Just Wanting to be a Regular Person

Strive to be regular in all things.

Sleep longevity (7-9 hours every night) has been difficult to achieve for many people, including your humble blogger. But there could be another path to good health: sleep regularity.

A recent study looking at sleep and longevity found that sleep “regularity”—going to bed and waking up at consistent times with few mid-slumber interruptions—matters more than how long you sleep. Sleeping six hours every night on a consistent schedule was associated with a lower risk of early death than sleeping eight hours with very irregular habits.

This finding comports with my personal experience. I frequently wake at 2 a.m. and putter around for a couple of hours. After I return to bed, the total time asleep, according to the Apple Watch, may be close to seven hours. But I feel better rested when I sleep for six hours straight.

Late in life I'm finding how crucial regularity is to good health in more than one bodily system.

Sleeping is not an Old Person's Game

(Pokémon Sleep images)

The growing research on the importance of sleep to health has resulted in a plethora of advice on how to fall and stay asleep for the recommended 7-9 hours.

The doctor said that there are medications available, but I'm foregoing that solution unless the problem becomes more acute, say, if I can't sleep for more than five hours a night.

As in all matters of health, like diet and exercise, there are now people who are obsessed with sleeping well. [bold added]

for millions, chasing winks with the latest sleep-measuring technology has become a nighttime sport, complete with sleep scores and strategies on how to best sack the competition. Some people are even, well, losing sleep about whether they are sleeping up to their full potential...

[Mike Skerett] has deployed tactics including blackout curtains and taping his mouth shut to max out his sleep score on Whoop’s app.

“I can see that on days when I tape my mouth during sleep, I have a 7% higher recovery score in the morning than on days when I don’t,” he says...

“I am disciplined and competing my ass off to get somewhere between eight and seven hours every night,” Michael Gervais, a performance psychologist who advises chief executives and Olympic athletes, said on his podcast recently.

The Apple Watch, which records the duration of each stage of sleep (REM, core, and deep) provides all the monitoring I require.

"Competitive sleeping," two words that I had never seen paired until this moment, sounds counter-productive because of the heightened effect that competition has on heart and brain activity.

A related point: if we're advised to turn off all our devices before going to bed, how is Pokémon Sleep going to help?

Chased Away

At 10 a.m. yesterday the water pressure in the house dropped to zero. I looked out the window. A couple of utility trucks were in the street.

Presumably the interruption was going to be brief, else the workers would have knocked on the affected homes' doors and informed everyone. One could also infer from the absence of signs that the shut-off was unplanned.

After an hour with no water I walked across the street. The homeowner explained that his plumber had damaged the line to the neighborhood, and the City had to close the valve while contractors fixed the leak. Maybe another hour, he said.

Not wishing to wait around, especially if nature called, we left an hour early for the appointment at the Apple Store to fix an Apple Watch.

Any irritation I felt evaporated. I felt sorry for our neighbor, who may be on the hook for the street repair costs, not to mention a plumbing job gone wrong. I felt grateful to live in a City that could respond so quickly to a utilities emergency. And I appreciated living close to safe shopping malls, work-out clubs, and restaurants where we could pass the hours. When we got back in the afternoon the water was back on, and the men were still working in the street.

San Francisco is only 20 miles north, but it seems much farther away.

Deep Sleep and Alzheimer's

The Apple Watch says I'm not getting enough
Deep Sleep. Alzheimer's could be in my future.

Sleep has long been correlated with brain health, and inadequate deep sleep in particular is connected with Alzheimer's disease.

During deep sleep, the brain produces slow electrical waves and flushes out neurotoxins including amyloid and tau, two hallmarks of the disease.

Studies have shown that even one night of lousy deep sleep can lead to an increase of amyloid. A week of disrupted sleep can raise the amount of tau, which is especially insidious because over time it can strangle neurons from the inside out...

In their study, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, examine how deep sleep affected memory in cognitively normal seniors. What they found is that more deep sleep significantly improved performance on memory tests in patients with higher levels of amyloid and who were therefore at higher risk for Alzheimer’s...

