Category: App

Fitbit Aria Air on Amazon

On By Michel McDonaldIn App, WeightLeave a comment

I bought a Fitbit Charge 4 watch in June 2020. I wanted to buy a scale, but I had to wait until I had more money. I finally bought the scale when I got my check in August 2020 because I wanted to be able to weigh myself and have it automatically enter my weight into the Fitbit app along with my BMI and body fat percentage. But apparently it only logs weight. Well, I could have done that manually lol. I bought this because the listing on Amazon (as you can see) says BMI.

While I was waiting for my scale to arrive, I went back to the listing and started reading the reviews. Most reviews mentioned it did not show BMI at all, and that it doesn’t pop up in the Fitbit app like it is supposed to when you step on the scale. I started getting mad, because I paid $58 for this scale (with the insurance and taxes, shipping was free with Prime). Then I thought, well maybe I should cancel this and get the Aria 2, but that’s $150 lol. So, I didn’t cancel this.

So here is what I have found out about this scale once it was in my possession. When I first opened the box and set the scale up in the Fitbit app, I weighed myself and it popped up in the app in a few seconds. But, several times later in the same day I tried and it didn’t pop up in the app. I didn’t understand, because it is supposed to work every time you weigh yourself.

Yesterday morning I went to weigh myself and it didn’t show up in the app, so I figured that I would probably have to start over, so I removed it from the Fitbit app and tried to reinstall it, but apparently you can’t do that, you have to reset the Fitbit Aria Air scale by pressing the button before you are even able to use it again in the app. So I went through all that only to find out it isn’t going to install again because something was happening with my phone and I needed to reboot it. I finally got it rebooted and it installed just fine like the first time, and it took 15 seconds to even pop up in the app.

This morning I wondered if this thing was going to work and it didn’t pop up in the app at all. I figured the problem isn’t the scale or the app, the problem is my phone. So I rebooted my phone and tried again and the weight immediately popped up in the app when I weighed myself.

So this is my solve for anyone else who has trouble with this scale. Just reboot your phone if it isn’t working immediately. Or, reboot your phone before you attempt to weigh yourself.

I had an issue with the listing saying BMI smart scale, when in fact it does not show your BMI, but upon further inspection, and a little Googling, I discovered the app actually does show you BMI. Not the scale. So how to find that is when you are in the app, look for the weight block, tap that, then you see the graph on the screen that says Weight Trends (30 days (lbs), swipe that to the left and it shows Lean vs Fat, swipe it again and it shows BMI past 30 days, swipe again it shows Body fat %. The Aria Air doesn’t include body fat %, you have to enter that manually, but if you don’t even know what your body fat % is, that graph will be empty. I don’t know how to find out body fat %.

Edit: I discovered there are apps that calculate body fat percentage based on measurements you have to take manually with cloth measuring tape. So yeah… there’s that.

So buy this if all you have to spend is $50 plus taxes plus insurance, and trust me, you want the insurance because it’s only $3 extra. You just never know. It is a good scale, even though it has limitations.

Oh, before I go I also wanted to mention that this scale has the option to see your weight in pounds, stones or kilograms. So if you prefer to see your weight in any other format, you have the option by pressing the button on the bottom of the scale. It shows it on the screen when you press it. You can also choose to change it in the Fitbit app.

Warming up to Windows 10

On By Michel McDonaldIn App, ComputerLeave a comment

Windows 10 logoI wasn’t happy with Windows 10 when I installed it because it took hours to install, then everything took forever to load. I couldn’t get the Start window to come up, and when it finally did come up, it would go away because I was clicking the Start button too many times in frustration. I also hated the new Start window because when I would try to move things around, the icons would disappear, and then there would be huge gaps with no icons, so I took out ALL icons and just added them again in the order I wanted to see them, like this…

win10startThe first couple of days using Windows 10 was a learning experience, and things have gotten a lot faster since I started. The Start window comes up immediately now and when I click All apps, the list of apps comes up right away, although, there are times when it takes a few seconds longer, but I’m patient.

