bobmacliberty

You use a remote, but it's a different experience. YouTube TV has 3 different main "pages". Live gives you a typical channel grid, Home gives you suggestions based on what you've watched in the past (which works well...it usually has what I'm looking for at the top of the page). Library lists everything in your DVR. You use the up/down/left/right, enter, and back buttons on the remote to navigate. For our Samsung remote, you can also use channel up and down, but we don't ever navigate that way anymore. Edit: The remote isn't from YouTube TV, it's from your smart TV, Roku, Apple TV, etc...whatever device you're using to get the YouTube TV app.

I used to have a Roadrunner email address when they were our ISP. 10+ years ago, I created 2 new email addresses...one with Outlook and one with Gmail. Both have the same name, just a different ending. That way, I can switch providers and not worry about losing my email address. I use the Outlook address for more personal things and the Gmail address for business things (like the address that everyone wants when you sign up for something online). This helps keep my Outlook address "clean". I still technically had the Roadrunner address (until we moved), just never used it. It's painful switching email addresses but worth it going through the pain one time and then hopefully never needing to do it again, so long as both Outlook mail and Gmail are still around. You will though probably run into situations like I just had. I created an online account a LONG time ago using my cinci.rr.com email address. I haven't accessed the account in more than a decade. When I tried to log in recently, I couldn't remember the password. I clicked the link to reset the password and they sent an email to my Roadrunner address, which no longer exists. I had no other backup email address. That meant that I needed to call someone to get my password changed, which was an extremely painful process.

With the recent talk of internet "speeds", the perfectionist geek in me is going crazy. I'll explain internet speeds in case it helps someone else choose the right speed option for them, possibly saving some money. When you get an internet service, it will be for something like 500Mbs, or 1Gbs. That's not technically a speed number but instead a bandwidth number. Some people refer to this as the size of the pipe, as in plumbing. A 1 inch diameter pipe may not allow for water to flow faster, but can deliver a lot more water than a 1/2 inch pipe. I like the analogy of roads (which isn't technically exact, but you'll get the idea). More bandwidth means more lanes of roads. You don't need a multi-lane highway to go fast...you can still travel 60 mph on a single lane road. A 6-lane highway will allow several cars to travel 60 mph at the same time. If you're downloading a large file, it can broken up into several cars that each travel in their own lane and then are reassembled into one file at your house. This means that the download does happen faster and therefore you're seeing more "speed". But you reach a limit with how many lanes you can use if all you're doing is watching YouTube TV on one device. 2 lanes may be "fast" enough to watch a video stream. Paying for 6 lanes doesn't do anything for you. However, if you have one person watching Netflix in one room, another person having a work video call in a second room, and another person doing online gaming in a third room, having all 6 lanes will be important so that each of these activities can happen simultaneously. We only have 2 people in our house and for the most part, will max out at watching TV on 2 different TVs at the same time, or one person Face Timing while the other person watches online videos. We could probably get away with only 200Mbs. We have 1 Gbs service just for the occasional time when we have guests or may have other internet needs. I'm also impatient and hate staring at the spinning thing in the middle of the screen showing that a download is buffering, so I'll err on the side of paying for more bandwidth. So how much bandwidth do YOU actually? It depends on the number of people and internet connected devices in your house, whether or not you work from home, whether you do a lot of video streaming, whether you do online gaming, etc. Check with your internet provider to see what they recommend. They may over-estimate what you need so that you'll pay for more, so here's an online site I found that will give you an estimate, based on answering a few quick questions. I have no idea where this site came from and can't verify its accuracy. The other option is to pick a service level with less bandwidth and see how well it works. If it seems like you don't have enough "speed", bump your service up to the next highest level. Hope this helps someone. It certainly helped my inner geek to get it out. 😁

YouTube TV works with any internet service. We have AT&T 1GB fiber and are similar to Greg with YouTube TV plus several additional services. YouTube TV was somewhere in the $60-70 per month range when we first signed up 3 years ago but the price has gone up. By the time we add in the cost of internet and the other streaming services, it's still less than what we were paying for everything bundled, but not by much. We like YouTube TV a lot. The unlimited DVR is nice but you need to know that it's all stored in the cloud, not on a local box. That's not a problem so long as you have a reliable internet connection. It also means that you can play back something from anywhere in the world, like your daughter's house in Cincinnati. 😉

Ever since Betty White died, Dolly Parton is our new national treasure. What an amazing woman. And to wear a Cowboys Cheerleader outfit at 77?? 😲 I thought she might have multiple layers of Spanx on, but Micheline said that she's always been skinny, at least in most areas.

It’s a good thing there’s an edit button here. I’d go crazy if I couldn’t fix the minor little errors in my posts.

