Thomil's Random Ramblings

As some readers of this blog may have noticed, I recently switched back to using Android after nearly a decade of running a purely Apple-based tech setup. For nearly the entire preceding decade, my choice of technology had been dominated by my experiences during my three and a half years as an employee of the Cupertino-based fruit flingers. However, for the last two years, iOS and the iPhone have felt strangely stale, and when foldable phones started getting more traction, first with Motorola’s reboots of its famous RAZR line, an then with Samsung’s Z Flip and Z Fold lines, the time seemed right to return to the Android fold. And yes, that pun was intentional. This wouldn’t be my first rodeo, mind you. My first two real smartphones had been Android devices, the Motorola Milestone and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S, as had been my first tablet, the ASUS EeePad Slider , the latter carrying me through my first year as a part of the Church of the Disciples of St. Jobs, and very much a device ...

If you’ve been following this blog for a bit, you’ll know that I recently moved back to using an Android phone after over a decade safely ensconced in the embrace of Apple. This move has been a lot less problematic than I’d feared, and yes, a blog post on that topic is in the works. However, this move also meant that I would have to say goodbye to my trusty Apple Watch 4. Now, to be honest, a replacement of that particular watch would have had to happen anyway, since it was five years old and, as I wrote in my notes for this review, absolutely beat to hell. But the change of platform forced the issue. The only question now was which smart watch to go for, and this quickly turned into a two-horse race between the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 and the Google Pixel Watch 2. Both have their pros and cons, and I’d ideally have preferred a product directly from the company that also produces the underlying OS, which in the case of WearOS would be Google’s Pixel Watch 2. However, in the end, I opte...

When I got into the taxi to JFK back at the end of my visit to New York back in 2011 , I had no reason to believe I’d ever manage to go back. It was meant to be a once in a lifetime experience for a guy who at the time was stuck in a dead-end call enter job and with questionable finances. Well, I doubt that you’ll need me to tell you that a lot of things have changed since 2011, both for good and bad. So when my employer invited me, together with my entire team, to attend the first in-person kick-off event since January 2020, and let it be known that this event would be in New York, you better believe that it was quite the surprise. Now, in retrospect, I wasn’t as excited as one might expect at such a trip. For starters, my mental health had suffered for much of the last quarter of 2023 and I was, and at the time of writing still am, finding it difficult to really get excited about anything. The second reason was less emotional and more pragmatic. The event was scheduled for early Janu...