casio watch strap broke, replaced battery in another
Something that happened on one of my Casio F-91W watches (I own two) is that the strap decided to break. In the way the F-91W is made, the strap is not attached with spring bars, but rather pressed-in pins with no springs involved. Technically, yes, you can remove the pins to attach another strap, but not without a small mount of destruction. Not on the lugs themselves, but within the lug holes the pins go through. If you have ever removed pins from an F-91W, you know what I'm talking about. An F-91W can have its pins removed only a handful of times before they become too loose to stay within the lug. After that, you have to use thin superglue applied used those super fine applicator tips just to keep an F-91W lug pin from falling out.
I've not replaced the strap and may not even bother. But I did replace the battery on another Casio that I've had for almost a decade if not slightly longer.
Recently, I've started wearing my AE1000W again. The WS1600H is nice and totally works, but I just felt like wearing something else.
I noticed the LCD display had a little fading happened going from function to function, and button presses were a little slow to respond. It was time to replace the battery, which on the AE1000W is a CR2025.
Thankfully, replacing the battery on the AE1000W is a simple process for the most part. The strap does not have to come off. Four screws need to be removed from the rear. The rear plate comes off after that, peel off one protective sticker, and then comes one of two slightly difficult parts. The metal piece holding the battery down has a shape similar to that of a light bulb. At the "top of the bulb", you take tweezers, get down into the case, flip a little flap, then the battery comes out easily. Insert new battery. Push the metal piece down so that flap snaps back where it needs to be. The second slightly difficult part is touching the AC point to start the watch again. It is labeled, but barely visible. Find that tiny hole, stick tweezers in there, press lightly, and the watch starts right back up. Put the protective sticker back, then put the rest of the watch back together. Done.
Casio digitals are the second easiest watches to replace the battery, depending on model. The AE1000W is easy, as is the AE1200WH, W218H, W800HG, and others. One that I know is not easy at all to replace the battery is the AE1500WH (the strap has to come off), but that's an outlier. The majority of Casio digitals keep it simple.
It is a good idea to have a small watch repair kit to make replacing the battery on a Casio easier. I have one, and have used it several times. You get the little jeweler's screwdrivers and the appropriate tweezers needed. Even if you don't use the other stuff in the kit, believe me, it is worth the buy. You don't want to be futzing about looking for those tools when you need them just to replace a battery. Better to have everything in a little kit with its own little case you can zip up and put away until needed again.
Casio is second easiest for battery replacement, but the absolute easiest isn't Casio, it's almost any Swatch watch. You absolutely don't need a watch press or any other specialized tools. In fact, no tools are required at all. All you need is a coin to take out the battery from the rear, put in the new one, done.
Swatch is the watch that could convince even the most diehard mechanical watch fan to go quartz just because of how stupidly easy it is to replace a battery in one. Which battery is used depends on model, so it could be a CR1220, CR2016, CR2032 or possibly something else. But no matter what it is, getting to the battery for replacement is ridiculously simple.
I may get a Swatch one of these days, but for now, I'm okay replacing batteries in my Casios.
navigation without drama
To my amazement, I'm still using the Drive 53 I bought about a month ago. The reason for the amazement is that I own better models, with one of them being the 7" screen 76. I could use that right now if I wanted, but instead, I use the 5" 53 that has no traffic reporting, no Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi, no voice control, and I'm getting along with it quite well.
There are several reasons I really get along with the 53, but one sticks out in particular that I didn't expect.
I described the I'm Done Moment recently, but there's another one, the I'm Good Moment, as in, "Yeah, I'm good. This works."
With the 76 and a few other models I have, you can talk to it to issue commands, like it's right out of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That might sound cool, but it isn't for me. I've never liked talking to a computer to make it do something. In fact, I hate it and always have. It doesn't matter what computer it is. Talking to a computer is annoying, stupid, and causes stress; this is especially true if you have to repeat yourself just to make the stupid computer understand your command.
I had the I'm Good Moment with the 53, which I didn't expect at all, and it occurred due to the lack of "advanced" features. The 53 doesn't have voice control, so it's not even an option. And I am 100% okay with that.
The lack of other advanced features in the 53 has actually made driving more enjoyable, and I didn't expect that either. There's less drama in the drive overall.
I'm using navigation now that's more or less the same experience as it was in the late 2000s. The screen might be new, but with a back-to-basics yesteryear navigation style. As it turns out, that's exactly what I prefer.
i don't know the price of a haircut
Every time I shave my head, I still have a hard time fully realizing how much money I save every time I do it.
