A Silent Phone and A Buzzing Watch; My Latest Notification Strategy

I have a vague memory of a PocketNow watch review where the reviewer noted that he always kept his phone on silent and depended on the watch to deliver notifications. I can't tell you the watch being reviewed, or who the reviewer was; but the idea stuck in my head.

A few months ago, after frustrations trying to set up the perfect Do-Not-Disturb schedule I realized I could try this method. I put my phone on mute and depended on my Vivoactive 4 to alert me to calls, messages and other notifications.

It worked! I found that I was reliably getting alerts without disturbing those around me. I can't believe I didn't try this approach sooner.

I found two gotchas with this setup: first, for reasons that are beyond me, my phone would occasionally turn off Mute and start to make noise again. Second, I didn't love that if my phone got disconnected from my watch it would remain in mute, leaving me with no way to get notifications.

Both of these issues were easy to fix with Tasker. Here's how.

Always Be Silent

Forcing my device to always be in mute mode turns out to be straightforward. I created a profile that is triggered whenever the variable %SILENT is changed. I then have that profile call a task that executes the Sound Mode action, setting the phone's mode back to 'Mute.' Here's how it's setup:

The %SILENT variable is built into Tasker and changes anytime the phone is put into or out of silent (mute) mode. Watching this variable is enough to know when to take corrective action.

Download from Taskernet: Force Silent Mode

No Watch, No Silence

If my watch gets disconnected from my phone I want to stop forcing the phone to always be silent. For this to happen, I created a profile that uses the BT Connection event. This event can detect when my watch connects or disconnects from the phone. This profile kicks off a task which consults %bt_connected. If true, then the watch is connected I enable the Force Silent Mode profile from above and force the phone's sound mode to Mute. If false, I disable the Force Silent Mode profile an set the phone's sound mode to 'Sound.'

I love how I can have this task enable or disable the Force Silent Mode profile. This let's me leverage Tasker's internal state rather than needing to write code to track whether the phone should ever be allowed to unmute.

Download from Taskernet: Watch Status Changed

Tybee Island Adventure, Day 8, The Last Day

[Composed 8/6/2021]

How we did it is a blur, but we did it. At 7:58am, we piled into a packed-to-capacity car and drove away from our beach house. We had an amazing vacay with the kids and all that was left to do was to drop them off at their respective parents and catch a plane out of town. Man this was going to be a long day.

During the car trip, when the kids got especially loud and out of control, I leveled the most serious threat I could muster. If you guys don't chill out, I'll be forced to read y'all a chapter from the Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse book. This was one threat I had no problem following through on. I'm telling you, this book is awesome. Why the kids aren't more interested in the story is beyond me, but at least it bought us a few minutes of quiet.

The drop-offs to parents went well and in short order, we found ouselves in an empty, quiet Yukon SUV driving back to Jacksonville to catch our flight. Our first stop, however, was a Dunkin Donuts to pee, mentally collect ourselves and have some yummy "recovery" donut holes.

We got back to Jacksonville with enough time for a bonus adventure: we stopped by our cousins' Lindsay and Doug's for some adult time. It was great seeing them and I only wish we had more time to catch up.

Overall, Tybee Island provided just the adventure Shira and I were looking for. The beach was pristine and kid friendly and Savannah and the surrounding area offers endless history to explore. Our VRBO was sized perfectly and the island was generally quiet. With the exception of one ice cream place, we didn't try any restaurants so I'm not sure how good the offering is.

About the only complaint I can level is that the area is super spread out. Tybeee Island to Savannah is a 30 minute drive. Even the Publix is 20 minutes away from the island. During trip planning I shrugged off this timing as no big deal, but in practice we noticed it as an inconvenience.

Overall: this was awesome! Time to start planning 2022!

Tybee Island Adventure, Day 7

[Composed 8/5/2021]

We started our day with a dolphin cruise. Driving to the boat launch I noticed some whitecaps in the bay and worried that the water may be too rough for the kids. Fortunately, I was wrong; the kids had a blast.

We had a chill cruise around the Tybee Island beach area and saw countless dolphins. The kids perched themselves at the front of the boat for the ideal view of the surroundings and we took turns shouting "dolphin!" whenever they had a sighting.

We also got up close to the Cockspur Island Lighthouse, which is Georgia's smallest lighthouse. The narrator on the boat kept up a pretty constant stream of commentary which everyone enjoyed.

Tomorrow ends our vacay, so we used the afternoon to do some much needed cleanup. The house and car looked like a Toy store exploded with Legos, Pokemon and other fun-related detritis everywhere. To the kids' credit, they didn't complain and picked everything up; I was truly amazed.

After cleaning up, I had wanted to go explore the nearby Tybee Beach Pier but after days of threatening, the rain finally showed up. For the last four days, every morning's forecast looked the same: the day was supposed to be filled with rain. Yet, the rain kept pushing back giving us an opportunity to do whatever activity we had planned. Our luck finally ran out today. But I was prepared!

I busted out some Shrinky Dinks and the kids had a blast creating jewelry, keychains and other odds and ends. I have vague memories of making Shrinky Dinks as a kid, and I'm delighted to report that the activity holds up quite well. What's nice about them is that everyone can put in as much effort as they want into coloring the various creations. The only catch is that we had to shrink them in the regular oven versus the toaster oven, so the kids weren't able to get a good view of the process. Still, it was a delightful activity for all.

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing games, watching for lightning from the storms that passed through and taking in more of the Olympics. Specifically, we watched the various forms of Karate that were making their debut. It was a chill way to close out our trip and rest up before the exhausting travel day ahead of us.