April 6, 2016 – Our RV Adventures

Daily Archives: April 6, 2016

April 6, 2016 Uncategorized

Staying Alive!

Cue the BeeGee’s.

One thing I noticed about Verizon’s XLTE upgrade in this area it that it has apparently spilled over to my 3G aircard. Where normally I get around 1.5 Mbps day in, day out, now on XLTE, I’m pushing 3 Mbps, usually around 2.75 and up. Very Nice.

When I mentioned still having a 3G aircard, several readers wanted to know why I haven’t upgraded to a 4G model. The reason is simple.

My aircard, which dates back from 2007, still has unlimited data. And boy, do I need it.

Here’s my usage for this month.

Yes, that says 45.160 GB!

Now my usual usage is 25 to 30 GB for the month, but we’ve streamed 3 or 4 hour long TV shows this time, so it does add up. But I reset in 2 days, so it’s all good.

I came across an app a couple of days ago that solves a problem that has irritated me for a while on my Galaxy S5 and Tab 4. I hate it went I’m using an app, like Google Maps, and the screen shuts down on me. I’ll be using my phone to navigate somewhere and the screen goes black, so I have to reactivate it. Over and over.

Well, Stay Alive!, a free app, fixes that for you. Yes, you can just set your screen timeout for longer, but only up to 10 minutes, and then it stays on for everything whether you need it or not. Which doesn’t help your battery life.

But Stay Alive! takes care of that problem by letting you pick what apps you want to keep the screen on. For that me, that’s Maps (Google Maps), Sigalert, and Torque. And when you close the app, Stay Alive! turns off and goes to sleep.

Google Maps you know about, and Sigalert lets you check out the traffic data and cameras for major cities around the country, and Torque lets you monitor engine parameters using a Bluetooth interface like this one.

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Installing Stay Alive! is super easy, but the setup can be a little confusing. After you open the app initially, all settings are done from the Notification dropdown menu. Like this.

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Then when you tap on the Stay Alive! tab, it brings up this menu,

that lets you configure the app for the programs that you want to Stay Alive.

A great app.

Let me know if you have a problem setting it up.

Recently when we needed more laundry detergent, rather than getting our usual Tide, we decided to try Persil, the new one that’s being advertised. Actually though, it’s only new here in the US, and it’s been the #1 seller in England for a while.

And here in the US, it has dethroned Tide as the best liquid detergent, as determined by Consumer Reports. However I’m not sure we can really tell any difference, since we don’t really get that dirty, but give it a try and check it out for yourself.

Thought for the Day:

Check out this neat animation about how deep the ocean really is.