Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: And there we are. Welcome back.
You've been doing some traveling out here?
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Yes, been traveling a lot and got more travel to do. Got a family reunion and a couple of conventions and work conferences and traveling with my wife. So travel tips in mind and you know, all I can think about is the old joke where he says I've been traveling all day to Nashville and my arms are tired kind of deal.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Yep, yep, I hear you.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: I feel like my body's tired. Nashville, that's where I came from last year.
But you know, they have a new, they have a joke in Nashville though. They have a new state bird. It's called construction crane. They've got construction grains all over the city, building everywhere.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Wow. I think that's the entire southeast at this point, don't you think?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: I think it's true.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Summer's a good time to do a lot of travel. There's a lot, a lot of things going on in the summer. And it's. We're recording this early in June right now. And as you probably have heard, June is wedding season and there's a lot of weddings going on in June. And it kind of made me remember and want to bring up a topic.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: About.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: When elderly loved ones get invited to weddings.
And you know, there's a, you know, nobody wants to be not invited to a wedding and everybody wants to go. But you know, there's a, there's a lot to that. There's a. If you've got somebody who's not all that.
Yeah. Get complicated. They're not all that mobile you got. You gotta have a lot of considerations there. There's, you know, some relatives of ours, one relative was ours, just got invited to a wedding and the relative is not all that mobile. She's in assisted living actually. And it was very cool though that one of the, one of the, the CNAs who work in the assisted living facility, very fond of her and wanted to invite her to her wedding and that actually made the lady's day. She is ready to go. But there's a lot of considerations, you know, if I think the wedding is happening in a very prestigious place in a close by city and sometimes getting folks to the door and making sure that they have a good route into the, into the church or into the, the. The event center and all that kind of stuff that'll accommodate walkers and making sure that they're. Everybody can get to get to a restroom if they need to and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot to consider. So it's one of those Things you guys may not be thinking about it, but you know, there, it's this time of the year is time for that sort of stuff. So time to put a little thought in.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And you got to think differently. You got to think differently because it's mobility's key to that kind of thing. And so how your loved one can. Can move can dictate a lot from what vehicle you get to what do you do when you get there.
Sometimes some of the activities can be very walk heavy. So yeah, you guys think about that kind of stuff.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: And even down to those to do you go to the reception or not? And if you do, how long are you going to stay? You know, all those kinds of things. So there's a, there's a lot of that kind of, a lot of those considerations when you're doing that sort of thing. And I know there's a lot of those considerations when you travel with elderly loved ones. And you've been doing some of that lately and I think you had some, some tips that you were wanting to talk to us about.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you're like, so I just came back from a business trip and so what I remember now is the kinds of things that are different in the airports I go to. And some airports have done a lot of construction. I talked about Nashville being it's, you know, it's, it's national bird being the construction crane. Atlanta, a lot of it on the airport.
So, yeah, so I tell you, when I thought about how airports have changed over the last five years, some of them can be considerable changes. So a few of the ones that I know have changed a lot. Well, Atlanta always changes, but Atlanta has a good base. But the other thing that you have to watch out for, some of the regional airports can get bigger too, and bigger can be more walking. So yeah, think about that. So particular Charlotte's got that way they added a terminal. So before you do that, make sure you know what's changed in your airport. If you haven't flown in a while or if you're. You may be used to it, but think about how your loved one might not be used to it. So think about those kind of things. Maybe you have to call the airline ahead of time and get a wheelchair or something like that. You might want to make sure you do that. So here's some tips. Just the top five. We've done travel tips before, so some of these make similar sense, but these are related more specifically to airports. So.
So again, request special requests if you need to notify the Airport in advance for a wheelchair support priority low Boeing or escort services, you can do that ahead of time. So make sure you understand what your airline is going to offer you and see if that's something you can use for helping your loved one through the airport, particularly the wheelchairs because maybe they might even be limited in how many you can do. So don't wait until you get there to do that. Try to find out about that. That ensures smooth movement, makes sure that you get to the airport and reduce physical strain. And nobody wants to train while they're traveling. It's already stressful enough.