Now the only thing that still concerns me is Microsoft Money. Someone tweeted me a link to a blog that tells me that all I have to do is go into my Registry and change something, which isn’t always the best idea, especially coming from a stranger. Oh sure stranger, I’ll screw things up even more, thank you. And the sad thing is I went into my registry and looked for that string, but it wasn’t there. I’m actually glad I didn’t find it because it would’ve been a disaster if I screwed things up and had to start over again. I hope Microsoft comes up with an update to fix this issue so I can use MS Money again.

This is the error message I am getting when I load MS Money.

money needs ie6When I started using Windows 8.1, I wasn’t using the browser to use Facebook, Facebook Pages Manager or Twitter, I was using the Windows apps instead. Gradually those apps stopped loading quickly until they just stopped loading at all. Eventually I had to go back to using the browser.

When I installed Windows 10, those apps load quickly, and in a small window. In fact, all of the apps, including Windows Edge, their new browser, all open in a small square window. I have a widescreen monitor, not a square one, not that Windows really cares. But still, when I use Edge, I have to stretch it on both sides to see everything on the website. When I close the website and Edge reloads when I click a link, it opens in that square box again. Not that that is a real issue for me, I don’t really care about that. I’m not bitching about anything, I’m just saying this is what’s happening when I open Edge.

I had mixed feelings before installing, and I was outraged after I installed, but I’m warming up to the new version of Windows and believe it or not, I’m happy I installed it.

For anyone who just installed Windows 10 without burning it on a DVD, you should probably think about downloading the ISO file for both 32bit and 64bit and burning them to a DVD or putting it on a USB drive. They give you both options. You’ll regret not doing so if/when the day comes when you have to reformat or even if you buy a new hard drive and you have to reinstall Windows 8.1 and then upgrade back to Windows 10. After a year, you won’t have the option to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. It’s just a suggestion, and trust me, you will thank me later.

D&D Starter Set

On By Michel McDonaldIn App, GamesLeave a comment

20150724_113040_3rd StIt has taken a couple of weeks, but I have nearly everything I need to play a game of D&D with my Wilderness tiles that my partner bought for me at Barnes & Noble. When he first bought me the Wilderness tiles, I thought that it was a starter set because it said on the back

“For use with these Dungeons & Dragons products:

Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game Starter Set

Dungeon Master’s Kit

Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures

Other Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Tiles sets.”

I guess I just misunderstood because I thought it came with all those things, I guess I just wasn’t thinking. Oh well. At any rate, I have bought a few things on that list. I went to Amazon and bought the Starter set which came with the starter set rulebook you see in the picture along with the blue dice and another book called Lost Mine of Phandelver, which is a walkthrough quest with maps that I can scan and add to an app on my Nook called 3D Virtual Tabletop. It’s just easier to do that since the maps aren’t very big to play on in the booklet. The starter set also came with some character sheets which I actually printed last year and put in my notebook. Yes, I have a notebook with line and graph paper that I printed since my printer offers that option.

 

20150714_16044120150714_160912_3rd St20150720_171424_3rd St

The miniatures that I bought aren’t all miniature, even though they say they are on Amazon and even on the packaging. Some of the green and grey ones are heroes and some are monsters, and oddly enough some are cavemen lol. The skeletons are a bit smaller and I’ll probably get more use out of those. I also bought from Michaels a set called “Knights and Dragons.” It comes with 4 knights with a red and gold flag and shields and 4 knights with a blue and gold flag and shields. They are all wearing silver armor and 1 of each has a guy sitting on a horse. Oh and it comes with a catapult and a little dragon lol.

20150724_115301I also bought a D&D Lego guy. I thought I was getting a set of 12, because that’s what the picture showed, but I guess I was wrong because I only got 1. He’s called a fighter and has a sword. I think what I’ll do is say he’s my main tank and the guys in the silver armor are the other characters. I also have a Lego Minecraft Steve and zombie as well as a Lego Robin from Batman and Robin. That one is a keychain, so of course I’ll have to remove that.

