In the last post I posted about learning woodworking and making some rattles.
Today I made another one, this time a whale shape. This is on my etsy page as well as FB marketplace. The first three are also on FB here.
Here’s the video itself:
If you are interested in purchasing you can find it at my etsy store.
I’ve been trying to teach myself woodworking over the last few months. So far have made a desk, a turntable “cabinet” for my record player and albums, a couple of dice towers and these baby rattles.
I’vee been using Life360 for close to ten years. I don’t remember how long exactly but started using it when my second child was a teenager, and she just turned 26. It’s been extremely helpful in past years not to snoop (although that’s what we were doing with our kids) but to keep tabs on my mom as well as the rest of the family.
It was useful in conjunction with the two home automation software packages I use, HomeSeer and HomeAssistant. I had quite a few automations set up based on location. Arrive home, at night? The front porch light turns on and the front door unlocks. Stuff like that.
Unfortunately, Life360 has chosen to block third parties from accessing its data and will not be providing its paid users with any sort of api to use either (I am gold level and pay $10 a month for the service).
Going forward I am going to be cancelling my subscription once I find an easy, viable alternative. May cancel it right away. With the free account you can have two “places” and it gives crash detection (something built into our phones now anyway).
I am limited in what I will be using but a few of the alternatives are listed below.
Home Assistant App– Does the same thing. I would miss being able to track in real time but it’s available for iPhone (my mom) and Android (the rest of us). The problem with HA is that it means I either must get it installed on everyone’s phones and get the setup right or expect them to do it. Probably not happening.
Bark. More of a parental control app which is not what I want. It is available for both ios and android. Don’t know if they have an accessible API.
Tasker. Android only. Difficult for new end users to set up, I would have to do the work and hope that nobody disabled it by accident. I already use it and, in the past, have used it for location based stuff for my personal phone, probably will continue.
Monitoring ip addresses on my network. I have done this in the past as well. It works well for automations when they are already here and connected so can’t have automations run quite as early as with Life360, but I will use this as well.
If anyone has any decent suggestions, please let me know. Open to alternatives.
I took a little time and fixed it so that the BBS telnet page is working again and can be logged into from the web page. Not sure why it wasn’t working but it is now…
Some of the fonts I am using don’t seem to display properly, I may consider going back to the old ones soon.
An example of what NOT to do in tech support.
I tend to update my phone at least once a year, sometimes more. I’ve gone through all the Pixels except the 4, the Oneplus 7 and 8, Note 3 and 10, all the Google Nexus family, a couple of different HTC ones, the Droid Incredible and Incredible 2, couple of different blackberries, couple of Windows phones. One thing has been consistent across most of the Androids. I’m an avid Rom flasher (it’s like getting a new phone 10+ times a year).
The problem with that is that I must back everything up and restore it. I have gotten fairly good at it but it still takes several hours each time.
One app has been a major headache every time I load a new Rom or get a new phone. Life360. I have one of their premium memberships and I use it with my home automation stuff as well, so it’s important. Any time I have to set it back up, it’s always been a bear to log back in. Usually, I can finally get it to log back in after 20-30 attempts though.
This time, I have tried to log back in 200+ times since March 31st and have been unsuccessful. I contacted Life360 through a DM on Twitter on April 2nd:
So, I went ahead and opened the ticket. I described my issue of not being able to log in, told them I had followed their FAQ. I tried over Wi-Fi and mobile. I tried in multiple locations. I uninstalled and reinstalled. I cleared the cache and storage. I disabled the ad blockers on my home network as well as on my Pixel 7 Pro. I reset my password twice. At two different points in the process I even got a text message from Life360 telling me welcome back, etc. You get that when you’ve made a successful connection, which obviously I had not.
Anyway, I get this initial email
Hey there,
It looks like you forgot your password. Let’s get you a new one.
If you didn’t receive the email to reset your password, please check your spam folder to see if the message is there.
If you didn’t receive the SMS text, make sure your carrier plan is set to allow SMS text messages.To reset your password, please follow this link- https://www.life360.com/forgot-password
*Watch this short video on How to Reset Your Password: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tckK_sWbFLg
If you still need help, please respond with the email and phone number on your account and we will be happy to help.