Tne implication is that improving deep sleep could help people at highest risk for Alzheimer’s retain their mental capacities. Sleeping aids might be one way to do it. Studies have also found that exposure to odors like lavender and auditory stimulation at night can improve deep sleep. Regular, moderate exercise does too.

Overnight observation at a sleep clinic is still the gold standard for diagnosis, and a doctor's order is necessary to obtain a CPAP machine and certain medications.

The Apple Watch did confirm the tiredness that I had been feeling, and if lifestyle changes don't do the trick I'm off to the local sleep center. Staving off Alzheimer's is a powerful motivator.

It's the Content That Keeps Us Wide-Eyed

(Cleveland Clinic photo)

The blue light on our smartphone is a minor factor in keeping us awake at night. The content is a much greater disruptor.

If we come across alarming news, a scary movie or an annoying work email right before bed or in the middle of the night, the stress hormone cortisol can rise. A spike in cortisol provides an energy boost by moving glucose from a stored state in the body to an active state. “It’s like eating a candy bar,” says Jamie Zeitzer, co-director of the Stanford Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences. Coming down from that energy rush can be difficult.

Positive content can be just as disruptive because it can increase the amount of dopamine or norepinephrine in the brain, two neurotransmitters Dr. Zeitzer says can excite the thalamus—the brain’s information-relay center—and disrupt the brain-wave oscillations needed for sleep.

Turning off the phone completely is an obvious solution. The sleep-tracking app is also effective; it dims the iPhone and Apple Watch 15 minutes before the targeted bedtime.

But if you must surf in bed, dear reader, I've been told this blog is an excellent soporific...

Usefulness Beats Beauty

The larger size is needed to read
the screen or touch the right icon.

Two decades ago I was gifted a nice European timepiece. It was expensive, an item that I would never buy for myself.

In 2016 it was put into storage in favor of the less costly Apple Watch. The Apple Watch had technological advantages: it had fitness apps; it could take phone calls and send text messages as long as the paired iPhone was nearby; and it kept time more precisely.

Over the years the Apple Watch Series 2 was swapped out for a Series 3 that a family member had retired, then a Series 7 with a plethora of health monitoring (e.g., blood oxygen content, sleep tracking, gait evenness) features.

Almost by necessity the Apple Watch has a large (45mm) diagonal size in order to read messages and to use the touchscreen. It's on the verge of being esthetically ugly by being too large, but since for me usefulness beats beauty, I'm not going back to the more elegant-looking wristwatch.

L to R: Tudor 31mm ($4,925); Bulova 32mm
($1,150); Timex 34mm ($199) - WSJ photo

Which is also why I won't be participating in the latest trend in men's fashion, tiny timepieces.

According to Nick Marino, senior vice president of content for watch site Hodinkee, plenty of other guys have lately been shrinking their wristwear. They’re often trading watches 41mm and above in diameter—long the norm—for versions under 39mm. Many are unisex or women’s models. Some are downright puny, like [Kareem] Rahma’s [15mm] Seiko or the 23mm Cartier Crash favored by stylish rapper Tyler, the Creator.

Since the early 2000s, “big, macho, attention-getting watches were the trend, but the pendulum is swinging back to [smaller] sizes,” said Mr. Marino. A small ticker, he said, is “a sign of confidence: You don’t need a giant billboard of wealth on your arm.”

I don't need a billboard of wealth on my arm, and I don't need to be driving one or living in one either. It makes for a happier life.

It Doesn't Read Your Mind.....Yet

(Images from Frontiers in Psychology)

Apple is pouring billions of dollars into developing medical applications for its devices. Although the emphasis continues to be on wearables, the iPhone is at the center of the push into mental health.

Apple Inc. is working on technology to help diagnose depression and cognitive decline, aiming for tools that could expand the scope of its burgeoning health portfolio...

Using an array of sensor data that includes mobility, physical activity, sleep patterns, typing behavior and more, researchers hope they can tease out digital signals associated with the target conditions so that algorithms can be created to detect them reliably....

The research projects are still at early stages, and may never lead to new device features...While prior academic studies have shown some evidence that people with certain mental-health conditions use their digital devices differently than others, it remains to be seen if reliable algorithms can be created to detect the conditions...

