11 small ways to Save the World

I wanted to write a little something of an inspiration for people, I'm hoping. I just wanted to list some of the things that I personally do in my daily life to help make the planet a somewhat more liveable space for future generations (that I also won't be contributing to. Should I add that? Probably.)

I understand some people are lazy by nature, and I am definitely in that camp. I have never volunteered to be on a clean up garbage crew or anything of that nature for example. I can certainly be lazy in other ways too. Specifically, instead of trying to sell old items I no longer need, I will give them to the Goodwill, because I am too lazy to go through all that jazz.

So, in that vein, I will give you examples of several lazy things that I do to help contribute to keeping the planet around a bit longer without going overboard.

1. Buying a hybrid vehicle. Yes I know, it still uses gas and oil. Electric would probably be better. However, I live in an apartment and my work has no charging stations, so electric really isn't an option for me atm. I also plan on keeping this car for as long as humanly possible. Bonus, my car doesn't have to look idiotic while saving the planet, either.

2. Recycle cardboard. Recyling can be hard and confusing. Besides the fact that my apartment doesn't support full-scale recycling, I have never really been in on doing all of that anyway. But, my apartment does recycle cardboard [boxes]. And that's super easy to do to break down your cardboard and throw it in a different container when you're taking out the trash.

3. Cleaning with electrolyzed water (EoW). If you don't know the miracle that is electrolyzed water, here is a primer. It's pretty amazing stuff. I had bought into Shine, which is a now defunct company who had invented a product that will clean your toilet with every flush using EoW. I absolutely hate cleaning toilets. Not only is it super annoying to have to clean them almost constantly, but then you're also flushing harsh chemicals straight into the sewer. I also bought into Force of Nature (however, I now have a Naturechlor instead so that I don't have to buy their little pods) to make EoW for surfaces. And in the same vein as using it to clean all my surfaces, I also use reusable hand towels instead of paper towels or wipes.

4. I buy most of my clothes through ThredUp (.com) or the Goodwill. This is also kind of out of laziness, because it's a lot easier for me to scroll through clothes online than it is to try to find stuff in a store. It also helps that I'm not a typical shopper that loves to go out and shop for clothes constantly.

5. Sustainable shoes. There is such a thing. Vessi is a shoe company that does ad spots on Linus Tech Tips. I trust Linus and his company to vet and review their sponsors and many of his staff wear their shoes. I actually didn't care that they use "vegan leather" etc, they're really just the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn and I want them all. They've held up very well and they're waterproof - bonus!

6. Reusable fabric grocery bags. In the state of WA, it's actually illegal to use plastic bags now, so it's been kind of a necessity for a while. Any plastic bags I get, I re-use for my bathroom trash bin, so there's that.

7. Non-meat foods. I'm not a vegetarian or vegan by any stretch. I still love meat. However, I can potentially go all veg meals easily without a problem. And I really enjoy both Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers. It's not something I eat all the time, but if I can replace meat with non-meat for any meals, it's better than nothing.

8. Rechargeable batteries. There are many things in your home that still require AA or AAA to function, and rechargeable batteries have come a long way. The only issue with your generic (or even name brand like Eneloop) batteries is that they use 1.2v. Some products require more volts to function properly. For example: my Quest 2 controllers, my salt and pepper grinders, and my milk frother actually require 1.5v which is what disposable batteries run at. However, there is a solution for this now. Tenavolts is a company that makes 1.5v rechargeable batteries. And sure, they're not cheap, but you also only need to put them in things that need 1.5v. They work great for this. 

9. Using Wool Dryer Balls and not using fabric softener. Dryer balls are not a perfect replacement for dryer sheets but they work pretty well. They just don't do a lot for stopping static, so if that's an issue for you and your clothes, then maybe stick with dryer sheets. 

10. A Bidet. Okay, hear me out. I know, in the US, bidets are weird. And it took me many years to get over this weirdness to buy an attachable one for my toilet. It took the pandemic and not being able to buy toilet paper to finally convince me. And we still use toilet paper. But not nearly as much as we would otherwise. You do feel much cleaner when using one, and I sometimes wish they had one at work too.

