Remarkable

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These are remarkable times we live in.

It’s unknown how many assassination attempts against a sitting or former president have been foiled, but we have just witnessed the first known attempt in over forty years.  In 1981, John Hinckley, Jr. shot president Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington, D. C.  Reagan survived, but the attempt was a close call.  A police officer was killed and Press Secretary James Brady was also severely wounded.

On Saturday, July 13, 2024, just moments into a campaign speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, former president Donald Trump and candidate for the office again, was providentially spared as a rifle shot took a chunk out of his right ear.  Two others were not so fortunate; one was killed and two others were wounded.  A moment earlier, the shot would have struck him right in the head, but he uncharacteristically moved to point to a chart, and the bullet narrowly avoided killing him.  Trump appeared two days later at the Republican National Convention sporting a bandage on his ear, but seemed otherwise unharmed.  Remarkable.

At the same time, despite remarkable efforts to conceal the fact, the incumbent president is revealed to be suffering from some form of mental incapacitation.  Observers of the political arena such as myself have noticed this ever since his 2020 election campaign was one of invisibility; under the cover of the COVID pandemic, Joe Biden huddled in his basement, rarely coming up and out for public appearances.  When he did, he exhibited many signs of encroaching senility.  One of those signs I’ve witnessed is a relaxing of inhibitions relating to self-restraint when it comes to expressing opinions.  From my witness stand, I’ve seen Joe Biden as a lifelong racist and inveterate liar, but most of the public doesn’t see that.  They only see what the image-makers have concocted, and so have believed Joe was a typical “everyman.” Remarkable.

In my youth, the Democrat Party portrayed itself as the party of the working class.  It catered to unions, minorities and the “workers.”  The Republicans on the other hand, were depicted as being the party of the rich, of Wall Street, and international elites.  Today, the Democrats are seen as “limousine liberals” and “Gulfstream Guevaras.”  The Republicans are led by a successful businessman who entered politics late in life.  The businessman, Donald Trump, mingles with construction workers, professional wrestlers, country music artists, and flag-waving Americans who show up en masse at rallies to show that the American Dream isn’t dead.  Yet.  Remarkable.

At this writing, the Democrat Party is maneuvering to remove Biden from the ticket.  Despite a series of non-democratic moves to ensure his place as the nominee, the Democrats are now using undemocratic means to remove the man they pledge will “preserve democracy” in the country.  Remarkable.

By the same token, the Democrats have used a number of non-democratic means to remove any challenges to their party’s candidate; they worked tirelessly to keep Democrat-turned-Independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. off the ballot wherever possible.  And the extent to which they leveraged the power of the government using “lawfare” (a term coined to describe persecuting the opposition through the courts) to remove and imprison Donald Trump is nothing short of remarkable.

The legal procedures that Donald Trump is undergoing have all been designed to keep him off the campaign trail.  A law that was enacted but never used was the basis for convicting him of 34 charges.  For paperwork errors. At the same time, a special counsel investigating Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents found him effectively guilty of a felony, but excused him from prosecution due to his status as aged with a poor memory.  The wags would say that this election pits a convicted felon against an un-convicted felon.

The inflammatory rhetoric from the Democrats accusing the Republicans of being like Nazis, and a “threat to democracy,” among other aspersions likely resulted in motivating a young, 20 year-old to attempt to take the life of the threat.  Twenty years after the last assassination attempt on a president’s life. Remarkable.

Every election year, the media and observers anticipate an “October surprise.”  This whole 2024 election process has been nothing short of remarkable surprises.

I only wish everyone would take notice of the current state of affairs.  They are remarkable.

Why Is It “Draining The Swamp?”

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“Draining the swamp” has become a popular phrase these days signifying clearing out the deadwood and corruption that is the U. S. government.  But I repeat myself.  But why that particular phrase?

I submit that this phrase originates with the fact that Washington, D. C., the capital of the nation, is actually built on a swamp.

Map of Washington, D. C. by neighborhood

Current Map of Washington, D.C.

This is probably not news to folks who paid attention to history lessons in school, but it could be that this bit of trivia has escaped the notice of many, or it’s just been forgotten as being insignificant.

A complete history of the city can be found here at the excellent Encyclopedia Brittanica.  For the sake of this article, we’ll focus only on the “swampy” nature of the city.

