Author: wwducat

About: Writer, Technology guy, Photographer, Possibly EX-Software QA Engineer, Worker Bee. Interests: SCUBA, Working out, Friends, New Views, New Vistas, Photography
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Now that’s slick…

The question is, will people I need to use it, actually use it?

I’ve been using an application called FantastiCal for many years. Generally speaking I try to use the applications supplied in on my iPhone, Computer, and iPad. 

This application is different. When Apple. in their infinite wisdom de-coupled To-Dos from Calendar, I went looking for something different. Apple has since re-coupled To-Dos and Calendar.

FantastiCal did the job and exceeded my needs then, as the years have progressed, they’ve added features that are really slick.

They’ve always had “Natural Language” processing. In FantastiCal you can say something like “Dr. Appointment @ 3pm on July 25th” and FantastiCal will add that to your calendar. Moving appointments is also drag & drop. Being able to duplicate appointments is really handy if you’re having to do a follow-up visit.

For about the past year or two, FantastiCal has provided a method to allow people to request appointments with you. I’ve not used this ability until recently.

In the near future, I’m going to be working on a number of things that will require scheduling and I thought, “Why should I be entering appointments and details manually?”

So a few weeks ago I enabled that part of the system. Now, instead of say, a job recruiter asking me what my availability is for an interview, I can send them a link in a cover letter, and they can pick a time themselves. Hopefully they’ll use the link and help keep me on schedule.

After I’d set up the interview link, I thought why not use the same system for more general meetings?

The cool thing is that the system looks at all my calendars, the private ones, and those that involve more public facing things like interviews, then automatically blocks out times when there is a conflict. It doesn’t disclose what I’m doing, it simply doesn’t list time blocks that are otherwise allocated.

No-one needs to know I’m at the Doctor’s office, they only need to know that I’m not available.

There are a range of ways I can see using this. For example: You have to arrange some kind of home maintenance and the provider asks you use their web site to make the request. So I’m thinking, I’ll include a link showing my availability and allow the provider to just pick a time that works for them, then it will pop up in my calendar. It’s also possible to select times that you’re generally unavailable in the template, so if you’re habitual about walking the dog, or you’re always at a community center on a particular day, you can eliminate that block of time entirely from selection.

FantastiCal has matured this part of their system to the point that you can make a template that requires information when the other person is making the appointment request. “Do you have to be there?”, “Estimated cost”, “ Will the dog have to be inside or outside” etc. Then you can approve the appointment or propose something different if need be.

I’m going to try this out & see where it goes.

FantastiCal has a small learning curve. It took me a while to get things set up in a way that works for me.

Another cool thing is that it can store the information in a way that Apple Reminders and Apple Calendar is also updated. So that information isn’t lost in the event you lose your phone. It’s still available via iCloud.

Recently they’ve introduced a Windows version of the FantastiCal application. 

I haven’t used it, but it might provide an elegant bridge between Windows and iPhone / iPad so that you’re not having to look at multiple systems if you’re making appointments.

I like the FantastiCal method of displaying scheduling information better than the Apple Calendar & Reminders app too.

That being said, I like Apple Reminders for shopping lists. FantastiCal doesn’t do that quite as well.

Hope your day is productive.

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Didn’t see that coming, apparently neither did Iran.

Trump took out Iran’s uranium refineries. 

Good! The last people on the planet that should have nuclear weapons, or even nuclear materials is a bunch of 12th century religious zealots.

Since the days of Carter, I’ve suggested that we give Iran nuclear weapons – Pointy end first. Then erect a huge monument to stupidity that could be seen from orbit on the foot thick slab of glass that used to be Iran.

I looked at it as a twofer, maybe a threefer. We’d get rid of the crazy mullahs, combat climate change with the dust the blast would kick into the atmosphere, and send a very clear concise message to terrorists that their unending violence would not be tolerated.

Most people told me my suggestion was extreme. Maybe…

I’ve mellowed over the years, largely due to my other half being such a just and kind person. I’m still in favor of terrorists being shot on sight. I’m not particularly interested in trials or appeals for them.

Which is why I have no pity for Gaza. The Palestinians were given the land, allowed to create their own governance, and chose a terrorist organization to be their government. What they’ve done over the years, and in particular on Oct 7 deserves no mercy, no pity, and no survivors.

It’s not hatred that I feel, it’s exhaustion. The entire Middle East has exhausted me.

