Tag: Fitbit

Thirstda’s Theme Music

My phone was ringing and dinging with a plethora of text messages. I clicked on the app to see WTF was going on. My phone tried calling people. Sighing, I rolled out of bed. 6:48.

Sunshine was again championing the blue summer sky. 58 F now, it’d be 84 F later. A thin line of nascent white clouds trouble the sky blue from being as rich and pure as possible. I tried again to check messages but they wouldn’t come up on an app. My sister, though, corresponds with me on a separate app. Her summaries detailed an overnight firefight in The Mom Saga between Mom, her boyfriend, his family, and my family.

I exercised to engage my muscles and get blood moving in the right direction and consulted my Fitbit for the results. Fitbit hadn’t registered anything. Some scrolling revealed that my Fitbit was fritzing. WTF.

Thirstda, June 26, 2025, was not off to an inspiring launch. Maybe coffee and perusing the news would help. Meanwhile, I would reboot my Fitbit and phone. I mean by that, turn them on and off. That’s often modern technology’s rudimentary fixes: turn it off and back on. It failed this time, leaving me with some WTF mumbling to my caffeinating self. Almost in parallel, I went to the net via computer to search for help. Blank pages came up. Really, WTAF?

Finagling of computer settings were engaged. Results showed. Turning off the Fitbit and turning it on again a few times, I drank coffee and considered the failed results. With coffee in, brain neurons engaged in what was going on.

Hey, they said, did you notice that the time is going backwards on the Fitbit?

Whaaat? I answered. Yes. Each time I turned the FB off and on, the time it showed went further back.

The Neurons said, This has happened before.

I’d tried snyncing the Fitbit with the app. That failed. The app kept telling me that an update was available. But It also told me that the update was already installed.

Well, hold on, partner, The Neurons said. The app is probably hung.

Of course.

Bringing the app up, I worked a hard shutdown on the phone. Yep, that fixed all Fitbit problems.

Thank god for coffee.

Tethered to my computer and technological issues, The Neurons are huddling with songs about freedom. The morning’s hours have sprinted away. Solomon Burke ends up singing “None of Us Are Free” in the morning mental music stream. A line resonates with me: “If you don’t say its wrong, then you say it’s right.” Yep. That’s how I view those Trump voters who say, “I didn’t vote this. I don’t support it.” You spoke with your actions. “The truth is shining bright right before our eyes.”

On into the day I go. Hope you have a better one. Cheers

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Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

My good ol’ Fitbit, which isn’t that old, actually — I’ll need to look that up — stopped working again.

First sign: at 9:15 this morning, it declared that I’d walked over 18,000 steps.

Had I been sleepwalking, I wondered? Chasing the cats, or saving them from a bear, cougar, or other beasts? Not that I recalled, and I believeI would have remembered that. So, must be something else.

Okay. I added resetting the Fitbit to my list of things to do but it was still nominally functioning, until, ‘lo, in the coffee shop, I tapped it for the time and got nada.

Well, I muttered in my mind. That sucks.

But what was really irritating was that, just a little later, as I wrapped up my reading day, I tapped my Fitbit to check the time.

Idiot! Habits are really difficult to stop.

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

I find myself part of a new breed, one that looks at the activity tracker on their wrist and then taps it to reach a specific piece of desired information or function. I think I’ll call folks like me ‘wrist-tappers’. Maybe just tappers.

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Two Small DIY Projects

Two minor issues cropped up this week. It’s embarrassing to even call them projects, they were so small.

The first was about a closet light switch off the master bedroom. It’d become unseated or something. The switch is a Decora rocker type, and the rocker wobbled when pressed and sometimes didn’t turn on the lights. More than once, it seemed like the rocker was about to fall out.

I bought a new unit, turned off the circuit breaker, removed the plate, and then the switch. The wires were disconnected from the old and connected to the new, faceplate restored, circuit breaker put on. Ten minute job. Voilà, success. Most of that isn’t due to my prowess but the standardization and refinement the housing industry has brought to modern light switches. It’s a DIY effort that’s satisfying because it’s so dang quick and easy.

The second effort involved my Fitbit Charge 5. I use the alarm each day. It recently ceased working right. Although it would show the alarm as on for ‘Today’, it wouldn’t go off but instead would show that it was now set for ‘Tomorrow’. For the alarm, tomorrow never came.

I set to work on it. The first thing I did was turn the Fitbit off. Next, I turned it back on. Voilà. Fixed and done.

The day’s final project was replacing the HVAC filters. We have two returns with filters. One is in the master BR. It’s smaller but hard to change because the bedroom has a vaulted ceiling and the filter is up toward the top, above an overhang. The other is in the hall by the HVAC controls. I’ve taught myself to do these at the end of any month with an equinox or solstice in it. That’s about three months. Having clean filters is good for our health because the filters get nasty and quit filtering, and also helps keep the furnace and air conditioner from straining.

Between the three efforts, it took less than twenty minutes.

Victory is mine.

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Just Wondering

A recent television ad extolling Fitbit and Google’s virtues suggests, what if the two entities combined? I wondered, would they be called Goobit or Fitle?

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Sunday’s Theme Music

The Neurons stuck “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” by Chicago into the morning mental music stream. I think the group may have been the Chicago Transit Authority when the song was recorded. It’s from 1970, when I was fourteen, instilling thoughts about what year it is and how old I am. The song was delivered when I looked to my wrist to check my Fitbit for the time. ‘Lo, it wasn’t there. Apparently, the FB faked me into believing all was well. Then its symptoms returned. I charged it and charged it again but had to remove it from my wrist because it was going off every three seconds — notification — which becomes v — notification — intrusive to m — notification — processes.

