google posts

A couple weeks ago, I bought a new phone, a Pixel 9 Pro. That is my 3rd phone in the last three years, about as many as I had bought in the previous 15. But the last two just weren't meeting my desires. The Samsung S24 didn't support multiple profiles or the AVF terminal, and the separate Samsung account, required for some features, was off-putting. The Minimal MP01 was missing reasonably frequent security updates, had a poor camera, had some buggyness and definitely had no video out or AVF terminal, among other things. The Pixel can support all that I want and can run the security / privacy focused Android fork, Graphene OS, as well as other common Android forks. This is my first try with Graphene or any self-installed alternative. I set it up and then moved my SIM card over a little over a week ago.

I've had a single GMail account for over a decade. I've thought of creating a second one for many years to use for lower security sitations. Today I finally did, to install Google Play, and thus other apps, on my Onyx Boox e-note. Continue reading post "#4263"

When I registered my domain "tobymackenzie.com" in 2009, Dreamhost offered the then free Google Apps to provide email for the domain. Already having a normal Gmail account and preferring the labels system over folders, I went with it. For 12 some years, it provided my email service for that domain. It changed names and eventually became "G Suite legacy free edition" after they started charging all new accounts. But this summer they are finally killing off the free version, requiring me to pay up or leave. I chose to leave, migrating over to my existing Fastmail account being used for other domains.

Found everyone in all six levels of the Google April Fools Where's Waldo game. Continue reading post "#1827"

I've "completed" my first freelance project, the Samba Soccer Club si…

Looks like it's been a good while since I've posted on this blog. My "professional" blog, which gets much more traffic, has been getting my focus, and I'm still not sure what will be happening with this blog.

Anyway, on with the post. I use Google Finance for my everyday checks on my stock portfolio and the market in general. I check for prices and news. It gives me a basic idea of my returns for each stock and for my overall portfolio, though it doesn't seem to match perfectly with my tracking in Quicken.

A while back they began tracking dividend payouts. They are not entirely accurate, which is probably why the numbers are off. They also are not applied to the returns of individual stocks, only the whole portfolio. Since Quicken can show me per-stock returns with dividends, this provides a nice comparison between market returns and overall returns.

So just today I looked at my portfolio after having not payed attention to it for several days or so, and suddenly my returns were way up (from around 60% overall to 80%). I was somewhat excited for a second, but confused because the overall market had not jumped that much, and as I looked through prices, none seemed that different from where they were.