New tech

It has been a few days and I am getting used to my new tech. My generous family gave me a Samsung Gear 2 watch for Mother’s day. I’ve been looking for a watch and I was intrgued by the “smart” watches that exist now. My job consists of being all over campus for meetings and they are frequently in locations that don’t have a visible clock. As a liaison, I want to be fully present at these because I am trying to build relationships and I find it hard when I can’t keep track of time. In addition, I find myself running back to back on a number of things, not just meetings, so having a schedule handy would be useful too.

In my personal life, I need a better system as well. I have forgotten to do things when I get home or on the way home simply because I check out or I don’t need to be online. My phone won’t help, because I can’t check the reminders while driving, if I even have the sound on. And I rarely check my phone once at home.

While the watch won’t totally solve all those problems, I find it a solution of sorts. I can input into a calendar and get discrete, vibrating reminders of the next event. I can have my schedule with me without having to pull up a webpage (can’t wait to get off the useless Oracle calendar system). I can check the time or anything else without having to pull out my phone and appear that I have just checked out.

I still need to work out the best way to get notifications, through schedule or task lists. I haven’t figured out the available apps other than what’s been preloaded. There are features I have been working with. I like the exercise tracker. It helped me pick up the pace this morning on the elliptical through the heart rate monitor. It automatically is a pedometer. Accuracy is sketchy, but precision seems to be ok, so it will work. If I ever get into a serious fitness kick, then I would need a different tool anyway.

All in all, I’m happy with it. It will do what I want it to and hopefully that will reduce the amount of time I feel that I am frantically running around because I’m not clear on what to do next.