Words On Wednesday

After discussing my  smartwatch experience , it occurred to me I haven’t talked about how I ended up with a Pixel 8 Pro. In July 2023, we went tubing with my brother-in-law. I had recently purchased a wet bag and I was itching to use it. I threw my phone (a Google Pixel 6 at the time) in there, my sister-in-law had her phone, and my brother-in-law had his vape. My wife asks me, “are you sure you don’t want to leave your phone in the truck?” Nah, the wet bag should keep it safe. Remember this, it’s important later. We get maybe halfway down the river and my brother-in-law wants to hit his vape. Cool, no problem. We drift over to a sandbar for a quick break. He gives me his vape, we throw everything back into the wet bag, and we continue on our way. Apparently, when I put everything back into the wet bag, I didn’t capture enough air in it or seal it properly. Once we reach our destination, I pull everything up onto the bank and notice that the wet bag is suspiciously heavy. I open i...

After using free forms of cloud storage for several years, I believe it’s almost time that I pay for more storage. With all the options available, what should I choose? I held off for a long time. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back is Google’s decision to make Google Drive files count against user storage. Part of what drew me into using mostly Google Drive was the fact that I could make Google Docs and Google Sheets files with reckless abandon. Now that they count against my quota, that previously unlimited source of storage is going to dry up pretty quickly. Logically, I could continue using Google Drive and just pay for a Google One subscription to get more storage. But really, why should I throw money at something without determining if there are better options. Tons of services provide cloud storage now. I personally have used Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox as well. If I’m going to start paying for a service, I should at least do some research and make sure that I ge...

The recent death of Google Play Music forced me to adopt a new music streaming platform. I decided on Plex. That migration has not been easy. Disclaimer: A word to the wise, fix your music folder before you ever bother with the Plex side of things. There are several tools and utilities I have discussed below, but everything is going to work much better if you get the music file structure right first. Everything should be divided into artist, and further divided into album. A free utility called foobar2000 can do that for you, if you take some time to tinker with it. AFTER the file structure of your music is right, THEN download and install the Plex server. If you need to set up a static IP and port forwarding, you can configure that all later. Be wary of my mistake, though, you want the music file structure to be pristine before you try to import it into Plex. Now, onto the ordeal I faced. I’ve been a power user of Google Play Music since almost the beginning. At least as far back as J...

I started blogging three years ago this week. Technically, it isn’t 3 years to the day. I started on August 27 ( https://jakehennett.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/words-on-wednesday-august-27-2014/ ), but considering this is Words on *Wednesday*, I figured it best to mark the date as the last Wednesday in August. Inevitably, there will be a few years where the last Wednesday in August will fall on the 27th again, but that won’t be every year. At this point, I don’t really know if it feels like I’ve been blogging for longer or shorter than 3 years. When I think about starting, I remember myself in college, but I had been finished with school for a year before I started. Logically, that would also put my start before getting married, but I got married a few months before then. It’s like I don’t remember a time when I didn’t keep a blog, but it truly wasn’t that long ago when I started. Obviously, I plan on continuing the blog for as long as I can. I’ve still got quite a few finished ...