What's everyone up to right now?

[emjay]

Sixty-two hours and counting nicotine free thanks to an anti smoking drug called Champix. The stuff is a godsend and has made this pretty painless so far. I have a very good feeling about this that I'm going to be able to keep it up, and already starting to dream about what I'll do if I do... would like to maybe join a gym... something that always seemed pretty pointless as a smoker.

Awesome, emjay! I hope thinks continue to go well for you!

I wish my neighbors would quit.

Thanks CM

I think it's going pretty well... I'm just very gradually exposing myself to triggers again. I actually kind of feel like I've been 'reborn'... I went out for a long walk the other day... when it was about 45 hours gone... and felt that I could smell things better - which I would guess is an effect of it... smell the grass and the flowers etc... and that was nice... so now it just feels like I'm going to be gradually reacquainting myself with everything in my life but learning to do it without smoking... so it feels like the beginning of a journey... but a positive journey... all to play for

[The Industrial Atheist]

I'm satisfied with my HD 7. But rooting it made it much more useful.

I haven't found any info on rooting the HD 10, so I don't know.  Otherwise it would be even more of a 'win'.

I think there are youtube videos. I think at heart it's just changing some settings, but you also have to change something so amazon can't see that you're installing stuff. I think. My HD 7 was something like that.

What I have now is, as far as I can tell, an Android tablet. I think it did take me some time to root my HD7 properly. Without rooting it there's a while lot you can't do. The Amazon app store has Hulu and Netflix and Sling and stuff like that, but it's not always great for out of the ordinary stuff.

Good luck, Jormungandr, whatever you choose.

[Astreja]

Relaxing between work and ballet class, and researching airfares to Reykjavik for a vacation next spring.

[Angrboda]

Loaded up on Amazon movie rentals on sale for Prime day.  Rented Annihilation, The Shape Of Water, and Darkest Hour for $3, and Jackie Chan's The Foreigner for $2.  

Four movies for $11 and I've got 30 days to watch them.  Better than going to the theater!

I just joined Prime a couple of days ago... well decided to pay to continue past the free trial... after years of toing and froing over whether I wanted it... trying to find some... any... reason to make it value for money to me (since I don't care about fast delivery etc). In the end what swung it for me is the Twitch Prime and a workaround I've found for the biggest problem I had with Prime Video... it's quality. I buy/rent a fair amount of stuff from Amazon Video but always buy it in SD since that's about all my Internet connection can handle. Prime Video on the other hand doesn't offer the choice between SD and HD and is just automatic, trying to send the best quality your Internet connection can handle... and it thinks my internet can handle a lot more than it can So that's always put me off Prime because every time I've tried a free trial, anything I've watched on Prime has been juddery because of that, with no way to change the settings (ie I'd rather a consistent SD experience than an inconsistent and juddery HD experience)... but I found a workaround... which you might find helpful as well if you have any similar problems... since you mentioned you also have a Roku; anyway from the home screen there's a hack basically that allows you to override the bit rate of the machine... changing it from its default of automatic to whatever manual amount you want to limit it to. So now any time I want to watch a Prime video I just do that before I start... set it to something like 1.5mbps... and I think that's solved the quality problem... but it would be much nicer if amazon would do it themselves... as they do on other prime video apps, just not the Roku's. Anyway, in case you're interested... cos alongside that it might be useful for other things... the hack is; from the home screen press home five times, << three times, then >> two times. Just thought I'd mention all of that cos you and me seem to have a lot in common ... you having a Roku, liking Amazon Video, and I saw you mention Everclear a while back and I didn't think I'd ever find anyone else who'd even heard of them... that was a trip down memory lane... so thanks for that

Thanks for the tip, but my throughput is plenty for streaming. I just renewed with Comcast and made sure to get a tier with enough bandwidth for streaming (60 mbs). That's also the reason I went with the Roku Ultra rather than the stick, because my wi-fi is not particularly good, so I'm using direct wiring via ethernet rather than wi-fi. I definitely sympathize, though. One of the days of my free trial for Sling TV and Playstation VUE, streaming on the computer, both were hiccuping and frequently rebuffering. Fortunately, SlingTV allows you to set the bitrate manually. I switch to Playstation VUE in August for the duration of the football season, and to the best of my knowledge, there is no such option there, so I may use your tip yet. Bookmarked.

