Birthday Gifts

Yesterday was my birthday.  I'm now 57 years old.

I got two gifts.  My wife bought me a DJI two-way charging kit.  My sister bought me a Wheeler F.A.T. Wrench.

Regarding the DJI two-way charger, it's a battery charger for DJI drones.  This is is for my Mini 3 drone.  I currently have two batteries.  The charger is basically a caddy that can hold up to three batteries.  It charges the batteries one at a time, starting with the battery that has the lowest charge.  It can also be used to charge other things (drone remote, phone, GoPro, etc) and will use whatever battieres are in the caddy to charge other things.  This also gives me the excuse of buying a third battery.  I might buy the Intelligent Plus battery, as it has up to 51 minutes of power, but it will mean that I'd have to register my drone, as that battery has extra weight that will make the drone over 249g.

The Wheeler wrench is a inch-pound torque wrench, mainly for use with firearms.  I wanted this for use in installing optics and other things that require precise torquing of small bolts and screws.

Besides that, I bought myself the PC game, Armored Brigade II, which I posted about a day or two ago.

I'd thought about getting a new Apple headset since my Beats Studio Pro has one leg in the grave.  We'll see.  I've a long flight to CA coming up and I might purchase that headset before I fly out.

GoPro Hero 10 Black - Received!

I posted that I bought a refurbished GoPro Hero 10 Black from Amazon and that I was awaiting the package to arrive.

The package arrived yesterday.

I was surprised when I opened it.  Why was I surprised?  Well, the product description stated that I'd be receiving only the GoPro itself and no accessories.  I was expecting nothing other than the camera (I also expected that no battery would be included).

This (<=== link is here) is the one that I bought.

I received the camera, two batteries, a USB-C to USB-A charging cable, two mounts and a case.  I was shocked.  I basically got everything that I'd get if I bought a new product.

The camera doesn't appear to be refurbished at all.

About the only thing that was off-putting was that I had to charge the the batteries sequentually with the battery compartment door left open.  The charging process was long in duration, as well.  This was so much of a pain that I immediately began searching for a dedicated battery charging caddy, which I didn't initially anticipate needing to purchase.  I bought the GoPro Enduro 2-battery & charger combo pack from Best Buy (local purchase) for $59, just so I wouldn't be having to charge each battery sequentially.

I haven't really used the camera yet, as I'm actually afraid to go out and about - around here, there's a lot of chaotic last-minute Christmas shopping going on and traffic has been horrendous.

I've got the camera set up to use with the Quik app - was easy to set up.  It can be used with my other GoPro fittings and attachments (many of them were designed by 3rd party attachment makers).

I've also developed a To-Buy accessory list:

I can't wait to use this camera while at my next shooting activity!

AW S8 - Battery Tracking; Activity Tracking

So, the AW's battery got as low as 20% today, before I decided to charge it. Between the last time I charged it and this afternoon, I changed the display settings:  I enabled AOD and allowed the display to show full-time.  I noticed a sharp drop-off of charge capacity between this morning and this afternoon.  Still, I got 2.5 days of use out of it before it needed charging (and I didn't run it down to 0% charge).

I charged it to 95% before I had to take it with me on a walk this afternoon.  I enabled Activity maybe 5 min into the walk (I hadn't messed with it until today).  10 min later it detected the walk and had already had the timer set to 10 min.  I enabled it to continue tracking and when I was done, I stopped the tracking.  I got really good feedback from that 20 min walk!  I will have to do this more often.

I'll also charge the AW again tonight then track how long the charge will last with AOD enabled the whole time.  I will then charge the AW and disable AOD and track how that charge's duration.

Comply Premium Earphone Tips & Spigen Ultra Hybrid MagFit Case

I posted about buying Airpod Pros earlier in the year.

One thing I absolutely hate about them (and all AirPods) is the fact that they won't stay in my ear.  I shouldn't have to spend this amount of money for ear buds that won't stay put.

Now, I'll say right now that my ear canals are hairy.  I'm not a hairy guy by any means.  It took me YEARS to grow a fully fleshed-out mustache and I can't grow a full beard (I have no problem growning a goatee).  My legs aren't extremely hairy, nor are my arms or chest (or armpits).  My ear has a good amount of hair growing from the ear canals, though.

