Pig Roast and Apple Watches

Today is the last weekend of Stampede for 2015, and Tammy received an invitation to a charity pig roast today.

Swine on My Mind-2015

It was a family event, running from 12 pm to 12 am, and we were advised to arrive around 3:30. It was one of the teachers at GEOS, Lesley, whose son Stephan was one of the chefs, who extended the invitation. It was $25 per adult, kids free.

It was fun, and we did our best at mingling.

We snacked and munched. There were dogs and burgers, and beef on a bun. The pig was roasting away.

But then a series of thunderstorms moved over. Everyone dove for cover. We ended up in the garage along with the roasting pig.

Unfortunately, Ian got wet and was starting to get cold, so we bailed around 7:00, long before the pig was ready. We never even got to see it. ☹️

Oh well. It was fun, and exciting.

Also, after much deliberation, Tammy bought me an Apple Watch today. I wasn’t going to get one without her, so she got one too. I got Ian to take this picture, knowing full well that in a few decades, it will be as quaint as the proud owners of a new Victrola, or a color TV, but for today, an Apple Watch is a mighty impressive bit of technology.

Updated August 7th, 2015 (almost a month later)

While I have a few moments, I’m going to put an update here regarding the Apple Watches.

Both Tammy and I are wearing our watches from sunup to bedtime. For me, the major benefits are, in order of importance:

1. Fitness/activity tracking.
2. Calendar and email alerting for work.
3. Timepiece.
4. Other notifications and remote controls.

Before I got the watch, I suspected that fitness tracking would be a surprisingly important feature, but I did not expect it to be #1. With my cycling, I’m not exactly a sedentary person, but what I am finding is that on the days I don’t ride, I don’t get much exercise. On the days I do ride, I triple my target exercise amount, and when I don’t, I get no more than 10-15 minutes. In the interest of “filling in my circles“, I have started using the treadmill on my off days. This is evening out my exercise days, which I think can’t help but be a good thing. Reminders to stand up on work days is also a great thing.

Alerts for work (during work hours) are really good as well. When I get a tap on the wrist, I can glance at my watch, and see who is contacting me. If it’s something I’m waiting for, I can stop what I’m doing and switch to my email to answer. Otherwise, I know I can keep working and deal with it later. I find I have a lot less of the sense of “I can’t get anything done because everyone keeps bugging me”.

As a timepiece, I’m getting used to the fact that the face is black until I raise my wrist. That motion detection works well, but it’s a deliberate motion, and sometimes I do a quick flick of the wrist and it doesn’t light up. This isn’t often, though. I have settled on the “Utility” face, which has a pseudo-analog face with small complications in the corners and bottom.

Tammy uses the “Modular” face, which is the digital watch-type face, with the most space for complications. The thing I like about that face is the large area for the Calendar complication, but I find that I make do with the small Calendar complication on the Utility face, in exchange for the nice style of the analog face. I am looking forward to watchOS 2.0 this fall with the promise of more complications and faces.

If I’m surprised about anything, it’s how little I use the watch as a “mobile device”. It’s a “notification device” to me, like a filter. I have some apps on the phone, but I don’t use them a lot. I use the timer, weather, remote camera trigger, Overcast and Vivint app. I installed the new Microsoft Outlook app yesterday, but I don’t spend a lot of time in it yet.

I’m happy with the green sport band, but I would like a “dress” band. There isn’t a lot of availability of Apple bands or 3rd party bands yet, but I expect there will be by Christmas. I’d like a metal link bracelet, like the one from my Bulova watch, but the Apple one is overkill. There’s a $40 one on Amazon, and apparently it’s serviceable.

The other thing was that since I’m now being notified on my wrist, I have made an effort to really limit the annoyances. This has included finally making the effort to unsubscribe from a bunch of email lists. I hadn’t realize what percentage of my personal and business email was “junk”. My inboxes are now much more useful.