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Abigail’s spring break happened last week. I am blessed and fortunate enough to have spent the week with my daughter!

Saturday April 4

We hard boiled and colored eggs for Easter
Abigail had a sleepover with our neighbor Ana

Sunday April 5

Easter with Family – egg hunt at home! The easter bunny hid a LOT of eggs in the back and front yard. One magical moment for me was finding one of those eggs buried deep in the flowers of my wildflower garden

Monday April 6

We spent the day in San Francisco. Took the Richmond Ferry (the absolute best way to travel!), went to Chinatown, saw supa-cool art and the time capsule they opened in the downstairs of the Transamerica Building, had a brief but bad experience at a tea-house in Chinatown, had lucious and amazing food

Yes, those are CDs, AOL is rolling over in its grave

Tuesday April 7

We did an Escape Room in the morning, had handrolls at the new Japanese supermarket in Emeryville, Tokyo Central, then got a wild 40 minute demo at the Apple Store for the Vision Pro!

Wednesday April 8

Wednesday was do nothing day. It was glorious! We did nothing!
But for dinner, Megan and Abigail made Rib-eye, slightly smashed potatoes, and beans. They came out great!

(It was originally going to be “Make every meal from scratch” day. I got excited, suggesting we make a peanut and butter and jelly sandwich from scratch: grinding peanuts, making jelly, and making bread. I honestly love that idea! But Abigail was turned off by that same idea.)

Thursday April 9

Thursday was Driving Without GPS Day!

We took off, driving down San Pablo, delivering some packages to post office-like places, including the Lucky’s supermarket, for an Amazon return. At Lucky’s we found a Pokemon vending machine but were disappointed that it was all sold out. In the 5 minutes we were there, 2 people came up to it, checking to see if it had cards. Apparently, the machine ISN’T sold out, it only makes cards available every half-hour or so! I feel like I could SEE the poke-addiction in the one guy’s eyes who told us the Target down the street had cards. He whipped out his phone and, in 2 taps showed us a photo of the display. 2 taps! That display was close to his heart!

After that, we were off again and found ourselves at Happy Donuts!

Then down the road and we wandered into Fenton MacLaren furniture. We had a blast trying out the couches, oogling their fabulous (and pricey but worth it!) cabinets, dressers, and whatnots. We left with smiles on our faces.

Then, continuing down San Pablo, we found ourselves at Oakland Ice Skating Ring! We got excited about maybe skating but found out the public skate session was about to end. So Abigail thought, “Ooo! They have a fancy cotton candy making machine!” And I thought, “Ooo! Let’s have some real food instead!” and we walked the neighborhood until we found sushi!

That gave us the energy to go back to the Oakland Skate Center. So we wandered around, looking at the skaters. But when we got near the rink…. oooo!! It was cold! We asked the staff if they had winter clothes we could borrow, putting them on over our shorts and T-Shirts, but no! So it was time to go home, promising to return some day soon.

Friday April 10

Stuff happened on Friday, I just don’t remember what!

Saturday April 11

Saturday had Megan and Abigail visit Costco, some chill time in our new RV in the rain, and a sleepover with Leia! The sleepover had it all: a great dinner, microwave chocolate cake, hot tubbing, making with Abigail’s new Cricut, staying up late, and everything!

On my Mac, I just figured out how to make it so you can swipe-back to a previous page, or swipe-forward to the next page using the trackpad. Here’s how:

On your Mac, go to System Settings | Trackpad | More Gestures.
Set “Swipe between pages” to “Swipe with Three Fingers” (no, “Swipe with Two or Three Fingers” doesn’t work. Nor does “Scroll Left or Right with Two Fingers”)

By setting this, you may have broken some other trackpad gestures on the same page. Fix ’em and move on and now you’ll be able to swipe-back and swipe-forward in Obsidian, as well as other apps (I’ve only tested Chrome so far)!

For me, now I’ll have to use 3 fingers instead of 2, and it reverses the motion of what I am used to for swipe-right and swipe-left. And now I have to do a 4-finger swipe instead of a 3-finger swipe to slide my virtual windows. I certainly hope I’ll be able to get used to these changes!

Screenshot

I’ve been struggling with this one for a while but I finally have a solid solution!