If they are successful, Apple and its partners could improve the detection of the conditions, which affect tens of millions of people world-wide. But the extent of user tracking that may be required could spark privacy concerns. To address them, Apple aims for algorithms that work on users’ devices and don’t send the data to Apple servers...

The pandemic drove an increase in mental-health-related complaints. The percentage of adults reporting anxiety or depression-related symptoms reached 41% in January, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly quadruple the early-2019 figure. Mild cognitive impairment, which can develop into dementia, affects around 5 million Americans over 60 years old, estimates the Alzheimer’s Association...

UCLA has said its research studying signs of stress, anxiety and depression began with a pilot phase last fall tracking Apple Watch and iPhone data from 150 people and will continue with a main phase tracking similar data for 3,000 people starting this year.

UCLA researchers will track data from the iPhone’s video camera, keyboard and audio sensors, and data from the watch related to movement, vital signs and sleep, according to the documents and people familiar with the study. The data that may be used includes analysis of participants’ facial expressions, how they speak, the pace and frequency of their walks, sleep patterns, and heart and respiration rates. They may also measure the speed of their typing, frequency of their typos and content of what they type, among other data points, according to the people familiar with the research and the documents...

Biogen and Apple said in January they are collaborating on a study to use the iPhone and Apple Watch to track cognitive function over time and identify mild cognitive impairment, a condition that can develop into Alzheimer’s. The two-year study aims to follow about 20,000 participants—half of them at high risk of cognitive impairment—and will use device data in a way similar to the UCLA mental-health research, according to the documents and people familiar with the matter. The work follows a 2019 feasibility study that showed that 31 adults with cognitive impairment exhibited different behavior on their Apple devices than healthy older adults.

Biogen is collaborating on the study because it hopes it can help Apple develop an iPhone feature to detect mild cognitive impairment early and encourage relevant users to seek care earlier, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company will compare the data against standard tests of brain health including traditional cognitive assessments and scans that track plaque buildup in the brain, according to the documents and the person familiar with the work.

Biogen’s drug Aduhelm, which costs about $56,000 a year, was approved earlier this year by the FDA for people with early-stage Alzheimer’s.

Diagnosing mental health conditions is difficult even for trained clinicians who are able to interact with patients in person. An iPhone algorithm that matches facial expressions, eye movements, etc. with depression or early-stage dementia can be beneficial. If a mental health app is able to screen millions of people quickly, and users are made aware that a positive reading is private, should be checked out and does not necessarily denote illness, that should lessen user concerns.

Note: it would be ironic if the same smartphone whose use triggers depression in teen-age girls is the device that warns that the user may be depressed.

Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show

“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the researchers said in a March 2020 slide presentation posted to Facebook’s internal message board, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves”....

“Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” said another slide. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram, one presentation showed.

Thank Goodness I Got Through Friday

Friday started off promisingly.

I dashed off a letter to Mom, then used the Starbucks app to order a blackeye (two shots of espresso added to a regular coffee). I grabbed the car keys, iPhone, wallet, and letter before heading out the door.

The first hitch in the plan for a beautiful Friday was the discovery of a flat tire on the Camry. Changing it would take some time, so as a temporary fix the cigarette-lighter-powered air pump reinflated the tire. The leak could be a one-off occurrence, but 9 times out of 10 the cause is a nail and repair or replacement will be necessary.

Forget esthetics, I want protection

What happened next can only be excused by too many distractions--mailing the letter, picking up the coffee, and worries about the tire--for the aging mind. I had earlier put the iPhone on the car roof and forgot to remove it.

At Starbucks the realization dawned that the phone was missing. Hurrying home, I walked the car's path for the first couple of blocks without success. (Having bought a "military grade drop tested" case, the phone probably survived.)

I returned to the car and drove slowly along the entire route, glancing at the Apple Watch to see if the iPhone was within bluetooth range. Again, no luck, maybe somebody had picked it up.

The "Find My" app on the Mac showed the iPhone to be a half-mile from the house. That was good news, because it meant that the phone was intact.