Send all their “immigrants” back from Western countries, quarantine the area, then let them murder each other at will. Wait 50 or 100 years then check on them to see if any of them had evolved beyond the 12th century.

This morning Iran is crying to the UN about not being able to make “Mostly Peaceful” Nuclear weapons. At the same time they’re still lobbing “Mostly Peaceful” ballistic missiles at Israel. I’d laugh if I didn’t know that the UN will of course condemn the US for burying a shit ton of uranium in the desert.

To be clear, I disagree with Israel launching the first missiles at Iran. I think it might not have been that great an idea.

I guess they had their reasons, and I don’t know enough to really assess what the motivation was. In general I’m in favor of destroying Iranian ability to sponsor global terrorist networks, piracy on the high seas, and God knows what other shenanigans they’re behind on the global stage.

Iran should be glad people with Western values are choosing tactical targets. I suspect that if someone were motivated, almost every city in Iran could be leveled in less than 24 hours.

I’m reasonably sure that as long as the oil production sites weren’t significantly damaged, no-one would give a shit. Perhaps it could be sold to the rest of the world as, “For the Greater Good”. That seems to carry weight with a lot of people these days.

It would do my evil little heart good to see tons of Americans out on the streets shouting “Death to Iran” or “Murder a Mullah for God”. Burning effigies, Iranian flags, and such.

I’m just sick and tired of being extorted by Iran (how many billions have been given to them to “buy” peace?) Maybe I’m sick of having to be “Nice”. Maybe I’m just tired of chaos.

I don’t want any American boots on the ground in the Middle East ever again. But I wouldn’t be opposed to making an example of the primary ringleaders of chaos from the air.

I’m glad Trump bombed the shit out of their facilities. Now let Israel finish the job.

Rumor has it, Iran has ordered the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Even though it would mean escalation of hostilities, I’m not opposed to the US Navy hunting down and sinking every Iranian warship. While we’re at it, destroy every single Iranian military aircraft.

I’m also for isolating them from the internet, and seizing all their foreign assets, including bank accounts, then returning that money to the American Taxpayer as reparations for PTSD.

If you deny the Mullahs the ability to make war, then you won’t have war.

Hey, at least I’m not advocating burning their fields and villages then plowing salt into the ground.

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WHY? Wednesday evening my phone offered to suspend my alarm for Juneteenth.

Really? 

Why would my phone offer to disable my alarm for that? It’s never offered to suspend any other alarms for other holidays.

Martin Luther King’s birthday – Jan 20, 2025 was on a Monday
Presidents Day – February 17, 2025 another Monday
St Patrick’s Day – March 17th 2025 another Monday
Easter – April 20th 2025 a Sunday
Memorial Day – May 26, 2025 a Monday

But, I get a notification to modify my daily alarm about Juneteenth on a Thursday? What the hell?

I’ll be interested to see if a notification appears for Independence Day July 4th 2025, that’s on a Friday. How about Labor Day September 1st 2025? That’s a Monday

I like the idea of my phone offering to turn off the alarm on a Federal holiday to allow me to sleep in, but wonder if this is just pandering on the part of Apple.

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Lesson learned.

Found another box of data CD’s and DVD’s.

I’ve gone through the entire box. 

I always knew I was a data packrat. But this experience has taught me a lesson. 

That lesson boils down to, “What’s the point?”

To be fair, I did recover a few more “important” documents and photos. Those will be sorted into the long term archive on a portable drive hard drive. Nothing made by Western Digital by the way. Their reliability has gone straight into the crapper. 

The rest… Completely useless. Either the disc wouldn’t mount, or it would only mount using Windows but if I got it to mount the data wasn’t worth preserving and probably never was.

Why on earth I stored copies of software that I’d downloaded I’ll never know. That’s not entirely true either. I know why I stored those files. At the time downloads were painfully slow, so if I needed to reinstall something at least I didn’t have to re-download it.

But, where I failed was in purging the obsolete stuff. Also my data storage methods leave a lot to be desired. It would have been one thing if I’d stored all the downloads on a disc helpfully labeled “Downloaded Software” and put a date on it.

Then just by looking at the date, I’d have been able to toss the disc without fear of something being unrecoverable. As fast as software is updated (even then) most of these programs were obsolete by the time I burned them to a disc in the first place.