Let us know if you tried, but did not receive the password code through SMS text or email.
Thank you,
Life360 Customer Care
So, I immediately emailed back “This has nothing to do with having forgotten my password.
Email is [REDACTED], phone is [REDACTED]”
No response after that until I sent them a DM on Twitter again.
Next email from Life360:
Hi Richard,
Thank you for reaching to Life360 about new device log in. I appreciate your patience and understanding on this matter. I’d be glad to help you with this.
To effectively assist, may I know what device are you using now?
Your swift reply is highly appreciated.
Have a safe day,
So of course, I email them back immediately
“I am using the Pixel 7 Pro
Thanks
Richard Miles “
I got a response quickly the same afternoon
Hi Richard,
Thank you for reaching Life360 Support about your account. I can assist you with this.
I would suggest to perform an app refresh.
Kindly follow this steps:
Note: Do not uninstall the app
Open your phone Settings app
Scroll down to and select Apps
Select Life360
Select Storage
Tap Clear Cache
Tap Clear Data
Power your phone off for 5 minutes
Open and Log back into the Life360 appAfter refreshing the app, you can reset your password. Kindly click this link
If the issue persists, please provide me a screenshot of the page that you are stuck.
Looking forward to your response.
Have a safe day,
Even though I had reset my password twice already at that point I went ahead and did as he instructed because sometimes it’s not the steps, it’s the ORDER of the steps that matters. I was in tech support at one point, and I know it’s important to go through with this stuff. Of course, that didn’t work. I emailed them back:
“Did as you instructed. Got the results in the screenshot. I did attach the logcat to my initial ticket.
Thanks
Richard Miles “
They emailed me back:
Hi Richard,
Thank you for your response.
I can see to your screenshot that unknown error has occurred. May I know if you have a stable internet connection in your area?
For the meantime, I suggest that you restart your Wi-Fi connection then, try resetting your password again with this unique link that I’ll be provided.
Please let me know if this works.
WTF. Okay, so I reset my password yet again for the 4th time. And yes, my internet connection is great here. Not only that but I had tried it on multiple connections and networks. I shot them back two emails:
“I have reset my password again using the link you provided. This is the 4th password reset I’ve done.
Restarted wifi connection. Internet connection in my area is fine. I have done this on two different wifi networks as well as connected only to mobile data in three different locations.
Same results, unknown error.”
“Also, it’s obvious it’s making a connection because if I enter the WRONG password it immediately tells me I have the wrong password.”
I didn’t get a response after that, DM’ed them again on Twitter:
Ok cool. Higher level of support. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that. It usually only takes a time or two or public tweeting once and they get someone with intelligence on the job. I was pretty wrong on that. Next email I got from them:
Hi Richard,
I appreciate your patience on this matter. Let me further help you with this.
For the password reset link that was previously provided to you, have you already tried the link on different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, or Safari) on your computer? If not yet, can you please try to access the link and try it on different browsers to see if the issue still persists?
Please let me know if this works.
Have a safe day,
What in the cracker jack box do they think this is about? Obviously not reading any of the prior tickets or emails. I let them know (on April 6th:
“The link worked and reset my password. What does that have to do with getting a network error in the life360 app?”
On April 7th, I sent them another email:
“Any sort of updates on this ticket? Been a week since I was able to log in.”
They finally responded 14 hours later (this was Friday I believe):
Hello Richard,
Thank you for your patience in regards to this matter.
I am glad that you’ve able to login by resetting your password through a web browser.
There are some time that resetting the password will not work in the app but it is a rare case scenario. That is why we provided an alternative through the website.
Please let me know if everything is fine now.
Have a safe day,
I was starting to get pretty pissed off now. This idiot has no friggin’ clue. Sent a couple of DMs to them again.
Received an email response a short time later:
Hello Richard,
Thank you for your patience in regards to this matter.
Upon checking with your phone settings, I can see that there is a VPN. Can you confirm if you are using a Virtual Private Network?
Looking forward for your response.