The wizard that I bought on Amazon isn’t exactly what I was looking for, but he does fit and he does look cool, so I guess I did good. I was looking for a gnome wizard, actually I was looking for anything in gnome size, but all I saw were miniature garden gnomes. That’s not exactly what I had in mind. This guy is actually a hell wizard named Damien lol. He even has a demon tail. He’s all white because he is meant to be painted. Yeah, that’s never going to happen. I don’t exactly have steady hands. His eyes will be way off if I tried. He’ll look either cross-eyed, or one eye will be looking up and the other will be looking to the left. Either way, I’m fine with him being all white. It would be cool if his coat and staff were brown and his base was green. I wish I had more patience and a steady hand.

I’m not quite ready to play yet because I still have to finish the starter set rule book and then I want to start reading the Lost Mine of Phandelver book and play according to the directions. I also want to read the Players Handbook because the Starter Set rule book didn’t give me ALL the information I think I need to start playing. I like to be thorough. Also, I’m having a hard time getting started, not just as the DM since I’m playing by myself, but also as a person who is playing 5 characters lol.

Screenshot_2015-07-28-21-29-58 1It would be awesome if I had some people to play with. I have an app on my Nook called 3D Virtual Tabletop, and that allows me to use existing characters and existing places (like a tavern or house) or I can upload my own pictures, which I did. I scanned all the maps from the Lost Mine of Phandelver book and imported them into the app. 1 square = 5 feet, so I had to put a 5×5 grid into each square. I asked someone if that is right and they said yes.

I saw on the character sheets that each character has 5 or 10 gold, so I figured it would be easier to keep track of who has how much gold by actually having gold in a little pouch, so I looked online for days for pictures of gold and silver coins to print so I could glue them onto cardboard, but then I thought about play coins, so I Googled plastic gold coins and found them at Party City, so I went and bought a pack of 144 gold coins and a pack of 72 silver coins. I was looking for Gold Doubloons, but they only had gold casino coins with dollar signs on them. The silver coins have pirate ships on them, so those are at least a little more authentic. I was also looking for copper, but they didn’t have any of those. I figure I’ll just sand some of the gold coins to create copper since they are gold painted on black plastic. Maybe I can buy some copper paint.

I hate that it has taken me this long to want to learn to play the game. When I was 15 years old and my step father kicked me out of the house (aka trailer), I moved in with a schoolmate who lived with his older brother who worked. One day they were playing D&D and asked if I wanted to play, but I didn’t know how because I’d never played before, and I didn’t want to play because I already had a target on my back for being gay, I didn’t want the target to get bigger because I was playing D&D, which everyone thought at the time (1985) that it was a satanic game and that players were all in satanic cults and were killing animals for sacrifice for their game. I really wish I had more of a back bone and was able to stand up to the bullies, but that’s all in the past and better late than never.

This is going to be fun learning and playing and I hope I can get a lot out of this game so I can use it to write my fantasy fiction novel. Writing fiction was a dream I’ve had since I was a kid, so I hope this works to get me started with my writing.

Terraria mobile issues resolved

On By Michel McDonaldIn App, Games, Google, How toLeave a comment

Screenshot_2015-05-04-23-30-38

I’m doing a little happy dance right now because I was finally… sorry, that was weak. I was FINALLY able to get Terraria to play on my refurbished Samsung Galaxy S3, and I will tell you how I did it.

The Issue was that when it installed the game, it only installed the obb file in the Android/obb folder. It didn’t install any of the actual game files in the Android/data folder. Every time I tried to load the game, it would give me this message (below). Try as I might I could not figure it out. I didn’t realize the data folder was lacking files. The OBB data file is fine, it installed all 52mb of that, it’s just that it didn’t install the rest of the data.

