My guess is granting it your location information. That’s handy for automatically identifying the closest McDonald’s when you’re traveling, but the rest of the time it’s constantly pinging your GPS and draining the battery while the app is running. Sometimes your phone will even remind you of this after a while and ask if you want to turn it off, specifically because of the battery drain.
Thanks! I suspected that also. Motivating myself to actually check, it is set to ‘only while using’, and ‘background app refresh’ is on. I’m going to try turning off background refresh and see if that fixes things.
Someone hacked a dormant user account on my local NextDoor. It’s been posting hardcore porn video clips most of the day. Post after post. I don’t think ND is moderated by actual humans anymore, and no matter how many people reported the posts, it kept coming back with more. It looks like it’s finally stopped. For now…
An anti-rant in praise of the LXW – the Lovely eX-wife. My bad leg has been getting worse, and she’s forced me into medical appointments.
Meanwhile, though I’m normally mobile once the initial stiffness wears off, I tend to have trouble with the first few steps after sitting in a chair for a long time. So she bought me a walker to deal with that.
And in view of my general disability, she wanted to get me a Lifeline subscription, but when I thought the pendant thingie would be onerous, she ordered instead a cellular-enabled smartwatch with GPS geolocation and fall detection and emergency two-way communication and is paying for the monthly subscription.
I think a lot of this is overkill for now, and I may improve over time, but I feel better for all the support. What a lovely woman.
That sounds like a distinct improvement over the brain dead, the paranoid RWs, and the life failure beggars who flood my ND region.
Yep! A few people were outraged, in particular one younger woman kept replying to it telling him he was a creep (which just egged him on), and the rest were wryly amused.
When you reply to a post, ND gives you a popup that says something like “want to make your post a new topic? Click this button!” or some such. Half the people think they’re supposed to click the button. So at last half the posts are orphan responses to god-only-knows what. Another third of the posts are ads. And the first response to any topic is an ad. The site is nearly useless now. If I weren’t hunting for my missing cat, I wouldn’t be there at all. Oh, that’s the other thing - people are too stupid to write “Found Cat”. Instead they write, “Is this adorable cutie yours?” So you can’t even run a search for found cats and know you’re getting all of them.
If someone started a new alternative to NextDoor, it could really take off. Too bad they can’t do IQ/MAGA tests before you can sign up.
The putative ND replacement would definitely need gatekeepers. And they’d need to charge admission to pay for that. And, kinda like here, I’d pay something for that service.
When I first signed up I got moderated for saying something negative in response to a particularly ignorant and stupid post. Nope, can’t have anyone saying anything negative about an idea, no matter how stupid it is.
Once in a blue moon I get an email alert that’s useful. Otherwise it’s pretty much delete on sight.
Not sure which specific watch it is but many of them don’t have long battery life (a day or two) & need to be charged regularly otherwise they won’t detect falls if the battery is dead; of course, they won’t detect falls if they’re charging & not on your wrist, either.
Given your post was right after wolfpup’s, it took me a minute to realize you were replying to someone else & not his ex taking over. 
If it has to be charged nightly, it would be no different than various other devices that charge nightly on my bedside table. It may be that a pendant, being less miniaturized, has a bigger battery and perhaps other advantages, but it has the rather big disadvantage that I’d never wear it. I don’t’ need an object dangling over my keyboard when I’m hunched over the computer, or people commenting on my strange choice of jewelry when I go out. I’m not accustomed to wearing a watch, but this is the least intrusive option. It’s much like an Apple smart watch. There’s a reason that Apple didn’t invent a “smart pendant”.
I feel guilty because I suspect the cost is significantly higher than any of their pendant models.
I’m glad you have her to help you get this sorted. It might seem like overkill now, but it’s probably not, and even if it were you’ll be grateful for it later.
My Aunt found her neighbor on the kitchen floor once. She’d been lying there for two days.
So it beats the alternative, yeah?
Also smart watches are awesome, when I remember to charge mine. It reminds me to take my medication and I can add stuff to my reminder list on the fly. It also allows me to keep my phone hidden away somewhere without worrying I’m going to miss something important.
Attach it to a clock and then you’ll be cool.
I know someone who got two smart watches. One is her day watch and one is her night watch. So one charges on her nightstand and the other charges on her desk.
Because the pendants do a lot less, they have significantly longer battery life. If you charge the watch nightly & get up to go to the bathroom or get a drink in the middle of the night & trip while it’s sitting on your nightstand charging it does you absolutely no good.
