Thursday November 19th 2020

Today’s weather continued the downward trend established yesterday. There were more clouds and stronger winds today. The new wrinkle in the mix was occasional showers coming in waves off the Atlantic. With one exception most of the rain storms were brief nuisance level storms. It just made outside activity a potentially wet event.

I final got around to replacing my cell phone today. Since sometime in the summer of 2019, I’ve known this day was coming. I did a lot of waiting for the next new phone to be released last year, then waiting out the delays resulting from the pandemic this year. It got to the point in the last few weeks that using the phone off the charger was almost impossible. The battery and battery management system in the phone were not stable. The phone might work for an hour or two off the charger or it might shutdown a couple of minutes after being disconnected from the charger.

Over the last week I made a serious study of the available phones and reviews on the internet. This afternoon I ventured to the nearest good size Verizon store in Melbourne Florida. I departed with a new Google Pixel 5 phone and a new Mifi device for connecting by other devices up to cellular data when I don’t have campground WiFi available. Other than the cost of the new devices, I think I’ll be paying less for more data service going forward. I know what they quoted, but when all the taxes and surcharges get added in I’m not sure what the actual bill will read. Even if it’s a little higher, I’ll be happy with the higher Gigabyte caps in the “unlimited” plans I’ve taken on.

Back at the campground I spent an hour or so getting the new phone up and running. I chose not to transfer all of the stuff I’d put on the old phone over time. I have backups of the useful items. Instead I’ve downloaded new versions of the applications I use the most. I’ll add a few more of the Apps I use occasionally, but many of the ones from my old phone won’t be returning. This is good way to clean things up a bit.