My Invisalign Journey.

After two years of Invisalign treatments I finally have my complete results. I’m pretty pumped up about it and loved my experience. I always say I’d recommend it to anyone - so now I’m writing a blog about why.

My First Go Around: With Traditional Braces
In the seventh grade I had traditional braces. For me, they a were horrible experience of epic proportions, really painful, and just looked really unattractive. I was also a pretty dramatic teenager, but all the same it wasn’t fun. At the end of my treatment I had issues with my then orthodontist creating gaps in my teeth and then by closing the gap creating another. When the treatment lagged on 6 months longer than it should have, I begged (and cried and screamed to) my parents to get them off and they made the orthodontist do it after signing some sort of waver. I of course, pissed from my awful experience, didn’t wear my retainer. By the end of high school my teeth were all jacked up again. (The picture you see above on the left is one of my senior portraits) This horrible experience was roughly $5,000.

If You Don’t Like Something About Yourself - Change It.
Most people have at least one thing that they don’t like about themselves. You know- that one thing that you see first thing in a photo or that thing that just makes you fixate on it. For me it was my top teeth. I felt like I saw the problem all the time, I felt like when someone met me that was the first thing that they noticed and I noticed it first in every picture. I started seeing ads for Invisalign when I was about to start college and I knew I had to look into it. When my mom and I talked about it she understood what it was like to be really upset about something like this, especially something as important as your smile, and we decided to move on it.

Getting Started
Not everyone is a candidate for Invisalign. Some cases can not be fixed by the aligners and need traditional braces and the only way to determine if your case can be fixed by Invisalign is to have a meeting with an orthodontist. When I found this out I panicked, because I knew that Invisalign was my only option. As much as I was upset about my teeth, I would have never even considered going back to traditional braces. So, we made an appointment with Dr. Vance Misuraca at Misuraca Orthodontics.

The Process and The Downfall
Obviously, it was determined that I was a candidate for Invisalign. Initially, I only wanted my top teeth to be fixed, but Invisalign only comes in two sets so my bottoms became part of the process too. After your initial impressions it takes a little while for the aligners to come in. When they did come in, I had to have buttons installed on my teeth. (Buttons are little pieces of hardened glue that the Invisalign snap to) When I got these I thought I had made a horrible mistake choosing Invisalign and I started to feel hopeless. Imagine having a little glue dot constantly on the front of your teeth, driving you crazy. On top of that, the aligners are really painful at first because your teeth are moving. I also had a really hard time taking them out a first, partly because my mouth was so sore and partly because they were tight. Things were awful, my choice was looking dim and I was about to lose hope. However, things turned around REALLY quickly. By the third day the pain was gone, I was used to the glue dots in my mouth, and I could take them off with ease.

Keep On Keepin On
The best part of Invisalign was that they were NEVER as painful as they were for those first three days. Every time I switched aligners I had a little bit of soreness but it was no where near the pain I felt after every tightening of my traditional braces. As I got more adjusted with them and my schedule of when I would be wearing them it became second nature. It felt awesome to go to my appointments, pick up new aligners, and leave. All of my 6 week appointments only took around 15 minutes.

Just DO IT!
For my life as a college student it was pretty inevitable that I wouldn’t be able to wear them constantly and they still worked out to do amazing things to my teeth. Granted, the process does take dedication. You have to stay motivated to wear them how you are suppose to. The great part was that it was something that I could easily make work with my life. I’ve done braces both ways and I can tell you for sure that Invisalign is the far superior choice. After my results and easy going experience I really would recommend them to anyone.


Misuraca Orthodontics
I’d refer you to my orthodontist too, Dr. Vance Misuraca, check his practice out at: www.misuracaorthodontics.com They were just as great as the product- so invested in the success of my treatment and just overall enjoyable people.

Now, if I could just get used to these permanent retainers…

Why I returned the Samsung Galaxy S3 and reunited with team iPhone

Conveniently, when you buy a phone from AT&T they give you 14 days to change your mind. -It only took 3 days for me to change mine.

Today, in a spur of the moment decision, I returned my 3 day old Galaxy S3 and joined back up with team iPhone. My last blog explained why I left in the first place and now I’m going to explain why I am going back.

It should be said that the Galaxy S3 is a beautiful phone that is extremely powerful and fully customizable. However, for me this was more of a curse than a blessing. For the past 3 days I have noT put down the GS3 and I have been incessantly searching through tons of forums figuring out how to make my phone do what I wanted it to do. Fundamentally there were problems with the phone that did not have good work arounds or that just didn’t have work arounds at all.


Here were my key issues with the GS3:

Battery life
When I used an iPhone I would charge it at night and that charge would last almost a full 24 hours. However, the GS3 didn’t have anywhere near the same power despite having a larger battery that takes longer to charge. Even with an overnight charge on a 3 day old phone by 2 pm I was down to 40%. I was constantly vigilant of closing out applications and that still did nothing for my cause. This was a major issue that I really couldn’t get around.