I'll save you the litany of false steps that were made, dear reader, including getting back in the car for one more search. Suffice it to say that your humble blogger was not aware of all the alert and messaging features of the "Find My" app. The man who found the iPhone showed up at my door. He was tall, ruddy, masked, and middle-aged, with a baseball cap and walking shorts.

How did you know my address?

"It popped up briefly." [After reading the "Find My" instructions, I still don't see how that happened.]

Here, let me give you something.

"Oh, no," he said, waving his hands.

Thank you sir.

And with that, he was gone, and I don't even know his name.

I do have a picture of his shadow (right), which the camera took while he was looking at the display.

Lessons learned:

Kind strangers still exist;

Flat tires are minor compared to other problems;

Never put stuff on the roof of your car.

Apple Must-See for Me

It's not the must-see event that it was when Steve was alive, but the company, which is six times as valuable as when he passed in 2011, isn't the same either.

I'm watching the livestream at 10 a.m. PDT though Tim Cook reportedly won't be talking about the iPhone.

My 2014 iPad Air has a cracked screen that kinda works, and I have a version 3 Apple Watch that doesn't have all the health bells and whistles. I'll be buying something Apple makes soon.

10:03 a.m. Tim Cook speaks from the Apple spaceship HQ. Camera angle shows vast expanse of the interior garden of the space ship.

10:05 Tim says they'll be covering only Apple Watch and iPad. Wonder if they'll be doing one more thing that Steve used to do?

10:08 Testimonies from Watch customers. I suppose they have to do marketing. Not everyone is an Apple technophile.

10:09 COO Jeff Williams introduces the Series 6 Watch. Blood Oxygen app measures blood oxygen in 15 seconds.

10:15 Touts Apple Silicon, display always on, continuous altimeter for hikers.

10:17 New Apple design faces. OK, but not world-beating.

10:19 New watch bands - solo loop with no clasps. It stretches! My Timex did that back in the 1970's.

10:20 Family Setup allows multiple watches to be paired with one iPhone. Many individualized programming options for each watch wearer; obviously valuable for young and old people who don't have iPhones.

10:23 Apple Watch SE is cheaper option ($279+) with most important features, except for blood oxygen measurement. Uses slower S5 chip. Apple Watch series 6 starts at $399.

10:28 New watches are available this Friday, September 18th.

10:39 Apple Fitness+ ($9.99 per month per family) has workout videos for many activities.

10:37 Apple One combines iCloud, Music, TV+, Arcade, News+, Fitness+. For $29.95 per month you get all services for the family, or you can get fewer apps at a lower price.

10:40 Tim's back to talk about the iPad.

10:42 Product Manager Ted Merendino on 8th generation iPad: begins with A12 chip. "2x faster than Windows laptop" Neural engine: 5 trillion operations per second. Keyboard options, Apple Pencil. iPad OS14 allows handwritten text into input boxes. iPad 8th Generation starts at $329.

10:48 Tim Cook introduces new iPad Air. Laura Legros, VP Engineering, starts with design and colors. 10.9" liquid retina display. Touch ID not on screen but on top button. Tim Millet on A14 Bionic chip: 5 nanometer technology--efficiency, speed. 40% performance improvement than previous iPad Air. 2x graphics improvement over comparable laptop.

10:56 Game, music, photo developers extol the new iPad Air.

10:57 Laura - USB-C performance improvement; 7 MP camera front, 12 MP camera back. Stereo audio speaker system.

11:00 iPad Air starts at $599, available "beginning next month" -- October [ ]?

11:02 Tim announces New OS for iPhone, iPad, Watch, and TV available tomorrow. That's it, no one more thing.

I'm guessing the announcements disappointed most people, but I'll be buying the iPad Air and the Watch. I'll also be a subscriber to Apple One. I probably won't be buying the new iPhone, whenever it is announced, because the 2018 iPhone XS Max is doing just fine.

Watching the Watch Owners

Apple Watch: more useful but frankly not as beautiful.

Back in the day of men wearing suits I used a mechanical watch.