I found an app that makes my Google Calendar alarms more prominent! The problem being that the standard Google Calendar Alarm on my android phone is a simple “Ding”. Changing that sound to be longer isn’t any good because then I’ve got a long-playing alarm that I can’t turn off! What I needed was a loud, dismissable alarm-style notification.

The beautiful Buzzkill Notification Manager app does it! It uses very few permissions, is as crazy-straightforward as it can be, and, most importantly, it works!

It keys off of Google Calendar Notifications. So you’ve got to make your notifications correct. Here’s an example:

Screenshot

Before Buzzkill, I had been using Calendar Alarm Clock Reminder by zzappbros for several years. A while back, it started misbehaving, I could tell the app “ring n minutes before every event”. But I couldn’t tell it “ring when the Calendar notification rings” (like what I do just above). This mostly worked for me, but not really.

I recently tried the ZenLendar app but there was a snafu with permissions (that’s been resolved), but in the meantime, I found Buzzkill and I’m happy with it!!

Two pluses is that Buzzkill requires few Android permissions and it is made by a reputable presence on the internets, Sam Ruston. Thanks, Sam!

The next adventure is to make it so Google Calendar Alarms can be created from within Obsidian. I know it’s possible with some plugins but I’m not there yet. (I’ve become a big fan of Obsidian!!)

At Games Night at Juku Co-Working Space, I played some games. Joel and I did a warm-up with “Flip 7”, which everyone knows is the greatest card game of all time. I mean, it’s right there on the box.

Flip 7

Actually, it plays a lot like “War”, good for the 8-year-old set. But hey, it was a nice start for the gaming night.

Then we tried Erik’s copy of Splendor Duel

It was nice. A little different from regular Splendor. Our game took a while… 1 1/2 hrs or so. That might be because I play slow and run at the mouth. But it was fun and a release from my daily thoughts. Thanks.

Here is my letter to Expedia, trying to get a refund on my $150 car rental.

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Thanks for looking at my case!

My beloved aunt, Ernestine McCarrent passed away on Tuesday.

She was on this earth May 5, 1941 to March 10, 2026

Ernestine Diane McCarren (née Ferranti), of Jupiter, FL, formerly of Secaucus, NJ and Jessup, PA, passed away peacefully on March 10, 2026. She was the beloved daughter of the late Ernest and Ida Ferranti.

Ernestine enjoyed a long and successful career in pharmaceutical advertising in New York, where she was known for her professionalism, creativity, and dedication. A lifelong runner, she also loved the opera, enjoyed playing golf, and was a devoted New York Yankees fan.

She is survived by her sisters, Dorothy Howard of Nashville, Tennessee, and Marlene Sonko of Hackettstown, New Jersey, as well as her loving nieces and nephews.

Family burial services to be held in New Jersey at a later date.

This weekend, Abigail’s school had a Pancake Breakfast. I showed up early, and stayed late volunteering for it. Here’s a fun vid that Mike Senese made of the event. He also championed the event. Thanks Mike!

Summary: I tried to book a car at Routes Car Rental. They tried to more than double the price of the rental AND they sucked up 2 hours of my time. Now, they refuse to refund the $140 I paid for the failed reservation.

Also see my previous blog post Routes Car Rental Scam

Details: 
I used Expedia to reserve a car rental through Routes Car Rental at Fort Lauderdale. Expedia charged me $140.06. See reservation

At the car rental location, the Routes agent said she needed to charge me $240 more ($60/day) because I was late to pick up the car. but I have an audio recording of our conversation where the agent acknowledges that I had been waiting in her line for over an hour to get the car. (start listening at 30:00, she admits my wait at 35:00) Note that the 1 hour line was a single other customer that was arguing with the agent for an hour about the exact thing I ended up arguing about! Listen:

(It is legal for me to make this recording because the video conference station I was standing at had a sign saying that I may be recorded. Since I stood there and gave permission to be recorded, both sides of the conversation are allowed to be recorded)

The Routes agent also said she would charge me $43.96 ($10.99 a day) for me to decline the collision damage waiver. In their insanely long terms and conditions, that stipulation is definitely not present! Go ahead and read the contract here (right-click open it properly) (I highlighted “CDW” for you). The contract does say that it will charge an insane $99.96 per day for a CDW. It also says under the “Insurance” heading, “Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) may be declined if your credit card offers equivalent coverage. This option is only available when the rental is paid at the counter using the same credit card that was used for prepayment on the website”, which I did.

