The downside of parking meters

San Diego is in the process of replacing regular parking meters with ones that are called multi-space meters. These are ones that give you a ticket that you place on your dash. I thought that these were neat as I could just pay with a credit card as I usually don't have change around. My wife, however, pointed out the problem with these is that the minimum is 1 hour on the meter which costs $1.25. I didn't think much of it until I had to pick something up today and found a meter with some time left on it; I dropped a quarter in it (I do have some quarters in my car) and got another 12 minutes which was plenty of time for my errand.

It turns out that the pay and display meters do take change and apparently you can put less than $1.25 in them. So the lesson is that I still need to have quarters in my car for times that I think I'll be at a meter less than an hour; otherwise, paying by credit card is quite convenient. Now if the city could just get with the game and figure out some micropayment strategy with lower transaction fees, maybe they could reduce the minimum amount to go cashless.

Simple fix to "This accessory is not compatible with the iPhone" with mophie cases

I've been using mophie battery cases for a few years now when I travel as the iPhone doesn't seem to last all day when I use it extensively. Granted the iPhone 5 has gotten better, but I typically use GPS to track my run/walk if I'm in San Francisco for WWDC or somewhere else. Every now and again when I'd charge my case, I'd get the message "This accessory is not compatible with the iPhone". mophie's FAQ gives some lame answer on how to fix this problem.

Recently I bought the charging dock for my juice pack and was getting this message every time my phone got to 100% charge and then overnight my phone would start to drain. After a bit of searching, I found a reference to charging cables on Apple's support site. While this wasn't my problem as the dock has an integrated cable, it got me thinking. My dock was plugged into a USB hub instead of directly into the wall or my Thunderbolt display. I switched the dock to plug into the Thunderbolt display and bingo, the problem went away. This tells me that the current supplied by the hub (it's an unpowered hub as I don't want to plug in the power supply) isn't enough to keep the iPhone/mophie case happy.

Such a simple fix for a problem. Maybe mophie can update their FAQ with this information and save others from returning their products or contacting support.

Review: Dyson DC44 - An expensive vacuum that really sucks

When we were picking what to put in our house, we decided to go with an engineered hardwood floor as it would look nice and wouldn't trap allergens like the carpets we had in the past did. We had a Shark vacuum that we brought to our new house and found that we were using it a few times a week because one thing that you don't realize with a dog is just how much it can shed! Our dark hardwood was constantly covered with dog hair (he's a light colored dog), so it started driving me crazy. The corded Shark sucked up a lot of hair, but the cord didn't make it convenient to use.

One day when I went to Costco (it is now my job to goto Costco as we're literally 2 minutes away from one and my wife hates going), I was browsing the aisles and saw the Dyson DC44. It was quite expensive, but I was willing to give it a try. When I got home, I told my wife that if we didn't like it or thought it wasn't worth the cost, it would go back. The Dyson's main selling point for me was that it was cordless; while there was another cordless on display at Costco, the Dyson looked more powerful.

I hung up the charger in the garage (this is absolutely key to using it as it makes it very convenient to grab). My son loved it and wanted to vacuum. We started vacuuming about every other day as there was tons of dog hair. Was the amount we were vacuumming just because it was a novelty to use a cordless vacuum or would we keep it up? Our house isn't that big (just over 1600 square feet), so vacuuming the entire house can basically be done on one charge (it gets about 20 minutes on a charge). About a month after I bought it, I knew it was a keeper as my wife offered our Shark to her parents. Yeah!

Now that we're 4 months into having it, I still vacuum a few times a week and sometimes just grab it when I see a large clump of hair around (we can never completely eliminate the hair). It's easy to use, but a little on the heavy side for my son. The canister is far too small for having a dog as I have to empty it 3-4 times when I do the entire house; it is adequate for quick cleanups, but a pain for the full cleaning.