Screenshot_2015-05-02-19-33-57

The Fix. My phone came preinstalled with a file viewer called My Files, but that isn’t enough. I have an app from Cheetah Mobile called File Manager and that did the job. So what I did was I zipped the data files from my Nook and uploaded the zip file to my OneDrive so that I could download it on my phone. I downloaded it and then went into the File Manager and located the zip file in my downloads folder. I copied the zip file and pasted it in the Android/Data folder, but it kept saying 0kb. So it was showing a file name, but it wouldn’t allow actual data to be inserted in that folder. I then figured out (after days mind you) that in the File Manager there is a option in the settings for Root Settings (Advanced Users). Root Explorer and Change System Folders. Check both of those.

Screenshot_2015-05-04-23-27-29

Once those two options were checked, I copied the zip file again and it actually unzipped all of the files, but for some odd reason all of the files were 0kb. So then I decided to paste the zip file in the SD Card Android/Data folder and it pasted with all 52mb in tact. I then unzipped it and it actually unzipped. I find that to be amazing because before it wouldn’t unzip onto the SD card. So once I had all the files in the SD card, I went into the folder with the files and I tapped (and held) on one file to select it, then I clicked that little icon at the top with 4 squares and it selected the entire directory, then I clicked copy at the bottom of the screen and went in the Device to the Android/Data/com.and.games505.TerrariaPaid folder and hit paste and all of the files actually pasted with actual file sizes too.

To prove it worked, the Terraria image at the top is the actual screen shot from my phone. I cannot believe I finally got it to work. Now, I’m worried about if/when there is an update in the Google Play store and it installs all the files again, but this time it deletes all the files, or it makes them all 0kb lol. If that happens, I still have it on my Nook, so I’ll just be able to copy it over.

I really hope this has helped someone out there who has been just as frustrated as I have been. If you have a second Android device that it actually works on, you will be fine.

The Sims FreePlay January 22 Update

On By Michel McDonaldIn Android, App, Games, Nook, The SimsLeave a comment

The Sims FreePlay

The Sims FreePlay has finally given us an update and not everyone is happy about it. Well, I should say they aren’t happy because EA still has not addressed some of the issues that some of us are having with the game.

There are really only two issues that I am having, like not being able to log in to Facebook in the game which would allow me to access the party boat to claim daily prizes based on how many Facebook friends I have who also play the game. It also allows me to visit those friend’s neighborhoods and interact with their Sims characters. They have tasks that you have to perform to earn a special currency called SP’s to spend on specific items in the store. If I cannot earn that currency then I will not be able to buy those items.

The other issue that I am having is that I cannot play the game on my new Nook HD+ that I got for Christmas. I have been playing this game on my Android phone since last year and I’m perfectly okay with playing it on there because that is mainly the only reason I even use my phone anymore. Ever since I got my Nook, I’ve uninstalled most of the apps that I used to use on a daily basis because they were causing The Sims FreePlay to constantly crash. Since I can use those apps on my new Nook, I don’t need them on my phone anymore.

Some people are reporting problems that they are having that I don’t seem to be having. They are also really irate that EA has not addressed their complaints.  Here are just 2 comments. I blurred out their names for their own protection.  The first one is negative, the 2nd one, well, if you can understand what that person is saying then you decide lol.  That person is having issues that I am not having.

sims freeplay comments

You know, I am just as miffed as the next person, but let us all have a little perspective here. This is a free game. You don’t pay for it, you get to play it for as long as you want for free. There are premium items you can buy with real life money, but you don’t have to buy them if you don’t want to. Be lucky they are giving us all of these updates because their other game The Sims 3 which is also available for your Android device will cost you $6.99 and from what I have read in the comments there, that game doesn’t have nearly as many cool features and items as the FreePlay game has.

Also, you should be so lucky to have your Android phone or tablet because there are many people in this world who don’t have such luxuries. There are children who are being abused by their parents, some even murdered. There are entire families who are starving and sleeping in the streets because they aren’t as lucky as you. There are people in this world who are being molested, raped and murdered.