It didn't have the prestige of a Rolex or Patek Philippe, but the Omega was respectable enough for a bankers' meeting.

After nearly two decades of wear, the Swiss timepiece was put away in 2016, displaced by the less expensive but more useful Apple Watch.

Picture of inner turmoil: socks, gold watch, no pants (WSJ)

The COVID-19 lockdown has caused all of us to re-assess priorities. Were expensive watches acquired for social standing or personal enjoyment?

Strapping on a Patek Philippe for Zoom calls just to have friends and co-workers salivate over your bezel is gauche, but the timepiece habits of dedicated collectors have scarcely changed in the Covid era....A good watch is a capstone to any outfit, but these days, people aren’t wearing outfits—they’re grabbing whatever’s on top of the laundry pile.

The more possessions we have the more we have to worry about.

Apple: The Worst is Over

Despite the March plunge, Apple shares are 46.4% up from one year ago.

As a long-time Apple user and investor, your humble blogger has always taken a keen interest in its earnings reports. Today Apple reported quarterly sales and earnings of $53.3 billion and $11.25 billion, respectively. both better than recent forecasts lowered due to the pandemic.[bold added]

Apple’s services and wearables business proved to be the difference maker for the company in the March period, underscoring the value of its strategic shift from selling more devices to selling more services and accessories across those devices. Those businesses, which include App Store sales and AirPods wireless earbuds, surged 18% to $19.63 billion. Meanwhile, sales of the company’s legacy products—the iPhone, iPad and Mac—fell nearly 7% to $38.68 billion.

The 2020 new-iPhone's delays could have been much worse, so today's announcement counted as good news:

Apple is pushing production of this year’s flagship iPhones back by a month, which could delay sales of those devices from September until October or later. It also is cutting production volume for the four new models by about 20% as the coronavirus weakens consumer demand.

Apple's China operations have recovered:

Mr. Cook said that Apple’s operations team and suppliers have returned to work and production reached traditional levels by the end of March.

The information coming from China's government has been untrustworthy, but we do trust Tim Apple.

China has been 2-3 months ahead of the U.S. in battling COVID-19 outbreaks. If the timeline is replicated, we should be underway to recovery in June.

Headline - Bloomberg: Tim Cook Says Austria, Australia Apple Stores to Reopen in 1 to 2 Weeks

Perth Apple Store (Business Insider)

Tim Cook said that the company plans to reopen its retail stores in Austria and Australia beginning in the next one to two weeks.

Apple has one store in Austria and more than 20 in Australia.

Cook...said that he believes that “just a few, not a large number” of stores in the U.S. will re-open in the first half of May.

Exercises for the Older Demographic

Side-lying windmill (WSJ gif)

The WSJ lists exercises for one of its key demographics: The Best Exercises for Your 50s, 60s, 70s—and Beyond:

aerobic capacity, muscle mass, bone density, flexibility and balance all decline over time—and each requires some attention

Thanks to the Apple Watch's reminders, I'm diligent about aerobics but have given scant attention to weight training and stretching.

The exercises "can be done with little to no equipment," thus requiring no commitment other than one's time.

Strolling the Bay Trail

Redwood Shores homes butt up to the edge of the protected area. Oracle is on the right.

After the rains subsided, we walked the Foster City section of the San Francisco Bay Trail. It was only a two-mile stretch, but given our age and conditioning, it was enough to meet the daily exercise goal on our Apple Watch.

We've been jogging, biking, and walking the Bay Trail for decades. Thanks to environmental restrictions, the marshes look nearly the same as they did 30 years ago.

Someday, I imagine, the hundreds of thousands of people whom we make sit in cars, buses, and trains for hours each day will prevail and we Peninsulans will have to live with more housing being built. We will have to give up our beautiful swamp wetlands and bubbly home prices.

Until that day, however, we will stroll the Bay Trail.

Every Second Counts

Studying the manuals: who does that anymore?

Seven years ago I assisted my father when he acquired his first iPhone. Since then he's purchased an Apple Watch and an iPad, as well as upgraded to an iPhone 6 Plus, all without help from me.

