Wednesday 13 December 2023: Technology is broken

The first email I received on Tuesday morning was from the time management app people I’d fired off a support email to on Monday. All it asked was if I previously downloaded the app from Google Play, which I did. I replied and told them the option was no longer there, even though my other devices are still there, and I even uninstalled it and tried again.

Once at my desk I had a look at Toggl Track and I was able to replace the product they no longer support with their updated version. So that was good. I can’t afford to pay for Toggl Track premium. It’s more geared towards much larger organisations than li’l’ ol’ me. But if the limited time tracking on my watch per day isn’t sufficient, I may consider paying 99c a month for that.

I finished yesterday’s blog post, chose the picture, and uploaded it all. Then I started today’s blog post. In Scrivener. Which we pay for once and once only. Well, Windows users had to pay twice, but only because the Windows platform had such a massive overhaul to bring it into line with the Mac version.

In future I’m going to prioritise products we only have to pay for once. I really dislike the subscription models and I usually avoid paying anything every month for an app on my phone. There’s one game I like, Yahtzee, and you have to pay almost £8 a month. Every month. That, to me, is a complete rip off and I choose not to pay it. I’d consider a one-off £8 payment, though.

I carried on typing today’s post just to see what the mini Pomodoro timer would do when it reached the end of my 50 minutes. It didn’t do anything, so while I’ve set up the timers on the phone app, they didn’t sync over to the desktop app. Needs more work, clearly.

I was expecting a parcel delivery, and so was the poet, but he wasn’t here. So I also had to keep an ear out for the door going. It went just as I finished my first Pomodoro. In my break, I made a cup of tea and folded some washing out of the tumble dryer. I went straight into the editing, then, as I’d lost a day on Monday.

The Pomodoro timer still wasn’t working properly on the desktop (i.e. stopping after 50 minutes and sounding an alert), so I logged a query. It’s probably something I need to do, but it’s been such a long time since I used it that I can’t remember.

I did crack on with my editing work, but I kept doing searches online for Pomodoro apps and techniques for desktop, mobile and watch. But when I tried to install any, they just didn’t work. Either there were files missing or it was incompatible or something. By the end of the day, when I’d wasted yet more hours on this, I realised that it wasn’t just me. Other down sites were reporting that various Pomodoro timers weren’t working.

So, this technology is currently broken, it seems. Did something go into retrograde on Monday? Because that’s when my watch bleeped and I had to reset everything because it had lost connection with my phone. I’ve not been able to get anything to work properly since.

Eventually, I managed to get Toggl Track working again, on all three devices, but the calendar on it isn’t as good as the one on ClickUp and I’m not sure which is the better value. I can integrate Google Calendar… one day, if I find I have a lot of spare time or if I can fit it in. In the meantime, perhaps I ought to try breathing before losing my rag over the slightest thing.

Today it’s full steam ahead on the editing job. Again…