Given I legitimately did not know what the price of men's haircut was before I started writing this, I did some research and found out.
Let's start with answering this question: What is the price of a men's haircut?
After answering this, I'll also tell you how much the cost is when you shave your own head.
The absolute rock bottom price before tax and tip that I could find at some dumpster fire national haircut chain is $22, and that's before tax. Assuming you're a cheapskate that will only tip 15% and no more than that, the price with tax and tip then goes up to almost $27.
What you're supposed to do is get your hair cut once monthly. I don't do that, but let's say I did.
Leaving aside that $27/mo just for a man's haircut is ridiculous, that means I'd be spending $324 a year just for hair. And again, that is the rock bottom price for the lowest cost haircut.
When not being a total cheapskate and going to a hair place that isn't a total dumpster fire, the price is $30 before tax, and the tip is 20%. After tax+tip, now the cost is $38 per haircut every month or about $457/year. And we're still in "low" price territory.
Then comes the average price. These are barber shops where the prices aren't listed on the web site at all nor on the door at the shop. The price with tax+tip now goes up to $51 or about $610/year.
For highfalutin barbershops, the total price bumps up to about $83, and by that point it's basically $1,000/year just for monthly haircuts.
At any of these shops, there is also no guarantee whatsoever that your hair will actually be cut correctly to your liking. Chances are likely that the cut you get will suck. It doesn't matter whether you go to the dumpster fire shop, regular shop, or the highfalutin one. Your cut will look like ass regardless of what you pay.
Now let's compare that to the price of a proper trimmer kit + micro trimmer. The micro trimmer is optional, but I recommend getting one anyway for trimming hair around the ears. It's that spot right near the top of the ear that can be difficult to trim hair with a full size trimmer. A micro trimmer makes it easy to do touch-ups for those little areas.
The cost of those two things pays for itself after two head shaves, or one head shave from a highfalutin barbershop with plenty of cash to spare.
The process (with bonus luxury tips)
Take the hair trimmer and attach the #1 guard, as in the red one.
There is a lever on the side of the trimmer with two positions, long and short. Set to long, which makes the shave head stick out longer.
Shave your head. Remember to go in all directions, especially around the crown.
Set the lever on the side of the trimmer to the short position.
Shave your head again.
Trim with micro trimmer around the ears.
Hit the shower.
For extra added luxury, there are two other things you can do after showering. Do one or both, your choice.
Put a small amount of Noxzema (or CeraVe if your skin is super sensitive) in your hands, rub hands together, rub that over your head. Once done, wet your hands and rub your head to wash that off, then pat try with a towel.
Put a splash of Pinaud Clubman aftershave lotion on the face, even if you haven't shaved your face. The one that "smells like barbershop" is the original, meaning not vanilla and not bay rum. This very specific scent is something a lot of guys chase after but didn't know what it was called. Now you know what it is.
Shaving my head gets easier every time I do it
I'm specifically talking about the psychological impact.
Shaving your head is in fact easy, but being comfortable with it is a different story, because that takes time.
I am mostly comfortable with it. Whenever I shave my head, I still have that "Whoa, what did I just do?" feeling right after I'm done. This used to last for a couple of days, but now only lasts for about an hour.
What's making it easier each time is the older I get, the more annoyed I get with hair.
When my hair grows out, the most annoying thing by far is how it shags out in the back just above the neck and shags along with getting wiry above the ears. Regardless of what shampoo or conditioner I use, that shag and wiry crap will happen, and it annoys the bejeezus out of me.
Then the moment comes where I think oh, I can probably fix this by getting a better shampoo, and... NOPE. STOP. My brain kicks in, and I know it's time to do a head shave. Shortly after that, I'm in the bathroom with clippers out and doing the deed. It's not even a question of should I do it, I just do it.
Just like the price of haircuts will send you to the poorhouse, the cost of shampoos, conditioners and whatever other goop is out there can do the same. I can see spending money on Noxzema or CeraVe, a nice aftershave lotion, and maybe a cologne (I'm still a Jovan Musk fan), but not shampoos and conditioners. Nope. I know that no matter what, my middle aged hair is going to shag and go wiry when it grows out, and there's not a damned thing I can do about it.
Okay, that's not true. I could see a stylist once a month and have her chemically bring body and fullness back to my hair. And it would be a woman performing the service due to it being a salon thing. I'm not doing that.