For starters, the city was designated by Congress on land that was ceded by both the state of Maryland and the Commonwealth of Virginia (the Virginia land was ceded back later).  This land was a peninsula at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.  This low-lying land coupled with the high humidity climate have rendered the perception that D. C. lies on a swamp.

I should note here that in the days preceding air-conditioning, foreign diplomats both before and after the revolution, considered a posting to D. C. as a tropical assignment!

To add to the image, the area surrounding the building(s) comprising the Department of State is known as Foggy Bottom.  Again, Brittanica states,

Its name derives from its origin as a neighbourhood of wharves, warehouses, brickyards, breweries, gas works, and an early 19th-century glassblowing factory: a combination of industrial smoke and humidity occasionally produced a blanket of fog.

This combination of real or imagined images and metaphors have given rise to the concept of a swamp.  Fitting, if you will, as the home of creepy, slimy dwellers who make up nearly the entirety of the government!  And perhaps needing of some drainage!

What’s In A Symbol? ™

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I am an avid radio listener.  Oh, not to the schlock that passes for music these days, that shipped has sailed.  But I like to stay current, and radio news is an easy way to stay up to date.  Plus, it’s easy to check multiple sources — even easier than clicking links! — to get a sense of what’s true and what’s hyperbole.  And boy, is there a lot of hyperbole, fantasy, and just plain incorrect “news” out there.

Every once in a while, I’ll hear an advertisement whose claims and statements drive me up a wall.  Case in point:  A current ad on my local FM news-talk station, WMAL, never fails to make my eyes roll.  I won’t mention the advertiser, but the announcer states there are three reasons to use this company’s service.  The first point is, “It’s TRADEMARKED.”

The U. S. Government’s Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) is the agency responsible for granting, managing and filing, you guessed it, patents and trademarks.  So what is a trademark?  In short, there are three forms of use.  Each is represented by a symbol denoting its use.

First, there is the Registered Trademark.  A product or service having a registered trademark can be identified by the ® symbol affixed to its name.  This is, as the name indicates, a product or service that has been registered with the PTO.  The PTO makes sure there are no legal conflicts or prior registrations, so this is the highest level of assurance that the product’s name has an ower.

Did you read that closely?  The word “name” appears twice in the above paragraph.  A trademark applies to the name of a product or service.  It does not protect the trademark owner from competitors making similar products, it just prevents them from using the same NAME.  Some trademarked items have become general common-use nouns, such as Xerox and Kleenex.  This doesn’t mean other companies can’t make copiers or facial tissue, it just means they can’t use the name “Xerox” or “Kleenex” in their product.

There is also the common-usage ™ (for goods) and SM for services.  No one is required to register these marks; they are meant to inform competitors that the name is in use and cannot be copied.  It’s just a warning, however.  The Bose Corporation, for example, once had a trademark court case over alleged trademark fraud. This is the primary reason to use a trademark.

So, why does the radio ad rankle me?  Because the way it’s presented, the ad infers that because their product/service (I consider it a service, but that’s for another article) is trademarked, it’s somehow unique.  Wrong.  Only the name cannot be used by any competitor.  A PATENT is granted by the PTO to protect the technology, manufacturing or operation of (usually) a product.  The company I worked for when I retired had been granted four patents by the PTO.  This protected the company from competitors using the same technology to achieve the same end.  In other words, the patents protect four different techniques or technologies all found in a single product.  The name of the product can be trademarked, but the patents protect the technology.

Thus, the ad claiming (in a breathy, excited voice) that the product/service being promoted is trademarked is a ploy to make the listener believe there is a technical uniqueness to it, when all that is really being said is that the advertiser is claiming a unique name for it.  And THAT is what I dislike about misleading ads.

Travel Photography, AI, And Photo Editing

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“The journey is the reward,” it’s been said.  A sentiment to which I heartily agree.

In April, 2024, I took the longest trip in terms of duration that I’ve taken since I was in college.  It could also have been the longest trip in terms of miles too, but I’m not going to attempt to measure.  I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been able to travel where I’ve wanted to go, and usually when I’ve wanted.  Now that I’m retired, this is truer than ever.

