Old Photographs Don't Lie

I spent about 10 minutes this afternoon looking through old photographs and they scared me. I ran across old pictures of girlfriends, people I hung out with, and me skiing in my youth. While I don't claim to have the best memory, I remember being a much better skier than those pictures would indicate. I also confess thinking that my old girlfriends looked significantly better in my memory than those pictures would indicate. Perhaps my wife is just that much better looking.

The other thing I remember wrongly is the quality of film photographs. I have been using a digital camera for so long and they have continued to evolve from rather poor results to now when they are significantly better than the film photographs I remember. Now one important thing to remember is that not all cameras are created equal. That is true for film cameras as much as it is for digital ones. I'm sure I used a lot of those crummy disposable cameras as they easily fit in a pocket and could be pulled out to take very blurry pictures. Then you didn't know what you got until you spent money developing the film. With a digital camera, if you don't like the photograph, you can delete it and try again. While I have some poor film photographs, I also have some really nice ones taken with a top-of-the-line Nikon from that time. While they look amazing, I still prefer my high-end digital camera.

In going through my old photographs, one of the first thing to note is that I used to have hair. I found a great picture from my teenage years and I look much better with hair. I wish I still had it. Unfortunately my genes conspired against me and I'll have to be satisfied with being bald. It is a good thing I got married before I lost my hair.

I have also decided to hide all of my old ski pictures from my kids. I ski much better now than I did back then. Part of it could be that I ski over 100 days every season now and I was lucky to get 20 back then. The important thing is that if my kids see those old photographs I will be ridiculed and made fun of the rest of my life. I should probably burn those pictures.

Mobile Phones for Children

Yesterday my 5-year-old granddaughter got a smartwatch with a phone built into it. She can only use it to communicate with a very small number of people. Naturally my wife and I are on that list and we have each received no less than 5 phone calls in the past 12 hours. While some might be bothered by so many calls, my wife and I love it as we enjoy speaking with any of our grand kids.

My son got the watch for his daughter to help locate her while playing with friends. she is very socially active and her parents often have a hard time finding her when it is time to come home for dinner. That is the primary reason she has the device and I agree with his thinking.

My slightly older grandson also has a similar smartwatch and he behaved the same when he got it. He wore it constantly and sent me voice messages all the time. Then he discovered he needs to charge the device and it often had a dead battery. Eventually I stopped getting messages from him and he stopped wearing the device. It became an unreliable way for me to contact him. Now that his sister has a smartwatch, they have been competing with each other to contact my wife and me. My hope is that with two of them having devices, we will have a great way to contact our grand kids.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and mobile phones became ubiquitous, I set 15 as the age for my kids before they got their first mobile phone. I wanted them to have practice using one before they started driving. That way if something happened in the car, a child could reach Mom or Dad. Now mobile phones have evolved to contain a lot more functionality including cameras, location data via GPS, and a number useful applications. It makes more sense to lower the age I originally set but still am not sure what that age should be. Fortunately I don't have any young children as my oldest is almost 30 and has kids of his own. Ultimately I don't think there is a specific age that works for everyone as I prefer to look at maturity. Not all 5-year olds are created equal and some will do well with a smartwatch while others won't. I'm interested in your thoughts so feel free to leave a comment. Others may appreciate your advice as well.

IRS Does Not Seem to be Slowed Down

It is tax time again and there seems to be some fear this year because of all the people being cut from the federal government. A lot of people are worried that Elon Musk and his seemingly gang of 20-year-old thugs is going to slow down tax returns being mailed to honest working Americans. Knowing this, I sat down last week and worked to get my extra complicated taxes filed. It took all week but I submitted them on Saturday afternoon. I then read the fine print and discovered I should expect my return within 21 days.

One of the reasons I have a complicated tax return this year is I cashed out a rather sizeable investment which I promptly reinvested in something with much better returns. The only problem is that I have to pay capital gains on the increase over the past 30-plus years. In doing so, I withheld federal taxes as if you owe more than something like $1,000 you will get hit with penalties. The state of Utah is different in that as long as you pay your taxes by April 15th, there are no penalties. My hope was that I would get enough back on my federal taxes to cover what I owe the state. I am actually getting slightly more back than I owe so I might be able to take my wife out to dinner or something. I did my taxes early enough that receiving the federal return within that 21 days would give me more than enough time to pay my state taxes.