Then there were the original discs that I purchased off the shelf. Those too appear to have been damaged by time and perhaps the heat from the house fire. I was able to recover some fonts but honestly it wasn’t worth the effort.

So, next to my chair here, I’ve got a stack of discs and their cases all destined for the trash.

When I say stack, what I really mean is a trash bag full.

I get why Apple stopped building CD/DVD burners into their computers. The world has moved on. I also found a bunch of floppy discs. 

For just a moment, I wondered if I could get a cheap floppy drive just to see what’s on those. I could, but then I thought, “Why?” It’s not like any of that data is launch codes or access codes to a vault or anything. I’m not working in the government or at the FAA after all.

I’ve got a ton of memory sticks and portable hard drives that are also in various states of decay. I’ve even got some network storage drives laying around that are shot for no apparent reason. Those that worked, I’ve transferred to the big network drive and that unit is happily searching for, and deleting duplicates.

As I’ve been working my way through all of this It occurred to me that I should go through the archive folder on the big drive and purge any software that I’m not currently using. That’s a project for later… Much Later!

Another dumb thing I did back in the day was zipped files or used other types of compression when I burned stuff to CDs.

At the time it made sense because I was trying to save space. From a long term storage point of view it was dumb because so many of those early compression techniques have been rendered obsolete. 

So for the future, I’m not compressing shit when I archive it. Turns out encrypting “important stuff” was also a mistake. Why? Because the encryption formats I used are no longer available even though I know the passwords or pass phrases.

To access some of this data, I’d have to have a computer from the period, and dig up a copy of the software I used to compress or encrypt it.

All of which is to say, nothing is permanent and unless you stay on top of changing standards decrypting and re-encrypting as time goes on, your data is going to be lost.

In other words it’s a maintenance nightmare.

I suppose, one could write a script or something that kicked off periodically to perform the maintenance but then you lose all time context since you’d be essentially recreating the files with every maintenance pass. I guess that problem could be worked around by updating some kind of text index preserving the original creation date and subsequent maintenance cycle date with each pass.

The point is, why? Do any of us have data that’s really all that important?

Which leads me to a larger lesson. If something isn’t being used, and it’s just stuck away in a closet or basement occupying space. You’re probably better off just tossing it in the trash.

At least then when you move, you don’t have to agonize over what to keep and what to toss.

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So I’ve had the Digital Driver’s License for about a year…

Thus far I’ve not been anywhere that had the facilities for me to use my mobile driver’s license.

I’d kind of forgotten it was even on my phone. It’s there in the Apple Wallet, and I’ve gone “familiarity blind to it,” I see it, but don’t see it. Maybe that’s a guy thing?

Anyhoo, I recently got the DL license renewal form. (2 pages) which encouraged me to  use the DMV renewal web portal.

I didn’t. 

I’ve got a little problem with the DMV charging me an extra (and in my opinion excessive,) “convenience fee”. Convenient for who? Me, or California?

I don’t mind writing a check. I know that my choosing to handle stuff like this via paper, and checks is more difficult, and labor intensive a.k.a. inconvenient for California. As an aside, I deal with the Feds, the same way.

It is no more or less convenient for me to write a check and put a stamp on an envelope. 

Maybe they should discount renewals and the like on the DMV website to encourage folks like me to give them our debit card numbers and allow California to collect their cash instantly.

I’m not overly concerned about using technology but I’ll be damned if they’re going to hit me with another fee for making their job easier.

I digress. 

I woke up this morning to the usual notifications from my bank about transactions that had cleared. However this morning, there was an additional notification. This one was from the digital / mobile driver’s license. 

The notification said my license had been updated. “That’s new,” I thought. I tapped on the notification and was informed that the expiration date had changed and my license had a new expiration date.

I logged into the DMV website and confirmed that yes, my license has been renewed and all I’m waiting for now is the hard copy.

Hmmm. That’s kind of neat. 

From what I understand, you’ll get similar notices when you’ve used the digital license at the TSA or other venues for identification. I’m curious to understand more about the digital IDs, much of what I’ve read seems a lot like vapor ware. The use cases and specifications sound a little “over the top”.

As I’ve stated elsewhere, I think digital ID’s have great potential. I also think they have a really dark potential downside.

The upside is that they could be used in places like Doctor’s offices. It would be nice to only transmit the necessary information instead of everything. We’ve all had the office administrator photocopy our license for insurance purposes, then attach it to our file. Going digital would make things a tad more secure, especially since we’ve all received notices or seen on the news that hardcopies of our medical files have been found in dumpsters. 