My recent trip lasted four weeks and took me to the lands Down Under:  New Zealand and Australia.  If there is one negative thing to say about the trip it would be that it wasn’t long enough!  I made good use of the Pin Traveler app, and learned how to deal with its quirks and design issues early on.  I created a trip in the app and then logged each (major) stop.  This is a screen shot of the trip as shown in the app:

“Pinned” places on NZ/AUS trip

There are quite a few “pins” on this map!  I counted 21 stops in 28 days.  It was quite a journey.  Well worth the 24 hours flying time it took to get there (28 to return!).

For the second time in as many trips, I opted to leave my Nikon camera at home and to use my iPhone 14 Pro as my only camera.  It was not an easy choice to make, but in my opinion, the camera capabilities of Apple’s smartphones are good for all but the most demanding professional.  I’m not yet ready to forego my DSLR yet, but I’m happy with a number of the photos I took with the phone, so even though a part of me regrets not taking the larger camera, I don’t think I missed getting any shot I wanted to take.

And since taking a “grab shot” with a phone is easier than with a camera slung around one’s neck as one is navigating a rain forest trail or trekking along with a group among city streets, maybe there’s a photo or two I couldn’t have taken otherwise.  We’ll never know.

What makes this whole topic even easier is the current level of astounding technology in the photo editing field.  I’m a bit of a software junkie, so I have purchased subscriptions to what I consider to be the three top photo editing programs available today:  Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom, ON1 Photo RAW 2024, and Luminar NEO.  I wish I could say that one stands head and shoulders above the rest, but this is a red-hot, highly competitive market right now, and each is attempting to outdo the others with features and capabilities.  AI (artificial intelligence, in case you’ve been in a coma for the past decade or so) has found its way into photo editing software and the results are quite remarkable!

Having been in the tech field for the bulk of my career, I have no illusions as to what it is, what it can (or can’t) do, and I don’t fear it becoming self-aware like the HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

After settling in from my trip, I downloaded the photos I took from my phone to my computer and decided to see what I could do with my recently updated apps.  Since ON1 had just released a major update, I thought I would give it a try.  I was impressed!  With just three or four clicks using the built-in AI, I was able to add vibrance and clarity to photos that were otherwise drab and uninteresting.  To accomplish this earlier would have meant making many changes and adjustments.  Since I’m not prepared to go into a major before-and-after comparison, let me just say that this software is making it much easier to achieve standout photos than before.  Of course, there is always the down side:  To say that “Photographs don’t lie” is now a false statement.  Photos can most certainly lie.  That they’ve been able to do this for decades isn’t the issue.  That now almost anyone can make a photo into something it isn’t or wasn’t is.

Well, no article about photography, editing or AI would be complete without some examples, would it?  So, here I present some finished photos from my recent trip.  All taken with my iPhone.

World Famous UNESCO site, the Sydney, Australia Opera House

Sydney, Australia at night.

Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock. A UNESCO World Heritage Site

I’m still editing photos — both from this trip and others.  Now that I’m retired, I can take as much time to render passable images as I please.  I may even post some of them here!

Off To OZ And Other Ruminations

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Next week I will embark on what I think may be the longest vacation trip I’ve taken since reaching adulthood.  Taking my ninth Road Scholar trip, I am flying to New Zealand for two weeks, and then on to Australia for another two.  This is a trip I’ve long wanted to take, and it will also mark the sixth continent that I’ve stepped foot on.  That leaves only Antarctica, and I’m not highly motivated to visit there, although I hear it’s fascinating.  Well, one trip at a time, yes?

Given my penchant for traveling light, I’m carefully considering what to pack.  I’ll check one bag, carry on another, and keep my laptop and electronic devices close at hand.  It’s just beginning Autumn south of the Equator, so I need to make sure I have appropriate gear for cool, but not cold weather.  It’s mildly warmer in Australia, but I think what works in one locale should work in the other.  Lightweight, easy-dry pants and shirts, with perhaps a parka and a hat will suffice.  Choosing them is the task that I’m facing.

Well, all of this wouldn’t be worthy of a blog post, so I’m adding some additional content.