11. Buying bed sheets that aren't cotton. Cotton is pretty damn horrible from an enviromental standpoint. But again, I don't necessarily do this for environmental reasons, but for comfort reasons. Although Bamboo is more sustainable as a bed sheet option, the way viscose/rayon is made is not enviromentally friendly. However, making bed sheets out of eucapluptus is more friendly, and they're still satiny and soft. Here is a primer on bamboo vs eucalyptus. The other option I like is linen sheets. They're considered "luxury" for sure, and it took me a while to get used to their feel, but I do like them a lot. They're not only breathable, but they'll last a really long time.

I know what you might be thinking. These 11 things are so miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Why even bother? Well, for a couple of reasons. The first one being that yes, while these things are small, the more people that do them, the bigger the impact will be. The other reason is something called "voting with your wallet". As consumers, we have all the power to decide how companies will behave. The more people that buy into envionmentally sustainable products like Vessi or Beyond Meat, the cheaper they will become and the more prolific - and the more inpact they will make. And the more people that buy one thing over another, then those companies will begin to realize how much their consumers want environmentally sustainable practices and they may change their ways. We can only hope. If everyone does a little, it will do a lot!

Birthday trip

I wanted to drive. If you follow my blog, you know that I just bought a new 2022 Honda Insight. It is a delight to drive. It's a hybrid sedan that can get up to 55mpg. That seems like an unreal estimate to be honest, as even when I was driving this road trip, the best I could get was 47-50mpg for highway miles. But even so, it's just so much fun with all the technology it packs in. 

My commute is so short that I don't get to drive it enough for my liking so as a birthday treat I wanted to go on a road trip somewhere. I took Monday 4/25 and Tuesday 4/26 off. I had to wait until Sunday night on April 24th to see what the weather was going to be like on Monday since the forecast suggested isolated showers. My options were:

The coast (Long Beach/Cannon Beach)

Chuckanut drive by Bellingham 

Diablo Lake in the Northern Cascades

I've only been to Long Beach/Cannon Beach but none of those other places so I would have been happy doing any of them. The weather forecast suggested that the coast was going to be clear by midday so that's where we decided to go. 

We stopped at Long Beach and decided to walk the boardwalk. I hadn't been at Long Beach in so long that I had no idea the Gray Whale Skeleton was gone and they had replaced it with a Gray Whale wood sculpture. Apparently the skeleton had either been stolen or vandalized way back in the early 2000's so they had to replace it. Sad!

The weather was nearly perfect. The wind wasn't too cold and the temperature was pretty mild. The sun was out so it felt really nice. After we walked the boardwalk we went to Marsh's Museum - the prerequisite stop on every Long Beach trip. We then walked downtown until the clouds began to gather and it got too cold. We stopped at a bakery and got a number of delicious goodies to eat on the trip.

I then tried to drive on the beach. I'm not sure if my car just wasn't powerful enough or what, but it felt as if I was sinking and sliding too much. I switched it to Power mode and that helped, but I still didn't feel very confident that I wouldn't get stuck so I quickly turned around and headed back out.

After that, I decided to drive us down to Cannon Beach in Oregon. It was raining pretty heavily when we passed through Seaside and landed in Cannon Beach. We decided lunch was in order, and Patrick found a restaurant close by. Unfortunately, it was a really expensive menu so we decided to back out and find another place. I'm usually up for sandwiches so I found a deli. It was not good. And it wasn't cheap, either. Super disappointment. But, by the time we finished eating and parked at the public lot for Haystack, the weather was clearing up and the skies were parting. The weather was gorgeously perfect for beach walking and picture taking.

Once we were done taking pictures of the rock it was time to head home. We had a long drive ahead of us. It was a total of 365 miles round trip, which was technically less than a tank of gas, but I'd had to stop at Costco in Warrenton to make sure I had enough to get home because I hadn't been on a full tank when I left. (Does anyone find it disconcerting that Oregon pays people to pump your gas for you? Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but because I can't run my own card I have to tell him my PIN number?? Seems very... stealy.)

Anyway, that's my trip! A lot of fun and good pics too.

Chip Shortages Affect Cars, Too

And now... for the dramatic follow up to the first post.

I'm not super stoked to write out this story because I'm still a little upset about the whole thing, but I need this for future reference.

You know I'm the research queen. When I considered replacing my Sonic, I started reading up on all the ways that dealerships can scam you out of your money. What things to watch out for, and what they will attempt to tell you or the excuses they will give to charge you things.