Dup

Love this! 🎶 Ooh gravy gravy, g-gravy gravy 🎶. 🤣

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We are headed to my younger daughter's sister-in-law's house for Thanksgiving dinner later today. My daughter married into a great family...very caring and giving people who we get along with well. Her SIL has a fairly large house with a big open kitchen and living room area, so it's perfect for a large gathering of people. She does Thanksgiving buffet style, which also works out great for large groups where everyone can bring something. Since we can't cook much while living in my older daughter's house (who is also invited so my whole family can be there), we'll just bring a few bottles of wine. First, we'll squeeze in a few more hours of work painting the second coat on the bedroom. My older daughter chose some bold colors, which I guess is appropriate for a Victorian house?? I don't know...I'm the tech guy, not the designer. For her living room, she went with Mellow Mauve and for her bedroom, she went with Gale Force. I'll post some pictures when we're done.

All this talk of losing too much weight reminds me of a reality TV show from several years ago where a family lived for some period of time (90 days maybe?) as if it were the 1800s. They lived in a cabin with no electricity or running water. They had to do everything by hand including growing and preparing food. Near the end, the husband had lost so much weight that the wife feared something was medically wrong and called in a Doctor. The doctor confirmed that he was perfectly healthy and was actually at a good weight for him. Everyone was just so used to seeing him about 50 pounds heavier that he looked ill at his proper weight. I don't look (too) overweight but I could/should lose 30+ pounds. I'm 6' 0" tall and weigh 215. I should be down around 180. I'm guessing that's a similar story for the majority of people in the US. I'm not suggesting that anyone mentioned here wasn't actually too skinny...just that we have a serious overweight/obesity problem in the US. Our medical friends here can probably create a long list of health issues that this causes.

It’s actually my older daughter, who isn’t married, that bought the house. She has grand plans but works long hours and doesn’t have a lot of extra money after the mortgage payment. She’s quickly learning how to do a lot of things herself. She definitely wants to get all of the paint off door hardware and the staircase banister. I’m proud of her but worry that she might have bitten off more than she can chew. She’ll definitely have some sticker shock when she sees her electric bill for heating this winter. Lots of drafts and poor insulation.

The house is livable now. The previous owner did a lot of work including new heating and air conditioning, a new tankless water heater, several new windows, and fixing a foundation issue. As a real estate agent might say, it has good bones. After replacing all of the electric and doing a thorough cleaning, most of the work that we're doing now is cosmetic. Micheline and I spent our first 5 days here in a hotel and then temporarily moved into the house itself. We have a functioning bathroom, kitchen, and bed, so it's not too bad...kind of like upscale camping. It has a decent sized garden at .25 acres/.1 hectares. The previous owner didn't do much landscaping. She had 2 large dogs and has most of the yard fenced in, with a couple of large trees and a few other smaller plantings that may or may not survive Micheline's spring cleaning in the garden next year. 😁

For a brief minute, I thought @brillohead's "surely you're joking" comment would not get the proper reply. I was glad to see @HBE4 reply accordingly. I saw an interesting video a while back showing how Airplane! was an almost shot for shot comedy remake of a 1957 movie called Zero Hour!

It's been a while since I've posted here. We're still working on my daughter's "new" 130-year-old Victorian house. We WAY underestimated how much work is required. We knew that we couldn't do everything that needs to be done on this trip (that's going to take a few years) but we hoped to completely re-do the living room, kitchen, and main bedroom, since my daughter would be spending 90%+ of her time in these 3 rooms. The house was absolutely trashed. The woman who lived here previously must have been allergic to cleaning. The electricians who rewired the whole house (eliminating old knob and tube wiring) contributed to the mess with the holes they needed to make to pull new wire and the plaster work they did to fix everything. The fridge alone took almost a full day's work before we'd even think of putting something in it. Every room requires multiple rounds of floor, wall, and window cleaning since one round wasn't enough. Our initial plan was to completely sand, meticulously wood fill, and paint the baseboard and crown molding so that it would look like new. Ha! Through the years, previous owners have done what my daughter calls a landlord paint job where another layer of paint was slapped in top of the previous layer. Between some sloppy caulking, wood filling, and painting from the past, there's not much we can do with existing molding. I sanded where possible, filled some obvious cracks/holes, and then added to the existing layers of paint. It at least looks OK...clean and bright. My daughter will need to replace all molding in the future when she has the time/money. Holes/cracks in the plaster walls have been filled and the primer coat of paint is done in the living room. Final coat should get done today (maybe tomorrow) and then all that will be left in the living room is a final floor cleaning with a rental floor machine and a coat of Scotts Liquid Gold Floor Restore. We'll do that to the hardwood floors that are in the entire first floor, except the kitchen. The kitchen is fully clean and plaster walls patched where needed. It just requires a coat of paint and a final deep clean of the floor, including trying to bring the grout back to the original color. I'll try a technique that I saw on YouTube for the grout. Mix up twice the recommended amount of Oxy Clean and water, paint it onto the grout, and then scub with a brush attached to a drill. Fingers crossed. The bedroom is a little behind the living the living room and kitchen. There was a mural painted on the headboard wall that my daughter want to replace with wall paper. We've sanded and cleaned that wall to make it smooth, and the rest of the room has been cleaned. I removed 3 generations of curtain rod and blind holders from the windows, which required taking off about a dozen layers of paint and some of the wood underneath. That's been patched and sanded so the windows and walls are ready for paint. We'll then do the wall paper on the feature wall. The upstairs bathroom was recently remodeled and just needed a good cleaning...especially the disgusting tub. How could anyone live like that? I knew this wasn't going to be fun, and I did something to my back a couple of days ago. I couldn't bend over yesterday without stabbing pain. It's a little better today...more of a dull ache than a stabbing pain. I'll hopefully be back to full duties tomorrow. The tentative move in date is either this coming Saturday or Sunday, assuming we're ready. I need to be able to lift furniture by then. We've barely touched the outside other than pressure washing the sidewalks and continually battling leaves from 2 large oak trees. It seems like it's taking 3 weeks to drop all of the leaves. We'll tackle more of the landscaping work next spring. I miss my golf and warm weather (and bed, and TV, and...) @helen haywood - Any of this sound familiar? @George C and @#55worktoplay - I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your cat and dog. That's always a difficult decision.

