Looking back to a post I wrote in
February 2020, reminded me
about the recent failure of my
Smart Watch. The same watch that I’ve been using,
since that article, on a daily basis to record my movements and track my
fitness goals.
So, what happened, and what
has failed?
Mrs PBT’s and I had a lie in yesterday (Friday). For me, the day
marks the beginning of three days of
R &R, because whilst my 3-day work
week ends on
Wednesdays, I have to get up reasonably early, in order to take
the lady of he house to her workplace. That place happens to be a scaffolding
company, based on a nearby farm. Her one day a week work routine, is something of
a token gesture, and before I’m accused of being patronising, she’d be the
first to agree with me.
She would also admit that her part time job gets her out of the
house, stops her going completely stir-crazy, whilst allowing her to reconnect
with the outside world, even if it is just for one day. The
9.30am start still
means a lie in for us both, and for me departing the house at
9.15am, is definitely
more preferable than leaving the house at
7.45am, in time for an
8am start at my own place
of employment.
Back to the narrative. After arising shortly before 9am
yesterday, I made my way downstairs, as usual, to make us both a cup of tea.
Returning back to the bedroom, with said refreshing and stimulating liquid, I
glanced at my watch and was mildly surprised to notice that my step count was
precisely zero. Perhaps, like me, my Garmin Forerunner 45 was taking time to
get going, so I thought little of it, apart from placing the timepiece on charge,
because the battery indicator was advising a recharge was necessary.
After a fairly hectic schedule the day before, I didn’t have
a lot planned, apart from catching up with this blog, and sorting things out
for our forthcoming cruise. The weather was dull and overcast, but I was still
looking forward to a walk, after breakfast. When I fastened the watch back around
my wrist, the step count was still showing zero, even though the power indicator
was showing the unit was fully charged. That was when the “fun” started.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most tech-savvy
of people, and I will also say that smartwatches aren’t the easiest of devices
to programme or adjust. There are five buttons, located around the periphery of
the watch casing, and whilst one is just a light, the others allow access to a number
of other functions that allow the user to scroll up and down. They have to be pressed
in the correct order, sometimes holding one down whilst pressing another. This
isn’t exactly intuitive, and there have been past occasions where I have ended
up accessing the completely wrong part of the built-in programme, and I think
this is what happened when I attempted to re-engage the step-counter.
Unfortunately, rather than re-connecting the step counter, I
ended up by disengaging the heart-rate monitor, so I now have a smartwatch where
two of the most important functions don’t work. Not smart at all, and despite
various online guides and
You Tube videos, I have not been able to rectify the matter.
Mrs PBT’s had already told me to stop obsessing about the issue, saying that it’s
just a watch, and to a certain extent it is. However, both functions, although
more so the step counter, form part of my daily routine, giving me something to
aim at each day, as I head off on a walk, or make a decision to leave the car
at home and go on foot instead.
The ultimate solution, of course, would be a factory re-set, but as I don't know how to do that, I shall leave things until
Monday, and consult one of my work
colleagues. The person in question, is not only very tech savvy, he’s also a smartwatch user as well – a
Garmin model too, albeit a higher spec model than my own. He’s a keen cyclist too, and uses his watch to record his various cycle rides, so if he can’t help me,
then I don’t know who can.
First world problems, of course, but still a very real one,
and for someone determined to remain fit well into the next decade, a rather important
one as well.
4 comments:
Paul,
"the recent failure of my Smart Watch" reminds me that I tend to avoid like the plague anything prefixed "smart". So not only no so called smart watch but also I have no so called smart phone, no so called smart gas or electricity meter and avoid as much as possible so called smart motorways including the M6 near me.
i know what you mean, Paul. We have persistently refused so-called smart meters, for both gas and electricity, and after breaking down on a "smart" section of the M25, the same applies to motorways. Thankfully, in the latter case, I was able to "limp" my vehicle along to a relatively nearby service station, and the car was recovered from there.
The Smart Watch, is just a gadget, admittedly a useful one, and fortunately, my work colleague was able to reset it for me, as I knew he probably would.
Paul,
I wasn't meaning to suggest that there was necessarily anything wrong with a gadget or two and realise that my Railcard and my bus pass are each "a small device with a particular purpose".
I've only broken down on a motorway once, nearly twenty years ago and not surprisingly driving for work which has accounted for about nine-tenths of the miles driven since passing my test aged thirty. The advice is to get behind the barrier by I was on the elevated section of the M6 near Great Barr and the thirty foot drop could have been fatal.
When motorways were being designed during our infancy it was blatantly obvious that motor vehicles at high speed ( unlimited until the end of 1965 ) needed a proper continuous refuge.
Those designing so called "smart motorways" must have guessed that their danger would result in the project being discontinued within twenty years but they were cheap and that's all that mattered. They would surely have removed the central crash barriers too if that could increase capacity by one third.
Paul, it seems incredible now, that when motorways first appeared in the UK, there were no crash barriers on the central reservation to prevent cross-over collisions. After checking, I discovered they began to be fitted in 1970, with a "lightening" project, to install them on all UK motorways, carried out in 1972-3.
They've been around for much longer than I thought, and I suppose one could argue, traffic was much lighter 50+ years ago.
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