For non-work browsing on Windows, I’m switching back to FireFox.

Doctor’s offices seem to be asking for coinsurance payments up front lately rather than sending me a bill after my appointment. I wonder what all the reasons for this are.

I just kicked Calendars 5 off my phone. iOS 13’s Calendar, NotePlan, and Drafts’s “Fantastically Good Event Parser” will have to do.

I really like the new watch faces that come with watchOS 6.

I’m upgrading my iPhone 7 to iOS 13.0. 🤞 I am debating whether to jump on the iPadOS 13.1 beta for my main iPad, a 2017 iPad Pro, so that I keep on the same major release across devices.

Cooler autumn weather means roasted chicken, chicken soup, and home-baked bread for my family. I’ve got the chicken and soup down pat, but I am re-learning how to make bread properly in our old bread machine. The first loaf rose too much and didn’t bake to my satisfaction.

I have the premium headphones and DACs that would make Amazon Music HD, it’s new hidef tier, worthwhile for me. But…I really don’t want to subscribe to anything other than Apple Music, due in large part to Apple Music’s integration with all my Apple hardware, which makes life easier for me and every member of my family. Also, I do not like how Amazon’s Prime Video app looks or works so much, and don’t want to invite that kind of friction in my music listening experience. I do applaud their direction into higher quality streaming, though.

🎮 I wonder why no one is saying much about “Oceanhorn 2” in regards to Apple Arcade. I don’t have early access to Apple Arcade, so i can’t find out myself, but that is the game I was most looking forward to out of all of them.

Matt Birchler posted his review of watchOS 6 today:

watchOS 6 is not a massive update to the platform, and you will likely use your watch in largely the same way you always have, but there are some new apps, nice usability updates, no real regressions, and frameworks that will allow third party apps to get better in the future. Basically, it won’t all change your life, but there is probably at least one or two things that you’ll really enjoy in this new update.

I am not exactly eager to upgrade my Apple Watch immediately, because it works just fine and I am happy with its behavior and performance, but I am looking forward to the new watch faces, which I think look nice.

I have had an Apple Watch since the original Series 0, but I have always been a little disappointed in the watch faces. I find it harder to read the time on the analog faces, based on simple things like the relative shortness of the hour hand, and, on many faces, the lack of numbers or larger hour markers on the dial. Also, I have long wanted a watch face with seven small complications and the time in the upper right corner, which would act as an app launcher for all the apps I use on a daily basis.

Apple’s new watch faces will provide some more visual variety, especially the California face, which will have various configuration options regarding the numbers on the dial. I do wish that Apple would allow you to change the shape and size of the watch hands, though. They are the same on every analog-style watch face.

📺 I didn’t think I would like “Good Omens” but I definitely do. It is funny and I really like the cast. I’m about halfway through it, so I hope it stays as amusing as it is at the start.

I think it is funny that many video game and tech sites are expressing surprise today that Apple Arcade is actually good.

My pie was good but the crust did not meet my standards. I absolutely nailed the Apple filling, though. My family loved it, which is the most important part.

Looks OK so far. It will be difficult to wait till after dinner to try my Apple crumb pie. I think I need to find an actual recipe the next time I make it, though. I’d like a different kind of streusel topping.

Today, I am trying to make the first pie I have made in a very long time.

I wish there was something like RSS for Apple Music. I want “show me everything new by these artists thatI pick in advance, automatically, and I don’t want to miss a thing”. I know Apple Music’s algorithm gets me most of the way there, but I think I still miss new releases quite often.

I have been working on a PowerShell and SQL-heavy project at work for about a week now. To facilitate PowerShell development, I installed and configured Visual Studio Code, which is Microsoft’s Electron-based code editor. I was not a fan of Visual Studio Code (hereafter called, simply, Code), due mainly to its lumbering speed when compared to Sublime Text, and somewhat, too, due to its brutalist design aesthetic.

I must say, after using it for PowerShell development and debugging, that Code has grown on my quite a lot. I can develop, run, and debug PowerShell scripts in an IDE environment, edit Markdown files, and can even run SQL commands against my SQL Server Express instance (though query running is really slow compared to SQL Server Management Studio). There are many, many powerful extensions—way more than I would have expected. Some of them let me do other useful things, like convert delimited files to Excel right in the editor, that just aren’t possible in Sublime Text.

There are some drawbacks, though. RAM use is extremely high—nearly a gig even when there is only one file open—and runs, for me, about ten times as much RAM as Sublime Text uses. Also, it is really slow compared to Sublime Text. Loading even small files takes a few seconds, and I have to wait for syntax highlighting to be applied to the files after they are displayed in the editor for the first time. Still, I am liking it, and am using it, more and more.

I have noticed that, since the Apple Card was released, the other credit card companies that I have cards from have substantially updated their apps, cribbing many of Apple Card’s features. From my perspective, the rising tide has raised all boats.

Per Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge:

After months of teasers and trailers, HBO has finally announced a release date for its upcoming His Dark Materials TV series, which is adapted from the popular fantasy book series by Philip Pullman. It’ll premiere on November 4th on HBO and a day earlier (on November 3rd) on BBC One in the UK.

This is something I am excited about—excited enough to subscribe to HBO again to watch—despite not absolutely loving Philip Pullman’s books or the movie version of The Golden Compass.

I expect to be getting a new, very powerful Windows 10 laptop soon. I plan to install Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, SQL Server Express, some kind of Git client, LastPass, maybe iCloud Drive, maybe FireFox, and nothing else. (Just watch: I’ll get into PC gaming somehow.)

It looks like somebody at TidBits forgot to replace the boilerplate text in one of their RSS feed entries today. 😆

Per Brian Seifert of The Verge:

The big new feature this year is an always-on display option so you can see the time without having to move your wrist, something that has been asked for since the Apple Watch first debuted in 2015.

Apple is going to sell boatloads of Series 5 watches to upgraders, due to the new, always-on display. That is the one feature—and pretty much the only feature—I wish my Apple Watch 4 had.

Apple is also permanently dropping the price of the Series 3 to $199, matching the lowest sale price on that model we’ve seen

Apple will also sell boatloads of Series 3 watches at the new, lower price, too. Apple is wisely going down-market with their older watch models, just like they do with the older iPhone models.

Why is Amazon Cloud Drive turning off all third-party app access? Is that service being folded? I’m glad I did not go all in on it a few years ago.

I will try to watch the Apple keynote later and get a hint of what my next iPhone will be, next year. I’m still rocking the 7 Plus.

I feel really good about the work-related code I wrote today for loading a database (via T-SQL and PowerShell), but I concluded, at the end of the day, that I have to rearrange all the components, and basically rewrite it, tomorrow.

As great as git is, every six months or so I find a way to completely mess up one of my repositories. 😤