Low speed and short battery life have been plaguing his iPhone 6 Plus. He had read about the significant changes Apple had instituted, and this time he wanted me to accompany him to the Apple Store at Kahala Mall.

The purchase went smoothly because we knew exactly what we wanted: the iPhone XR (a far better value proposition than the XS), a protective case, and AppleCare. Apple also gave him a $200 credit for his old iPhone.

What did not go smoothly was transferring the data from the old iPhone (Verizon requires a PIN, which few users have memorized, and dealing with Verizon took half an hour) and syncing the Apple Watch. In the end it all got done, and he's still getting accustomed to the changes (no home button and swiping up, facial recognition).

But it is much faster, and at 93 every second counts.

In Tim I Trust

The Apple Watch has already breached my defenses.

The inputs: a person's

internet searches,

driving patterns ("the number of trips taken, duration of trips, left turns versus right turns and time spent on the highway versus local roads"),

how he or she uses a computer mouse or touchpad.

the time it takes to fill out a weekly online health questionnaire.

The black box: artificial intelligence and big data.

The output: the probability that he or she has early-stage Parkinson's or Alzheimer's Disease .

The above is a trend sweeping health care: the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to help better diagnose and treat patients. [bold added]

A Duke University doctor working with Microsoft researchers sifted through data on the physical movements of computer users that came from millions of internet searches. Their study found links between some behaviors—such as tremors when using a mouse, repeat queries and average scrolling velocity—and Parkinson’s disease. They used artificial intelligence, or a computer analysis, to identify which of the metrics separated a control group from those searching for Parkinson’s disease symptoms.

It used to be that family members were the first to notice that something is amiss. The machines that we touch every day--cars, phones, computers--are now more accurate, quicker, and smarter diagnosticians than loved ones. But what about individual privacy?

I HOPE that Apple lives up to its standards.

For those who are too cautious to buy a TV that can watch them, or a smart speaker that monitors what they're saying, the promise of real-time health monitoring may the lure that allows the Internet of Things(IoT) into personal space.

As for me, it's too late. My Apple Watch, which has been tracking me for 1½ years, knows more about me than my doctor.

In Tim Cook I trust (because I don't have any choice).

Little Buzzing Gadget

January 1st, 10 PM. Red-move 650 cal.
Green-30 min exercise, Blue-stand for 1 or  
more minutes during 12 separate hours.

Though my daily "move" target on the Apple Watch is but 650 calories, I've only been achieving that goal once or twice a week.

Well, the page turned on the calendar, and I'm going to try harder. At 9:30 p.m. the red ring still was 150 calories shy, so off I went into the night. It was a pleasant-enough walk in the 50-degree weather, and I did close all three activity rings.

However, any notion that I am of independent mind was again disproved.

Little buzzing gadgets influence my behavior powerfully, a sobering thought in the New Year.

An Honest Day's Walk

The Apple Watch reminds wearers to stand up every hour because sitting on one's keister for long stretches is harmful to one's health. Even better than standing is walking, which for even short intervals confers significant health benefits:

Research showed that walking for less than two hours a week was linked to a lower mortality rate for all causes compared to being completely sedentary. Walking two and a half to five hours a week showed a 20 percent lower mortality risk.

Walking was also linked to specific types of lower mortality risks, for example, walking more than six hours a week was linked to a 35 percent lower mortality risk from respiratory disease.

If one finds an $11.50-per-hour wage acceptable, the perfect job from a moderate-physical-activity point of view is to be part of Amazon's army of seasonal workers. One blogger describes the experience: [bold added]

There were 4 jobs available: stowing, picking, packing, quality assurance (QA). Each job has it’s own pros and cons and physical challenges. I was a Stower. My job was to place items onto the shelves so they could later be picked after being ordered, and then packaged and shipped out. I averaged 5 miles of walking a day, plus a lot of lifting and repetitive motion with my arms. I didn’t do these other jobs, but from what I gather from coworkers; Pickers walk more than 13 miles a day, Packers stand in 1 spot all day, and QA has to kneel and sit a lot. Each job has a quota to fulfill.

