Joy's totally nuts about exercise classes and once found herself trapped in a place where the music blasted so loudly that the instructor had to scream over a microphone. She should have left immediately.
The tiny hairs in your ears lay flat when assaulted by noise. Like good soldiers, they bounce back -- if they're not insulted too often. After a while, they can't bounce back anymore and you have hearing loss.
A loud rock concert -- about 110 decibels-- can cause permanent hearing loss after just 5 minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An NFL game or a noisy bar gets up to 90 decibels of sound and will cause hearing damage after a couple of hours. If you want to find out how loud the neighborhood is, download a decibel measurement app to your phone or tablet, such as the free Sound Analyzer. It said our place was almost as quiet as a library.
Bob is a big fan of earplugs and always wears them to the movies. But what are the best ones? For concerts, Reviewgeek.com recommends Etymotic ETYPLugs for $14 from Amazon. (We figure those would also work for noisy bars and football games.) For airplanes, there's EarPlanes, which come in a set of three for $14. For yard work, there's EP4 Sonic Defenders, also $14.
INTERNUTS
ASlobComesClean.com gives good advice, slob-to-slob. Why listen to someone who was born organized? Dana White coins words like "deslobification" and "procrasti-clutter," to guide you in your decluttering adventure. Joy prefers her book, Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff. But the blog is a good place to start.
OnlyInYourState.com is a website for roadside attractions. We like the dazzling dragon at the carousel museum in Albany, Ore.
"Ecuador Legalized Gangs, Murder Rates Plummeted." Search on that phrase to find a fascinating article. Gangs started acting like community service organizations, adding women and children, when the government legitimized them.
NEW WAY TO GET YOUR EMAIL
It's frustrating to label an email as "spam" only to see it come back again and again. So we love the new blocking feature in the free Edison Mail app for your Android or iPhone.
You don't need to change your current email address or service to use it. Just sign in with your Gmail, Yahoo or whatever service you use. It works with all the major providers. Like Gmail, it uses a "bot" or robot to comb your mail to fit it into categories. But the ones it adds are handier: packages, bills and receipts, travel, entertainment, subscriptions and security.
To get rid of a pesky sender, tap an email. Then tap "block." All mail from that source will skip the inbox and go directly to the trash from then on. Though you could set this up in other services like Gmail, it's more work than simply tapping the word "block."
Edison Mail also has a handy "unsubscribe" feature. Tap the hamburger icon, which is three stacked lines in the upper left. Then tap "subscriptions." Tap "unsubscribe" next to any newsletter you don't want to receive any more.
Since launching three years ago, Edison Mail has sent more than 10 million flight notifications (such as letting you know if the plane is on-time or delayed, and if the gate has changed), tracked shipping for more than 90 million packages, and organized more than 500 million receipts.
TO SCREEN OR NOT TO SCREEN
One thing we love about Google phones, such as the Pixel 2 and 3, is their Call Screen feature. Until Joy learned she'd been screening out Bob's doctor.
Rumor has it that it's about to roll out to Motorola, Nokia phones and other Android One phones as well. It works like this: A call comes in, and you're not sure whose number it is. You tap Call Screen and callers are asked to state their names and the nature of the call. You see a transcript of that as they're talking and can tap to answer or hang up. The odd thing is, caller ID doesn't always kick in. It didn't for Bob's doctor.
He told us that he'd called a couple of times and that he should probably let the call screening feature take his name next time. His number is on our contact list, so there should have been caller ID, but there wasn't. Call Screen screened out our friend Jay too. So we may just stop screening for awhile.
FREE CALLING
When our niece first got an iPhone, she didn't pay for cellphone service. Whenever she was in range of Wi-Fi, she made a free call or went on the Internet for free.
Most people have a data plan, which costs money. You use it when you're out of range of Wi-Fi. But if you didn't turn on Wi-Fi calling, you might be using your data plan when you don't need to. We don't remember turning ours on, but it was on when we checked.
On an iPhone, go to Settings then Cellular then Wi-Fi Calling and toggle it on.
On an Android phone, go to Settings then Network & Internet then Advanced. On our phone, we tapped "Configure SMS Calling," then noticed it was already on. These settings vary, however, depending on the Android version you have. If in doubt, search on the phrase, "how to do Wi-Fi calling in Android 7," or whatever version of Android you have. To find your version, tap Settings, About Phone, and scroll down to Android Version.
Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at bobschwab@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.
Business on 04/13/2019