Today I had to log into my bank account for a completely unrelated issue and noticed my balance is larger than expected. I clicked on the details and noticed that my federal tax return is sitting in my account ready to be sent to the state of Utah. It only took 5 days for me to receive my refund! This is the fastest I have ever received a tax return.

Let me return to my second sentence in this post about Elon Musk and his seemingly gang of 20-year-old thugs slowing down tax returns. I think this is one myth that doesn't fly with me. Granted my experience is one in 300-plus million Americans and your experience may vary. However I'd like to believe that the mere threat of dead wood being cut from the federal government has lit a fire under IRS workers and they are working with the speed we haven't seen in decades.

Back to the University of YouTube

Once again my youngest daughter came to me with a car problem she needed help with: replacing a headlight bulb. One nice thing about modern cars is how well they do keeping dirt and debris out of the engine compartment. The downside is that it is not very intuitive on how to do simple things like replacing a headlight. Before committing to the work, I looked on YouTube at the process of replacing a headlight on her Jeep Cherokee.

The first video I found had a very encouraging sign: the video came in at 3 minutes. That indicated it would be a fairly simple job. I watched all 3 minutes of the video and learned the very important trick to get to bulb. While I would have tried to go in through the hood, it is actually easier to unscrew 3 bolts and go in through the wheel well. The guy did it in 3 minutes on the video but did some editing to remove some of the boring parts. I estimated it would take me 10 minutes. I found time in my schedule and texted my daughter when she should come over so we could work on her car.

My daughter arrived with the new bulb and we did the work in my driveway. Fortunately we had a bit of a warm spell this week and I didn't need to bundle up. We worked together and quickly had the old bulb removed. As you should never let oil from your fingers get on a new headlight bulb, I ran inside quickly to get a single disposable glove so I could handle the new bulb safely. Then we reversed the process and had the new bulb in quickly. It would have gone 30 seconds faster if I had remembered that you turn to the right to tighten. Once I figured that out, the car went back together easily.

When I added up the time it took me to research the most efficient way to change the headlight bulb and the time to actually do the work, I figured I saved myself about an hour. Yes I could have gone in through the hood and figured out how to change the bulb thanks to my skinny hands. I probably would have lost a lot of skin and learned a dozen new expletives so I'm glad I took the time to do a bit of research.

Can You Really Trust an Online Review?

I recently went on a cruise with my wife. When I got home, I had an e-mail from the company where I purchased the trip, which is not the same company as the cruise line. The e-mail asked me to provide a review.

Every time I purchase something online I seem to get a request asking me to review the product. Once I bought a winter jacket in August and a week later received an invitation to write a review. I hadn't even worn the jacket yet let alone put it to a true test of how good it is. I've had that jacket for 2 years now and could provide a much better review but nobody would be interested in it because you can't buy it any more. It has been updated and only slightly resembles what I purchased. My review today would say that the jacket is amazingly wind and waterproof, breathes well, but has lousy zippers. If I didn't have such an amazing seamstress for a wife, the jacket would be in the garbage. It is only after 2 years of use that I have come to that conclusion.

Let's go back to my cruise example. How would anyone know if my review of the cruise is accurate or not. Anyone who has taken such a trip knows that one passenger's heavenly cruise can be another's sub-standard one. I have only been on one other cruise and I found each to be amazing and a lot of fun. They occurred on different cruise lines but had similar standards for food and entertainment. I would rank both as 5-star experiences but someone with the experience of 20 or more cruises would be a better judge.

One area where I feel I am an expert is skiing and feel I can give an honest opinion of equipment or various ski areas around North America. It is actually a topic of my YouTube channel. How would you know if you can trust my opinion or not though? I have ridden up the chairlift with quite a few skiers that are on the wrong skis but swear they are the best skis in the world. Nobody has ever spent $1000 on a new pair of skis and gone on to say anything bad about them. It makes them look foolish and so they only sing praises for their equipment.

There is also the other end of the spectrum. Sometimes someone will get a bad product or have a bad experience. Perhaps they took their spouse on a wonderful cruise only to find out the spouse wants a divorce. Do you think the cruise is going to get a good review? Probably not but not because of bad service, poor food quality, or lousy entertainment. The reviewer may be going through something outside the control of the cruise line and the reviewer should not be penalized the company for it.

