Noise from the Basement

Wow, we are already one week into 2017. The Christmas decorations are put away, the leftovers are eaten, and I have to get used to writing the correct year. So far it’s going well, although my brain had a glitch last week where I kept writing “2012.“It’s also the time where I keep getting asked what my New Year’s resolutions are. My standard answer has been “get more sleep and eat more food.” It’s not really a serious answer, because I am not a fan of New Year’s resolutions.

Merry Christmas everyone! We can hardly believe how quickly 2016 has gone by and that the new year is almost here.

So many things have happened that it’s going to be a challenge to summarize them all here without making you read for the next hour. But hey, challenges are fun! This year Ada got a brand-new full time job that she will start in the new year. She and her family also traveled to Hong Kong and China, and saw tons of interesting things including the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Chris worked hard on developing Goal Buddy (as did Ada!), as well as his other computer projects. He said that his big goal is to become a better communicator.

In Android you can schedule a notification that shows immediately using the NotificationManager.  However, if you are like me, awesome, and want to schedule a notification for a future date you need to use the Android AlarmManager.  The alarm manager lets you schedule an Intent to occur at a later date.

Quick aside, do you know what an Intent is in Android?  I kind of understand them but not as in-depth as I would like.  Please forgive any errors I make when I setup the alarm intent below.

You may have noticed that our smiling faces now accompany our posts. This is to prevent confusion among our long time readers who may think that Chris is joining the Edmonton Police (he’s not, Liv is) or that Liv has a behemoth garden (she doesn’t, I do). Also, so you can see our smiling faces.

If you are looking to do the same for your blog, you can follow the steps I took.

Using old technology is a bit like driving a Model T on the Indy Speedway. It can be a bit scary, but most of the time it is incredibly frustrating and everything seems to be zooming past at a mind-boggling rate of speed.

Case in point: I have a version of Photoshop from 2002. It’s a robust program that I know inside out. It can do a lot of things, and when it came out, it was pretty mind-blowing. But, it’s from 2002. That means it is 14 years old. In Computer Years, that is like comparing something from the Jurassic Period to Present Day.