Author Archive

The Frustrating Fallacy of “Next Day Air”

Ordering something online from a US retailer last Friday, for domestic delivery. I was given the option to pay $20 for "Next Day Air". When I selected that option, the expected delivery date was updated to.... Tuesday, four days hence.

Folks in America know nothing other than this shady date math... an order placed on Friday doesn't get processed or shipped until Monday, so "next day" isn't until Tuesday, but it drives me crazy. In Japan, when you order something for the next day, it arrives The Next Day.

For example, in Japan, "Amazon Prime" is "free next-day delivery". If [...]
View full post »

Snowy Ohio Morning, Take 2 (Part 2)

This post is a continuation of "Snowy Ohio Morning, Take 2", of photos around my folks' place after a snowstorm. After 49½ years at the same place, it's probably the last winter they'll be here, so I thought I'd memorialize the place with some more photos, mostly for my siblings' and my own memory...

I still remember coming home from elementary school one day to find it in the driveway. He bought it when adding on to our house, but he still uses it 40 years later to clear snow from the driveway.

We all wished he would have painted [...]


View full post »
The Fix for Missing Apps After an iPhone Restore from Backup

Another issue I discovered with my iPhone today, besides the problem of it not alerting to a new watchOS version, is that restoring an iPhone from a backup with iTunes requires a lot of temporary disk space, and if you don't have enough, the restore operation will partially fail, silently leaving the phone with some apps (and their data) missing.

If you notice, as I did today because most of my apps were missing, you can clear out disk space and re-run the restore.

The first time I encountered this kind of problem was a few months ago when restoring [...]
View full post »

A Fix for Apple Watch Apps Not Showing Up

This post is for the search engines, about how I remedied an issue with my Apple Watch, for folks who might have the same issues.

TL;DR version: if watch-enhanced apps are not even showing up in the iPhone "Apple Watch" app, check in that app to make sure that you have the latest watchOS version.

I stopped by the Apple Store in Akron Ohio the other day to have my iPhone's camera replaced because its stabilization had started to go crazy. As they fixed it for free under warranty, I lazily watched [...]
View full post »

Snowy Ohio Morning, Take 2

Today was a gorgeous warm sunny day, with temperatures in the mid 60s (~18°C) and a warm breeze. T-Shirt weather. It's difficult to believe that just a few days ago we had lots of snow and temperatures approaching -10°F (-23°C).

A week ago I posted "Snowy Frigid Ohio Morning", with lots of snow pictures. A few days later a storm brought a bunch more snow, and I went out early for some more pictures, from which I posted "A Warmer Version of That “Warm” House Photo". This post has some more shots from after that second storm.

Early before sunrise, [...]


View full post »