Yes, the Fitbit is no more. I thought about searching for DIY repairs. Had done that tentatively. Maybe later. Maybe I’ll purchase a new one. I don’t know. It’s too early to talk about replacing it. Plus, there’s the irritating issue of how to dispose of this technology piece without contributing to further environmental damage. Yes, it’s small, but it all adds up.

Sunday, July 31, 2022, finds us shrouded by smoke, sent to us by the McKinney fire a few miles away on the California and Oregon border. Truly nasty smell. You can’t breathe it, so keep the pets in and close up everything. Mask up when you’re outside or suffer the consequences.

The cats were very cool about being kept in. When I responded to their request to go outside with an explanation about what was going on with the heat and smoke, they replied, “Oh, that is very distressing to hear. Thank you for your concerns about our health, Michael. We appreciate it.” Then they groomed themselves and went to sleep.

What do you think we should call that fairy tale? Because that’s what that story was.

No, the cats took being kept inside like Mel Gibson screaming for freedom, constantly and persistently, hour after hour. OMG. The floof people insisted that they’re free animals, meant to roam the outdoors except for eating, having bowel movements, drinking water, and snuggling with humans. Oh, and playing with toys. Oh, yeah and catnip — mustn’t forget catnip — and looking out the window, observing people like a spies following troop movements.

Today’s sunrise was at 6:03 AM and sunset is at 8:31 PM. It’s presently 26 C outside. The high will ‘only’ be 99 F, which is much closer to our usual average. It’s supposed to cool for the rest of the week, dropping to 90 at one point. Of course, the hot weather has generated thunderstorms galore, adding to the wildfire threat, given the looonnnggg drought and the dried-out land that we’re enduring.

Stay positive and test negative and take care of yourself and your people and animals. I’ll try to do the same. Coffee? Yes, stat. Enjoy the music. Cheers

6

It’s Alive

Three AM?

An insistence buzzing breaks my sleepwall. As consciousness is dragged forward, so comes awareness that this noise is arriving from the Fitbit on my wrist. Yes, I’m one of those who sleep with a bit on my wrist. Use it to wake up, check time, a quick splash of illumination when necessary, and such matters. But why at whatever broiling dark thirty hour was it going off?

Don’t know. Checked the digitalware and found it cycling through its functions. Perhaps it’d gone crazy from heat or being with me. It’s a Charge 2, an old device that’s not even supported any longer. I’ve worn the bugger for years, going through fasteners and bands.

A smart person would have plucked that sucker off their wrist and gone back to sleep. But I ignored it, leaving it on my wrist, as it came up and buzzed every three seconds, announcing, “Notification” like it was telling me nukes were inbound or fire was consuming the house. Eventually, no surprise, all those notifications sucked the life right out of it. It was totally dead when Tucker awoke me for Sixes, his affectionate term for a six AM feeding. He was meowing, “Get up, get up, time for sixes.” I put the FB on a charger. My wife started her day shortly later. I told her about the Fitbit and asked her to wake me when she left for her exercise class because I was going back to bed.

“It’s probably dead,” she said. “You probably need a new one. It is old.” Then she promised to wake me.

The final exchange left me wondering about electronic lifespans among devices and their ratio compared to human years. It probably varies to some degree between, say, microwave ovens and iPhones. I decided, without real reason except how often and quickly our tech marvels expire, that one human year equals ten digital years. Your ten-year-old electronic device is 100 in digital years. JMO.

When I checked on the Fitbit an hour later, it was fully charged and alive. My dashboard showed no data lost except for about two dark hours.

All’s well, then, though, looking at it, I could use a new band. This one looks fifty years old. Makes sense. I bought it four years ago.

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New Technology

I just read of a new technology that I could actually use. The latest activity trackers, like Fitbit, have a new optional app called Closer. It works like this. If you and your spouse or partner, or whomever, have activity trackers with Closer on it, the systems can be bonded. Closer can then be activated by cycling through apps, then pressing on it when it’s on your device face.

What’s it do? Well, the bonded devices will show an arrow to where the other is located. The closer the two devices are, the larger and greener the arrow will become. If you’re moving away from them, the arrow turns red and small.

Ad campaigns tout several uses. One, if you’re in a store like Costco or a mall and don’t know where the other person is, just call up Closer and follow the arrow. Two, you can find the other’s device if they’ve misplaced it.

Pretty neat, huh? I know it’s a lot like the apps and trackers used to find keys and phones, but I just made all of that up. Closer doesn’t exist, as far as I know. Consider this an early April Fool’s Day entry.

Cheers

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Fitbit Mystery

My wife was preparing for bed and removing her Fitbit. It was a few minutes after midnight. She said, “There’s no way you’re going to have more steps than me today.”

A weird thing to say a few minutes after midnight. The Fitbit resets at midnight.

She showed me her steps: 69,697.

WTF?

The next morning (yesterday), she was at an even 70,000. “Fix it for me,” she said. “I tried syncing and I couldn’t.”

Well, I logged in and looked at her settings. Everything was good. She hadn’t synced, her account said, since last November. I synced it and searched for why she may have had a surge. Nothing came up on the net and the Fitbit working fine today.

Just one of those mysteries, I guess. I do have a theory and I’ll check that later.

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