2016 Mar 27 | Los Angeles Beach Volleyball



A beached boat near Dockweiler.



Something love, but not sure what.



I wonder if it's legal for these people to sit at this intersection and sell bed sheets. Do they have a permit to use that space?



I don't think we should be driving behind a truck that has two inhalation hazard signs.



Star Wars fan.



Flowers and mountains.



Cool bridge.



Accident near Beverly Hills.



The city just passed a law that says homeless can only have as much stuff as that fits in a 60-gallon container. This picture is actually from a bit before that, but this block will get cleaned up by city workers (here they're scooping up all the stuff with shovels) and then have tons of crap all over it a few weeks later.



This state-issued license plate basically says sexx.



I like this notice. I'm sure the developers got exasperated by people constantly hitting "OK" over and over and made this notice to tell them to take a few breaths, have a cup of coffee, and try again.



The Domino's by our place has an electronic screen that displays how your pizza is coming.



The drops I have missed the recall by one.



Ogii and I got new phones. It was kind of crazy; we only did it because we heard about the free Gear VR headsets with new phones and also because this phone supposedly takes the best pictures out of any cell phone right now and the pictures on my Nexus 5 aren't so great. We went to Sprint first, but they were sold out. Then we heard T-Mobile had a buy-one, get-one free promotion, so we went to one store downtown. They said they were out of the phones and didn't know if the BOGO offer would work if they ordered the phones. That was the rich area, upscale store where the employees didn't seem to really care if we got T-Mobile or not. Then we went to the cheaper area, eager-to-sell-you-a-phone store and the guy said we'd definitely get the one for free even if we preordered them. So we changed from Sprint to T-Mobile and ordered our phones. They actually came in much faster than expected; they only took a few days where we were expecting more like a few weeks. It's good they came in fast because you needed some numbers off the phone to send in for the VR headset promo, and if we didn't get the phones by 3/31, we wouldn't be able to do that.



We went to the Batman v Superman on opening night. There were all these people standing around Batman's car.



Ah, they're doing that "whoever keeps his hand on the car the longest wins something" contest. Although I couldn't figure out what they would win.



The Chinese Theater IMAX is the biggest screen in LA. The tickets cost $25, though, so I think we'll only go there for really big movies.



Comparing new and old phone cameras: the ceiling with the new Galaxy S7 Edge.



And with the old Nexus 5. Definitely much worse.



Friends dressed as Superman and Batman and also a guy holding a Wonder Woman cup, so all the superheroes in one shot.



It's kind of confusing when I order trial lenses and lenses patients ordered at the same time; the boxes look a lot alike. But if you line them up like this, you can just look for the white space instead of "trial lenses not for sale." This was with the new Galaxy S7 Edge.



And with the Nexus 5. They actually look pretty close, but the Nexus was with a flash and the Galaxy was without. The Galaxy actually takes much better pictures without a flash for close writing like this; if it's with a flash, it tends to wash out everything and make it a blue tint.



Thinking about getting insurance for the phones. It's hard to decide which one to go with, though, and there are even more than this.



The phones are supposed to be fairly waterproof. I told Ogii to try hers in the shower but she said we should use mine instead. No way; I'll wait until other people try it and write about it online.



There's an ad for jeans that make your butt look bigger on the bench right in front of a church.



We stopped by this camera shop to see if they could repair my wide-angle lens, which fell out of my backpack and down a couple of stairs and then wouldn't focus. Hopefully it won't be too much.



Neat old car.



We both had Saturday off, so we went to Los Angeles Beach Volleyball.



George with his eyes on the ball.



He told me to take a picture while he jumped like he was going for the ball, haha.



It looks like an R2D2 outfit.



Good timing.



Kendra hitting the ball.



This woman destroyed me with her serves like five times in a row. She would serve very far back and fast.



Kendra serving.



Ogii serving.



Kendra bumping.



Ogii laughing while Kat goes for the ball.



Kat serving.



Long step.



Yoshi was funny while playing.



David serving.



And hitting.



And serving from the other side.



Kat hitting.



Me going up for a block.



Yellow ball, yellow glasses.



Big hit.



Looking up things to customize on the new phones.



One problem with these larger phone screens: I can't get my hand all the way over to the other side of the keyboard, so I have to use two hands to write text messages and such. This phone has a "one handed operation" mode where it makes the working area about a quarter smaller so you can get to everything with one hand. Nice little option to have.



Another cool feature: you can have two apps open at the same time in a split screen. It doesn't work with every app, though.



Trying out different themes on the phone. This one is mostly black.



Mettalic blue.



Neon, but you have to pay 79 cents.



Another fun one.



Sunscreen in the clearance section at Ralph's.



It's really discounted, $12.99 to $3.49. It doesn't have an expiration date, so hopefully it's still good.



Watching some video game tournaments on Twitch. The quality can really vary, though, since I'm watching it on my phone while Ogii drives. Here you can barely make out where the characters are...



... and here it's crystal clear.



You can also use the phones to pay at stores. I was a bit worried hackers would be able to steal the credit card information, but it looks like they can do that even if you don't store the credit card information on your phone; they can get it even if your card near your phone, crazy. But I turn NFC off anyway just in case unless I'm actually using it.



Store the card into the phone.



And waved our phones over the credit card readers at the grocery store to pay and got a $30 gift card each. So in total that's $1160 saved on the new phones and bonuses. Plus switching to T-Mobile saves us around $20 a month, and so far the coverage has been much better, too. I'm surprised, because T-Mobile is supposed to work worse in building because of the spectrum it uses, but so far it's been much better than Sprint.



I tried to use the 311 app to tell the city to come and pick up the mattress, but it said it wouldn't do that location. No problem; when we came back at night somebody had already grabbed it.



All of the different places have outdoor movies in the summer, but it's pretty much always the same movies year after year at all of the different places.



I don't know what's up with Google Navigation here; that's like an impossible figure because there are two starting points.



And this is just way too confusing. I know it's trying to be helpful with other options, but unless they're faster, I don't care and they just clutter it up. Plus where I'm supposed to turn is practically off the screen.