My father once kept a map of the world on the wall of his home office, and he’d place a pin on every country or city that he’d visited.  It was an impressive display!  I’ve tried to follow suit, but using modern technology, instead.  For a number of years, the travel site Tripadvisor had a feature where you could search the globe and mark every place you’d visited. It would then provide statistics, such as how many countries, states, cities, etc.  I had quite a list, but it’s all but gone now.  If Tripadvisor still has it, they’ve hidden it well.  I couldn’t find it the last time I looked.

Two years ago, during the early stages on my wonderful Greek Island Odyssey (also a Road Scholar adventure) I happened upon an iPhone app called “Pin Traveler.”  I downloaded it and began logging the islands, cities and sites during that trip.  It was such a great replacement for the Tripadvisor online-only experience that I bought the Lifetime Membership!  I don’t recall the actual price, but it was something like $30 US.

Pin Traveler Map of Greek Trip

The pins mark each place in Greece and Turkey I visited.

Recently I was reminded of this app when I received an email from the developers announcing some new features and updates.  I was delighted, as I do not like applications that become “abandon-ware.”

Now for the down side.  I have difficulty at times navigating the user interface.  It’s easy to “drop a pin” and add comments.  The app will locate (using the Google API) the city or place, but I’ve had a very difficult time gathering the locations into “trips.”  The above screen, for example, is in my mind a single trip (my Greek Odyssey), but each element (Pin) seems to appear as a single trip instead of a segment.  I haven’t found a way to back fill these individual pins into a single “Trip” entity.  Perhaps that’s coming in an update?  I’ve written to the developers, so we’ll see what happens.

In any event, I’m hoping for this upcoming trip I can “pre-heat” the journey by creating a trip and then adding the pins as I drop them to it.  Even if isn’t possible (or at least obvious), I will still have a record of the places I’ve been, and more pins and statistics I can share with those who may be interested.

 

It Can’t Happen Here

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In 1966 Frank Zappa released his seminal double-LP, Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention.

Freak Out! Album Cover

Album cover for Freak Out!

While the album was a sardonic and often critical statement on the state of the 1960s, it’s amazing how much the content remains relevant today, in 2024, 58 years later!

I still own the album on vinyl.  And more often these days, I’m reminded of some of the song titles and lyrics:  Who Are The Brain Police?  Trouble Every Day, and the song that inspired this post, It Can’t Happen Here.  Why?

Only a few years after the release of Freak Out!, I found myself the dependent son of an American diplomat posted behind the Iron Curtain, a term coined by Winston Churchill in 1946 to depict the divide between the Soviet Union and Western Europe. This was at the height of the Cold War, when Americans were viewed by communist regimes as “the enemy.” As a long-haired college kid at the time, I found the experience educational and informative.  Better still, I had the luxury of leaving any time I wished (college was in what was then known as West Germany) so I had enormous advantages that the everyday citizens of the country did not.  I drove an American car with diplomatic license plates when citizens had to save up and wait for years to obtain a terrible Trabant, Wartburg or similar examples of soviet “expertise.”

A Trabant (defunct) from East Germany, circa 1966 - 1985

A Trabant P 601

I knew I had privilege.  I was able to go places, buy things and enjoy myself at leisure.  I also knew (and had been apprised of this by embassy personnel) that I was under constant surveillance.  It’s likely my bedroom was bugged, our house staff would certinaly report anything that might compromise my family’s position, and that everywhere I went I was followed by the secret police.  In fact, I enjoyed spotting my “tails” and would sometimes lead them around on wild goose chases as I navigated the cities and countryside.  Despite my youth and privileged status, it was clear to me there was an “us-versus-them” air about my time there.

When the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989, it signaled the end of the Cold War.  At least as we knew it (my father had a photograph of him chipping away a piece of it, and enclosed the fragment in a block of lucite).  What followed was a period of détente, where if we weren’t “pals” with the Russians, we at least agreed to trade, and generally cooperate.

So, now back to the topic at hand:  It can’t happen here.

For decades, Americans have been schooled on the “evils of communism.”  Until they weren’t!  At some undetermined point, but likely in 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved, the Soviet threat seemed to have lifted.  But that didn’t end communism; it just took on a new face.  For a few years, Russia struggled internally, and then in 1999 Vladimir Putin climbed the steps of power, becoming the country’s president in 2012, where he continues to this day (having rewritten the Russian constitution to allow him to do so, and by eliminating his political opponents — permanently).

