Category: April 2019

I get a lot of spam calls to my iphone. Many per day. Probably because I route two different numbers to the same cell phone; my coaching number and my local number. My coaching number in particular is “out there” because it’s counter productive to try and keep a number private when you’re trying to market your business.

These are all spam calls:

I don’t want to leave my ringer off, because I don’t want to miss the few calls that occasionally come from people I actually want to hear from. For awhile I set my phone on “do not disturb” with an override for contacts. So my contacts could ring through and no one else could.

That worked sort of ok, except the “do not disturb” setting silenced my text messages. They wouldn’t “bing.” There wasn’t an override for my contacts for text messages, only for calls. So I would tell everyone, “I won’t hear it if you text me, you have to call.” Well, that worked about as well as you’re thinking it did. Who calls anymore when they can text?

One day I had an idea. I’d create a new ringtone of just silence! I’d set that as the default, and assign other ring tones to my contacts. I recorded my own music file of a few seconds of silence, and spent quite awhile trying to figure out how to download it into my phone app as a ringtone. I finally gave up.

So then I thought maybe I’d just try to find a quiet or non-noticeable ringtone through the itunes store. Then I discovered that the itunes store offers several versions of a ringtone that is just silence! So for $1.29 I bought one of them and assigned it in my settings as my default ring.

So far so good, but now I had a phone that only rang silently. The next step was to assign a non-silent ring to each of my contacts. I could not figure out how to do this as a bulk action, so it took awhile. But once it was done, I don’t have to do it again except if I’m entering a new contact.

When entering a new contact, I just need to remember to edit the ringtone while I’m at it. For example, for this one I set the ringtone to “bulletin” which is the ringtone I use for business contacts. Friends have a different ringtone, and so does family.

Now my phone only rings when someone in my contact list is calling. And I can tell from the ring whether it’s a friend or client or business calling.

I read recently that the phone companies have developed a new way to limit spam calls, and things do seem to improved a bit since last month. But I still get spam calls every day and I’m glad they no longer ring.

I just discovered my brother lives half hour from Hell. That is, Hell, Michigan.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/04/13/what-small-town-america-can-learn-from-a-town-called-hell

This week my parents are moving two blocks away from my brother and his family. So now half of my family is going to be half hour from Hell.

Maybe this summer the rest of us can go visit and we can have the family reunion from Hell.

I should check with John first before making final plans. Hey hon, you wanna go to Hell?

John often suggests that I go on family visits by myself, because they’re not really his thing. But this time I’m going to tell him, John, you can just go to Hell.

I did a Tripadvisor search in Hell, and discovered a lakefront “heavenly oasis”. Perfect! Heaven in Hell! Unfortunately it’s booked through the summer and not available until the second week in September. https://www.tripadvisor.com/VacationRentalReview-g42265-d10686841-A_heavenly_oasis_on_Half_Moon_lake-Gregory_Unadilla_Township_Michigan.html

But if we plan now, maybe next summer we can all go to Hell!

Here is something Darren wrote recently on facebook. I don’t use facebook, but the kids send me their posts in an email when they think I’d be interested. Darren says:

As many of you know, April is Autism Awareness Month. What a lot of people don’t know, is that Autism Awareness month is actually harmful to people with Autism, but we can change that. Here’s why and how.

You see, a lot of Autism awareness symbol and campaigns (including the blue puzzle piece and paint it/light it up blue), were started by a group called Autism Speaks. The majority of adults with Autism consider Autism Speaks to be a hate group.
https://awnnetwork.org/is-autism-speaks-a-hate-group/

Autism Speaks raises funds by creating ads that portray Autism as this horrible, helpless thing, and portrays having an autistic child as the worst thing that can happen to a parent. In fact, in one Autism Speaks video, a parent states that she wants to murder her autistic child, in front of the child! The rest of their funding goes towards research into eugenics, and to finding a “cure.” Practically nothing goes towards actual support for individuals with autism. There is not a single individual with Autism on Autism Speaks’ board of directors. There was one, once, but he resigned in protest. https://jerobison.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-resign-my-roles-at-autism-speaks.html

The message the Autistic community is receiving from Autism Speaks, and from the community that supports them, is, in essence, “What the hell’s wrong with you? I wish you had never been born!” It’s no wonder that studies have shown that individuals with autism are 10 times more likely to die from suicide than the general population.

https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/hidden-danger-suicide-autism/

https://www.autistica.org.uk/what-is-autism/signs-and-symptoms/suicide-and-autism

So what can you do? If you see the rainbow infinity neurodiversity symbol or #redinstead, these are individuals fighting not for Autism awareness, but for Autism Acceptance. Join us.