I came in with a folder. I thought I was ready. I had gotten an approval for a car loan from BECU. I had my credit numbers printed out. I had the average price of the car, what the MSRP was, and an entire print out of all the bogus fees dealerships might try to tack on. And of course I had Patrick with me in order to keep me in check.

When we first walked in, they tried to charge over $35k for a $27,775 MRSP car. They said they were tacking on a markup for the shortage situation. Look, I get it - it's a tough market, but you also have to realize that the longer a car sits on the lot unsold, the more it costs the dealership because they're basically charged a fee for every day it sits. So in the case of selling a car before it even hits the lot? Come on.

When we questioned this, she relented and said that was supposed to have been $31,775 and got it changed. Rule number one that I read is "Dealers don't make mistakes". She'd been doing this job for 3 years, and that would have been a very obvious error. It's not a mistake, they just get caught in a lie.

Then we also got the GAP insurance coverage removed, the oil maitenence package removed, and a reduction in the "PERMAPLATE" stuff that apparently "gets installed at the factory" and helps protect the car from dings and scratches. This is another thing dealerships try to tell you - they will "blame" the factory and say that they're charging it because they have to, as they didn't add it on, but all you have to say is "I didn't request _____, so I want the charge removed." You can do that for other things too, like VIN Etching.

They also do something I read about called "filling buckets" - it's just a visual aid to describe that they shuffle money around from one spot to another to make it look like you're saving more. They did that with my trade in. They first offered $10,500, but then reduced it to $10k after me asking for other stuff to be removed or something, I can't remember exactly. I was looking at the total at the end, and instead of charging $1200 for the PERMAPLATE, they were charging $999, and I figured if I could get that taken off entirely, it would work out. She basically asked me, "If we remove this charge completely, then you will sign?" Due to the $4k markup, the monthly for the vehicle was going to be much higher than I had anticipated. Although I had read that taxes for a vehicle in WA state would only be 6.8%, that doesn't include county tax, so it was more. And also the vehicle licencing charges were almost $800, which seemed outrageous and I was not expecting that either. On the plus side, they didn't try to tack on any "Dealer Prep Fees" or any other bogus charges, so it was just the straight taxes and licensing. 

It was way more than I had originally mathed out. But then the manager said "what if you went from 72 months to 84?" I said I had gotten approved from BECU, and I'm not sure if this was intentional or if there was miscommunication, but he asked "for 84 months?" and I said yes, because I figured if I was approved for 72, why not 84? But we had agreed on a price that worked for me, which I think was $240 a month after down at 84 months. So as long as they took off the PERMAPLATE charge, I would sign.

It's when we got to Finance that things changed and I probably should have backed out. She told us that you can't finance anything less than 20k at 84 months, which is true for a lot of banks, and because we couldn't put as much down as we were anticipating (as it would bring the total cost below 20k), then the monthy would go up to $255. They had tacked on the extended warranty and couldn't remove it or it would drop the loan amount to below 20k. I mean, after raising my concerns, she did take $500 off the extended to bring it down to $2500, and somehow reduced the cost of the licensing fees to somehwere around $450 and it still kept the loan above $20k. Plus, she told us that if we wanted to remove the extended warranty all we had to do was call them, and a check would be cut directly to the bank and it would take $2500 off the total, but it obviously wouldn't reduce our monthly.

[Side note: The reason I focus on the monthly payment is not make it low enough to afford, I know that is a mistake. I want it the lowest I can possibly make it so that I have the ability to overpay every month. I had paid off my Sonic loan in 3 years. I knew I wasn't going to still be paying off this car in 7 years, and not even in 6.]

My mistake was signing anyway. It was after 9pm, we were all tired. She told me "lets just secure this paperwork and get you home" (including putting down a $500 deposit to secure the new car).

That night, after I got home, I was phisically ill. I couldn't sleep. I kept telling Patrick how much I regretted this, and he was saying that everything was fine, everything would be fine, we could afford it. But I didn't like it. I felt like we were taken advantage of, that it was a type of bait and switch, that we had agreed on one price but then Finance told us different, and the whole thing didn't sit well with me and I wanted to back out. He said that was fine, that we didn't "sign anything" and I could still back out. 

The car would be arriving that Saturday. I texted the rep that I wanted to back out. She had originally told me that the $500 deposit was contingent on me liking the car, since it wasn't available for me to test drive. And I figured that if she refused to return the deposit then I could issue a chargeback on my credit card since I had no intention of picking up the car.