America’s relationship with communism and Russia has been and up-and-down affair for years.  During President Obama’s time in office, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made famous the “RESET” attempt.

Spelling error -

Spelling error – “Reset” translated to “overcharge” on embarrassing attempt to mend US-Russian relations.

When Vladimir Putin assumed the Russian presidency in 2012, the wily former KGB officer began to put his lock on the Russian political scene.  At the same time, the values and practices of the soviets had been hard at work in the U. S.  The educational system was infested with leftist ideologues, and graduates from colleges and universities that had become indoctrination centers began to take up residence in schools, media, law centers and offices of government (local, state and federal).  The quote by former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev rings out:

Gullible Americans according to Nikita Krushchev

Krushchev quote on Americans accepting socialism and communism.

So, when Frank Zappa sang, “It can’t happen here,” he was not only satirizing mainstream middle America, but was also foretelling the direction the country would take when the “Hungry Freaks, Daddy” became mainstream (check the lyrics at the link).  Today, the halls of government, academia, healthcare and technology have upended the Constitution and turned the USA into a mirror of the soviet state.

We have a two-tiered justice system (“laws for thee but not for me”).  where you are protected if you’re a member of the privileged class, but jailed or ruined if you’re not.  The U.S. has become a surveillance state, as former CIA director James Clapper admitted to Congress. There is a secret court (FISC) with unnamed judges conducting investigations into private American citizens’ lives.  Profligate spending to send purported hush-money (and the anticipated kickbacks) has run the country to the brink of ruin, while the borders have become open doors to the world’s underclass.  As Donald Trump once said (and was pilloried for saying it), ““When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you.”  Few of the migrants breaking U. S. immigration law are likely rocket scientists, computer programmers, or brain surgeons.

Russian author Elena Gorokhova wrote in her book, A Mountain of Crumbs, “They lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them.”  That pretty much describes the current status of USA.

As Walt Kelly’s Pogo once observed, “We have me the enemy and he is us.”

We Have Met The Enemy...

Walt Kelly’s Pogo the Possum, © 1971

It can’t happen here.  Right?

LinkedIn – A Story and a Warning

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LinkedIn is one of what I refer to as a second-tier “big tech” company.  By second-tier I mean that it’s not always the first corporate name that springs to mind when that term is used.  In my mind, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft logos are the ones that seem to appear when the discussion of big tech occurs.

But LinkedIn, which was founded by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly and which was launched on May 5, 2003, was praised in the past by technologists for its implementation of new, complex “big technologies.”  LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft in 2016.  Yep, Big Tech.

I created a LinkedIn account during my working career, sometime around 2011.  At the time, LinkedIn was going public, with its initial public offering (IPO).  By the end of the year, LinkedIn had a higher market value than Twitter.

Let’s detour for a moment and consider “social networks.”  Think of an electronic version of a public notice or bulletin board, where anyone is free to post want ads, babysitting services, yard work, junk removal and personal profiles.  That’s the general idea behind behind the likes of Craigslist, MySpace, Facebook and others.  These sites captured the imagination of (mostly) young people and grew accordingly.  I won’t go into the psychology of obsessiveness that developed among a large number of users.

The founders and developers of these sites discovered something television producers had known for decades:  You make money by advertising.  Over-the-air television cost nothing more than the set on which to receive the signal.  It paid for itself many times over by presenting the viewer with advertisements.  This was the model that turned Google into a powerhouse Big Tech company.  Simply put:  Make the usage free and put advertisements in front of the users.

But “Big Tech” is big tech.  The Googles of the world learned that they had the ability to track users, and to target them with ads based on their searches, activities and behaviors.  A rumor floated a few years ago that Facebok (or name your big tech company) was able to read your hard disk and lift personal information from it.  That was never proved, and these days would be extremely difficult to do, but Facebook and every big tech company does read the contents of your web browser’s cache.

Cache.  Ah, a term that’s often not clearly understood.  Having worked in a field where cache is a major component of the technology, I feel qualified to discuss this further.  Cache is an area of a computer’s memory or hard disk that is used to store recently accessed data.  It does this to speed up computer operations by not needing to “go to the well” every time, thereby also reducing resource consumption at the source. EVERY web browser maintains a cache of data.  It’s this data that exists and can be used by big tech.  If you are handing out your personal information (address, driver’s license number, credit card information, etc.) that information exists in cache.  Need I draw the connecting lines?

