Are you tired of phone scams and fraud? You can filter out all such calls (mostly)

Most of the unsolicited calls these days have a caller ID very close to your number or a 5 or 6 digit caller ID. Either you do not answer or set your phone to ring only when callers on your contact list call. That takes care of 99% of the junk calls. Needless to say that you should not give out any numbers on the phone unless you initiated the call to your bank, brokerage or IRS using the number posted on their website. You can verify who they are if they ask you questions to identify yourself and you too can ask them questions such as what was the exact amount of a transaction you made on a particular day that you know.

Scammers and Telemarketers can put out any caller ID and it is surely possible that they can put out the caller ID of someone in your list. That is a different issue and if that happens, ask your friends to send you a text message which identifies them with something only you told them and you call them back. Luckily, I did not yet have to resort to that but that is what we need to do these days.

Other thing to be aware of:

When on vacation be aware that your posts or photos or reviews if seen by public can clearly let the public know that you are not home. Not a good idea to post ANYTHING to public when out of town. Good to inform 2 or 3 neighbors and your major credit card companies of your travel plans to help prevent fraud. Better to avoid using credit card abroad. Debit card is safer. Better to use Debit cards with low or zero foreign transaction and ATM and take cash on a need basis at a very public ATM during the day.

What is the best bang for the buck 4k TV for the best picture in Nov Dec 2017 in the US?

Short summary:

Vizio E series 75" for those want biggest picture TV 4K $1500
Vizio M Series 70" for those who want a bigger TV than 65 but better contrast than E series 4K $1300
Vizio P series 65" for those who want higher contrast 4K $1400
LG OLED 55" for those who want best picture 4K $1650

Detailed opinion.

I am only talking picture quality here. If you care about audio, consider a sound bar for bedroom and a AV receiver with sub woofer, center, left and right
for better audio and add 2 more rear speakers to receive the 5.1 audio available on many TV and DVDs, Bluray as well. 7.1 audio is for audiophiles and there is very little 7.1 content available. And yes, there is 9.1 too.

If you are looking for a budget TV under 500, see my other blog.

If you want to spend under $2000 and like to watch your own or YouTube 4k video and photos in highest resolution and best picture quality, you surely want good color spectrum and high contrast.

First of all what is the difference between LCD, LED and OLED TV?

LCD and LED are both back light Liquid crystal displays which require back lighting to brighten the picture where there is brightness and no back lighting where there is darkness. LCD was backlit with compact fluoroscent (CF)  light. LED was backlit with LEDs. Now there is hardly any CFL backlit just CFL bulbs are gone and LED bulbs replaced them.

The very first generation LCD TV had a single backlight and later they started adding multiple zones to better control the contrast.

The E series mentioned here has 14 Active LED Zones.

The M series mentioned here has  32 Zones.

The P series mentioned here has 128 zones and true 120Hz refresh rate for less motion blur.

The OLED has no backlight requirement. Each pixel is either lit or not light.
Effectively 8.3 Million "zones".

So, the contrast is the best. Note that the picture may not be as bright though but this will change as technology improves just as the LED bulbs got brighter with improvement in technology.

There is another aspect to picture quality which scales 480p, 720p, 1080p to to 4K. If money is no object Sony is known to have the best video scaling and video image processing engines. Go do some home work!

What is the best bang for the buck budget TV in Nov Dec 2017 in the US?

Short summary:

43" 4K LED TV for $300 to 350 at Walmart or Bestbuy.

Detailed opinion:

43" TV can be seen from as close at 6 feet without seeing any graininess.
So it is good for just about any use other than as a computer monitor.

At Costco, 48 of the 56 models are 4k or 2160p. 7 are 1080p. 1 720p.

The cheapest and acceptable 43" 1080p TV is TCL for about 20 bucks less
at Costco.

4K (2160p)  has 4 times the
resolution of 3840 pixels × 2160 lines (8.3 megapixels, aspect ratio 16:9)

1080p  1920 x 1080 2 megapixels.

 Most photos we shoot with even a cheap smart phone are 8Mega pixel. So, they
look much better on 4K screen.

