Techie Me

I woke up early today, at around 6:00 AM, filled with anxiety, shaking from it. I tried to calm myself, knowing full well that a Zopiclone would take some time to work, ending up with me sleeping until well into the afternoon. As it happened, I did that anyway, through the demands of a nap starting shortly after home care got me out of bed. Some days there just ain't no winning.

Once I finally got my act in gear, I started a bit of a technology. I wanted to create a "Help Me" list, the purpose of which would be to list all kinds of the little things which I need help with whenever somebody visits. As I get increasingly weaker, I have to ask for help constantly, creating a real nuisance for visitor. Instead, I am creating this two part list, one part with "one-off" tasks, the other part with continual tasks.

For example, setting up the power bar behind my night table is a one-off task once it's done, it's done for good, assuming nothing goes wrong with it in the future. On the other hand, going to Safeway with me to help me shop, or cooking dinner for me with leftovers, or taking me out to a restaurant are all things which can happen repeatedly, improving my quality of life directly with each task.

You might think this would be a simple thing. Were I to use low technology tools, it would have. However I wanted to test the list functions of Google Home and Google Assistant, but talking to my Google Home Mini. This meant some configuration of my lists, along with developing an understanding of how the list might be exported into a printable document. Google expects that you will only access your lists online, providing no export or print functionality other than printing the whole page in one go.

After a lengthy period of research and experimentation, I ended up with a rather poor workaround. I simply printed the web page to a pdf, then opened that pdf in Word, converting it from the pdf format to an editable Word format. Now all I have to do is clean the list up and add my own commentary.

There are other ways to do this kind of thing, such as an app tool called If This, Then That. I took a look at it today, but my objective was to use native apps as much as possible. I might look at these other apps eventually, but for now I already have my list. That's what I really wanted anyways.