Have a safe day,
What? Number one, you can’t see my phone settings, and if you think I believe that you really are a fucking fool. Number 2, I am not behind a VPN. While I do occasionally use one to access my home network when I am away, I haven’t used it in months and certainly not on this ROM.
So again, I emailed them back lol:
“I’m not currently using a VPN. I do occasionally use one to access my home servers but not in general.
I do use Adaway (not VPN mode) to block ads but it is currently disabled while I troubleshoot this.”
and a second email a few minutes later with a snippet of my logcat in hopes that someone that knows something there will be able to help. I don’t know what most of it means unfortunately, just that it’s errors:
“Just tried logging in, all ad blocking disabled, connecting over 5g rather than wifi. This is the log recording:
—- Apr 8, 2023 5:10:32 PM —-
04-08 17:10:36.180 4187 4187 I GoogleInputMethodService: GoogleInputMethodService.onStartInput():1898 onStartInput(EditorInfo{inputType=0x0(NULL) imeOptions=0x0 privateImeOptions=null actionName=UNSPECIFIED actionLabel=null actionId=0 initialSelStart=-1 initialSelEnd=-1 initialCapsMode=0x0 hintText=null label=null packageName=com.life360.android.safetymapd fieldId=-1 fieldName=null extras=null hintLocales=[]}, false)
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: https://api-cloudfront.life360.com/v3/oauth2/token error
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: at com.life360.android.l360networkkit.internal.etag.ResponseETagInterceptor.intercept(SourceFile:2)
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: at com.life360.android.l360networkkit.OkHttpClientSingleton$special$$inlined$-addNetworkInterceptor$1.intercept(SourceFile:3)
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: at com.life360.android.l360networkkit.internal.NetworkManager$RetryStrategy.doStrategy(SourceFile:3)
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: at com.life360.android.l360networkkit.internal.NetworkManager$RetryInterceptor.intercept(SourceFile:5)
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: at com.life360.android.l360networkkit.internal.HeadersForV5ApiAndAboveInterceptor.intercept(SourceFile:19)
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: at com.life360.android.l360networkkit.internal.cache.CacheInterceptor.intercept(SourceFile:20)
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: at com.life360.android.l360networkkit.internal.Life360PlatformImpl$AuthInterceptorBase.intercept(Unknown Source:13)
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: at com.life360.android.l360networkkit.internal.DynamicBaseUrlInterceptor.intercept(SourceFile:11)
04-08 17:10:46.535 14180 29161 E NetworkManager: at com.life360.android.l360networkkit.NetworkCallInterceptor.intercept(SourceFile:12)
That was on April 8th. Three days ago. Still no response. So I DMed them again first thing this monring
They didn’t even bother to respond there. Probably getting tired of me. They did, however, respond via email a few hours ago:
Hi Richard,
I appreciate your patience on this. I’d like to make a follow up on this. Are you still not able to log in to your new phone?
Have a safe day,
Really? No shit I’m not able to log in. What the fuck do these guys do, send out generic emails and close the fucking trouble ticket so they can tell their supervisor they’ve fixed everything for the day?
And my response to them
“No, I am not. Have not been able to log in since prior to April.”
To their credit they responded pretty quickly, although it was not helpful in the fucking least:
Hi Richard,
Thank you for your response. Can you confirm what type of device are you using and also can you check it for me if you can log-in using other device?
Have a safe day,
So, we are back to the same initial questions again. I did respond again though,
Pixel 7 Pro.
I’m setting up an old phone now to see if I can log in there anymore, will take a few minutes before I can get it set up.”
and then again, a few minutes later after having tried to log in from an older phone (non-rooted, completely stock, no extra apps installed, no custom rom.
“I got the same result trying to log in on another device. OnePlus 8 pro.”
And they responded again. Third time in one day. Wow. This guy must be tired from all the typing he’s had to do:
Hi Richard,
Thank you for your response. Since you are still unable to log back in to any device you might need delete your account and recreate it?
Have a safe day,
That’s all you have? What the everloving fuck.
So, I sent out a tweetstorm rant over on Twitter for my two followers to see. Only thing I’m getting there is answers from bots and spammers.