If you are planning a vacation, look at youtube videos in 4K.

So, splurge the extra 20 bucks!

Open letter to US Wired and Sat TV providers. Innovate or perish.

You lost the Millennials already.  Gen X and the younger baby boomers like myself are next in line.

Dish network had no internet service. DirecTV was bought by ATT. Verizion FIOS is too small and too costly to expand. Dish network fired the fist salvo with Sling TV and ATT and now Youtube got it to complement Hulu and Netflix. Do not fight them. Join them. Perhaps you need to partner with cellular data service providers.

I have cable and internet and I pay $110 on the average for a 2yr contract. If my contract were to expire today, I would just get internet service even if it means I pay $65 instead of $45 and pay $50 to get Sling TV so called Orange plus Blue plus 4 extras and even a cloud DVR which is coming.

Embrace the new wave and dump your set top boxes completely. Use your ISP backbone using open standards to prioritize video. You know that all it takes is 2Mbps with the high efficiency codec to deliver 1080p and so 8MBps x 3 will support 3 4k TVs per house which is just 25% of my downstream bandwidth. Lot of room to expand into IOT, home security video etc. Your costs will come down because many users who are savvy enough to install their router can do it by themselves and you can contract out with the likes of GeekSquad at Bestbuy for the others. You will not need as many truck rolls. All the hardware other than wire to home is at your end. You can go after any customer in the world connected to Internet including mobile who wants your programming.

Collect social security at 62 and invest vs wait till 67?

I did a simple calculation. Collect at age 62 and invest all of it. What is collected in year 1 is invested for 5yrs, year 2 collection is invested for 4yrs and so on and accumulates till age 67.

Compare it collecting 34% higher amount at age 67.

What I found is all you need is 2.75% return on money you collect at age 62 to match 34% more collected at age 67 and investing at the same return of 2.75%.

You may not get guaranteed return for 1yr investment unless it is 10yr treasury but if you have down payment money to buy real estate, current interest rate on mortgage is 4.75%. Even after tax deduction of 33% 3.2% is better than 2.75%.

What do you think?

I suggest we rename Internet of Things IoT to MoT.

I have always said that it is not about internet when it comes to things we use every single day.

Can you think of one thing every person in the world sees and probably uses every single day?

I think it is the light bulb.

I did a dumb search and found that 2.5Billion light bulbs are sold each year worldwide at average cost of 92 cents. In the US we have switched mostly to CFL bulbs and now switching to LED bulbs but 82% of the bulbs in the world are incandescent.

The retail price of a 60W equivalent LED bulb is when bought in a pack of dozen is less than $3. The retail price of the cheapest connected bulb is $10. The cost of making a bulb connected vs dumb is probably less than a dollar. That means in high volumes it is possible to bring down the retail price of connected bulb to less than $5. That is 5x that of incandescent. Now wonder that 82% of the bulbs sold are still incandescent.

There in lies the challenge and opportunity. With enough volumes LED bulbs could come to the price of incandescent. and for a bit more it could be smart connected bulb.

However, the title of this article suggests MoT instead of IoT. I believe it is all about Mesh of Things MoT. No need to flood the internet with more things connected which do not really need to connect most of the time. However the cell phone is seen all over the world where there is electricity available to charge it and hence a light bulb. A cell phone knows the time and it knows when it is sunset. It has alarm. Most smart phones have bluetooth and wifi. Bluetooth is lower energy and lower range than wifi and more secure because the range is less.

Bluetooth mesh networking is coming. So, connect the dots. Bluetooth mesh enabled led bulbs controlled by phones can lower the global emissions and energy costs. This is the challenge to inventors, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and governments all over the world....

Build it and they will come.

Experience installing Pioneer 4200NEX in 2006 Lexus LS430 without Nav.

The original AV system had Radio, tape deck and CD in a double din plus CD changer under it. JBL amplifier was behind.

It was replaced with Pioneer 4200NEX Android Auto/Apple Car Play system, Pioneer's rear view camera with the ability to calibrate the back up camera guidance lines. Added HDMI, USB Android charging port in place of the center cigarette lighter and 3.5MM jack inside the storage compartment between the front seats, bluetooth mic behind the rear view mirror.

