My time with the Apple Watch

More than 3 years ago, I backed the Pebble watch on Kickstarter. My needs for the watch were quite simple; I wanted to be able to tell the time (the summer before that, the battery on my watch died twice and I got tired of replacing it), I wanted to get text message notifications on it and I wanted to be notified when the phone rang. The last 2 were important as I don't always feel my phone vibrate when it is in my pocket. About 2.5 years ago, my Pebble arrived. Initially it didn't do all that I wanted (from the list above), but with software updates and iOS updates, it completely met my needs.

Pebble added apps and I played with a few of them, but didn't really use them. I'm likely an atypical user as I'm at my computer most of the day and when I'm away from my desk, I don't spend a lot of time playing on my watch or phone (I don't commute anywhere).

My only real complaint with the Pebble is that it got confused often and didn't always give me notifications.

When Apple announced the Apple Watch, my main reason for wanting one was better integration with the iPhone. About a month and a half ago, mine arrived (black sport). Since then I've worn it everyday and have been pleased with it for my use. Like the Pebble, I use it for notifications and telling the time. In addition, the watch face I use shows upcoming appointments; that is very useful.

I've been quite pleased with Siri on it as I tell Siri to add things to my grocery list and set timers. I haven't used it for Apple Pay, yet, but hope that more stores accept Apple Pay so I can use it. I don't use it while running as I'm not sure I'd find it all that comfortable with all my sweat; also I don't know how well I can get the sweat out of the watch.

In my use, the battery life is excellent (I charge it nightly and it usually has 60-70% battery remaining). I don't really use the apps, but maybe with watchOS 2.0, that will change. For notifications, the watch performs well. As a watch, it is kind of mediocre; having to lift my wrist is strange and I'd like to just be able to glance at it and see the time. However, having to lift my wrist makes me check the time less often which may be a good thing.

Is the watch for everyone? Of course not. I love technology and the Apple Watch does everything I expected it to do and then some (like Siri), so I guess it was worth it. I knew what it was going to do before getting it and it performs those functions adequately. I know that there are people that hate the Apple Watch and those that love them. Will it be a mainstream product? I kind of doubt it, but that doesn't matter to me as it does what I need.

Surge Protector on Coax - Bad idea?

It seems that most surge protectors that are a bit more expensive than the run of the mill ones have ports for coax, Ethernet and phone lines to provide surge protection for these items. I've always ignored the Ethernet and phone line ones as I use VOIP and it is unlikely that the VOIP box would generate a surge and same goes for Ethernet. However, when I setup my UPS almost 2 years ago, I figured that connecting the coax for the cable modem into the coax on the UPS would be a good idea in case a surge came in through the cable line, it wouldn't blow up my cable modem.

As I've written about in the last few months, I've had some problems with my Internet cutting in and out sometimes and I basically came to the conclusion that it was the router. However, at the same time I replaced the router, I came across a post indicating that the coax surge suppressor will cause signal loss (any coax connection likely does this) and that depending on the suppressor, it might not pass all the frequencies needed for the cable modem. (From what I understand, the newer cable equipment can use higher frequencies. I don't know enough about this to verify what I've read, unfortunately.)

I decided to just connect the coax directly to the cable modem (the coax into my cable modem has no splitters from the street; just a few connections would shouldn't cause signal loss) and see what happened. Combined with my router change, my cable modem connection has been rock solid. Is all this a coincidence? Who knows, but the signal loss issue is quite possible (the cable tech said that the loss was acceptable, however) and what do I have to lose? If there is a surge through the cable line, I'll lose the cable modem.

Food for thought if you're having problems with your cable modem.

Air conditioning in coastal San Diego?

I've lived in a few places in San Diego over the last 20 years; 4 relatively close to the coast and 3 further inland. In that time, I had air conditioning in the places inland, but rarely used it. In fact, when we lived 20 minutes more inland than we do now, I don't recall turning on our A/C for the first few years we lived there; we used ceiling fans and just dealt with the warmer days. So when we bought our house and remodeled it, adding A/C didn't even cross my mind. We're pretty close to the coast, and I figured we'd get a coastal breeze. Within the first year of living here, I knew that this was a bad decision. It turns out that last year was the hottest year on record in San Diego with 12 days over 90 degrees at the airport whereas there are normally 1-2 days over 90 degrees. I thought maybe I had become a wimp and couldn't take the heat (well, that still may be true), but the facts confirmed that I wasn't completely crazy.

So, at the beginning of this year, I had air conditioning installed. It was pretty painless as we already had duct work, a thermostat and a place to put a compressor. Since the installation, we've turned it on 3 times. Twice last week because the humidity was so high and one of the days, it rained which required us to close our windows (it was well over 80 degrees outside so closing up the house rapidly increased the house temperature). I really hate to use air conditioning as it is a dry air and it isn't cheap, but with outside temperatures increasing, this was a wise decision. We still use ceiling fans as much as possible, but knowing that we have this backup just makes our house even more comfortable.

EdgeRouter Lite and VPN Connections

When I was going through a variety of routers before I ended up with the EdgeRouter Lite, I found that my connection to my work VPN would drop several times a day which became quite annoying. The connection was a standard Cisco IPSec VPN connection using the built in Mac VPN Client. I've setup VPNs before (site to site using Cisco boxes) as well as a VPN Server (OS X), so I do have some experience with VPNs. I tried to tweak settings (OS X's VPN client is built on top of raccoon) to no avail.

After I setup the EdgeRouter Lite, I tried to connect to my VPN and found that the VPN (except for 1 day) remained connected for the entire day! This was great news and is likely due to how the router handles NAT. For people that work from home, maintaining a connection to a VPN is absolutely vital. Some router manufacturers might not care much about this as they figure that home users don't use VPNs; this is an oversight that I'm glad the enterprise grade EdgeRouter Lite handles well.

Yet another reason that I'm pleased with the EdgeRouter Lite.