Moto X4 and Project Fi

I took advantage of one Black Friday deal this year, for a new phone and carrier service.

My old phone was a Samsung Galaxy S5, which was starting to show its age. I got it last year as a refurbished sale, which was cheap but I knew it wouldn't last for long. It's been acting up recently, with battery issues and needing reboots regularly. As my carrier, I was using H2OWireless, a budget outfit which only cost me about $10/month. It mostly worked, but I had occasional connect troubles, especially when traveling. And I had to very carefully watch every MB of data to avoid high usage charges, which got annoying sometimes.

Google has a fairly new phone service offering called Project Fi, which seems to cover exactly what I'm looking for. It's a bit more expensive at $30/month, but has much better coverage and significantly more data allowance. They credit your next month if you don't use all your data, which I expect will be the case for me more often than not.

I don't need a high-end phone, so I went with the budget option that Google recommends: the Moto X4. $400 with a Black Friday sale giving $100 credit on the Project Fi service. The reviews of the X4 are good for a budget smartphone - some small issues, but nothing that will affect that way I plan to use it.

The hardware arrived today and everything's working as expected so far. I'll be testing the new phone and service out over the next few months, but I don't expect any significant issues. And if anyone decides to try out Google's Project Fi as a service, let me know and I'll share a ref link that gives us both some credit.

Car Shopping

After my 2010 Toyota Yaris lost its battle against a deer, it was time to go car shopping.

I don't enjoy vehicle shopping. To me, a car is a tool to get from point A to point B, with as little fuss as possible. I don't much care about looks, high performance, fancy interiors, and just about anything else that a salesman is trying to sell the customer on. My selling points are reliability and economy, which means I'm about the lowest commission that they're likely to see. But, it's a necessary evil, so I made the rounds.

That deer did me no favors, but at least the timing wasn't too bad. Now is a pretty good time of the year to be looking for a new vehicle. The dealers still have some 2017s sitting around that they're wanting to get off the lot, so they can show off the 2018 models. And everyone has Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Year-End deals getting off the ground.

There's no lack of places to look for a car in my area of West Michigan. Within a 15 minute drive, there are at least 7 different dealerships. Drive another 10-15 minutes and you can double that. In a couple of days, I stopped in at a variety of brand dealers: Chevy, Ford, Honda, Toyota, and Kia. Plus a couple of used lots. And looked at just about every local dealership's online listings.

I basically had three choices. One, buy a new car: most expensive but least risk of problems in the near term. Two, buy a lightly used vehicle from a dealer: a bit less expensive, but slightly more risk of problems. Three, buy a cheap older used car: almost free after my insurance payout, but highest risk of problems cropping up.

In the end, I decided on the lightly used option. I really didn't want to deal with the maintenance issues of an older used car, so that eliminated option three. I wouldn't have minded a new car if the right deal had come along, and there were some fairly decent deals available. However, there was a 2017 Chevy Cruze with 30k miles on it at the dealership right down the road that still beat the new car prices by several thousand dollars. A good chunk of the manufacturer's powertrain warranty remaining, only one previous owner, and certified by the dealer service department. The only downside was that the previous owner was a rental car agency, but the dealer certification and limited warranty that goes with it mitigates that concern.

The new Cruze, at home in the garage.

So now I'm mobile again, hopefully for many years with minimal maintenance. And no deer encounters.

Byron Center Fine Arts Boosters Craft Fair

There was a craft fair today held at the Byron Center high school. I heard about it from a friend, whose wife had a display booth for her artwork.

A herd of wooden reindeer, one of many craft items available. Managed to snap this in a rare moment when no child was trying to climb on them.

I showed up expecting a few dozen exhibitors, probably set up in the gym, and hoping I could do a bit of Christmas shopping. This was a gross underestimate. The first sign was the completely full high school parking lot - I had to park on a nearby road and walk in. There were not a few dozen booths in a gym - there were over two hundred booths set up in two gyms and lots of hallways and other areas. Hundreds of people crowded through the halls and around every booth. Clearly this is a major event!

All the cars. They had a shuttle to a nearby middle school for even more parking.

All kinds of craft art was on display. Paintings, wood carvings, clothing of various kinds, pillows, and so on. Several booths had collections of rock pieces. There was a group selling "yard yahtzee" with giant wooden dice, and several with various versions of the cornhole beanbag-toss yard game. And food, of course, from kettle corn to bake sale tables. It was not hard to fill a few spots on my Christmas list!

One of two gyms full of people. Not to mention all the hallways.

The fair benefits the Byron Center Fine Arts Boosters, which is a volunteer organization that raises money for fine arts programs like theater, band, and choir. I'm always happy to help out those kinds of causes, though it does sadden me a bit that it's necessary. Personally, I'd be happy to pay a bit more in taxes so all schools could have this level of support for these kinds of programs, not just the districts that are wealthy enough to support organizations like the Fine Arts Boosters.

I did not purchase the Batman pillow-and-blanket combination. But it was tempting.

My visit to the craft fair was a fun couple of hours, and useful in the annual holiday shopping quest. I'll be keeping it in mind for next year, too.