Arrive early. Most people have a sense of this and I talked to some people who in my travel who eventually go to an airport 30 to 40 minutes before their boarding time. That's. That's a no no. Especially with a senior.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Two and a half to three hours before the flight international. Add another couple of hours and I know what that means if you travel internationally, whether it's with a senior, it's already complicated. It's going to take a while to get through customs. Keep in mind I'm sure you that in mind. But two hours, two and a half hours is a minimum even as some of the smaller airports because guess what, it's time you might have done. It might have been five years ago. They might have done a who lot. They might not might not be a small airport. It might be a regional airport. So think about where you're going so and allow things for rest breaks. Make sure you expect unexpected delays, especially this time of year. Barry and I noticed the weather changes and gets really severe. It's gotten really severe and weird. You know we've up here it's gotten cold. So that kind of weather can disrupt airlines, especially if you fly in the afternoon.
So if you're going to do this also think about time. Make sure that you do early flights that don't have delays in front of them. If that's something you're concerned about, keep your medications handy. Don't pack them in a bag. You never know when you might get in a situation where you're laid over and you need that bag or maybe it's not with you. Medication, especially for seniors, should be in a carry on.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah. All the time.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Make sure you do that. Choose convenient seats. I know some airlines like Southwest is ending their open seating arrangement. I think in the next couple of days they were the only ones that really did that. But now you can choose your seat. At least you will be after a time. So choose seats that give you the ability to move in and out quickly. Especially have a loved one who needs to go to the bathroom or get all quickly. So that may cost you a little more, but the convenience may be worth it.
And then don't over pack.
Overpacking can cause you a lot of fatigue and complicate your your travel. Pack light. Use wheels. Wheels are important. No bags with no bags with no wheels have no business in airports, especially if you're carrying them on. And remember, you still got to get them from your, your baggage to whatever you're using to get to your destination. That's a. An Uber or Lyft or taxi or something like that. So you got to think about that kind of stuff. So there are a couple of tips. I'll throw them in the show notes.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: And yeah, man, I think these are all aware of all good stuff and, and so maybe some of the extras I can throw in there. One especially is to when you're doing flight planning, if you know you're gonna have somebody who's got limited, go ahead and opt for a longer layover than you might normally would do. Nobody wants to be dashing through the Atlanta airport, even if you've, you know, nobody wants to be pushing a, a wheelchair at a maximum speed through the, through a big airport at all. So no other way to get your exercise. Exactly. You know, if you got, got. If it's going to be a slow one of your. One of your folks are going to be a little slower than the others. Go ahead and plan for an extra, extra amount of time in that airport.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Or do a direct flight. Even better.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: If you can pull it off, that'd be great. And like you said, Charlotte and Atlanta. Well, Atlanta's. I'm used to Atlanta. I can get around Atlanta pretty well. But I would hate to take my dad through Atlanta. And same thing with Charlotte. You know, this is, this is our part of the country and these are the airports that we hit a lot. But what I would do for me and what I would do if I had somebody else with me are completely different things. So you know, things to think about. Well, it is not just, you know, it's not just elderly loved ones or anything like that. Shoot. 10 years ago my wife had a knee surgery and you know, she was recur recovering from that. She was not as fast as possible. We walked through the, we flew through Chicago to get to one of our trips. And I tell you, I love Chicago. It's a great town. Sometimes the airport can be. Could be the devil. And some of the folks in the airport can be evil. So I'm just going to go ahead and say that I don't know that they were, they were from.
But they're, you know. You know, people will really get a little bit rude when you're, when you're slowing down the flow. So again, think about, think about extra levers if you're going through those big, big airports. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I was trying to think, is there anything.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: I'll tell you something else I learned.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll tell you something else I learned is there's a difference between Clear and TSA Precheck.
I want to use that or not.
So both of those are services that aim to give you better convenience when you go through the security checkpoints, period. Pre check really focuses on physical screening. So it's faster security with that. So you don't take your belt off, you don't take your shoes off, take your computer out of your bag, things like that.
It's good for five years. It's fairly cheap. It's like 80 bucks for five years. Something like $16 a year.
It's available at lots of airports, so it's all over the place. It can even shows up now in your. When you buy a ticket now, it'll show up and say pre check. And there are special places to go. It's for people who want shorter, easier screening. And yes, it's basic now. A lot of people I'm actually seeing airports that have more people in PSA pre check than they do standard, which was really weird to see.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that is kind of bizarre in it.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: But now there's something else on top of that. And you'll probably see it in a lot of places. It's not in as many airports. It's like 50 airports or so. There's called Clear.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: What Clear is supposed to do is speeds up your verification at airport security.
