I have not been sleeping as I would like recently, so I decided to try a weighted blanket. I also thought it might help my wife, who has experienced poor sleep for many years.

My wife always objects to my spending any money for her needs but is usually enthusiastic if I want something like this.

When something is for both of us, her opposed impulses put her into a state where she agrees to the purchase but can’t decide exactly what we should buy. …

Exercise

When I go out for a walk, I usually include this set of stairs for a little extra push. I might only go up once, or I might go up and down several times.

Yesterday I went up and down repeatedly for fifteen minutes.

I’ve done that before, but yesterday I noticed something strange. You may see that there is a landing partway up. If I take the stairs two at a time, that landing can interrupt my two-step rhythm, depending upon how I start at the bottom.

I’ve marked the photo up to show what I mean. If I…

The temperature hit 12 degrees here last night. We live in a manufactured home sitting on a crawl space, which means freezing water pipes are something that can happen.

We have heat tape, but we don’t have any way to know that it is working other than crawling under the house. That’s not something I want to do anytime at all, never mind now.

How cold does it get underneath?

Last year I put a remote wireless thermometer in the crawl space. That device let me measure the temperature under the house from the comfort of inside. I found that the heat from the house does…

I have set Siri to respond to a number of commands. “Hey Siri, Dinnertime” turns on several lights, “Candles on” and “Branches on” turns on decorative lights and so on. Other things happen automatically: the porch light turns on at sunset, decorative candles and things follow soon after.

At night, “Bedtime” turns off all the living room lights, all the candles and other decorative accents, and all the outside lights. It turns on a small light in our bedroom. When I finally get off my butt and replace our thermostat with a Homekit capable version, it will turn down the…

My parents took my children, my wife, and my sister to Disneyland in 1978. I had to work, so I did not go. Oddly, I was working for my father that year, so that does seem odd, doesn’t it?

Yesterday I cleaned out an old pile of stuff and came across a small box marked Disneyland Slides. Holding a few up to the light, I could see that most were not from that trip, but there were several dozen that were.

I also found two slide viewers. Neither worked; when I opened them up, I found that batteries had been…

Technology

I started to leave a comment at Robert C.’s article about AppleCare+, but it became too long, so I’ve published it here.

AppleCare is the normal warranty, AppleCare+ is what you pay extra for.

These are some of the things that I would explain to customers about AppleCare+ when I worked at an Apple retail store for four years after closing my consulting business.

First, there are differences between AppleCare+ across products. These change now and then, so you should check specific details always.

There are also country differences; I’m writing here about the United States only.

Costs, coverage, and…

My bookmarks were worse than a rats nest. Worse than a garbage dump. Worse than my “haven’t had a haircut in thirteen months of COVID” hair when I stumble into the bathroom first thing in the morning.

It wasn’t that I had too many sites bookmarked (less than 100, in fact), but that there was no organization to them. A site about coding might be uncomfortably squeezed between a recipe and a political diatribe or a link from Amazon. …

Technology

I’ve been exercising regularly since before high school. I’ve belonged to gyms, I’ve taken aerobics classes, but in the past few decades, I’ve mostly exercised at home. My workouts vary from time to time but have always included brisk walking, aerobic dancing, dumbbells, pushups, pullups, dips, squats, and plenty of stretching and balance exercises. I felt I was covering the exercise gamut quite thoroughly.

Apple Fitness+ proved me wrong. I’ve been sampling these workouts for the past week, completing one or more each day. I haven’t stopped my usual routine; I simply added these.

The results have surprised me. First…