Found some time and made it to one of my local Starbucks. I was able to access the internet and my WordPress blog from my laptop and will now try and get some of my recent thoughts out here for all to see.

I had to get a new iPhone a few weeks back. Besides having a cracked screen (my first cracked screen ever, after having an iPhone for over 10 years), the voice quality was terrible, and people were often unable to hear me on a call. It was a pretty painless transition, and I give Apple a lot of credit. Simply backed up my old phone to the cloud, placed it next to my new phone and let it transfer everything. Once it finished transferring everything, I was up and running on a new iPhone 15 Pro.

There were a few things that I had to do manually — I needed to re-enter/reset some of my passwords for some apps and I needed to set things up to use my original phone number (As part of the upgrade, I got a 2nd number add to my phone as part of a way to get more value for my trade-in)

I forgot that the new iPhone 15 Pro now has a USB-C connection instead of the old Firewire connection. This meant I needed new charger cables and new USB-C headphones (I am a bit old school and still prefer wired headphones over Bluetooth when going for runs/walks. I lost one of my ear pods (low-cost JBLs) when it dropped out of my ear, hit my phone, which was in my hand, and flew into the woods never to be found. I do like the new magnetic chargers that snap onto the back of the phone.

With that out of the way, here are a few things that bothered me this week

I stopped by QuickChek on my way home from work and saw that they had some new ChargePoint EV Chargers installed. I have a Prius Prime Plug-In Hybrid and wanted to see what they were charging (ChargePoint Chargers costs are set by the individual providers). It stated that the first 30 minutes were free, and after that, the cost was $60.00 / hour. And in small print, it stated a $2.50 access fee. So even if you plugged in for 30 minutes, you still would pay $2.50. In contrast, at work, we have ChargePoint chargers, and the cost is $0.75 for the first 2 hours and then $1.50 per hour after that

I am OK with the cost at work; my hybrid plug-in takes about 2 hours to charge at the station and gets around 30 miles on a full charge before the gas motor kicks in. This comes out to around $0.05 / per mile. On the flip side, A two-hour charge at QuickChek would run me $2.50 plus $90.00 (at $1.00 / min) or $3.08 / mile. Even if I just charge for the 30 free minutes, it still comes to $0.33 / mile (after the $2.50 service charge). Needless to say, I will not be using the ChargePoint Stations at QuickChek

Quickly want to mention that it is getting harder and harder to take either political party’s side and views seriously. I consider myself a Democrat, and I think most of the Republicans and their views are just whacked. But that doesn’t mean that all Republicans are awful people. The Democrats must be careful about how far they push their narrative without crossing the lines of truth. Let the Republicans bury themselves with their own actions, and don’t keep trying to find a gotchya moment. I have faith that most people are good at heart, and if you let things play out, the old-time and crazy Republicans will do enough on their own to cause them to lose future elections.

I actually found it refreshing to sit and write at Starbucks, and I plan on doing it more. But I do have things I need to get done today, so will be signing off for now.

#PEACE

Average Andy