She said that I had signed over the Sonic and it was now their car. I said I still had the title...? She sent me a picture of the affidavit I signed the other night in Finance. That basically meant that I had no recourse to back out of this. You see, even though I held the original title to my Sonic, they had me sign a Affidavit to Release Interest in the Sonic. It was now their car, and if I didn't give it to them, they could repo it. I was stuck. Although I had gotten advice saying that it wasn't legal and they couldn't do anything if I didn't drive the car off the lot, it didn't make sense to me that they never needed MY title of the Sonic. That affidavit had to be a legally binding document. 

I spoke to the manager, and he got me another $250 off the price, which lowered my monthy to $251 (oh joy), but that was all he could do. I mean, I was more upset with myself than them. I did sign all the documents. The only part I can't prove was whether or not they had intentionally made it seem like I could do 84 months at a lower payment then was actually possible. 

I told Patrick that we were going to go pick up the car. He was upset that I was upset, and to him it seemed like I was folding under pressure. But I just had to chalk it up to experience, and an expensive mistake, and it's not like I still didn't want the car. It was just right now was bad timing. We were planning on moving out in May, and I had to take some money out of the Savings for moving in order to meet the down payment. And due to Patrick owing taxes and such, it just meant that we were going to have to sign another lease at our current place for another 6 months. But that might work out for the best in the end, since the new apartment was going to be a bit more expensive than this one anyway.

I can't say I got a bad deal. The only thing they ended up getting away with was the $4k markup. And they weren't the only dealership charging $31,775 for the car. But I can't wait to take the Honda of Burien plates off my car, that's for sure.

New Car

 As the title suggests, I got a new car. I was already planning on replacing my 2015 Chevy Sonic LTZ for 2 main reasons... #1 is that it has had a number of mechanical and electrical issues since I've owned it in the last 6 years, and I felt like there was another one coming due to rough idling (it only had 70k miles on it). #2 is that right now, the used market for cars is nuts, and Kelley Blue Book said my car was worth $10,200, when I had paid $12-something for it 6 years ago.

So the only real issue with a high rate of return on trade-ins is that many new vehciles right now have a mark up because dealerships are getting very few sent from the factory and therefore need to make up for the loss in revenue due to this. That was the case for the car I wanted to replace this with, which was a 2022 Honda Insight hybrid. 

Right now, gas prices are also nuts, and while you would think the tiny body and engine (the LTZ model had a turbo as well) of the Sonic had to have had some great gas milage, it just didn't. With a 12 gal tank, it averaged about 280-300 miles, and roughly 27mpg, with a HP of 138. The Insight on the other hand, is a mid-sized sedan with a hp of 151, a 10.6 gal tank, and gets about 500 miles to a tank; roughly 50-55 mpg. It's basically the best in its class and on par with the Prius. 

Thanks to youtube reviews, I knew basically everything about the car inside and out before even going to the dealership (obviously this isn't the end all-be all of information, but no dealerships had any cars on the lot for me to look at personally, so it's all I had). And compared to the Prius, Honda did them one better. The EX trim, which is their base model, had all the high tech saftey sensors that the base model Prius lacked.

• Safety features:
  
  • Collision Mitigation Braking System™ (CMBS™)8
  • Forward Collision Warning (FCW)9
  • Road Departure Mitigation System (RDM)4
  • Lane Departure Warning (LDW)10
• Driver-assistive features:
  
• Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with Low-Speed Follow13
• Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS)11
• Traffic Sign Recognition System (TSR)58

And let me tell you, the driver-assistive features are so bomb. I'm in love with them already. The ACC is amazing for highway traffic as the car basically drives itself. You set your speed to whatever, like 65, and if traffic slows in front of you then so does the car. Once traffic picks up, then your car will as well, without you having to do a thing. Lane Keep Assist is also great for the highway, as the car follows the lines of the road and basically keeps straight or curves with the road for you. The only issue with this that I've found so far (besides the fact that some reviews state it doesn't always work) is when there's a exit the car wants to follow that line and you have to correct for it. But overall, it's much less work to drive, especially in heavy traffic, then it would otherwise be. The traffic sign recognition is also pretty neat as there are times I'm driving around in unfamiliar territory and have no idea what the speed is.