I have had Owntracks set up on my phone for the last few days. While it doesn’t (currently) offer me all the bells and whistles that Life360 does, I am able to integrate it into both Home Assistant and Homeseer using MQTT and trigger my automations off that. The way it’s headed now I will be deleting my Life360 account and cancelling my subscription. Biggest issue with that is that my daughters and my mom are all on my account as well and don’t live with us so getting it on their phones and getting everything working properly is a pain in the ass.
FYI, if you buy a Google Pixel 7 from the Google store enter “Z1M77NMTD8MEMZWQI7SNT87” at checkout and both of us will get $100 in Google Store credit
The Google Pixel 7 Pro is fairly easy to unlock, root and pass SafetyNet provided you have a little bit of knowledge on how to use the command line and aren’t afraid to permanently break your phone. While Pixels are relatively easy to recover if you do something wrong, there is always the potential to permanently brick your phone if you don’t know what you are doing.
You are going to need a few things before you can unlock and root. I am assuming you are doing this from Microsoft Windows (I am using Win 11 and everything works from there)
Unlocking your boot loader will factory reset your device. There is no way around this so make sure you have backed up everything. Once you unlock it I would suggest never relocking. If you do want to relock it, make sure not to do so until you have restored it to 100% stock. A couple of notes are that with Verizon branded versions, they can never unlock the bootloader. With T-Mobile and AT&T you can unlock once you’ve paid off the phone. You can contact your carrier and have them CARRIER unlock it (not the same as bootloader unlocking). Your best bet for unlocking and rooting phones in my opinion is to buy them direct-from-google or make sure that you are buying the carrier unlocked version if you are getting them from Amazon, Best Buy or some other vendor.
The steps to unlock the bootloader are:
Congrats. Your phone is rooted. If you open Magisk it should show “Installed” and the version number.
If you want to use Google Pay and most banking apps as well as some games and media apps there are a few more steps you need to do.
I’m currently using the following Magisk Modules and can cofirm they work with Android 13 on the Pixel 7 Pro (Cheetah):
If you install a Magisk module and you start bootlooping or SystemUI freezes up, restart your phone (make sure you have it connected to your PC and from the commandline run: “adb wait-for-device shell magisk –remove-modules”
That will boot you into safe mode and all your Magisk Modules will be uninstalled and you can add them back one by one to see what the issue is.
Several game and apps in Android the last couple of years implement what is called Immersive Mode. Basically your navigation and system bars disappear so that you can enjoy full screen mode. Google made this possible starting back in version 4.4
I used to use an app called GMD Full Screen Immersive Mode to force it when I wanted to use it but it unfortunately breaks the keyboard when you are using it. There’s also an ADB command that will trigger it but up until a few months ago everyone thought that you have to be rooted to use it. I personally stopped rooting my phones around the time I picked up my Nexus 6p, so around a year ago. It’s just not needed and I’m a huge fan of Android Pay, which is unusable if you are rooted.
XDA has an article up describing how you can enable system-wide immersive mode on demand, without root. Go check it out here.
Apparently some Project Fi customers have noticed improved voice call quality over the last few weeks. That’s because Google has been testing Voice over LTE for some users. It was announced four days ago over at the Project Fi Help Forum.
Hi everyone,
Some of you have noticed this already, but over the past few weeks we have been testing VoLTE with a subset of Project Fi users.
A few advantages of VoLTE are:
higher quality calls over data – without using any of your data allocation.
faster data browsing during an on-going call
faster call setupYou can tell you’re making a VoLTE call because your signal indicator will continue to display LTE instead of falling to H [HSPA] when you make or receive a call.
We will continue to keep you informed as we progress with our testing.
Thank you!
Alena
Project Fi Community Manager
Unfortunately I’m not one of the lucky few yet who are getting to test this. If you happen to be a Project Fi customer you can tell if you are a tester by looking for the signal indicator to continue displaying LTE when you are on a call.
VoLTE lets you use your data to make a call, without using your data allocation. It also means that you’ll be able to use faster data browsing even while you are on a call, such as when you are looking up contact info online or need to look up directions.
You can also go into your settings – data usage – cellular networks and there will be a new switch for you to turn it on.