So what Clear does is it uses biometric ID. It IDs you in a chaos and it puts you at the front of the security line when you go through. So even though Precheck doesn't have as many. Not have as many people stand, it's gotten to have a lot. It always puts you at the front of the line because they know that you're already cleared.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Okay, well, cool.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: It's privately operated. TSA Precheck is government operated.
It is sign up online. You could do it in the airport. They have a thing now where you can actually not pay for it for two weeks, but it is more expensive. It's like almost $200 a year. So it gives you a. There's a lot of convenience in it. It's not at that many airports and it's for people who want to skip lines completely. Frequent travelers who have done that. So it is the fastest experience.
So one is the most, the easier and shorter screening. The other one is the fastest total experience.
Think about that when you go through. So you might get people approaching you about clear. If you're flying only a couple times a year, it ain't worth it. Yeah, like me seven, eight times a year. Might want to think about it. And then where. How busy you travel to. So just somebody to get to. And I'll throw those in the show notes too.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Cool. And I'll throw something on. I see your clear and your TSC pre tech and I'll raise you. I'm going to raise you global. Raise your Global Entry.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: If you're doing any international. International travel, Global entry is a must.
And it's. I think it's $100. It's good for five years and it gets you all the benefits of TSA PreCheck, but it also gives you expedited entry through customs and at borders. So that, that's a, that's a little extra thing that.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Oh, so when you're doing international travel, you want this.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And gives you, gives you both of those. I have done, I have done international travel without that and with that. And I, I can definitely say, if you have the means, by all means, go ahead and get Global Entry. It's well worth not having to stand in the line forever at customs, I think. Let's see. So, yeah, we're talking a little bit about travel. We're talking a little bit about wedding season. And then the various security programs come along and. Well, I tell you what, now I'm going to move on over to something tech related.
We talked a couple of weeks ago about how sometimes our loved ones can be the best QA people in the world. You know, they can find all the edge cases of where. Where a piece of software does things that you wouldn't expect it to do. Well, my aunt called me the other day and she told me, she said, you know, I was talking to my sister and while we were talking the other night, all of a sudden this, this man's voice came over and it said, your call will. This call will be recorded.
And I thought, okay, what?
That, that's, that's really weird. Didn't know what was going on. And then I thought about it for a minute. And I thought, oh yeah, okay, I know what's going on. Well, you remember a couple of weeks ago we talked about, or actually several episodes ago, we talked about that Apple had added call recording to iOS calls. There's a little icon in the top left hand corner of your screen when you're on a call with, with, with someone on an iPhone, if you hit that thing, it'll, it'll basically pop up and say, hey, the call is going to be recording. And it'll tell everybody on the call that, so what had happened to. Cause this is one, the man's voice. Her Siri is a man's voice. That's one thing. Two, she likes to speak on a speakerphone to her sister, but occasionally she says she forgets and puts it up to her ear. Well, when you're on speakerphone and you put it up to your ear, the screen is still live and it will respond to touches from your earlobe and from the side of your head and that kind of stuff. So what happened was she put it up to her ear, it hit that icon up in the top left hand corner and is initiated call recording and freaked her out, Freaked her sister out. And nobody knew what was going on. So. Well, once figured it out, not a problem. And she said, is there any way you can take that away? I don't really want to do that anymore. There's no need to recall to record a call.
That just freaked me out. I don't want to do it. Okay, let me go dig a little bit. So it turns out this is the tip I want to give. You can turn off call recording on iOS if you want to. It is super easy. You go to the Settings app, you go down to apps, you click on phone and in phone slide down the screen. Well, and there is a call recording section. If you click on that, you get the option to turn that off. It's on by default. And when you turn it off, it won't show up anymore. And if you happen to be on speakerphone and put it up to your ear, your earlobe will not, will not do that for you though.
I will say, and this is something else, I need to go investigate that. We do have one relative who has that problem, you know, wanting to put the speakerphone up to their ear.
And they will, their ear will hit FaceTime on a regular basis. And so you'll get these, these intermittent FaceTime calls from that person while you're talking to them. I need to go investigate if you can turn that off.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: I hope that she could Move that.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Icon, probably, I guess. But. But it's. No, it's while it's in the call, like so the. The call.
All the call controls are on the screen. So there may be. Though there may be a way to turn off FaceTime for that. We'll have to look and see, but we'll see what's going on. But yeah, that's the only tech tip I have.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: You can also.