Group Messaging
I never liked group messaging when I had it. Frankly, I thought it was pretty annoying. Then I got the GS3, which has absolutely no good way to group text and I realized how much I actually used it. From what I hear there might be some really crappy work arounds but I’m not really willing to have to deal with that. You may be annoyed by group texting too, but think about coordinating what you’re doing on a Friday night with your friends. I always use group texting for that and it just makes my life significantly easier.


Phone Calls
First off, I could not see the phone at all in the sunlight. I know this is problem with the iPhone as well, but I felt like it was significantly worse on the GS3. Today, when I got a call while I was on the phone I couldn’t instantly figure out how to put the phone on hold. This was 1) because it was bright as hell and 2) it wasn’t an intuitive design. You have to slide up to do something and then press something else. I know this sounds whiny, but it’s a culmination of little things like this that bring down the phone. Also, for me, the most intrinsic placement of the end call button would be at the bottom of the screen in the middle. On the Galaxy, this is the mute button. I’m sure with time I would have gotten adjusted, but I was already mad about everything else.


Receiving Photos
Sometimes, and by sometimes I mean 7/10 times, when you receive photos from iPhone users (you know, basically - the world) it displays the photo like a video. It’s hard to explain this. You select the photo and it starts playing like a video. It literally has a play pause button and a ten second time bar at the bottom. You can not enlarge the photo from this screen. After some research I found out that this was just an android bug that they have yet to fix. I could have gotten another texting app, but I liked EVERYTHING else about the factory texting app so it wasn’t really worth changing.


Voice Control
The Samsung GS3 uses SVoice for it’s voice control software or you can download Iris (haha stab at Siri). I tried both of them. Any online review will tell you that Siri is way better at voice recognition that SVoice and I’ll confirm that it is completely true. SVoice had a big delay in reacting to my commands and it often didn’t understand me. I know that most people think voice control is a waste and pretty useless. However, I use it all the time. I used an iPhone 4 so I did not have Siri- but I wish I did. When I am on campus using my phone I typically always use it with my headphones and I control my calls with voice commands. I do the same when driving. So, a good voice recognition software was something I was really looking for.


Camera
The camera was not by any means horrible, but it was not as good as the iPhone camera. The pictures were not as clear and the focus capability took a lot longer to work. I also have the feeling that if I handed it to a stranger to ask them to take a photo for me it would probably never come out good, ever.


Factory Headphones
A lot of people rave about the GS3 headphones for their wonderful sound canceling ability. However, sound canceling is not what I was looking for in my phone’s headphones. When you are making calls with them it sounds like you are talking with earplugs in, which is just plain aggravating. Also, when I am wearing headphones at work I need to be able to know what is going on around me and hear when someone walks up to my desk or knocks on the door- these headphones made that impossible. I know this is a minor complaint because I could just use new headphones. All the same, you may just suggest that I just use the iPhone headphones (which I love) but, those headphones only work on iPhones. They still play sound, but the mic and volume control do not work on the GS3.


Flexibility for Customization
Like I explained in my last blog, if you don’t like something about the GS3 chances are that you can find an app to fix it. However, this is a double edge sword. For me, customizing my phone to the best fit for me turned into almost an obsession. I spent all of my free time (and class time) researching the phone and experimenting with new ways to organize it. To put it simply- the phone legitimately stressed me out. This may be my mild self diagnosed OCD coming through, but for me this was a serious problem.


Frankly, what I really realized is that fundamentally ease of use is the most important feature to me in a phone. Yes, it was wonderful being able to do incredible customization with my phone, however it was overwhelming. As soon as I returned to iPhone I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I need a phone that makes my life easier, not more stressful. I need it to come out of the box capable to make my life easy, not ready to make my life easy after days of customization. I don’t want to be glued to my phone. I just want it to work for when and how I need it to.

I ultimately liked the size of the GS3 and the light-weight feel of it. Honestly, it’s a little rough going back to the stubby iPhone 4 after that. Also, I really could use a good voice control. Because of this I’ll be moving up to the iPhone 5 sometime this week.

Well y’all - I can’t lie. It’s pretty good to be back. #teamiphone

Turning my new Samsung Galaxy S3 into everything I loved about my iPhone.

Why the switch to GS3?

Last night, after a long mental battle with myself, I bought the Samsung Galaxy S3 on a whim. After many years of being a devoted iPhone user, i was extremely disappointed by the lack of innovation in the iPhone 5. Also, I was just plain bored with the look and feel of iPhone. Back in the day, iPhone was the most innovative phone on the market and first adopters like me loved that. I felt special for having the best technology out there. However, it’s time to get real- my grandmother has an iPhone. Sure, the phone is easy to use (that’s why she has one) but doesn’t that say something about the lack of functionality of the device? I say yes. I also found it so annoying that Apple would wait centuries and create a huge fanfare about releasing “new” updates for the phone with supposed “new” technology and ideas- when Android has had these “new” features since it’s inception. So alas, I switched.