Tested it with Android and iPhone.

Paid $250 for labor and about $800 for parts.

This is significantly better than Lexus built Nav system and backup camera available in the 2006 LS430 because the backup camera adds guidance lines as in all the newer systems, bluetooth, HDMI, 3.5MM and DVD playback. Had bypass installed to be able to play video over HDMI when the car is moving because a passenger should be able to do that which is no different from a passenger being allowed to sit next to driver with a connected phone or tablet.

Pioneer will not force the driver to push a button to accept the legal message every single time unlike Lexus and Toyota.

Google maps work offline too and way more current than the maps on the Lexus Nav DVD as well as easier to use.

Here is what I noted. Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Lollipop was not compatible with Android Auto. LG G4 H811 Marsmallow, Nexus 6P Nougat 7.1.1 worked fine. Samsung Galaxy S7 Marsmallow worked fine.Interestingly Google Pixel XL Nougat 7.1.1 did not work. Important to check compatibility before the installation.

Car battery draining? Check your electronics add-ons.

I came back from vacation to find that the battery was totally dead. I used a 10A charger and it charged to 66% and then the display said "Bat Bad". Car started though and I revved the engine to about 5 min at 3500rpm. Stopped and re-started the car. Next morning it did not start.

I looked at youtube videos which suggested that I connect a meter to monitor current and remove one fuse at a time if the current drain is more than 50mA. That gave me an idea. I removed the OBD2 bluetooth reader. In 5 min the battery trickle charged to 68% from 66%. In 8 hrs, it went to 90% and after over night trickle charge, it is 100% charged.

So, I ordered OBD2 switch to disconnect power when I do not want to use the device. Moral of the story is to go easy on devices we connect in the car. Hope this helps someone prevent a dead battery.

Good to pay more for devices which are smart enough to auto power off or go to sleep mode when ignition is off. Solar trickle charger may help but not if the car is in the garage overnight.

Got bumped down Business to Premium Economy by British Airways but that is not all...

Hope there is a lesson in this which helps someone.

1. Even business class gets overbooked by British Airways and that too on long haul flights. They told me that I would get the refund but when I called BA, they told me that I should call the travel agent.

2. Ticket was bought through Orbitz but British Airways wants passenger to call Orbitz to get refund. After 30min on hold Orbitz confirmed the downgrade and says that British Airways will take 4 to 6 weeks to process the refund. Next time I will try other airlines. If they are so quick to downgrade, they should be quick to refund. No real excuse in the current day of electronic transfer of funds or credit back to credit cards. I guess I gave a free loan to British Airways for 4 to 6 weeks. The $250 compensation does not compensate for the sleepless 10hr flight at all. More equitable would have been a free upgrade next time I fly. What was interesting was British Airways did the right thing and promised to bank to bank transfer of the $250 compensation but will not speed up the refund.

My take away from this:

Look or Orbitz but do not buy on Orbitz. Deal directly with the airline. I was on the plane with my elderly mother who is disabled but got separated from her just because she got her ticket and then I got my ticket on the same flight. Even though I called British Airways and they told me that they linked our booking references, it was just a note and no one looked at it before deciding that I was a single traveler and OK to downgrade me. Moral here is if you travel with someone, book the flights together.

How I moved TD Ameritrade thinkorswim to new machine.

On the new machine, I opened thinkorswim (ubuntu linux but may be similar for other platforms).

in $HOME/thinkorswim directory

I saw a single file workspace.*.xml

On the old machine I saw 4 files. Copied all of them to the new machine.
Opened thinkorswim on the new machine and bingo. All done.

Hope this helps someone else because google search did not find me anything and if you call them, you really need to get lucky and talk to the right person.

Acer C720P 11.6" Chromebook 4GB RAM not so great.

Specs looked good. Dual core x86 CPU, 4GB RAM 16GB SSD.

