Daily - March 22, 2026

Previously…

Today’s recap

I am not in the mood for writing these daily posts lately. I might need to take a week or two off.

Honestly, both days this weekend were forgettable. Saturday Wife had a hair appointment, so I was left to my own devices until after lunch. The gorls were busy doing their thing and the boy doesn’t wake up until the afternoon, so I did some random chores and watched YouTube. In the afternoon I worked on switching my phone. More on that below. That night we finished watching Total Recall and then moved onto Double Impact, two comfort movies for us.

Sunday we had a playdate scheduled for the gorls, but the other family had to cancel since one of the kids has a cold. I’m glad they decided to wait a week and appreciate them messaging ahead. No biggie, we will link up next weekend. The rest of the day I did nothing. I watched the NASCAR race because I didn’t know what else to do. Completed my normal Sunday chores and prepped for next week. Otherwise, sat around and did nothing. Tonight we will finish Double Impact and probably call it an early night.

Projects

I’ve been having intermittent issues with my Samsung Galaxy S10e. Sometimes the battery won’t charge, regardless of charger or cable. A couple of reboots will fix it. That is actually the lesser of the problems. Most days it is just sluggish. It won’t register some taps or will be really slow to recognize it. Think like tap, wait 3 seconds, then the action. Apps are slow to open and switching apps is slow. This is expected for a phone that came out 7 years ago. I replaced the battery in the Fall last year and I was hoping to get one more year out of it, mostly because I simply cannot afford to buy a new (to me) phone. But, it is misbehaving more than ever. I’m also super concerned about running my business from this device and that it stopped getting updates two years ago. I absolutely have to have my phone for doing service work and running something so out of date keeps me up at night.

While thining about what to do about my phone, I remembered a family member gave me their old iPhone 11. At a previous employer they issued me an iPhone and I used one for like 7 years, so I am well acquianted with using an iPhone. However, I never liked it and I’ve always preferred Android. But, if my budget is $0 and having a phone with up-to-date security is important, the iPhone 11 will get security updates for at least the rest of this year, maybe even 2027. Switching to this phone costs me nothing, except frustration and headaches, which is why I hadn’t considered it.

Then I sat and thought about what I actually use my phone for and if switching operating systems would impact me. I love Android and I’ve toyed around with so many random projects over the years. I have hundreds of retro games and a kitted out emulation config. I have a Linux desktop setup in pRoot. I’ve played PC games using Winlator. There’s a fully decked out Termux setup. I love Dex Mode. But, when I think about it, I don’t use any of this stuff. I’ve only used it in two scenarios: Once to set it up and random times to make sure it still works and keep it updated. I don’t use it. I don’t use any of this stuff. Another example is scrcpy. Its super rad to mirror my phone on a desktop and interact with the PC keyboard and mouse. I literally never use it other than the initial setup. I use multiple alternative app stores, like F-Droid, to get apps that aren’t in the Play Store. Never use them. I have NewPipe, but I never watch YouTube on my phone. Its the same with APK Editor, GitNex, DroidFS, and any of the other awesome apps folks make. I don’t doubt people use them and they are great apps. But, I simply don’t use them. I like the idea of having them around and what they can do. 99.99% of the time I only use my browser, Gmail, Calendar, Square, Tasks.org, and CoMaps. I never connect it to a screen, never play any games, never watch YouTube or my Jellyfin server, or even write notes on it. For any of these things I get out my laptop. I used to do these things, but that was before I started my landscaping company.

When digging into this, I realized what phone I use means nothing. I need a phone that can do basic stuff and still gets security updates. So I decided to give it a shot on Saturday. I went through the process of setting up the iPhone as if I was going to use it on the daily. Not gonna lie, there was a lot of cursing involved. I’m still not a fan of iOS and I don’t understand how it gets away with doing the same shit Android does. There are so many nags, so many little tricks it does to convince you to sign up for the myriad of subscriptions Apple has. Settings don’t make any sense. The fact that background image uploading for non-Apple apps still exists is mind boggling.

I know just a few days ago I was ranting on here about setting up an iPad. All those complaints are still true and they apply to this iPhone. Yet, I don’t have much of a choice. There is no way I can afford a new phone and this iPhone was free. I just have to hold my nose and get through it. I know some people are thinking, “Its a free iPhone! What are you complaining about?” Let’s get things straight. The iPhone 11 came out the same year as the S10e, so it is also 7 years old. The battery health is at 79%. It is not that much of an upgrade and I will still have to replace it sometime next year.

All of this has put me into a crisis. Not that I have to use an iPhone, but that I don’t use tech the same way I used to. I only use basic features on my phone. I never use my desktop. I put PostmarketOS on this Duet chromebook for my EDC laptop and it sits for so long in my bag unused that I didn’t even know the battery died. What was once a hobby for me is gone. I wrote about this not long ago and I thought I was mostly okay with it. But, I very clearly am not. Its not the fact that I’ve lost tech as a hobby, but that I’ve lost my only hobby. I do nothing else. If you read these daily notes you can see I have zero hobbies. I do nothing for fun. Nothing for me. I feel like I’m a shell of my former person. I’ve lost everything that was me. Not because I don’t enjoy tech, but because I do literally nothing but work and chores. I don’t find happiness in anything and I don’t know what to do. I know there’s folks who would shout a list of things, but everything costs money and I don’t have any. Hell, I can’t even eat food due to my teeth and allergies.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

Other than Wife and kids, my life is in complete disarray and I don’t know what to do.

Loose thoughts

These daily notes are on hiatus for the rest of March. I just need a break from everything. I need something to go right, I need things to get easier, I need to feel like being alive is a good thing. I’ll see how I feel in April.

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