It also has Android Auto (which I missed the boat on with my 2015 Sonic) that I've wanted forever. Going from the LTZ Sonic to the EX Insight, I lost out on a few nice-to-haves, like leather seats, heated seats, fog lights (trust me, they come in handy even without fog), and premium speakers. But the cool thing about Hondas is that they do their upgrades at the dealership, so I can always add the heated seats or the fog lamps later.

In my next post, I'll explain what the buying process was like for me (thanks to the shortages), which didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked.

OnePlus 9 Pro Update

I loved this phone when I bought it, even with its quirks in the software. I hadn't owned a OnePlus device since the OnePlus One, which had a ton of software flaws and turned me off of OP phones until now. When OP announced their cameras were in collaboration with Hasselblad, I was intrigued. I wanted a phone with a good camera.

Everything was going great until it was finally time to upgrade to Android 12. Unfortunately, this did not go smoothly. OP and Oppo merged, which meant that OxygenOS was becoming ColorOS. Along with the A12 update, it turned into a disaster. 

3 months after updating to A12, the issues I was having still weren't being addressed and I was running very low on patience.

1. No more 5G/VoLTE/VoWifi. This one is huge. How can they let an update go for 3 months without a phone having access to the stuff it did in A11?

2. Always on Display doesn't stay on. (It's literally in the name, dudes.) I use my phone as a clock/alarm, and having to tap the screen to find out the time was irritating. But also, if my alarm went off and the screen wasn't on, I'd have to hunt for the alarm under notifications and turn it off manually. And then my Google Routines wouldn't run.

3. No more Visual Voicemail. T-Mobile has a nice service that will give you voice-to-text voicemails and access to look and save them and re-read them, if you pay $4 a month. It's pretty sweet and super handy. But after the update not only did voice-to-text stop working, but voicemails stopped showing up in the app completely. I messaged the developer about it but got nothing back from them. I wasn't going to pay $4 a month for a app that doesn't work.

There were other more weird, random annoyances like the fact that after a couple of days, the ability to log into my phone with the fingerprint would competely go away unless I rebooted my phone. And when I rebooted, I would have to re-inable auto-rotate every time. And other times when my screen waking just wouldn't respond at all.

Oh I'm settling. So hard.

I posted these 3 main issues in OP Feedback, but they wanted me to do a screenshot video of the issue and some other weird stuff, and it just irritated me more, because 2 of the 3 issues I would not be able to do this. How do you expect me to video record my phone turning off its Always on Display after a random 4 hours in the middle of the night and then what - screenshot the off screen?? Like, are you serious? They were sending me canned responses without even reading about my issue first. So instead of trying to go through that trouble, I said screw it, and reinstalled Android 11.

I finally have a fully functioning phone again. It's unfortunate that I lose out on critical security updates. I'll try Android 12 again maybe in a few months. In fact, I think they've stopped pushing it out to phones due to all the issues, so maybe it'll be a few months before I get the update again. 

I had to factory reset my phone in order to downgrade it, which is a hassle in itself. But fair warning - if you have a 2-factor authentecator app - MAKE SURE YOU EXPORT EVERYTHING BEFORE WIPING YOUR PHONE.

Google Authentecator has an option to export/import your stuff, which I had no idea even existed, and I didn't even think that I needed to backup this stuff, but of course you do. There is literally no way to get all your old 2-factors back, and I had a whole page of stuff - some of it for work even. I was even locked out of the Bitwarden (my password manager!!) webpage without it. I was still able to access the browser application, which was crucial for work passwords, but basically the only way to "fix" the website problem was to delete my account and start over. Luckily, using the browser app, I was able to export all the passwords to my desktop and reload them to the new account. But without recovery passwords I have no access to any of my 2-factor unless it has a backup text option. And I don't even remember who all I had them set up for so I will be discovering them for a while, I'm sure.

Don't make the same mistake I did. >_<

Kitty Update

I wanted to write a little update for Daisy. If you haven't read my previous post, (go do that!) basically she was diagnosed with metestatic lung cancer from a lump we found under her armpit that we, at first, thought it might just be a lipoma until it changed to become hard and oozy. Anybody that has been warned about cancer, knows that when a lump suddenly changes shape/hardness, to be worried and get it checked out. Even though we never did a pathology on the lump after her surgery, they did an xray when the lump grew back and found masses on her lungs.

