Morning Cuppa

This was the first picture taken with my Blaze 4G smartphone.

I took this picture of my breakfast because I was amazed how much it looked like a cup of fancy espresso coffee.  It is not.  It is my hot farina aka cream of wheat.

I doctored it with cinnamon, sea salt, Truvia and Pumpkin Spice before adding the water and heating and water was absorbed by the wheat.  Then added a tablespoon of peanut butter and a half cup of applesauce and heated it again.  By then I could tell I had not added enough water at the beginning as it was so thick it accumulated on the stirring spoon in a big clump that would not fall off.  So I added a third of a cup or so of water and heated again.

When it was just the right thickness for my taste (which is on the soupy side) I filled the 16oz cup two thirds full.  Then put a big dollop of plain yogurt on top with a couple teaspoons or so of half and half around the rim,  Then I sprinkled flax seed and hemp hearts over the top and gave the pumpkin spice jar a few hard shakes over the surface.

I spent many hours again today with my fingers glued to the Blaze,  But I had three clear goals:

1. figure out why I still can't make or receive calls. Very frustrating since the main reason Ed wanted to do this for my birthday was so we could communicate more often during the day.  We've only connected via the phone three times and they were all cut off after a short time.  Most attempts don't even get through.
   
   It's still a mystery but I think we're closer to solving it. Two error messages keep getting are clues.  One saying the SIM card is not ready.  The other saying something about not registered on network.  And that last seems to have something to do with using the Wifi here for calling.
   
2. get ebook aps for all the formats my ARCs come in and get all my ARCs loaded on the Blaze.
   
   I have Kindle and Adobe aps now but still need to find an epub reader.  Still haven't loaded any books and am thinking will run into the same problem as with any other attempts to connect device to device.  Error messages.
   
3. the third goal was to gather all the aps etc. needed to create a blog post start to finish.  Learn to use the camera.  Find and learn a photo editor. Learn methods for sending the photo where I can access it with Blogger.  I was hoping Picasa but every time I tried I got error messages.
   
   I have Blogger and Google Drive, Gmail and Google Calendar.  And having listened to Ed rave about it for months, I got EverNote.  That might have solved the problem of getting files to where another ap or device can access them as it apparently syncs across devices and interacts with several common aps.
   
   I wanted to be able to make this post start to finish from the Blaze but finally had to give up and email the photo to my sister so I could get to it via my Gmail on the Aspire to download it.

But if I had succeeded in creating this post from the Blaze, it would have been much shorter--little more than a caption for the photo explaining: 1st pic taken with Blaze.  1st post created from Blaze.  Because it is still a challenge getting any text typed on those tiny touch keys.

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My Fingers Should Be Smoking Hot...

The CNET Review

...having been glued to my new Blaze smartphone all afternoon and evening, from the moment Ed tried to call me on his lunch break and it didn't work thru the Gmail texting trying to solve that and then after he had to go right on thru until he messaged me again when it was time for our evening vid chat. Just over six hours.

This is my birthday present from Ed.  He put me on his plan and had the phone sent directly to me via UPS.  It arrived yesterday afternoon but I didn't know until evening as my sister knew I was still working on that review that was late going up and then she forgot to tell me until I came out and opened the front door looking for it after Ed, via Gmail chat, had told me that was where tracking said it was.

Actually it was Mom who told me my phone was on the couch and Carri overheard from the other room and explained why she hadn't brought it directly to me and apologized for forgetting after I had the review posted.  That's a good example of ADD at work in a family of multiple attention issue sufferers.  Knowing the danger of distracting me before an important task was completed, my sister had my back when choosing not to interrupt me.  But then her own ADD played a role in keeping it from me for an extra two or three hours.

 Carri and her son both have official diagnosis of ADD.  She getting hers after her son got his in grade school.  She then saw many of the signs in our Mom and our brother and his eldest son and me.  My brother's son did get the diagnosis while still in  high school.  As for me, no official diagnosis, but the med nurse is augmenting treatment of my depression/anxiety issues with ADD meds since it does run in our family.  But since attention issues are also a big marker in depression and anxiety it would be hard to sort out where to lay the blame.

Then there are attention issues atypical of ADD like those Mom now has caused by her stroke--memory loss and mild aphasia among them.  And like the weird hyperfocus thing both me and my sister's son do in which we stay intensely focused on a single task, topic, worry or activity for hours and even days at a time. Which is what happened to me today once I got started learning my way around the Blaze--settings, preferences, aps, touchscreen maneuvers, touchscreen keyboard, menus, widgets and so on and on.

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