I already had an account on Google Chrome on a Linux machine.  There was no recovery SD card. So, I thought of creating a recovery before I did anything. Google search and Youtube videos suggested chrome://imageburner

That did nothing at all. I struggled and found that there is an App that does it and it did. All this took 1hour.

Then I turned on the machine knowing that if something goes wrong, the machine can be restored because I did test the restore.

All good? No.

When I turned on the chrome book and opened the browser, It picked up all the Addons as if they work on all platforms including ChromeOS. That immediately caused chromecast not to work properly. I had to delete the cast app, re-start the machine, re-install the cast app and then it worked as expected. My wife wanted to be able to read Microsoft documents when offline. Found no way to do that except to install ubuntu linux using what is called crouton. 

The video said that you put the machine in developer mode and then it is easy. It was very tricky to put the machine in developer mode. I did it after google search and experimenting for an hour because I have the comfort of a recovery SD. I have used Ubuntu for 10yrs on X86 PCs. Installation took 30min and customization took 30min for a fresh install on X86 PC. Crouton took well over 2hrs to install and 3 hrs just to get firefox, libreoffice, java and silverlight to work. After all this, the machine was very slow. Either the internal memory is slow or 4GB RAM was just not enough. 11.6" screen was adequate compared to 13.3" I used for over 4yrs. The shine on the screen caused lot of glare. There was no DEL key! It is ctrl Backspace. It was very convoluted to start using ubuntu do begin with. So, packed up the machine and returned it and in the market for a Windows laptop to run ubuntu as in the past.

At least I tried...

Replaced $100 Automatic Car adopter + App with $20 bluetooth obd 2 reader and free App.

I used Automatic gen 1 adopter for 2yrs and gen 2 for 1yr. I liked the idea of looking at mileage and the status of check engine light and email or SMS when a trip is completed or if air bag is deployed. Usually the lower mileage is an indicator that something is not OK. Could be tire pressure, air filter, engine problem....

What I never liked about Automatic was that it is says is driving and gives no other info like engine coolant temp, battery voltage level, real time MPG which older cars before 2010 or so may not have.

What I did not like at all with Automatic was that it was taking to long to recognize that car was started and pair to the phone. The newer gen 2 unit has GPS. So, it can record the trip using that GPS. What I found is that we do not want to replace a unit like this too often. You connect to OBD 2 once and then it is software upates. All the intelligence is in the App. We replace the phones more often.

So, I bought bluetooth obd 2 reader for $20 and a free App called Dash and the result is fantastic.

For Iphone there are other solutions like Carista. Just have to look.

Only thing which is constant in technology is change. Accept change or become obsolete!

Global Entry card. Experience in applying for it - Part 2

Our interview times were 6:45pm and 7pm on Sat Jul 16 th at SFO. We were then at 6:25pm. At 6:30pm, both of us and another person with interview time at 6:30pm were called. Essentially the questions we already answered on the application were asked and the original documents we mentioned in the application were required. Finger prints and photos were taken. We were told that we were conditionally approved and the email with official approval will come in 24hrs. The emails arrived 2 minutes after we walked out. We were told that the global entry cards would come in 3 weeks. They came in 3 working days on the following wednesday. We were told that the card is valid for 5yrs. I was pleasantly surprised that it is 5yrs from my birthday next yr. I guess I got bonus few months this one time. I was told that when may passport is renewed, I just need to stop by any of their offices and when they come to call people for interview, they will allow me to come in and link my new passport number and expiry date to the Global entry. Also, I was told that renewal is online and interview is required.

I will write a part 3 of this blog as a travel domestic and abroad and see how it helps.

Ideas to introduce and improve self-driving technology and IoT.

Here are some ideas. You hear Tesla, Google, Apple, Samsung, Wink, Intel, Qualcomm, Garmin and others?

Best to perfect the technology on sparsely populated low traffic areas first and then people movers or dedicated roads instead of trains or buses.

Perfect example comes to my mind.

A retirement community with a golf course and other activities.
=================================================

Self-driving wheel chairs, golf carts and minivans with sliding doors.