[emjay]

I just joined Prime a couple of days ago... well decided to pay to continue past the free trial... after years of toing and froing over whether I wanted it... trying to find some... any... reason to make it value for money to me (since I don't care about fast delivery etc). In the end what swung it for me is the Twitch Prime and a workaround I've found for the biggest problem I had with Prime Video... it's quality. I buy/rent a fair amount of stuff from Amazon Video but always buy it in SD since that's about all my Internet connection can handle. Prime Video on the other hand doesn't offer the choice between SD and HD and is just automatic, trying to send the best quality your Internet connection can handle... and it thinks my internet can handle a lot more than it can So that's always put me off Prime because every time I've tried a free trial, anything I've watched on Prime has been juddery because of that, with no way to change the settings (ie I'd rather a consistent SD experience than an inconsistent and juddery HD experience)... but I found a workaround... which you might find helpful as well if you have any similar problems... since you mentioned you also have a Roku; anyway from the home screen there's a hack basically that allows you to override the bit rate of the machine... changing it from its default of automatic to whatever manual amount you want to limit it to. So now any time I want to watch a Prime video I just do that before I start... set it to something like 1.5mbps... and I think that's solved the quality problem... but it would be much nicer if amazon would do it themselves... as they do on other prime video apps, just not the Roku's. Anyway, in case you're interested... cos alongside that it might be useful for other things... the hack is; from the home screen press home five times, << three times, then >> two times. Just thought I'd mention all of that cos you and me seem to have a lot in common ... you having a Roku, liking Amazon Video, and I saw you mention Everclear a while back and I didn't think I'd ever find anyone else who'd even heard of them... that was a trip down memory lane... so thanks for that

Thanks for the tip, but my throughput is plenty for streaming. I just renewed with Comcast and made sure to get a tier with enough bandwidth for streaming (60 mbs). That's also the reason I went with the Roku Ultra rather than the stick, because my wi-fi is not particularly good, so I'm using direct wiring via ethernet rather than wi-fi. I definitely sympathize, though. One of the days of my free trial for Sling TV and Playstation VUE, streaming on the computer, both were hiccuping and frequently rebuffering. Fortunately, SlingTV allows you to set the bitrate manually. I switch to Playstation VUE in August for the duration of the football season, and to the best of my knowledge, there is no such option there, so I may use your tip yet. Bookmarked.

Cool... I hope it helps sometime down the line There are other hacks that do different things BTW... I found a forum, I think it was a forum, discussing all of these (where I got this one from) and there's about (or at least) four or five others, that work on similar lines of a sequence of button presses, and bring up different hidden screens/menus on the Roku. I haven't tried any of the others, and I don't have a link to hand of the site where they're referenced... though I might look for that tomorrow, but just letting you know they're out there, in case you wanted to explore other ways to tweak your Roku

[Joods]

Sixty-two hours and counting nicotine free thanks to an anti smoking drug called Champix. The stuff is a godsend and has made this pretty painless so far. I have a very good feeling about this that I'm going to be able to keep it up, and already starting to dream about what I'll do if I do... would like to maybe join a gym... something that always seemed pretty pointless as a smoker.

You can totally do this!

[Angrboda]

I haven't found any info on rooting the HD 10, so I don't know.  Otherwise it would be even more of a 'win'.

I think there are youtube videos. I think at heart it's just changing some settings, but you also have to change something so amazon can't see that you're installing stuff. I think. My HD 7 was something like that.

What I have now is, as far as I can tell, an Android tablet. I think it did take me some time to root my HD7 properly. Without rooting it there's a while lot you can't do. The Amazon app store has Hulu and Netflix and Sling and stuff like that, but it's not always great for out of the ordinary stuff.

Good luck, Jormungandr, whatever you choose.

I decided not to spend the money. I still have my Asus Transformer Infinity, and it will suffice. I have little occasion to use a tablet, so this will have to do. It would be nice to have a nice, fast tablet, but it's not a priority.

[emjay]

Sixty-two hours and counting nicotine free thanks to an anti smoking drug called Champix. The stuff is a godsend and has made this pretty painless so far. I have a very good feeling about this that I'm going to be able to keep it up, and already starting to dream about what I'll do if I do... would like to maybe join a gym... something that always seemed pretty pointless as a smoker.

You can totally do this!

Thanks Joods Surprisingly I actually do think I can do this... but that's a new experience in itself, having confidence in this. I just fear it's too little too late... I had to have some tests done and I'm supposed to get the results for that on Friday... on the understanding that if it was bad they would need to do surgery but they couldn't do it... ie it would be pointless to do it... unless I fully quit smoking, hence my current efforts. On top of that I'm worried about my throat as well, which feels very weird and I need to talk to the doctor about. But on the plus side if I do have any of these things, I would think they'd all be best served by me quitting smoking, if nothing else other than not to exacerbate them... so it's worth doing no matter what the results.

[Joods]

Quitting smoking is the best thing you can do. And it's never too late. I quit after 36 years of smoking.

[Fireball]

You can totally do this!

Thanks Joods Surprisingly I actually do think I can do this... but that's a new experience in itself, having confidence in this. I just fear it's too little too late... I had to have some tests done and I'm supposed to get the results for that on Friday... on the understanding that if it was bad they would need to do surgery but they couldn't do it... ie it would be pointless to do it... unless I fully quit smoking, hence my current efforts. On top of that I'm worried about my throat as well, which feels very weird and I need to talk to the doctor about. But on the plus side if I do have any of these things, I would think they'd all be best served by me quitting smoking, if nothing else other than not to exacerbate them... so it's worth doing no matter what the results.

My youngest brother contracted laryngeal cancer, and was treated via surgery (first), then radiation and chemo. I seriously hope you do not have to experience that regimen.