There are teenagers who are kicked out of the house and end up living on the streets for years simply because they came out of the closet to their parents. There are gay kids being targeted, beat up, some even raped and then murdered in Russia because Vladimir Putin gave them the okay by making being gay illegal. There are gay people living in Uganda who are being murdered or raped, or both. And finally, there are people being stoned to death in the Arab countries for the same reason, because they are gay. So chill out, it’s just a silly little game. Count your lucky stars that you even have the money to play the game on your expensive little toy.

I am just as miffed at EA because the Facebook issue started when they put out the Halloween update and I have waited all this time and was let down yesterday when I couldn’t log in with the new update. I understand how frustrating it is. I was also let down when I couldn’t play it on my Nook, but even if I could play it on my Nook, if I can’t log in to Facebook to upload my progress, then how will I be able to continue from where I left off on my phone when I try to play it on my Nook?

Someone told me to just buy a Kindle. Um… I have a Nook. I can’t just go out and say “hey take my Nook and give me a Kindle.” It doesn’t work that way. My Nook is a Nook HD+ with 32 GB which only cost $150. The Kindle Fire equivalent is $444 (see below). So yeah, I will not be buying a new Kindle just so I can play The Sims FreePlay. Even if I did, I still have the Facebook issue. If I can’t back up my game, then what point is getting a Kindle Fire to play it on?

kindle fire hdx

One person even said to just go out and buy the cheap Kindle Fire. Again, even at the low price of $139, I still have the Facebook issue to deal with. Besides, why do these people think I have money lying around that I can just go out and buy all these new things? I just cancelled HBO and Showtime because I needed that extra $30 a month. How am I supposed to go out and buy a second tablet that I will only use to play The Sims with? I put $20 into savings and had to take it back out just to buy groceries. Come on, think it through people.

At any rate, I will continue to wait and hope that EA will fix these issues and I will continue not complaining because there is more to life than just a silly little game. I will continue playing it on my phone and be happy that I even have that luxury. How happy you ask? This happy…

sims freeplay shirt

My recent reward for watching TV

On By Michel McDonaldIn Android, App, Nook, TV3 Comments

viggle

I bought my HTC One V for Virgin Mobile from Amazon in December and one of the first apps I installed was Viggle because a friend uses it and posted the advertisement on Facebook.  I’m always looking for ways to get rewarded for doing things, like surveys, blogging, tweeting, installing and playing games and whatever else I can do.  Well, Viggle gives you rewards just for watching TV and doing trivia during your shows.

Since December I have been racking up points.  I had over 63,000 points and I was saving it for a really expensive reward, the Kindle Fire or Kindle Fire HD.  The problem is, those are 482,500 and 560,000 points and well, let’s just say if it has taken me 6 months to get 63,000 points, I’m sure it will take me a long time to get the Kindle, so I figured I might as well pick a reward of lesser value for now.  I decided to get the Barnes & Noble $25 gift card for 50,000 points.  This is what I bought.

the hunger games trilogy

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins for $24.49.  I waited for a few days after getting my Viggle reward because I wasn’t positive what I wanted.  I can’t recall exactly what made my decide on The Hunger Games, but I suddenly remembered that I wanted to read the books before seeing the movie.

I wanted to buy many ebooks at .99 cents each because then I could buy 25 ebooks, but I think getting this trilogy was better.  It’s not the quantity of the ebooks that matter because chances are I’m not going to have time for all 25 ebooks, and who knows if I will feel like I made a huge mistake because the books aren’t quality writing.  So I’m glad I bought this trilogy rather than a bunch of books I may not like.  Although I’m not positive I will like the hunger games, but I know it is something that I am interested in so I’m sure I will.

I have started reading the first book, but haven’t gotten too far because I just didn’t feel like reading.  I have to be in the mood to be able to really get into it, and I don’t want my lack of interest in reading to make me like or hate a book.  I will wait until I’m ready to start reading it.  I actually have a few other books that I’m halfway through that I would like to finish before starting another story.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that Viggle is a good app and this is proof that you do actually get rewarded for watching TV.