They gave her up to 6 months. That was back in October. Because she is 18, and the masses were in her lungs, they knew putting her under anesthesia would be too dangerous. And doing chemo would wipe her out much worse than a younger cat. It wasn't worth it for her quality of life to put her through that.

I just wanted to give anybody interested some idea of the resources out there when you have an animal going through something like this, in case they were unaware like we were. Daisy's vet/insurance is through Banfield (Petsmart) and all they could really do is ask the oncologist his recommendations about how to treat her with her remaining months left. But while we waited on an answer, Daisy was becoming more lethargic, not eating very much, and anything she did eat, she might throw up. We weren't sure where to turn.

I began to do research (like I do), and found out that not only were their hospice/palliative care services for animals, but they could even travel to your home. Granted, it won't be covered under any kind of insurance, but if they could help Daisy then it was worth it.

We found a travel vet call Peaceful Goodbyes, and she was able to come out within a couple of days. Daisy, at this point, had done a 180 from a couple days ago and was now eating again, but we were still worried about her pain level. 

See, cats hide their pain very well, and sometimes that pain can cause them to not want to eat, which can turn out very badly within just a couple of days if they continue down that road. We wanted to get ahead of the lack of appetite/throwing up, since it would only take a couple of days for her to suffer from hepatic lipidosis. 

The vet prescribed an anti-nausea medication that was actually meant for dogs, so we had to cut these tiny pills into quarters, which is not easy. And then, she gave her a shot of ketamine. It's hard to find anything online about ketamine for animals in regards to pain control, as mostly articles will pop up that it's used for anethesia. But boy, did it work miracles. Daisy felt a million times better and wanted to eat the whole world. In fact, she wanted more food than I think I've ever seen her eat in the 3 years I've known her. The ketamine could last about 4 weeks and then we could get her into her Banfield for another shot. This visit basically cost $315 (when you include the 2 meds), but now she was set up with a hospice vet that we could call on to do at-home euthanasia when the time came. 

We continue to give her her gabapentin to help with arthritis, and Banfield also prescribed a steroid to help with inflammation. Unfortunately, when it was time for Daisy's second shot of Ketamine, it didn't do all the wonders it did the first time, which is pretty disappointing. I mean, she's still eating a good amount, but she also lost almost a lb of weight in a month, which is horrible. We feed her anytime she begs for food, and we give her just enough for her to be able to finish her plate in 2 sittings (wet food, of course.) But I guess the disease is using her calories so she's still losing weight.

I went online to do more research (since Banfield isn't much help) and basically googled "my cat is losing weight". Irritatingly, what pops up is "find out why your cat is losing weight". We already know why, what can we do about it?? They gave basic instructions like, feed wet food, and warm it up etc. Sigh. But in my googling I saw an ad for a high calorie Nutri-gel for cats. It's a sticky, molases-like stuff that tastes fishy, and Daisy seems to like it. We put a small amount on her paw for her to lick up. We haven't had it long enough to see if it's helping, but it couldn't hurt that's for sure. We'll mix it up into her wet food too.

So that's the update so far. Just some resources for anyone that might be going through something similar with their pet.

Adjustable Base

So you know me, the research queen. I try to watch and read all the things before I buy something, especially if it's expensive. Due to some recent back issues I've been having (and Patrick has been complaining as well), I decided that we needed to do something about our bed. Unfortunately, we had just bought the Purple 4 back in March. And the funny thing is, it has worked great up until now. I've replaced my mattresses too many times over the last 5 years and spent way too much money trying to find the "perfect mattress" to have to toss this one and try another. So, I found another solution.

An adjustable base.

To the youtubes!! Just about everybody and their dog makes their own adjustable bases. Unless you've been living under a rock, I'm sure you've noticed the explosion of rollable, shippable, factory-to-consumer beds being sold on the market right now. And just about every one of those brands will make an adjustable base. I had to watch several youtube videos about "the 5 best adjustable bed bases!", which of course, each one had a different set of 5, so it made things even more difficult.

Feature-wise, I didn't need anything too fancy like under bed lighting, wall-hugging, or message. I really just wanted this so-called "anti-gravity" feature that raises the head and legs up so that it craddles you and takes the pressure off your lower back. But I was also desperately looking for measurements of the frame because a bunch of them touted that they would fit inside your current bed frame to look seamless, and also had adjustable legs to increase the height, which I really needed because my platform frame was 14" high. I also wanted to make sure it was going to hold enough weight. The cheaper frames I found only held 650-750lbs, which seems like a lot, but Purple beds are really freaking heavy. My queen is probably about 200lbs of floppy hyperelestric polymer. Add 250 for Patrick and round up to 200 for me, and that's already too much.

