Travel Tuesday - I am being tracked

I am not paranoid, I am being tracked and here is the evidence.  This starts in about 2013 or 2014, and is shockingly accurate.  If I zoom into the details, it sometimes knows what room I am in, in some buildings.  

I might be tracked by some nameless, government entity, but probably not.  But if I can find this, so can they. I am tracked by my phone.  I get this report from Google, updated monthly, with an annual report that includes everything they know about where I have been. At some point in setting up something I apparently clicked the magic button to get a copy of the report. 

I can't remember the last time I went someplace that I didn't want anyone to know I was going, maybe back in the days of adult bookstores.  But if I want to not be followed, I could just turn off my phone, or leave it at home (I don't always turn it on, often leave home without it.) 

I am not worried about others knowing.  I assume that customs and immigration has tracked my passport.  That TSA keeps a record of all of my airlines flights.  If they haven't, what are we spending all of that money for? 

It is kind of fun to look back at the record of where I have been.  I really wish it went back to the mid 1960's a few years when my family traveled a lot.  

If I am ever lost, Google can find me, or at least find my phone. Assuming the phone is turned on.  Even with the phone in airplane mode, Google can tell you where it is, trust me on that one, we found the phone, eventually wedged next to the seat of a rental car in Iceland. Airplane mode blocked the call, so we couldn't hear it ring, but Google kept telling me I was on top of the phone. When I moved the car, the phone moved.  

You are probably being tracked also.  Apple has that wonderful find my device service.  

    

You Tube Monday : Grizzly and the Lemmings

If Yogi Bear and the Road Runner had a love child, it would be Grizzly and the Lemmings.  And you don't have to wait until Saturday morning to watch. This is a repost on YT, the series is also on Netflix.  It is good slapstick funny.  

The Sunday Five - What did we do this week?

 What did you do this week that -______? 

1: Made you happy? 

2: You were surprised you could do? 

3: That pleased someone else? 

4: Made you realize you are lucky? 

5: That was fun? 

My Answers: 

1: Made you happy? Had coffee and carrot cake with a colleague at a new bakery / coffee shop. 

2: You were surprised you could do? Finished reading a couple of books. 

3: That pleased someone else? Reached out to an old friend I hadn't heard from for a while. 

4: Made you realize you are lucky? Slept really well. 

5: That was fun? Cooked, I do enjoy it.  

Please share your answers in the comments, feel free to be silly, or frivolous. 

The Saturday Morning Post - The Future of Travel?

A couple of Sundays ago, the CBS Sunday Morning Show (one of the most intelligent programs on American network television) did a feature on the Futures exhibit in the Arts and Industries building of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. It was a cold Sunday, and I needed to get out for a walk, so I drove into the city and spent some time walking a couple of the Smithsonian museums.  For those not familiar, the Smithsonian is not one museum, it is a bunch of them.  Arts in Industries is one of the oldest buildings, and it had been closed for 19 years for structural repairs.  

One of the items on display was a hyperloop car/capsule.  The concept of a hyperloop is basically an enclosed tube, kind of like a pneumatic tube, transport pods would move inside of the tube at very high speeds, just under the speed of sound.  The working model, uses linear induction electric motors, that have no moving parts, and magnetic levitation to minimize ground contact and friction. The enclosed tube minimizes friction, and actually the air can be pumped in the direction of travel creating even less drag. The current test circuits are relatively small.  Large scale they are talking about Washington DC, to New York City in 25 minutes, a trip that currently take 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours by train, or 45 minute by air, but when you land in New York, you are an hour from the city center where most people want to be.  

The current test vehicles seats two people.  In relative comfort, but the trips would be short, the east coast corridor in less than an hour, east coast to Chicago in about an hour (with the time zone change you would arrive in Chicago from the east coast, before you left.) Cross country in about three hours.  

Will it work?  It works.  Is it practical, time will tell.  It is less than 100 years since humans first flew across the Atlantic, and there were those that questioned if air travel would ever be practical.  I marvel to think of the travel adventures of the next 100 years.  

Fabulous Friday - Shoes #1

 Starting this made me think back to when shoes became a thing for me, I was a teenager (really I was, I know it was decades go, but I can still remember when) and there were two things I saw that made me go weak at the knees, a pair of dress boots - not work boot - not cowboy boots - but spectacular dressy - I had to have them.  And Adidas tennis shoes, in light blue swede with three white stripes down the side - they were sexy!  

Over the years the obsession has taken various forms.  Cole Hahn  driving mocs, I had almost every variety of those they made at one point, exotic leathers, I had a wonderful pair of crocodile shoes - that were terribly uncomfortable but looked amazing.  

Anymore it is comfort or not at all, and I have a huge pile of athletic shoes in my closet.  Different colors, different styles, different manufactures.  The one thing they have in common is comfort.  But color and style will motivate me to buy. 

The shoes above (not a good photo) are black leather covered in what I can only describe as bubble wrap.  Unique, but not for me. 

Thursday Ramble - Uglies

 I had a couple of encounters recently with uglies, not just the jug above, but the human incarnation.  

One person forwarded a link to an article describing terribly unsafe living conditions for renters.  The article concluded with a couple of paragraphs of racist commentary on the people who owned  and managed the buildings.  The post drew some very appropriate criticism.  I reached out to the person who posted it saying that there were serious issues.  That the expressed racism was offensive and undermined the credibility of everything in the article.  The person who posted it, strongly disagreed and made excuses for why the reader should overlook the racist comments and just pay attention to the terrible living condition. I can't help but think maybe the entire article was tainted by the authors racism.  I am in a position to cut the poster off from the formun, something I rarely do, but I did.  

The other ugly last week was a conversation with someone involved in "public health and nutrition programing."  The person described an effort to improve the diet of older adults by convincing them that they can no longer eat traditional comfort foods.  I asked why? The response was "so they can live longer and healthier in their old age!" Forcing a change in the diet of a 70 or 80 year old is not going to have that big of a difference.  So what if it adds a few days, weeks, or months to the life of the person, if everyone of those days, weeks or months is spent missing the happy foods of their life?  This is money and time wasted, it is paternalism. 

There is malnutrition among older adults, mostly due to either a loss of appetite, an inability to eat, or a lack of access to a food or a variety of foods.  We need to spend the senior nutrition dollars on enticing appetites, medical and dental care, and assuring access to foods that people want to eat, the comfort foods of their lifetime, and not on trying to convince them to eat more Kale - unless it is simmered for hours with lots of fatty sausage and ham and that is what they associate with the best of mom's cooking.

There is joke that circulates from time to time, that research shows that people who carry an extra 15 or 20 pounds, live much longer than the spouses that point it out to them.  

End of rant, I feel less ugly now.    

The Way We Were Wednesday - Cleveland 1994

 We became a couple in the fall of 1992.  J was teaching at Rollins College in Florida, on a year to year contract, and looking for a permanent job.  This would have been in January of 1994, our first airline trip together, from Orlando to Washington DC, for a conference where he had a laundry list of unproductive interviews.  The flight was suppose to pause in Cleveland and go onto DC, someplace between Orlando and Cleveland, Continental decided the flight was not going from Cleveland to DC, and we had an unexpected layover and a late flight onto DC.  My one and only trip on Continental. 

In Cleveland we stepped outside for a minute, this was long before TSA, and the security was easy.  I hadn't seen snow in about 14 years.  I remember grabbing a handful and being surprised at how cold it was. I think I still have that Calvin Klein turtleneck.  The leather jacket I outgrew.