Just imagine the entire golf course lawn monitored by cameras to see where watering or lawn maintenance is required and sending messages to crew using IoT. The golf ranger cart with cargo capacity to send sod or supplies to the crew and even transport the crew. Tiny solar cells and wireless technology embedded in the golf balls to help the players locate the balls or let them know that ball cannot be recovered where it is. Later the crew will know how to recover and recycle the balls and sell it back to the owner but share the profit. Players have an app in the phone to know where the balls is and automatically score. self-driving golf cars to keep track of multiple players sharing the cart and moving the cart as required on the designated areas.

Now extend the self-driving carts in the retirement community. App on the phone or TV to request a cart as in uber to go the the club house, the gold course or to visit some one in the same community or to the entrance of the community and then connect to a bus or uber or other transportation service. This may even be a minivan for larger number of people.

People mover without rail tracks
=============================

Huge corporate campuses with designated pathways for self-driving carts to move not just people but supplies between buildings. Expensive lab equipment could be shared between several buildings.

Airports do not have to invest in dedicated self-driving trains to move people between terminals, rental cars and ground transportation. They can be electric minivans or golf-carts on dedicated pathways.

Toll roads and car pools dedicated to self-driving cars can accommodate bumper to bumper vehicles moving like a train. No slow pokes holding up traffic and speeders tail gating. Nav software updated to encourage people to use combination of uber like which connect to self-driving cars can even replace the sparsely used buses and they have the priority in the sense that others have to yield when they see flashing green leaf symbols on such cars.

I see a win-win here.

Tax payers will pay less for rail, road and bus infrastructure.

Auto makers can sell cars to people who cannot drive.

People can use their time more effectively while taking less time to go from A to B and spend less because there is no need to own a car or even if they have a car, they carry a device which records the actual use and insurance may be less or more.

Yeah. There are many challenges other than technology. Vested interests to keep the status quo and monopolize, legal issues, safety concerns to name a few.

Open letter to Intel.

I worked only for 2years at Intel back in 84 as a new college grad. Later I was an investor and did well too but no longer an investor.

Here is my point of view. Back when iPhone came and later Android came, the writing was on the wall that the conventional PC model is changing. Intel did not embrace the change and rather than capitalize on the strong ARM, Intel did the opposite and got out of ARM completely. The foray into foundry services to offset the cost was perhaps too late. The failure of WiMax and the delay in entering the networking market did not help. The decline in PC graphics and the move to game consoles and tablets for gaming did not help either.

Once the management changed, the emphasis on cloud services and IoT was a plus. Hope this is just the start.

Time has come for lot more changes than a big layoff to take the company into the next stage.

Hardware is commodity. Hardware has less value without software. I believe that consumers will only have one PC or Mac and replace it only if it breaks. Microsoft has acknowledged the change and made office available on multiple devices and the cloud.

What if Intel re-embraced ARM. If not hardware, emulation assisted by hardware acceleration? That should enable Android and IOS apps to run on x86. Eventually acquiring a company like ARM itself perhaps?

Partner with Samsung, Tesla, Apple and Google to enter IoT end user market, self-driving cars, next generation cellular networking etc..

In other words, major changes...

Time for Cable companies and content providers in the US to evolve.

You keep reading that Comcast with 27.7Million subscribers with average revenue of $100 per customer does not want to make available their content including USA Network, Bravo, E!, CNBC, MSNBC, Syfy for streaming. They will allow only their subscribers to stream.

Just as it required old management to leave before companies like Microsoft embraced cloud services as opposed to Windows and Office, it is time for the management to change and consolidation to happen.

For $100, people get many channels they never ever watch. So, out of 200 channels, people actually want to watch only 40 channels but they are willing to pay $50, the revenue per channel is $1.25 instead of $0.50. Let the channels which people do not watch disappear. Let the shopping channels pay more money to service providers. Also, by offering TV only over Internet, the cable companies could cut their costs. No need to transmit cable and Internet signals. No need for extra hardware. Also, by offering channels over internet, content providers including Comcast can significantly expand the number of subscribers to 27.7M in the US to the entire world. Just as DirectTV got absorbed by ATT, Dish Network can also be absorbed by another service provider like a Verizon. There can be roaming arrangements for Internet between all internet service providers as in cellular data. Satellite may be required only where there is no Internet or Satellite can be used for Internet TV because downstream bandwidth on Satellite is much better than upstream.