The Routes agent also said that I would not be charged (at 37:00 in the recording) though listening to it, her response is full of double-speak, spoken with a smile.

• I witnessed 3 other potential customers get dicked around in the same way! (Listen to the other people in the background of my audio recording, above!)
• I ended up spending 2 full hours at the rental office, waiting for and then talking to an agent. (notice how my audio recording is over 40 minutes long! That was just part of my conversation with the agent!!!
• For reference, I went back to Enterprise car rental in the airport and spent a total of 10 minutes waiting for an agent and being served, and was charged $435 for a fine car. Enterprise’s Expedia price was $350 but I was so glad to just get out of the airport, I had no interest in nickel-and-diming them!

The Routes agent told me that she handled all of the calls for Routes Car Rental, NextCar, Mex, and Advantage Car Rental. I assume these companies are as shady as Routes.

TL;DR: Routes Car Rental and NextCar Car Rental in FLL (Fort Lauderdale Airport) are scammers. The $160 car rental that I reserved on Expedia.com was going to be $405 because of a bunch of junk fees. And they wasted 2 hours of my time trying to scam me.

Boring details:

I arrived at FLL airport and waited 10 minutes for the shuttle bus.

At the car center, there was a counter with maybe 5 stations but none were manned. There were two booths in the corner with video screens.

There were two couples ahead of me. In the booth on the left, they disagreed with the agent a few times, then at the 30 minute mark (!!!) they got disconnected. They repeatedly kept trying to reconnect but each time, the agent couldn’t hear them (in retrospect, I think that was just a tactic). Later, at the 2 hour (!!!!!!) mark, as I was leaving, I chatted with them and they said they were busy trying to get their money back and get out of there.

In the booth on the right, I overheard that the rate had gone up because he was late to pick up the car. To be sure, it was 7:15 am and he was scheduled to pick up the car at 6 am. Incensed, he abandoned the process; he told me he was going back to the airport to get a car.

I got into the booth at about the 1 hr mark. Mind you, there had been only 2 people in front of me and there were 2 video chat terminals! (I had just gotten off a red-eye flight and what should have been red flags were only showing as yellow in my brain)

The rental process was going smoothly, if slowly, until 20 minutes into the process. The agent told me that I would be charged extra because I was late to pick the car. I explained that I had not been late, I had been waiting just outside the booth for over an hour. “My flight arrived at 5:53am, my reservation was for 6am. And I was standing here at 6:30. I know that no one else has taken my car because I’ve been standing here the whole time!” She wouldn’t budge. She also told me I would be charged $10.99/day for using a credit card. I stared at her as hard as I could through the crappy video chat connection. My $160 rental was now $405. I patiently and kindly explained that she was full of shit and I’d have to leave if this is how it was. Not budging one bit, I walked out, having wasted 2 hours of my life.

On my way out, I chatted 2 other groups that had been waiting in this dingy satellite rental center. They were both having big problem. I bailed and caught the shuttle bus back to the airport!

At Enterprise car rental, there were about 15 people in front of me and 4 agents. I got worried but then the line was quick beautifully quick. I was in front of an agent in less than 10 minutes, and I was sitting in a great car in another 10. They quoted me $435 for the car (just $25 more than the scammers) and I consented immediately! I had some discount possibilities but I was just so happy to get a car quickly, I had no interest in nickel and diming them!

I came across an Android app that requires all of the permissions, made by someone with a small reputational footprint. How am I supposed to install it without legitimately worrying that I am doing a dumb thing?
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I’m looking for an app that will ring a loud alarm whenever Google Calendar rings its (quiet) event alarm. I’ve been using the paid version of Calendar Alarm Clock Reminder by zzappbros but it doesn’t work perfectly. I can’t get it to ring alarms at the right times. When I tell the app to ring when the when Google Calendar Event Reminders ring, it erroneously rings 5 minutes before the event instead.

In this thread, the author of ZenLendar promoted his app. The app requires full permissions and I can find scant info about the author.

What’s a guy to do? I’m not giving my entire phone over to a random author.
I wrote to the author asking for reputation info. What else can I/we do?