Initial Panic set in.
Upon purchase, I felt crippled by the GS3. I had no idea how to do anything, including basic functionality like locking or unlocking the phone. It should be said that these are really easy things to do on the GS3 and I can only attribute my inability to do them to something I’m going to call iPhone separation anxiety. However, that passed by the time I left the store.




Transformation into the ideal iPhone
As soon as I started setting up my GS3 I found myself trying to turn it into an iPhone with a new look and better functionality. You might call this crazy, but there were certain functions that I did love about the iPhone. I’m proud to say that I have the majority of them back. You should know that if the GS3 doesn’t do something out of the box that you want it to - 9 times out of ten you can get an app from the Android app store Google Play to run in the background and make it happen. In a huge victory- I made the phone sync pretty seamlessly with my Macbook. Here’s what I used and how I did it.


Calendar
I am desperately dependent on my macbook’s ical, so a seamless integration with this was my number one priority. First, I exported each of my ical’s to my desktop. Then I imported them to my google calendar. (I had to create new calendars inside my google calendar and then when importing I had to select where I wanted them to go- work to work etc.) After that, I subscribed my ical to my google calendar. Voila! However, panic struck when I only saw one calendar instead of the five color coded calendars I had imported to google calendar. To fix this I went to iCal->Preferences->google->delegation->select your calendars! And just like that my phone syncs with my google cal which then syncs to my ical and my ical syncs to my google cal when then syncs to my phone!

For step by step instructions take a look at the tutorials I used:
Export your ical’sImport your Ical’s to your google calendar:Link your ical to your google calendar:



Music
My iPhone held my entire music library. I used it as an iPod almost daily. So, naturally, I wanted my entire music library on my GS3 as well. To my delight the GS3 has the capability to use SD cards to extend their storage capability so I purchased a 32g SD card to ensure that this library transfer was possible. To do this I used this nifty app called DoubleTwist. I downloaded it on my phone and went to the company website to download it on my computer. Unfortunately, for this to work on the GS3 you have to upgrade the phone app to do Air Sync. It’s only about $4, which was a small price to pay for all of my music on my phone. Once the computer download was done I opened the program, linked my device wirelessly with a passcode, ctrl-a’ed the music under the library tab, and dragged it all to my device. Now, when I first tried to control my phone with the headphones it started playing from the default player rather than DoubleTwist. I fixed this by changing the settings in DoubleTwist. Player settings -> use headset controls -> on.
This help article on their site helps you through the set up:
DoubleTwist Tutorial


Email
Email set up on the GS3 is a dream. All you have to do is type in your email and password and it does the work for you. No looking up incoming or outgoing servers! To add multiple accounts just go to email -> settings -> and hit the +. I prefer to look at my inboxes combined so to do that I just clicked the white rectangle at the top of my inbox and selected combined view. Yay!


Widgets
I love the GS3’s option for widgets on the home screen rather than just app icons. This option lets me look at the app running right on my home screen. I have mine set up with a clock and a few key app icons on the front page, then when I scroll to the left I have a widget for my email, then to the left again for my calendar. To the right of my home screen is more app icons with a music player and to the right again is my alarms. To add a widget hold down a blank spot on the home screen, click add to home screen, apps and widgets, widgets, and pick and place!


Headphone Controls
So, I may have been the last person on the planet to know this but, iPhone headphones do not work with the GS3. People rave about the headphones that come with the phone but I’m not so sure about them yet. They are earbuds with a rubber cap that sits inside your ear. The sound quality is pretty bomb, but when I’m walking around I can hear the rubber caps shaking around. I’ll probably be shopping for a more basic pair. Anyway, to my dismay when I tried to voice control my phone using one long click, like my iPhone, it did not work. I was pretty pissed about this because this was one of my most used functions on the iPhone. However, after an hour of research and finding tons of other people with my problem I FINALLY found a solution! All it takes is downloading an app and you can set the headset to do whatever you want. The app I got is called Headset Button Controller. It was free and did the job perfectly. Just download the app and go into the settings to set what you want different headset clicks to mean. I set a long click to mean voice control and BAM! We are back in business (:


Transformation Complete
Now, at the end of all of that, I finally have the phone I wanted. A phone with all the best functionalities of the iPhone, the freedom of total customization, and actually current technology. I never thought I would ever go to Android, but until Apple gets their innovation act together I’ll play for the better team.

Now for a joke-
The iPad mini
ahhahahhahah