The device, whichever device has to be somewhere you can access it. If it’s on a pendant under your shirt & you can pull it out or reach thru your shirt & press the button if/when necessary then it’s usable there & not ‘dangly’. If you can talk to the watch to activate it, then it’s good but if you need to press a button & break the arm that needs to press the button because it’s on the other wrist then it’s not as good as a pendant. If you choose not to wear it in the shower/bath but place it in reaching distance then it’s in a good place; however, if you leave it in the bedroom or on the far side of the vanity then your SOL if/when you slip in the shower/tub.
In short, if you’re a person who needs one, you need to be committed to having it in reach & charged 24x7
One big difference is that a middle-of-the-night bathroom visit is a fall risk, so you should really have the device on you, not charging.
Years ago, my aunt, who was quite obese, couldn’t lift herself out of the tub and stayed there for about two days until a neighbor found her. After that incident I traveled from Maryland to her place in New York and installed an emergency alert system.
In the days before cell phones, this consisted of a base unit connected to her land line and a waterproof pendant that she was supposed to wear at times. When she pushed the button on the pendant, it would connect to the service and they could talk to her through the base station and send EMTs if necessary. She had a small apartment, so it was adequate. We put a lock box on the door so they wouldn’t have to break in.
A few years later, she got stuck in the tub again. She had taken off the pendant before getting in. Shortly after this incident she moved into a nursing home.
On the other side of the family, I got my mother a cell-based pendant that she really did wear all the time. But in all the years she wore it she never needed it. We got a couple of false alarms, when it thought she had fallen, but hadn’t. But better that than the alternative.
I have to pull the stupid plants out of the stupid garden but it’s wet from raining all day. I don’t know why this task seems insurmountable. But we have to rip everything out and start over. My husband asked me last week to finish the task by today. Well that’s not happening. I know he’ll be understanding but I feel pretty shitty about it.
(Since I know people will ask “why doesn’t he do it his damned self?” The answer is that he’s convinced himself his respiratory problems of late may be exacerbated by the plants in the garden. My wifely instinct suspects he believes this because he doesn’t want to do it but he’s sick of the plants blocking the path to our house so he wants someone else to do it ASAP. He is almost if not completely recovered from illness (which was transparently bronchitis + a cold NOT allergies), but the remote possibility that these plants may have caused the problem makes this very clearly my responsibility now. As will be planting and taking care of the new garden for, I assume, the rest of my life. I’d like to note here that the reason we bought a condo was so we didn’t have to do any exterior maintenance, but I guess I have to take care of this garden now.)
On top of that I came home early to relax a bit and do some stuff prior to retrieving the child, but I’m getting a roaring headache.
I’m trying feebly to put together some routines for stuff I want to do at home, because things have been pretty chaotic. So for example, after picking the boy up from school, what steps to do in what order so nothing gets dropped. Put away purse, plug in phone, change shoes. Shower child. Start child’s food. And maybe dishes in between.
I gotta tell you it’s really fucking hard to set an example and provide structure for an ADHD kid when you’ve got it yourself. I feel for my husband who has to deal with two of us.
Fortunately, I almost never have this issue.
The pendant is supposed to be worn on the outside of clothing, and in the winter when going out it would be the worst of both worlds as it would be on the inside of a heavy coat, or else dangling outside it.
Whatever the disadvantages of the watch, I think it’s a much more practical and elegant solution. The pendant just won’t work for me for a bunch of reasons. I appreciate the feedback, though, and expect that the watch does have limited battery life because of all its functions – it also monitors blood pressure on top of everything else. If it lasts a few days between charges that would be great; if it needs charging every night then so be it – there really isn’t any other practical option from my POV.
This is apparently what it looks like:
I liked your Deviated Septum rant about pulling the weeds after the rain. To specifically pull wet weeds with thorny stems in the fall is a pain in the watoozie!
My inheritance was a hand-held tiller with some wicked blades. It can tear through a bed of weeds in minutes! If a neighbor has one, it’s a great reason to have a neighbor.
I started pulling out the stuff in the stupid garden. A lot of it has deep roots. I filled up two big yard waste bags and there’s so much more to do. Also I’m itchy now, so looks like I’m allergic to something. I guess it’s good it’s coming out.
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, so I’m going to have to start a thread soon.
Get a rototiller and rip out everything. Leave it sit until hubby puts something back in.
Next problem?
I’m mostly kidding, but the key thing I see in the 20 years we’ve been friends is that about 90% of your workload is you assuming stuff that somebody else ought to do. I’m fighting that battle w my GF now. She cannot say “no” to a very long list of moochers, time suckers, and emotional vampires. And as a result has no time or energy for herself.
And sometimes too little for me.
Don’t be like her. Your stress level will plummet. Just taking care of you and kidlet is way more than plenty.