Well, I got a couple of. Actually so related to yours. Forget where that is. Remember, you could search for things in the settings. So if you can set. If you can search for call recording or screen recording or call recording, you could find it without having to dig through a lot of stuff. And if even for FaceTime, you might even be able to look up items in the settings to find those settings too. So the search feature and settings is really cool. And don't forget about it.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Excellent point, excellent point. So, yeah, if you don't know exactly where it's at or you can't. Can't find it in the settings, just search for it and it'll usually show up and take you right to the right spot. So that's pretty cool.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: I got another update.
A little stack of tech on the other side of the seesaw.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Go for it.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: I've been using TeamViewer as one of my big choices for doing screen sharing for my mom.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Right, Right.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: But guess what? They updated.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: What's that?
[00:16:55] Speaker B: They updated big.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: So what'd they do for us?
[00:16:58] Speaker B: They have a new interface. And so you may run into an issue where your old interface doesn't work or something is not. You may have to change it and have to deal with it. So a tip for those who are using TeamViewer time, when you're there, go back and look. Make sure that you're updated to the right version, because being out of date with that kind of thing could be bad. And then get used to the unit interface and make sure you set it up for both you and yourself so that we'll do that. I had to do that for mom because I tried to connect to her and it wouldn't work anymore.
And then you have to go back and reinstall. So that's the. The price of free software like that is they change stuff.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: One of the things they changed is that they only allow you to connect to three machines with the free version before it was unlimited. And they just sort of said, well, if you're personal, you can do it. Now they would limit you to just three. So if you run into that just choose, choose your machines well.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Good tip, good tip.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Product, it still works really good.
I'm going to talk maybe on the next show we do. I am figuring out how to make the Apple screen sharing work a lot better. So I told you, I think the last time I mentioned it, it would still make the user click on something. They let you connect, you can set it up so you go straight in.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: You just have to make sure you have an account inside that machine and there might be some charts we might want to do to illustrate a little bit better. But yeah, I've made some changes there.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: That's good to know too. And you know that, that, that screen sharing thing brings up something I've run into lately, and you guys out there may run into this too, is that you'll be on a FaceTime call sometimes with someone on their phone and if you need to help them with a process on their phone, you know, there's a, there's a screen sharing button you hit and it allows them, they, they have to say accept. And then when that lets you see their screen and then if you want to control their screen, there's another round of verification have to do. Yeah, I've noticed lately when I've done that with some folks, especially if their signal is not great, it, it takes a long time to go from asking if you can see or control their screen and it actually showing up on my phone. I don't know if that's just a me thing or it's a connection issue, but it eventually does. It'll eventually come on. And I have found that if you have, if that you run into that and it keeps being persistent, reboot your phone and then call them back and it'll usually take care of it. And if they're if possible, have them do the same on their side. Lately rebooting has cured a lot of ills for a lot of things, but it's just something to look out for.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah, there is actually a feature in Team Viewer that lets you hide backgrounds that can really speed that thing some stuff up like that, so.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Oh really? Okay, cool.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Yeah, so there's a. And it's a feature that's really prominent now so you can go in and look under view and say hide backgrounds. And that could speed on when you're on a slow connection. So.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Nice, nice.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Something about.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Oh, cool. Well, I think this is an early summer episode for us. We might be a little short today, but we'll probably be back in the future with some longer episodes. But right now, I think that's. That's a pretty good. Pretty good swath across travel and care and tech. All in all in one little short episode. What do you think?
[00:20:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you like what we're doing, make sure you recognize us, go ahead and like us and write a review and give us and get to the notification. So, you know, when we drop, we're pretty consistent about doing every two weeks, but every once in a while, we get too busy, and so we might go three, but that's okay. Hopefully we'll do a little bit of more to snap things up and make sure we don't miss anybody. But, you know, it's. We're doing this to help ourselves, but we're also doing it to grow community. And so tell us if you got something you want us to talk about, because Barry and I are pretty good about solving problems, so if you hit.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Us, we'd love to hear it.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: You'll usually figure it out.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: That reminds me, by the way, I looked at our analytics, and we have a new country this. This week. We have Serbia.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Oh, new.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah, a new country. We got. Got. Got a listener in Serbia. Shout out to Serbia. We've seen a lot of new cities lately with. With folks popping up from. From different places all around, and we're really, really happy to see it growing and like to see it grow more. For sure.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: All right, well, y' all have a lovely, lovely week, and we'll be back in touch soon, and we'll. We'll see you on the other side. Take care, y' all.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: No problem. We'll have more on caretaking tips.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: Caretaking tips.