The price of getting a haircut was the primary reason I started shaving my head in the first place. But in all honesty, even if I were a millionaire, I'd still be shaving my head once every few months. Money doesn't fix the fact that most barbers give bad haircuts. Money would fix the shag/wiry crap my hair does, but what it doesn't fix is having to take time out of my life to go to the salon over and over again.
Relief best describes how I feel after a head shave. There's that negative emotion crap that happens at first, but then after about an hour passes, I calm down, and that's when the happy happens. When the hair is shaggy and stupid, that's a problem. When the head gets shaved, the problem is solved.
There was a time however that even with that relief, what I used to do after a head shave was wear a hat for a few days whenever I went out. But then I realized that was stupid and nobody cares, so I stopped doing the hat thing. I'm glad I realized this, because I don't even like wearing a hat.
At this point, the I'm Done Moment now comes sooner than later. And by that I mean, "I'm done dealing with this shag/wiry mess on my head. I'm done paying way too much for a haircut I won't even like. I'm done with shampoos and conditioners because none of them work. I'M DONE."
There used to be hesitation after the I'm Done Moment before I marched to the bathroom and plugged in the clippers. Not anymore. When I'm done, I'm done, and to the bathroom I go. Yes, there's still that hour of slight depression after a head shave. After that hour, that emotion changes to a nice sense of relief, then I get on with my life.
fighting with fonts
Fonts are something I've been battling with for about 30 years. Maybe slightly longer.
Based on customer reviews I've read, some who buy the Garmin Drive 53 think it's too small as a 5" screen. I know it's not because I use it myself. Bear in mind I also own a DriveSmart 76 that has a 7" screen.
The perceived smallness of the 53 isn't because of physical size. It's the font.
I'll talk about Windows 11 in a moment which is its own can of worms, but if you compare the 53 to the old nuvi 50 from the early 2010s, you would be shocked at how much more legible the 50 is.
That 50, even though a 5" and a matte screen, has legibility that outdoes 7" screens and all smartphones. Yes, all of them.
Why? Bright, daylight readable screen, and the font used. I don't know the name of the font, but it's the near-equivalent of the most legible font ever used in Microsoft Windows, Verdana.
It takes a 7" navigator to almost equal the legibility of the 5" nuvi 50. Yes, I said almost. The 50 is absolutely top dog.
You'll be left scratching your head as to why a 5" outdoes a 7" screen, because people think a physically larger screen means better legibility. Nope. If the font is done wrong, you're not going to be able to read that display no matter what.
The 50's font is big, wide, and ideal for automotive use. In addition, the top left arrow and distance indicator is white with thick black outline against a dark green field. And the map acts the same way with its route arrow. That's perfection.
With Garmin's modern UI for the Drive/DriveSmart, gone is that wonderful Verdana-like font, replaced with a more difficult-to-read skinny Arial type. The font size also got smaller, and that nice black font outline is gone from the top left field as well.
Garmin could, if they wanted to, add in a simple option to the Drive/DriveSmart UI settings to increase or decrease font size. Or better yet, add in the ability to change size and/or BOLD the font. That's never happened, and I doubt it ever will, because that would just make too much sense.
UI designers don't seem to realize that everybody hates skinny fonts with glyphs that smash into each other.
Remember how in Windows you used to be able to change the menu font size and bold (or even italicize) it if you wanted to? And remember how that DID NOT affect the font sizes in programs? That's been gone for years. All you have now in Windows 11 from Accessibility > Text Size is one slider to increase/decrease the global system font. Can you change that font? Nope! Can you bold that font? Nope! You get a slider bar that affects the system font that you can't change system wide, which includes programs. This means increasing the font size increases it everywhere, including places you don't want the font size increased. Lovely, eh? That's modern UI hell.
Modern UI hell is also in all smartphones. It absolutely does not matter how large your phone screen is, nor how high of a resolution it has. Your font is going to be skinny garbage that looks like a family-sized bucket of ass no matter what. Can you change the font? Yes. Your other choices will be other skinny font garbage. Regardless of what you pick, it will be nothing more than different flavors of ass.
"Glyphs that smash into each other" is exactly what happens when the font is too skinny. The skinniness refers to both line thickness and glyph width. Verdana or its Linux equivalent DejaVu Sans does not have this problem whatsoever. Glyphs are wide, dots over lowercase letters i and j are easily seen, bold truly means bold, and the font is good. Take away the glyph width and go skinny, and the font is bad, style be damned.
What glyph smashing does is make a font appear to "vibrate". You could have perfect 20/20 vision and that crap will still happen with a glyph-smasher font, effectively ruining usability.
