfast.

Next I went thru our travel itinerary for January and made a Google My Maps of the trip we have planned. This is a trip that is all planned out by Overseas Adventure Travel. Putting the details on a map really helped bring it to life. We signed up for this trip after our Dive trip to Palau got canceled due to Covid. We're keeping fingers crossed that this trip doesn't suffer the same fate.

 In the afternoon, I called a good friend in Nevada and chatted for a while. When she mentioned that she was missing photos from the last few years, the teacher in me jumped up and insisted that she open the Google Photos app on her phone and check a couple of things. That prompted me to write an article, "Organizing your photos with Google Photos – Step 1"

Then, I started thinking about what topics I want to cover in our live YouTube show this Sunday. This has been part of our business since 2014.

So, you see, I don't really want to be completely retired. I need to teach. If I'm not learning and teaching, then I'm not living. And, I'm so grateful that our busines (GeeksOnTour.com) gives me an outlet to do just that. But, I no longer have the energy to build a business. I appreciate the people who help support us by being members of GeeksOnTour.com, and I hope that some new people see the value of joining, but neither Jim nor I are going to push it. There are other things we want to do.

Writing day to day

 I've never been one for posting to a blog every single day. My friend, Nick Russell does that and I think he's obsessive! But, you know what Nick is? He's a writer! A writer is a person ... who writes! I wanna be a writer.

Today is November 23. The last time I wrote in this blog was September 3. That's bad. I don't need to write every day, but this is my memory - there's got to be more that one entry every 3 months! 

SO - from today until the end of the year, I'm committing to writing every day just to get back into the swing of it. For the most part, I write blog posts when we've done something fun or exciting. We got home on September 3 and I haven't written since. Life isn't always adventure, beauty, and excitement. Sometimes it's just day to day - and that's important stuff too. When we first went into Covid lockdown,  I wrote every day because that was a very unique time. Every time is a unique time and I'm going to write every day until the end of the year.

Hopefully I will go back and write something about the time since September 3 also because we did some cool stuff. But, just in case ...

In September, we took the Roadtrek to the Keys and had a few days of fun

Here's the photo album for September

And, in October we presented seminars in person at a Roadtrek Rally in Sarasota.

Here's the photo album for October.

SEE YOU TOMORROW :-)