Pros

• It is easy to use.
• Cordless makes it very convenient.
• Charging base is well designed and makes it easy to grab the vacuum out of it.
• Has enough power to pick up dog hair.
• Lots of attachments; we tend to use the attachment that spins like a vacuum and a pointed one.
• Battery is big enough for our use; using it on carpets or a bigger house, it would be too small.

Cons

• Charger cord is too short. The base has to be mounted very close to the outlet which won't work for everyone and barely works for us.
• The canister for the debris is too small for a family with a pet.
• Very expensive.

Summary

So far, this is proving to be a good investment. We are vacuuming regularly and don't just put it off to a bi-weekly task like we've done in the past. I believe that this will help us live in a cleaner house (not sure how clean a house can be with a dog in it). I would like to see it have a larger canister to hold debris and a larger battery wouldn't be bad, either.

Overall, I have no regrets about buying this. Without this vacuum, I imagine that we'd have dog hair around all the time and make our house look dirty. Cordless vacuums have come a long way and I'm not sure I'd go back to a corded one even if it offered me more power. The cost is the biggest hurdle in me recommending this product to others, but if you have some spare change, this is well worth a look.

Another trip, another lesson (or more) learned

While I don't travel all that often, I do travel between 6 and 12 times a year. I have my routines down pat and usually get through the airport unscathed. On my most recent trip to Portland, disaster almost ensued. I arrived at the airport very early as there are limited flights to San Diego and had nothing left to do downtown; this turned out to be a great thing. Security line was long and I made it to the porno scanner. As I always do, I opted out of the scan. I was doing my best to watch my bags as I waited for a screener to come over, but it is pretty hard to do so. After 10-15 minutes, they finally found a screener for me to do my rub down, I mean pat down. This kind of delay is pretty routine when I go through Portland; I find this unacceptable. Also, I find it interesting that every family that was traveling with a child, the TSA officer let all members of the family go through the metal detector and not one of them had to go to the millimeter wave detector.

When asked what items were mine, I pointed to a bin and my backpack and told the screener that my suitcase was missing. Depending on the day, I shove my phone, watch and wallet in my backpack or my suitcase. This trip, I put my phone and watch in my backpack and my wallet in the bin with my shoes. I did, however, but my belt in my suitcase. This must have been an "oh sh*t" moment for them as they didn't seem to know what to do. The head person said that they'd review the video footage and try to locate the person that took my bag. I had my screening with a very nice officer who skipped over some of the baloney speech as he knew I'd been through it before. After the screening, they saw that a bag was left behind and searched it as I indicated it is likely that someone took the wrong bag. One officer found a pill bottle with a name on it, which allowed them to page the person and hope that the person would come back to the screening area.

I asked if they could use the passenger manifests and find out what flight the person was on and get the airline to grab the bag before the person boarded. I was told that they didn't have access to that information. This, of course, is completely false as the TSA can't do its job with the no fly list without knowing who is on what flight. A passenger search is a simple task as there are many a few thousand people in the airport and searching a database of that size takes maybe a few seconds at most. This is what really annoyed me (besides waiting for my screening) as they have enough information to locate my bag (unless the person left the sterile area).

Luckily they found my bag as it appears that the passenger heard the message over the intercom. The passenger was very apologetic and it was an honest mistake (OK, his bag really didn't look like mine, except that it was black).

I've learned a few things about this experience. First, I need a big piece of brightly colored duct tape on my bag. Second, I need to grab a Bluetooth LE beacon such as StickNFind or Tile and shove it in my bag. Even though the range isn't great, it could give me half a chance of finding my bag running up and down the terminal or setting up an alert when the bag leaves the area of my phone (this assumes that my phone isn't in the bag and isn't taken at the same time). Third, I really need to get into the TSA PreCheck program. I have no problems spending the $85 and submitting my fingerprints, but there isn't a facility close to me right now to process my application. Portland, however, has one so I'll try to set that up for my next trip up there if it works out. And the last thing is to speak up and get one of the officers to pull my bags off the conveyer belt right after it goes through the scanner.