Dublin Randoms 5 – Pretzels, Visitors, Rainbows

TLDR – The kids new Microsoft badges were printed, found some rainbows at work, cooked pretzels with the kids, new fitbit, and other bits

Pretzel cooking

Michelle was in our room working on a writing project and I was trying to keep the terrorists from harassing her. Figured a baking project might entertain us for a bit so I thumbed through the kids cookbook and found pretzels. We setup our baking station on the shorter table in the kitchen and made some dough, let it sit for half an hour then shaped up breads into looking pretzels and other shapes, baked, and ate.

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Maddex rolling some dough

In the end the pretzels turned out to be, OK. Would not call them “amazing the kids NEED to make them again”, but they are not something we’ll never make again. They were ok enough the kids ate most of them. We’ll try again another time and see if we can do better.

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Finished pretzels.

Badges are in

It’s almost take you kids to work day at Microsoft in the states. We don’t have anything like that outside of Redmond, which is not horrible because the event is a bit too much madness for us. But, we’ve been trying to get the kids badges every year.  Not being in the states being able to pick the badges up made it a bit challenging this year, but there is always a way. Simple solution, Wes helped out and picked them up for us. He’s flying out to visit in October before we fly home and will deliver them to the kids then. In the mean time he sent us a picture.

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Michelle with Bangs

Picture posted with it’s own heading, without comment or explanation.

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Rainbows at work

Walked into the building at work on a dark rainy sunday morning and found a flowing rainbow playing in the digital waterfall. Looked pretty cool, so, took some pictures

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New Fitbits

I’ve had a Fitbit Blaze since they came out a few years ago. In the last month or so the battery life has been on strong downward journey. It went from a week between charges to about 12 hours between charges, which was making me sad face. I finally broke down and ordered a new Fitbit Versa to replace my blaze. I think the battery life has to do with water damage – not sure, but it’s my feeling.

My thoughts? – Overall I’m pleased with the new Fitbit. I have a few feelings on the plus and minus’s –

  • The negatives – how the band attachs to the device seems awkwards from the apple watch or blaze. They use pins, which are not easy to use, and the band hangs on the device at an angle which feels odd. Really liked the Blaze band setup. Oh ya, the charger is huge, like magnitudes larger than the watch. The app crashes while adding aps / watch faces to the device. Crashes could be IOS beta, not sure who to blame
  • The positives – The touch response is much better than previous models, it auto detects when I run, the app store is well populated with about a billion watch faces compared to the apple watch, notifications feel better, it had zero issues syncing with both my apple and android phones at the same time.
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Snazzy LCARS watch face on my fitbit. I change the face a few times a week right now

Shortly after I picked up a new Fitbit Michelle broke the band on her Fitbit Alta HR. Shocking to both of us it turns out you can change the bands on the Alta – we never knew. She ordered a number of bands of amazon and is happy with the new look.

Why do I wear a fitbit and an apple watch?

  • Fitbit – Fitbit tracks my sleep natively, has a web interface to view my data – both things apple watch does not do, and Fitbit has 9 years of my movement data. I’d like to keep on adding to that same 9 years of data and will do something with it in another five or six years
  • Apple watch – Apple watch has a button to find my phone, which is my number most used feature. Plus it does some great notifications and makes following directions mega big simpler. Mostly It’s to find my phone.

Pope on a Rope

The Pope came to visit Ireland for the first time since the 70’s this weekend. Got Michelle and I chatting and reading // Back then it was illegal to divorce, being irish meant you were catholic, and the gays were outlawed. Now it’s legal to divorce, church numbers are down all over, plus actual legal separation of church and state is happening in goverment, lastly it’s legal for the gays to exist. So legal, our current Taoiseach (Irish for Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar, is openly gay.  – I call these things progress.

No we didn’t go into town to watch him parade around; that would be madness. Entertaining to me about the visit was the Pope Merch at the local shops

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Get your Pope hats and shirts

Some More Pictures

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Making Pretzels
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Khaleesi practicing with her scooter
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Walking home from the shop with foods
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Close up look at the rainbow glass
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Was not able to capture the floor colours well
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Kids finding all of our 20 cent coins to take to a coindozer
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Coindozer machine found in the Newcastle airport

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