Currently Project Fi is limited to the Google Pixel and Pixel XL, Nexus 6p, Nexus 5x and Nexus 6. VoLTE support for Fi is limited to when you are on T-Mobile’s network since it’s the only US partner that fully supports VoLTE. No telling when Sprint or US Cellular will get on the bandwagon.
So I set up Google Home a couple of weeks ago and figured it had been up and running long enough for me to give a preliminary review.
So far the WAF factor (as well as children) has been meh…
Don’t get me wrong. I love gadgets. I love Google stuff. I was a big fan of the Nexus program and now am using the Pixel XL. I have several Chromecasts scattered throughout the house and am on Google Wifi. For the time being though (and maybe only temporarily, I don’t know) Alexa is kicking Google Home’s ass at my casa. Maybe because we’ve been using the Amazon product for two years now and it definitely has a place in our home. I have an Echo in the living room and three Echo Dots in other rooms. I also use Fire TV (a lot more than my Chromecasts the last few months) and they have become an extension of my home automation system (Homeseer). I can control all of the lights with Alexa as well as my thermostat, TVs, audio receivers, my CCTV system, my coffee maker, etc. Can’t do that with Home, not easily anyway.
There are workarounds. I have Autovoice set up and can ask Google home to “tell Autovoice to…” but that’s such a pain in the ass. “Alexa, turn on the TV” just comes naturally.
I don’t use very many skills with the Echo, so won’t even compare how many are available. Most of them are crap anyway.
As far as setup and ease of use, Google Home is awesome. It was painless to set up and quick. Currently I have it in my kitchen (one of the places I DON’T currently have an Echo or Dot. I spend the majority of my time in our bedroom though, so it’s not getting used as much as the other devices.
The speaker itself is decent. I’m not an audiophile so don’t have anything to complain about as far as volume and range and all that other stuff. It sounds good to me so that’s all that’s important. I like Google Home for playing my music. That’s one thing I don’t normally do with the Echo. My wife and daughter listen to Pandora all the time so Alexa is good for them. I’m not a huge Pandora fan, or spotify for that matter. I prefer listening to what’s in my own library and all 18,000 songs are on Google Music. A very small portion of it is on Amazon so if I’m listening to music it’s through Google Music casting to one of the Chromecast Audio’s here, or through Google Home.
I also like the integration with other products. Keep for instance. Except for my oldest daughter, who has an iPhone 6, we all have androids here and there are a few Keep notes that we share with each other. Our menu and grocery list are two of them. I can use workarounds and IFTTT to get that stuff from Alexa if I want but it’s a pain in the ass and as anyone who uses IFTTT can tell you, it’s not instantaneous. Usually it’s fairly quick but occasionally there’s a delay of up to an hour. With Google Home if I add something to the shopping list it’s immediately added to a Google Assistant Shopping List in Keep. Now if I could just get the wife to use THAT one instead of the one she keeps creating and sharing.
There’s a lot of other stuff I could be doing with Home, particularly with Tasker, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. As I integrate it more fully with my system I’m sure I’ll start to like it more and more. Whether the rest of the family can get used to saying something besides “Alexa…” remains to be seen.
Looks like Google Assistant on the Pixel is finally getting proper home functionality, without having to have Google Home. Up until now you could issue commands to the Nest, for instance, from your phone if you had already set it up on the Home. For instance, I already have a few Hue lights and a couple of Wemo devices (only one switch) that I have set up through Google Home. Now though you can do it through assistant, which is awesome.
If you open Assistant and go into the settings, Home control should be there. Since I already have a few devices set up through my home these already appear for me but you can add devices from Nest, Hue, SmartThings, Honeywell, and WeMo, create rooms, and assign a device to each room. Not too bad. Unfortunately Homeseer is not in the list but they are working on it and hopefully will be there shortly. Currently I’m using a workaround with Tasker and Autovoice to coomunicate with Homeseer, as well as IFTTT although that’s a lot slower than HS with the Tasker plugin.
Not everyone is seeing it yet apparently. I have a Google Pixel XL running the Android 7.1.2 beta, with the Google app 6.12.19 and Play Services 10.2.98