Here are some more tips. https://www.wikihow.com/Support-an-Autistic-Person-During-Autism-Awareness-Month

PS: I did a google search for “rainbow infinity neurodiversity symbol”and I’m going to buy my car a neurodiversity magnet.

Laura has been volunteering as a mentor for Partners for Change for several years now.

http://www.independentnews.com/community/program-helping-to-lift-people-out-of-poverty-seeks-volunteer/article_b81b45c8-66db-11e9-b178-8f797d664ac7.html

This comic is too big for me to paste a screenshot, so you’ll have to click on the link. It’s worth it.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Thanks to Laura for demonstrations and explanation. The illustrations, however, are all mine (lol).

I just discovered a great new musician from an article in one of my magazines, titled, “Music for the Migrant Crisis; A fiercely anti-immigrant country falls for a Tunisian Italian rapper” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/ghali-rapper-italy/583207/

He’s Italian, born to Tunisian immigrants, and his music is becoming really popular in Italy. And he also sounds like a great guy (unlike a lot of rappers who deliberately cultivate a not-a-great-guy persona).

His lyrics encourage open mindedness about immigrants and there’s hope that his music could help mitigate the anti-immigrant issues in Italy. The article says, “Ghali is so popular that even far-right voters are being dragged to his concerts by their children.”

The article says, “Ghali is careful to avoid talking about religion or politics publicly—yet if you listen to his lyrics, you’ll hear plenty that’s subversive. “The newspaper … talks about the foreigner as if he were an alien,” he announces in his most popular song, “Cara Italia” (“Dear Italy”), a love letter that envisions an open-arms nationalism. “When they tell me, ‘Go back home!’ … I reply, ‘I am already here.’ ” Other lyrics are equally pointed: “You think that Islam equals ISIS,” he raps in “Wily Wily,” a song whose chorus Italian fans delight in joining, even though it’s in Arabic.”

I just bought an album of his and I really like it. It sounds like Hispanic rap to me, which only proves that I know nothing about music. (And I also can’t tell the difference between Spanish and Italian.) I always enjoy the Hispanic fusion (rap, rock, etc.) that’s common in New Mexico. Ghali sounds to me like something I would hear here. I wouldn’t have guessed it was Tunisian-Italian.

Go Ghali!

I’m trying to find internet advice regarding the design aspects of colocating solar tubes with traditional ceiling light fixtures. And it’s just not happening!

You’re like, “What?” Yeah, that’s what google was like. “What?” Google knows what solar tubes are, but it does not understand the concept of determining where to colocate them with ceiling light fixtures.

Solar tubes are a more modern and cheaper version of skylights. From inside your house, they look like regular recessed lights.

Here’s what they look like on your roof:

And here’s what a whole one looks like:

Our new house was built in the 1970’s and it has low, flat ceilings. It’s dark! We’ve always had lofted ceilings and skylights in the past, and we’re used to a lot of natural light. So we’re going to install solar tubes throughout the main living area (kitchen, dining, family, office).

There are a couple of existing ceiling lights in the kitchen-dining areas, but no light at all in the family room and office. I’m not a fan of floor lamps because I like to locate furniture away from the wall, and then I’ve got cords in the way. Plus I don’t like cluttered houses. I much prefer my light coming from the ceiling.

However, skylight and solar tube options only work during the day, obviously. So at night I’m going to need some sort of electric lighting.

I have specific places I’d like to light; above the couch, above the dining room table, and so on. So, do I put the ceiling lights near the solar tubes? Or do I put the ceiling lights where I want the light, and then put the solar tubes somewhere else? How close can I put them?

So that was when I started googling about interior design and colocation of solar tubes with ceiling lighting and google was, “huh???”

There is a potential option to put electric LED lights inside of the solar tube, so you can turn those on at night. However, there are several potential issues with that solution. We have a flat roof and there may not be enough space between the top of the roof and the ceiling to add the LED light fixture (particularly because it’s an older house).

Secondly, there’s a limit to the wattage, so they aren’t going to be particularly bright. So I might end up needing lamps anyway.

Thirdly, a lot of the light goes out the roof, which is a waste and causes nighttime light pollution. It probably won’t be visible from the street because our roof is flat with a parapet around it. But the house on the hill that looks down on us would definitely see it.

We’re going to have an “in home consultation” in a couple of weeks, so hopefully they will be experienced with deciding where exactly to locate them.