At first, I tried clipping my ear hairs, and it works, but it's a bit tedious and I don't like the barbed feeling of the ends poking into me when I insert the Airpods.

I was close to selling them and getting a pair of Beats instead, as I heard they're much better at staying in place.

I was reading the MacRumors forums this week and saw that someone mentioned that they used a product called Comply premium earphone tips.  I ordered a set two days ago.

They arrived today and while sitting on my patio drinking a beer, I tried them.

OMFG.  They work. They work very well.

I'm using the medium set (these came in a set of three, sized small, medium, and large).

I also bought a magnetic ear buds tether, as well, but I think I was overly redundant.  Honestly, I wouldn't have known these would work, because I've tried at least 5 other sets of ear bud tips - only the sixth set worked.

It's time to wear out these AirPods!

Note:  I also bought a Spigen Ultra Hybrid Mag (MagFit) clear case.  I want to get a MagSafe battery, but at $99, maybe I'll put it on my Christmas list.  

Miscellaneous...

So, I'm finding out that the M17xR3 is bulky enough to where I don't want to carry it around from one part of the house to another, so I've still been using my Macbook (when I'm lazy).  Been using it a lot to pay bills, IRC (##slackware), and web browse.

So, one day, I unplug it and go to another room to help my wife with a project and notice that the battery icon is still showing 100% after not being plugged into AC power for about an hour.  I click the icon and it states that I'll be needing another battery soon.  COME ON!  First I run into the limited hard drive space, now I'm going to need a new battery?  GRRR...  Might be time to retire it.  Granted, this battery has been stellar since the original was replaced...it IS about time for a replacement, I guess.  And, it could do with more than 80GB of drive space.  So, it looks like I might be refreshing both sometime this year.  Maybe July/August, if I can hold off.

About the M17xR3.  I've decided to subscribe to Carbonite as a backup utility.  I was using Dropbox but didn't want to pay for the extra space (using the free account...and no, I'm not going to hawk Dropbox to my friends to get extra space).  Carbonite has no limit on backup spacing, but is tied to one PC.  It also won't backup the OS or applications, but will backup everything else.  I purchase the HomePlus version of Carbonite and it has a drive mirror option, but requires a dedicated local drive to mirror the drive...BUT...I'm using two drives in RAID0 format (stock configuration), which HomePlus won't support.

I'm also using DriveImage XML and plan to perform a whole disk backup (as soon as I figure out where to store the image...it should be pretty big).  I will also need to back up the restore partition.  I do have a clean image backed up to USB drive (using Alien Respawn), but it is a copy of the drive without most of my apps, which is a good start, I guess.

I've been gaming a lot from my dining and living room (via wifi connection), playing L4D2 and BF3.  The Killer wireless card is awesome, as I've noticed NO lag or connectivity issues.  I'm loving the fact that Killer prioritizes the packets associated with gaming...that may be why I'm seeing no connection issues.  I do notice that it takes BF3 longer to load (which I was attributing to my RAID0 setup), but most of my clanmates are experiencing the same issue, and they're using standalone hard disks.  The load issue wasn't present before the last BF3 patch, so I'm thinking the issue is related to that.

I'm having issues with using my iMac as a second screen now.  Not a real issue, but for some reason when I try to get BF3 to show on the 27" screen, Windows 7 keeps placing the gaming window on the M17x monitor instead.  I didn't have this problem initially, so I wonder why W7 is doing this.

I began to use my G930 wireless headset with the M17x and it is awesome.  I still need to get the headset set up so that W7 detects that it is in use and uses the headset by default when it is plugged into the Alienware system (I have to manually go into the sound settings to enable it).  I don't remember having this issue with my Turtlebay headset, but want to use my G930 since it sounds soooo much better than the Turtlebay.

Installed three new software packages:

coconutBattery
coconutIdentityCard
coconutWiFi

I can tell you now that coconutIdentityCard is pretty much useless, as it doesn't really do much. It'll tell you if your Mac is possibly stolen and also your unit's build date (estimated). coconutBattery will also tell you how old your machine is, amongst other things. coconutWiFi is also useful, as it will tell you how many WAPs it sees and will make a sound everytime it detects a new WAP.

coconutBattery and coconutWiFi will stay installed, but coconutIdentityCard will be removed.

You can get these three apps at http://www.coconut-flavour.com