At the cafeteria in Campbellsville, KY (daveandkathy2011)

A significant subset of Amazon's seasonal labor is known as CamperForce, workers who live in recreational vehicles (RVs):

Many of the workers who joined Camper­Force were around traditional retirement age, in their sixties or even seventies. They were glad to have a job, even if it involved walking as many as 15 miles a day on the concrete floor of a warehouse. From a hiring perspective, the RVers were a dream labor force. They showed up on demand and dispersed just before Christmas in what the company cheerfully called a “taillight parade.” They asked for little in the way of benefits or protections. And though warehouse jobs were physically taxing—not an obvious fit for older bodies—recruiters came to see Camper­Force workers’ maturity as an asset. These were diligent, responsible employees. Their attendance rates were excellent.

Bankrupt in 2008, they live in an RV  (Wired)

Seniors who are part of CamperForce likely have had some bad breaks; living in an RV and having to take seasonal work to supplement Social Security and Medicare could not have been the "golden years" they envisioned.

Many had seen their retirement savings vanish in the stock market or had lost homes to foreclosure. Others had watched businesses go under or grappled with unemployment and ageism. A larger number had become full-time RVers or vandwellers because they could no longer afford traditional housing—what they called “sticks and bricks.” They talked about how Social Security wasn’t enough to cover the basic necessities and about the yoke of debt from every imaginable source: medical bills, maxed-out credit cards, even student loans.

Nevertheless, the fact that they persist in trying to make a go of it is inspirational to this observer.

Apple Watch would approve, but I'm sure they don't care.

Different From Most People

Magic Island, Ala Moana Beach Park, in August

With apologies to Bishop Berkeley:

if Dad walks for 30 minutes, but the Apple Watch doesn't record it, does it count as exercise?

My father has been faithfully recording his daily walks using electronic tracking devices. He upgraded to--and was very pleased with--the Apple Watch when it was introduced in 2015. Last month it stopped recording his exercise minutes.

During my trip to Hawaii we spent nearly every day working on the problem. I deleted various health apps, reset both the watch and iPhone to factory settings, and met with a Genius from the Ala Moana Center Apple Store. No luck. The watch works in every other respect--when I talked to him tonight it still gave him only a 3 minute "credit" for 30 minutes of exercise (yes, I turned off the pause feature so that exercise minutes accumulate even when he stops to rest).

Given the mixed reviews of the new Series 3 Watch (WSJ: "Untethered... and Unreliable") most people might choose to wait for the next model.

Dad, 92, has a different perspective on time from most people. Subjective idealist George Berkeley would understand.

AppleCare for Watches, not People

Apple Store, Hillsdale Mall, on a Friday afternoon.

While at the gym I knocked the Apple Watch off a shelf onto a tiled floor. The crystal cracked, and the watch wouldn't turn on at all. I made a Genius Bar appointment for today.

Eric, the Genius assigned to my case, said that the repair would cost a $69 "deductible" under my AppleCare plan. I cheerfully proffered a credit card (Apple wouldn't take ApplePay, ironically).

The repaired watch will be shipped home in a week. The transaction took 15 minutes. Easy-peasy.

Note: a young college acquaintance recently likened Obamacare to "AppleCare for people". Sure, except for rising annual premiums and deductibles, disqualification from buying the policy if you either make too much or too little money (copy of your tax return, please), and not being able to go to the doctor/Apple Store of your choice, Obamacare and AppleCare are exactly the same.

My friend is a nice person, and her observation didn't deserve an argument from your humble crank. If only Obamacare were like AppleCare, we would have a lot fewer problems...

Unwinding and No Winding

For many functions the Watch needs an iPhone nearby

Spending a quiet Thanksgiving weekend at home and munching on leftover turkey was just what was needed to recharge the batteries.

Speaking of things that need recharging, I played around with a belated birthday present, a new Apple Watch. The watch will likely be another "indispensable" modern device (mobile phone, TiVo, GPS) that I originally didn't think that I would need.

(Image from personalfintech)

The ability to dictate short text messages using the watch is a boon---yes, one can perform the same function on the iPhone but it seems a lot easier to do that on the watch.

Besides, I can finally look like one of my childhood heroes...