I also wanted something where the frame looked nice just in case it wouldn't fit inside the one I currently had. Now granted, there isn't anything fancy about my platform frame. Its a steal construction with wooden slats but a nice dark gray padded headboard; that's the part I really wanted to keep. But I had spent probably $200 on this frame, geez, a year ago, maybe 2? It's not like I like throwing away money.

So, after a couple of days of watching videos, I finally found something that fit the bill. The Nectar adjustable base actually had above and beyond what I wanted, at a reasonable price. On sale for $800, it had USB ports, underbed lighting, message, anti-snore, all the adjutability, could hold up to 1,000lbs, and a nice padded dark gray surround for the frame. It said the leg height could be adjusted and was meant to sit inside bed frames, so it looked great. The youtube videos I watched said that the set up was really easy which was good because I didn't have enough room in my apartment to shuffle things around while trying to put it together.

I buy it, and end up with a coupon for a free 10-year parts and labor warranty on the motor etc, which is great because it originally only comes with a 3 year one, which is one of the worst offerings for adjustable bases. Patrick and I had a horrible time getting it up the stairs. First of all, there is something wrong with my left arm (that I will be seeing the doctor about) where I can't use it to lift much without it really hurting, so we had that going. Plus, Fed Ex dropped it off outside, with a cardboard box, on the day it was raining a monsoon. I got to it within 30 minutes but Patrick was at work, so just getting it inside the door of our secured unit (downstairs) was a feat in itself, as it weighs like 150 lbs. The cardboard was already falling apart, so when Patrick came home I told him we had to open it downstairs and then drag it up, because the cardboard wouldn't last the journey.

We get it up the stairs, and notice that the actuators for the motors weren't connected, and nothing was plugged into the control unit. It was also not already one piece (the video I watched said "it's already put together, all you have to do is unfold it and turn it over!" basically). So, we move the mattress out of the way, and I measure the adjustable frame and no, it will not fit inside the one I have. Sadness. I was not super surprised, as I was reading that platform frames are a bit different than regular frames so it might not fit. That's why I found one with the gray trim. But then I noticed the legs. They were a single piece of steel and not adjustable, even though the FAQ claimed that they were. So now they're lying. Fine, whatever, it wasn't going to fit inside my platform frame anyway.

We go to put the two halves together. Holes need to align so that we can screw in a leg on each side; only, the right side was being stubborn. Nothing we could do, no matter how hard we pushed, would align the two holes to screw in that leg. I finally had to bring out my dremel and start shaving steel. That was fun. I managed to make the hole just big enough to get the holes to align and we screwed in the leg. Then, we had to decipher the horrible instructions. They were completely wrong about which wire went into each plug for the control unit (they were color coded on the unit) and in general the directions just sucked. We had to guess at what they were implying most of the time. 

Finally, we get it together, put the batteries in the remote, and the bed doesn't move. (Luckily, the mattress wasn't on it yet). We realized they had given us dead batteries. They're AAA - do I even have any? Luckily, I did; exactly 3, which is what it took. Then, we try again. The bed still doesn't move. Maybe we plugged something in wrong, after all, the instructions were shit. So we turn the bed on its side and look at the controller. I'm reading the instructions to see if there was something we missed. On the last page, there is something in italics saying that we need to pair the remote with the controller.

...why wasn't that in the instructions for set up? We had already turned the frame over and were ready to go. It would be pretty important to tell us this before we get everything set up. The controller is in the middle of the frame and hard to reach.

So, we do this, and finally, at almost midnight, we get the damn thing set up and now we can go to bed.

Pic from GoodBed review

Additional: We've had this bed base for like a month, and I've already had to re-pair the remote with the unit as if I took the remote outside with me or something. The remote hasn't gone further than 5 feet from that controller for the whole month. It's ridiculous that it unpairs for absolutely no reason, and then I have to reach under the bed in order to do the pairing process again.

On a positive note, it seems to work great when it works, and sleeping in a modified Anti-Gravity mode is super comfortable and works amazing for the lower back pain. So I highly recommend buying one (maybe not this one though??) if you have that kind of issue and have the kind of bed that can be bent to its will.