The good news is that browsers are becoming more security conscious, as are most computer systems developers.  For example, Apple’s latest operating systems offerings continue to add features meant to secure your data from prying technology.  Of course, the cost of doing so makes using a Mac less “user-friendly,” but the trade-off is seen as being worth it.

So, back to LinkedIn.  I chose LinkedIn as the subject of this piece due mostly to my personal experience with it.  As mentioned above, I created a LinkedIn account during the peak of my professional career.  Presented as a “socia networking system for professionals,” the concept of LinkedIn was to enable professionals to post their résumés , connect with others, search for job openings, preview job candidates, and enable peer-to-peer evaluations.

On the surface, the concept sounded appealing.  After all, why not connect to a world of your peers?  It wasn’t until I’d had my account for a couple of years that the cracks began to appear.  Like other social networks, LinkedIn would propose connections.  Often, these would be people employed in your organization, in similar job fields, alumni of your college(s) and linkages (hence the name, LinkedIn) it deemed appropriate.  Fair enough, it’s how the system works.

But when I started receiving praise and recommendations for capabilities I don’t have, for experience I’ve never had,  by people I barely know, my eyebrows began to raise.  This started happening with regular frequency.  It made me question the entire veracity of the system.

Feeling that LinkedIn was more a waste of my time than a benefit to my career or productivity, I decided to close my account.  This is where the hammer dropped.  In short:  You can’t.

Oh sure, you can “close” your account, but LinkedIn’s Terms of Service (TOS) state (in my English translation of lawyerspeak) that all data you send to LinkedIn becomes THEIR data. The effect of “closing” my account meant that my data was not accessible to ME, but it was still there for everyone else to see!  Hey – check your TOS on Facebook, Google and the others.  I’d be willing to wager they all say the same thing:  Your data is THEIR data.  That gives rise to the saying, “If a service is free, YOU are the product.” 

So, I re-opened my account.  Yes, I was able to re-link (sorry!) to my data.  As I have now moved into the realm of the retired, I clearly put that as my status, and changed my profile photo to that of a milk carton with “Missing” displayed on the face.

And today, I still get recommendations and offers.  It’s a good thing Big Technology has provided a way to detect this nonsense as junk, and to send it to my trash bin unread. LinkedIn no longer exists to me, and neither do Twitter (“X”), Facebook and other “social” networks.  I use technology daily, but my searches aren’t done through Google, and I share only my AppleID account information with Apple.  My data isn’t for sale.

(The opinions in this article are those of the author only.  As the saying goes, “Your mileage may vary.”)

A Week of Retirement

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October 17, 2023 was my last day at work.  Following the end of the normal workday, I was honored with a dinner by my local colleagues (and was presented with gift cards for $500 at Guitar Center!).  And then my retired life began.

It’s now been a week.  There are many books and tales of how people adjust to retirement.  Perhaps the most apparent to me is the ease of not having to adhere to a daily schedule.  Oh, for sure there are places and times that I must still conform to, such as helping pack food for students, church services and activities, and the recovery meetings I attend.  But each morning as I open my eyes, the first thing my eyes alight on is the clock, and my first thought is, “I don’t have to get up just yet.”  I do anyway, because I’m now awake, but there is no pressure to do so.

I must learn to concern myself less with financial issues.  One of the first tasks I undertook without needing to care about the time was to take my Mercedes in for what I thought was going to be a simple five minute fastener replacement.  Nope.  It turns out the loose fastener is due to my front bumper coming loose.  I need a new front bumper.  Sigh.  So now almost immediately I’m faced with an unexpected expense (Mercedeses aren’t cheap to maintain).  The two sides of my mind say, “Oh, boy, this is gonna hurt.” and “You’ve got the money.  Be glad it happened now and not ten years into your retirement.”  These are new thoughts, brought on by the knowledge I do not have a regular paycheck to refill my bank account.

Health coverage is another new facet to my retired life.  My employer paid 100% of my health coverage and now I have to navigate the confusing waters of Medicare and its multiple “parts.”  I have already confirmed my enrollment in Medicare Part A, but I’ve had to request a “replacement” card since I don’t recall ever receiving the original.  And I need that in order to apply for Part B.  The government says I should receive it within the month.  A month!