That’s scary since those files contain our ID, Social Security Number, address, date of birth, and a ton of other personal information.

If the data was only in computers and those computers had a field like “ID verified Yes/No” then in theory, it would close off a pathway for identity theft. As the records stand right now, with either the hard copy or the digital copies, medical records are valuable to criminals because they have everything someone would need to commit ID theft.

I could see using digital IDs for voting. Wave your phone at a reader and get your ballot. That would help cut down on fraudulent votes, and also raise a red flag if someone had used a stolen ID to vote in your place. It probably wouldn’t help in that election, but it would allow you to report the problem to authorities.

The biometric aspect of digital IDs means that in theory only you can use your ID, so there’s better security built in. At least that’s the theory.

If all stores that sold items like liquor, and cigarettes, used digital ID, then you could have a lot of convenience making those purchases. The register could ping the ID for age verification as part of the transaction process and not allow the sale to complete if someone were underage.

Even with in-person banking transactions or at an ATM it’s theoretically possible to do away with the physical debit card, and just use the phone to access the account and verify ID so PIN numbers could be a thing of the past.

I personally prefer using my phone at gas pumps and convenience stores. Why? Because those places are notorious for having card skimmers and the phone option with biometrics cuts that shit right off. At least for the time being. 

If every sales transaction was linked to biometric ID verification on a personal device then theft and fraud could be a thing of the past.

All of this is of course, predicated on a government that can be trusted, and highly secure data.

Unfortunately, neither is true.

Data breaches happen every day all day. Trusting the government? Uh, NOPE!

The dark side of all of this would be the government being able to turn off your digital ID. They wouldn’t have to touch bank accounts, they’d be able to simply not verify your ID. The bank and ATM would then cease to function. As would every other transaction that verified your ID.

In a cashless society that means you have no access to money, food, fuel, or anything else. If the government wanted you they’d know exactly where you are and they’d know you probably weren’t going to get very far away from the last transaction terminal you accessed.

Purchasing guns or ammunition for example suddenly becomes a matter of record and the government could, at a whim make it impossible. PayPal and other Credit processors have already implemented blocks on sales of firearms, firearm accessories, gambling and some items of a sexual nature. It’s written into the agreements.

The government turning off a Digital ID makes verbiage in the credit agreements redundant.

Talk about the ultimate gun control and passive gun registration. An overbearing government could in theory, disarm the entire populace in very short order.

Even if members of the populace had guns, the government could stop sales of ammunition, then all that’s left is stopping the sales of precursor materials.

Think about not being able to buy lead, brass, primers, or gunpowder. (No more reloading.) Then since people are creative and clever, the government could stop sales of materials like carbon, sulfur, potassium, and nitrate materials. Meaning people couldn’t even begin to make gunpowder.

Large quantities of fertilizer are already monitored in the US, after the Oklahoma City bombing.

In the aftermath of January 6 2020 The Bank of America released transaction records to the United States Government on suspects. The FBI knew exactly what those people had for breakfast.

So it’s not much of a stretch.

A bad government could, by turning off an individual’s digital ID prevent them from voting, buying or selling cars, homes, or renting an apartment. That same bad government could turn off access to public assistance and retirement funds. A bad government could control literally anything they didn’t want people to have.

Down that path lies dystopian nightmares.

It’s already happening in China, and honestly the UK isn’t far behind.

Last week, Apple announced that they were going to allow addition of passports to Apple Wallet. 

Hmmm. That might be really cool, especially if the passport in Apple Wallet acts like the Passport card. The Passport Card now allows travel between Canada, Mexico, and some of the Caribbean islands. Imagine the possibilities. Breezing through TSA and later Customs just by waving your phone at a reader.

Sounds neat, or does it?

I’m not sure that I’m comfortable with an all digital ID or cashless future. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love the convenience.

That being said, I’m increasingly concerned about the potential misuse. Especially after COVID, the vaccine passports, COVID digital contact tracing, seeing how quickly people complied, and worse how quickly those in power began to abuse their power.

In an idealized perfect world, I’d love digital IDs and a cashless society.

We don’t live in that world.

My California mobile ID will continue to live in my Apple Wallet. I’ll probably not notice it by next week. Knowing me, If I’m asked for my ID I’ll hand over my new drivers license even if the party asking for ID can read the digital version.