Beautiful day for golf today...75 and sunny. This was my last round for a few weeks. We are headed back to Cincinnati to help my daughter fix up and move into her "new" 130 year old Victorian house. I see a lot of Advil in my immediate future. Untitled video (8).mp4

Nope. That's never happening.

Spectacular!

It's weird. Although I have a fear of heights, I've gone skydiving twice and didn't experience that fear at all, even when leaving the plane. I think we were so high up (about 13,000 feet) and the ground so far away, that my perspective was thrown off. Mike probably just has full faith in his plane.

I've stood above where the beams cross but couldn't really get myself to put all of my weight where there's just glass below. It really bothers me that my fear of heights trumps my engineering brain's knowledge that there's no way I'm going to fall through. 🫣 I'd much prefer to look out than to look down. On a business trip to China, we went to the observation deck of the Canton Tower in Guangzhou. I think it's still the second tallest tower in the world, just above the CN Tower. There's a glass "box" that sticks out from the side of the tower, 1420 feet (433 meters) above the ground. I took a picture of a friend of mine standing out there, but there was no way I was going out there myself. He didn't exactly look carefree out there either. The real test, which I want to visit but will never do, is the "Step into the Void" glass box in the French Alps. It's at 3842 meters (12,600 feet) above sea level with a 1000 meter (3280 feet) drop straight down. Incredible to look at, but no thanks! No idea who these people are...just found this video on YouTube

We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better. Stronger. Faster. 😜 Congrats on the Chiefs win. Great game to watch. Hope your pain subsides soon and that your recovery is easier than the other knee.

And to set up your smart phone, and configure your Wifi, and upgrade your computer, and... I'm a tech geek and it's getting harder and harder for me to keep up. 😁 Sorry...I didn't mean to insinuate that you were wrong. I was just explaining why many people may have problems getting their built-in car buttons to work with their garage door openers.

Newer garage doors using what's called rolling code technology, where the code to open the door is constantly changing. The buttons built into newer cars work with rolling code technology, allowing the car to stay sync'd with the opener. Older cars typically only work with fixed code door openers...where the code never changes. With fixed code, you just set the opener and the clicker (or keypad, or car button) to the same code. This is much simpler to program, but the code could be intercepted by a bad guy and used to open your door. Rolling codes are harder to program but are more secure since an intercepted code is not reused to open the door.

I'm pulling for your Chiefs Greg. I don't really want to root for either team but the Dolphins are in the Bills division. The bottom line though...squish the fish.

Try this article about Amari Cooper (former Bama receiver) dismissing the idea, or this article where Pete Carroll (former USC head coach and current Seahawks head coach) says that "it ain't even close", or this article where Joe Namath says that a pro team would need to beat itself and the 2016 0-12 Browns would probably roll the 12-0 Tide. The article with Pete Carroll had a Vegas odds expert saying that the Jags (worst NFL team at the time) would be favored by 24 over the 2012 Bama team. The pros know. Ain't gonna happen.

Not even close, although people seem to like to say this all the time. The worst NFL team is still made up of the best college players, who are now bigger, stronger, and more experienced than they were when playing in college. Bama had 10 players drafted this year...more than any other team except Georgia who also had 10. That means that 12 of their starters, and another 5-10 who don't start but play regularly, weren't even good enough to play pro. I haven't verified this but of the 10 Bama players who were drafted, several are probably sitting on the bench, and a couple may not have even made the team. Just look at how easy #1 draft pick Bryce Young made things look last year at Bama, and how much he has struggled this year against NFL defenses. That doesn't mean that teams like Bama and LSU aren't very good and fun to watch...their just not even close to being in the same league as any NFL team.