Still, I have a long-anticipated trip to Peru looming.  I paid for it while I still was earning a paycheck, so I’m not fretting the payment, and simply looking forward to my first adventure without having to set an out-of-office auto-reply on my email.

Finally, I’m making sure I still get my exercise.  The weather recently made it easy to just sit on the couch reading, but my upcoming trip will be physically taxing, and I’m so used to moving my body that I am resuming walking and running.  I went for a nice three mile walk yesterday, once again cognizant that I didn’t have to be anywhere (home) at any specific time.  The weather was early Autumn wonderful, so I explored some new paths in my continuing knowledge of the community in which I live.  I love that we have trails and paths.  One day perhaps, I’ll have walked, run or biked them all!

Being A Social Media Outcast

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The title of this piece is slightly misleading.  An outcast is someone who has been literally cast out of a tribe, a community, or an environment.  In my case, it’s a self-inflicted condition.

When the public Internet was young (circa 1993-1995) social networking, as we now refer to it, was largely unknown.  But in the early 2000s, sites like Friendster, LinkedIn and MySpace came online, and social networking began.  MySpace was eclipsed by Facebook and social networking took off.  Soon to follow were the likes of Twitter (now X) and almost everything on the Internet became “social.”  I too, jumped into the pool.

My initial foray into social media came when my daughter left for college.  I had learned she had opened an account on Facebook, and I did so also, as a means of staying in touch.

There was a lot of fascination with the concept at first.  I added “friend” after “friend,” as names were suggested to me, and they were all people I knew in the circles in which I traveled.  Truthfully, not many of them would actually meet my criteria of “friend,” but it was entertaining to see photos of places people visited, accomplishments and awards earned, and other forms of vicarious experience.

But I learned my daughter didn’t really use Facebook.  So, after the freshness wore off, I began to grow tired of the rampant narcissism.  Because after all, Facebook is first and foremost about “me.”  The majority of users, I stipulate, are always putting on their best faces and showing how wonderful and perfect their lives are.  Don’t you wish you were me?

After a while, the tone of social media began to appear shrill and strident.  “Thread drift” became the norm (I maintain that if a topic goes on, by the third “page” it has devolved into a shouting match akin to “I’m right and you’re wrong.”  Except often not as polite.  And no longer on point.

When I began this post, I had a lot of thoughts I felt I could post.  But I tend to want to keep these periodic pieces short, so as to not bore the reader.  Thus, I will wrap this up by saying this:

I’m not a social media outcast.  I’m a social media “hermit.”  And I’m quite happy to be away from the mess.

Writers Writing For Writers

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I recently joined Substack.  Then I joined Medium.  Why?  The short answer is that I was thinking of turning to writing once my retirement become final.

But I write here.  Why add new sites when I can write all I want on my own site? The short answer, I think, is exposure.

Yes, I admit that the idea of pulling in a few extra dollars to supplement my retirement is one of the considerations for my choices, but I’m quickly re-thinking that decision.

The research I did suggested that Medium is better suited to writers who simply want to write.  Substack is geared toward writers who want to get paid. However, I’m not sure I fit in to either category.

For starters, the general consensus is that columns, blogs, posts, or whatever you want to call them should all be “topical.”  In other words, the feeling is that readers will want you to focus on a particular subject, otherwise they won’t be interested in reading what you have to say.  I don’t know that I completely subscribe to that belief.  I enjoy reading articles by Victor Davis Hanson, Christopher Chantrill and the like.  True, they tend to speak to modern American society, politics and culture, but part of their appeal to me is that they do vary the topics on which they write.

Lately, I’ve been receiving my daily updates from Medium and the trend seems to be users/authors expressing their disappointment and frustration with the offering.  I’m so new to the site that I haven’t had the experiences others may have had, but it doesn’t speak well when the primary topic discussed is something like, “Why I left Medium.”

Still, there’s some attraction to using a delivery platform that has a built-in readership.  It’s unrealistic to think that one will be an overnight success simply by clicking a few keys and hitting the “publish” button.

I think I’ll continue.  Here, and on Medium and Substack.  At least for now.