"But 'crispness' of a font counts!", you may argue. Nope.
Using a watch as an example, some men purposely buy Seiko diver watches because the hour indices are big dots or thick sticks, the hands are thick, and one of the two hands will be an arrow, depending on model. Legibility is guaranteed, and you will never confuse one hand with the other. If the watch had skinny hands, that's a no-go because legibility is ruined. At certain times of the day, the hands would "blur" together.
It doesn't get any more "crispy" for appearance than an analog watch dial, and if THAT has issues with skinny hands screwing up legibility, what makes you think a skinny glyph-smasher font would be any better on an electronic display? I'll answer that for you. It's not.
"Get your eyes checked" is not a valid argument.
The reason I know this isn't a valid argument is because I've seen proper user interfaces that use the correct fonts, and know that the trash offered today is vastly inferior.
Some devices, such as the old Garmin nuvi 50, got it right the first time.
With my phone, I've had my fights with it. I found a way to bold the fonts on the home screen, and wow, that wasn't easy. What I have isn't great, but at least it's than the awful skinny font trash look it had by default. Fortunately, my texting app does have its own individual font settings. Being that's what I read most, at least that's taken care of.
When it comes to the operating system I use, Linux saved the day.
Were I using Windows 11, I would have to buy a physically larger monitor (probably a 27" display size) just to compensate for the lack of font customization in modern Windows.
Since I'm using Linux, I was able to keep using my existing 24" monitor. All that was required were a few minor font size tweaks here and there that Windows USED to have, but were taken away.
It's probably possible to tweak Windows 11 to get the font settings/sizes I'd want with registry edits. But that's not really a solution, is it?
It used to be true that to tweak Linux font settings, you had to manually edit complicated configuration files, but that's no longer the case since it's all in the GUI. Now it's Windows where you have to do complicated registry edits to get the fonts how you want whereas you didn't have to do that before.
Funny how the script flipped like that.
so i finally baked something
The more I think about this, the more embarrassing it is, but it is one of those "better late than never" things.
For the first time ever in my life, I baked something.
This is almost as embarrassing as admitting I didn't fry anything in a pan nor so much as cracked a single egg until my forties. But at least I've been frying eggs along with other foods for years, so I actually do know how to cook.
However, it took until the fifth decade of my life before I finally opened an oven to actually do some real baking with one.
What did I bake? Cookies.
No, I didn't make the dough. I acquired the ready-to-bake type.
Only one part of the process can ruin the batch, and only because a specific instruction is not mentioned on the package.
Step 1. Get a baking sheet. It does not need to be lubricated with cooking spray.
Step 2. Break apart the dough like the package says, putting each piece 2 inches apart from each other on the sheet.
Step 3. Preheat oven to 350F.
Step 4. When oven is heated, put the cookies in, bake for 10 minutes.
Step 5. After 10 minutes, turn the oven off, open oven door, wait 10 minutes for the cookies to firm up. THIS RIGHT HERE is where most people get cookies wrong. After baking, the batch is still soft. The rookie mistake is thinking you need to bake longer. No. Baking longer will burn the batch and ruin it. All you have to do is just wait another 10 minutes after baking, and the cookies will firm up properly on their own.
And that's it, done. Take the cookies out and eat.
The reason it is embarrassing to admit it took me so long to finally bake something is because of how stupidly easy these things are to make. This is basically no more difficult than heating something in a microwave. The only difference is that baking takes longer because you have to preheat the oven and the overall baking process is slower.
How much time does it take to do all this? About a half-hour. Preheat + bake + cooling all put together takes about that long.
Is any money saved by doing this?
Yes, absolutely. Fresh baked cookies cost less than prepackaged crap, and way less than bakery cookies.
And, obviously, fresh baked cookies taste best.
The entire reason I decided to bake a batch of cookies is because nobody in my local area can make a genuinely good tasting cookie. It doesn't matter if the cookies are prepackaged, baked in a grocery store, or baked in some upscale highfalutin bakery. Everyone around here gets it wrong.
In other words, frustration was the reason I finally decided to bake something. Since everybody around here does cookies wrong, the only way to get it right was to do it myself.
Did my cookies come out correctly? Yes. Did they taste good? Also a yes. They were about as good as I could get for a ready-to-bake batch.
The Big Question however was this: Were they better than the garbage sold locally?
Yes. I finally got a cookie that tasted right.
I will at some point go the mile and actually make the dough myself. But for now, at least I know I can buy ready-to-bake, chuck it in the oven and get something decent. Job done.