Internet service providers will win if there is no such thing as unlimited data. It can be pay per use. Let the free market decide how much bandwidth is needed by consumers. High efficiency codecs allow very decent 720p signal to be sent with just 1Mbps downstream. Most people cannot tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on their TV. On Mobile devices with screens 10" or less need no more than 480p. The costs incurred by internet service providers will come down as usage comes down.

Content providers will win because the potential subscribers are huge. At some point the broadcast TV network is not required. Just stream. Of  course the FCC must allow that too. DVR is only in the cloud. It is just a stream. Anyway, their content is saved somewhere.

Consumers will win because they will pay perhaps $50 a month for content instead of $100. They may pay $60 for faster cable if they want higher definition TV than 720p and their watching patterns but they may pay $40 less than currently.

I do not see any losers in this. It can happen.

Time has come for a 3rd party in the US which evloves with times.

I rarely venture into political blogs.

Why do I think we need a 3rd party?

1. Our US primaries with the 2 parties have exposed the weakness in the way we choose candidates for the President.

The system of delegates, caucuses, primaries starting in a small state and ending in a large state may have made sense before we had telecommunications, mass media, internet. Our country was way too big to even think of elections one one day. However, when we had the infrastructure to hold nation wide elections in November, we also had the infrastructure to do the same for primaries nation wide in 1 day. That way, no single state would dominate because all the voters can vote and vote for any candidate in any party. No need for closed primaries. The candidate with the largest votes in each party goes to the November election. Again, all the voters can vote as long as each voter votes only 1 candidate.

2. For a long time we had essentially 2 parties with one working for the poor and working class and one working for the rich and the rich corporations and businesses. As a result we often have grid-lock and nothing gets done.

There are no real winners.

Our medical care is the most expensive among the developed nations and yet not all the people are covered.

We have the worst public transit system in the developed world.

Our tax structure is too complicated. It should not be about taxing the rich to pay for the poor. It should be about a level playing field for all citizens and corporations.

All the citizens must have the same quality of medical care. Take a page of the airline pricing system. Regardless of economy, business or first class, every sits in the same plane and take same time to reach the destination on a given flight. Those who can pay more may have bigger bed or a suite with a fancy bathroom and fancy food. All get the same medical care.

The US corporations should not have to go abroad just for lower taxes, We should compete and take away the need for them to go abroad just for taxes.

We need reciprocal trade. If our goods and services are taxed at a higher rate by other countries compared to the goods and services produced locally, we tax them the same way. If a country subsidizes their goods and services for export, we do not buy from them.

We are not the police for the world.

We have no business telling other countries that our way of freedom is right for everyone.

We have no business in allowing our citizens to promote their religious beliefs and try to convert poor people into their religion. Religious freedom is within our country. Atheists may be offended by the idea of one nation under God. We need the idea of one national for all the citizens. All citizens need to pledge allegiance to the nation and the flag or leave the country. De-couple religion from the country. No single religion should be favored by the constitution. Citizens should be free to choose a religion or no religion.

All this is easier said than done of course. But it sure will not happen with the existing 2 parties and without amending the constitution.

I do not believe that the founding fathers meant our constitution to stagnate.

It is about time for a truly "progressive" party which progresses and evolves not only the party but our constitution and the processes to ensure real liberty and equality  for all the citizens and businesses.
 

Paris Apr 4 to 8 2016. Europe series part 8 of 8.

This is the last of the Europe series blogs.

We drove from Reims to Epernay in the Champagne region of France to an apartment 5 min from Notre Dame on Saint Germain. It took little over 2hrs of easy drive. I could have parked in front of the apartment if the car was a bit smaller than the Opel Insignia.