So how can trust an online review? Look at as many reviews as you can find. In statistical analysis we always throw away the highest and lowest scores as they can skew what is really going on. Look for those 2, 3, and 4-star reviews to see why people didn't give the maximum or minimum rankings. You will discover that the passenger booked a cheap cruise during hurricane season and spent the voyage seasick, which is not the cruise line's fault. Perhaps someone is really sensitive to color and the picture didn't quite match what they received. That doesn't ruin the quality of the product, just the aesthetics, which may not be important to you.

Remember that not everybody is qualified to provide quality online reviews. Furthermore there are reports of AI being used by companies to give large numbers of positive reviews. Be aware of that and look at a number of reviews for any products or services you are considering. Carefully selecting the right reviews will help you understand if it is right for you.

A Case for Text Messaging

I have never been a fan of using text messaging. That being said, I do recognize that it is a prevalent form of communication and use it when necessary. Today I have discovered a case where text messaging beats other forms of communication and have been using it for that.

Before continuing I should share why I hate texting. I am a fast typist and prefer to use a full-sized keyboard instead of a tiny one on my phone's screen. That is one reason my personal computer is a Mac. It seamlessly allows me to see and respond to my phone's messages on my computer. When someone sends me a message, I can use that full-sized keyboard to respond. Furthermore I don't have to take my phone out of my pocket. I agree that if you need to send a short message to someone, it is easier to send a quick text than to call them or send an e-mail. If there is going to be any back-and-forth, use the phone part of your smartphone and give them a call. Your communication will go much quicker.

Today I have been trying to schedule a meeting between two people and there has been a lot of back-and-forth. While a phone call would be nice, that is not a good solution with more than two people. One person is generally busy doing other things, like me for example, and it is tough to get everyone on the phone together. In this case, I had a young woman ask to meet with a senior manager. While I would have liked to just introduce the two and have them work out a time to meet, protocol in this situation dictates that I act as a gating person. Otherwise the senior manger would be inundated with meeting requests and never be able to get any work done. I asked the senior manager for some preferred times and got a number of options that I passed onto the young woman. Unfortunately none of the times worked for her because of other commitments and so there has been some back and forth to find a time that will work.

The nature of text messaging allows a conversation like this to take place over several hours without ripping anyone away from meetings or interrupting the current flow of the day. Now one could argue that this process could have been shortened by having access to the young woman's and the senior manager's calendar, making it easy to find a time for the two to meet. Unfortunately there are a number of scenarios where that doesn't work. One that I run into frequently is working across time zones that are far enough apart that one of the two parties will have to meet outside of regular work hours which is what happened today.

I still dislike that some people would rather send a text than talking on the phone but recognized there are reasons where text messaging is the best form of communication.

Using Google Calendar

I spend a fair amount of time working as an executive secretary for a volunteer organization. This is not something I aspired to do. Instead someone asked me to do it and I said I would. As an executive secretary I basically set appointments for people to meet with the leadership of the organization. Sometimes people ask to meet with the leaders and other times leaders ask to meet with specific people. Google's calendar, which can be found at https://calendar.google.com, does an amazing job and makes things very easy.

Before networked computers became commonplace, someone in my position had to keep paper calendars and have a lot of coordination meetings to make sure not to double-schedule someone. Now it is as simple as providing a scheduler like me with access to your calendar. Most of the leaders of the volunteer organization I associate with have e-mail addresses separate from their regular work or personal e-mail. Then they just log into Google Calendar with it and make sure to give me access to their calendar so I can set appointments for them.

The organization leadership changed significantly last week as nobody is expected to be a volunteer forever. We met as a new group on Wednesday evening and I deleted my access to the old leadership's calendars. The new leadership then shared their newly created e-mail addresses and gave me proper access. The next evening I then went through and created calendar entries for all of the regular meetings. We also had a number of requests for people to meet with the new leadership and I entered those. Fortunately I had lots of experience using Google Calendar in the past and did not have much of a learning curve.

I keep my personal calendar on my iPhone. I can access it from my Mac computer. It is great as I keep all sorts of appointment information up-to-date using both devices without having to worry about which one has the most correct information. They both do as an update on one pushes the change to the other. This would also be a great solution for the volunteer association I work with. The only downside is that everyone is required to use Apple products. Google Calendar doesn't care what phone you use. While you can access it with your phone's browser, there is also an application you can put on your phone. I just always use a web interface and it works great.

Are there problems with Google Calendar? Of course but they are minor. It has all of the features I need it for and appreciate the free price tag. If you are looking for a calendaring tool that makes it easy to share people's schedules, you might want to give it a look. It may also work for you.