Next time, I will look into 25 euro per day parking multiple entry in 9 parking garages in Paris for 4 days. Sure it is more expensive than metro but if you have 4 people, it may be cheaper than a taxi perhaps without having to look around.
http://www.parkingsdeparis.com/EN/multi-park-parking-pass.php

We bought 10 metro tickets for 14 euro. Each ticket bought separately costs 1.8 euro. Good till use dup I guess because we used the tickets over 4 days. We used up all the tickets. We had 6 day Paris Museum pass we used in Versailles, Louvre, Orsay. We had a reservation to go to the summit of Eiffel Tower at 8pm to see the view before and after sunset. We saw Louvre and D'Orsay using Rick Steve's audio guide. No waiting anywhere. We bought for 50 euro 3 day batobus pass to cover a boat and hop 4 routes on hop on hop off bus. Took just 1hr to see D'Orsay museum. Could have spent 2hrs if we had time.

http://www.batobus.com/en/paris-a-la-carte-pass.html

We did go all 4 routes without getting off anywhere and just 1 ride on the boat. There are other choices I would consider next time. The frequency off the bus was not enough. We wasted too much time waiting. Also, compared to other buses, this one ends too soon in the evening at 7pm.

We went to the nearby Franprix and Carrfour supermarkets for food shopping.
We walked to Luxemburg gardens and Montparnase tower, Notre Dame.

Here are the photos.

https://goo.gl/photos/zGd3Z3A4pG3ygEbF8
https://goo.gl/photos/nXiue8XrTt8qo5rk7
https://goo.gl/photos/qc7LXk1pMMJMPVcT9
https://goo.gl/photos/fwNBXeCQTMbr8Grp8
https://goo.gl/photos/A3yHiDfdfEppVvVM6
https://goo.gl/photos/s7pWo7xVPXLXMsa37

Reims and Epernay Champagne region, France. Europe visit series part 7.

Left Versailles at about 3pm on Apr 4th and reached Reims in less than 3hrs. It was a very easy drive. Parking was right in front of the apartment and it was big enough for Opel Insignia car. It was free on weekend and 1 euro per hr after 9am. We stayed at a nice 1 bedroom apartment close to the city center.

That evening we walked to a nearby carrfour city supermarket and got milk, coffee and breakfast supplies. The next morning we visited the cathedral and later Pommery.

Our host took trouble to make a reservation to visit Pommery which is a producer of Champagne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pommery

http://www.champagnepommery.com/en/

http://pommery.tickeasy.com/Information.aspx

We then drove through Epernay Wine country to Paris for a 4 night visit. That will be the next blog.

Here are the photos:

https://goo.gl/photos/c2fcjhW75V9o3NHh9

US T Mobile worked great in Denmark, Norway, Italy and France. Europe visit series part 6,

I used Android phone set to use Google Voice for all calls.
In all cases I used Google navigation to find public transport and walking, driving and even Uber. In most cases 3G data was good enough for navigation, email, whatsapp. At least 70% of the time it was good enough for phone calls. Calls to US were free. Calls to other numbers were 1cent to 8 cents per minute. Text messages worked great. Airbnb worked great. When I was at Wifi, calls were like local landline calls because Wifi was 1 to 3 MBps down and 0.2 to 1Mbps up.

I used the phone in
Copenhagen - Denmark
Oslo - Norway
Rome, Rome to Sorento - Italy including driving
Paris, Versailles, Reims (Champagne area) - France including driving

We had no charges at all for data or text. Even though we set the phones to use Google voice for all calls and when we called the call seemed to have gone through google, the incoming calls went on the voice network and for 17 days, we paid total $97 extra at 20 cents a minute. Not bad at all. Even better. I asked T Mobile about this charge and they gave me full credit for the extra $97.

Folks, if you have Google voice:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/voice/crhtHN-rUhU

Google voice is NOT supported outside the US.

Google voice only uses the tiniest amount of data during a call to do some stuff.

The call itself actually goes through your phone network. 

Hangouts does work over the internet to make calls.

Alternately, use Whatsapp or skype over data network. Of course, this may all change in future and international roaming for calls may be included.

I am surely impressed by the T Mobile service while in Europe and even when I asked them about the charge. Time for other carriers to follow T Mobile.