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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We’re all writing our lives in Sand

Years ago, I was speaking with a Professor friend of mine, extolling the virtues of digital books.

In my idealism I was bubbling over about the elimination of the high cost associated with college text books. I saw this as a new age where everyone would have better access to higher education and as new discoveries were made, the new data could effortlessly be inserted in the text books so people wouldn’t have to buy the revised editions of a hard copy.

My Professor friend nodded and conceded that if things worked that way, it would improve education and could make higer education somewhat less costly.

He said simply, “Sometimes the best ideas, built on the best of intentions, don’t work out like we think they will. I’ll stick with my dusty paper books for the time being.”

At the time I envisioned a world where everyone had access to the sum total of human knowledge and that we would then all be playing on a level field. Naively I thought that the best angels of humanity would rise to the top and we would enter a new age of cooperation and creativity. I thought equality and harmony were just around the corner, built on free exchange of information and thought.

I WAS A MORON!

Yep, at that time in my life I was leaning pretty left. I thought the vast majority of people would choose light and temper their natural selfishness because the promise of everyone being happy, healthy, and productive would be so alluring.

Looking back from 2021, I have a bitter laugh. There’s also a sadness, humanity could be so much more, but the opportunity may have passed. Now I think we’re heading for another “Dark Age”.

Five years, or so later, my friend and I were having a similar discussion. This time the discussion started because He was having to incorporate EBooks into his curriculum. He was dealing with variations in some of the books. It turned out that many of the Ebooks, even though they had the same ISBN number contained different text and there was no notation of when revisions had been made. To make things more confusing the Ebooks didn’t match the hardcopy text books that could be purchased from the campus book store.

That was when I realized that an Orwellian component had come into play. In my innocence I’d never considered that anyone would prefer censorship or alteration of the facts in a book, to fit a narrative. I actually believed that we as a species had grown beyond that.

Truth rings like a bell. You might not like it, but Truth stands on it’s own merit.

Knowledge, and understanding may start out flawed, but there is a logical step by step refinement that is driven by the truth of new undeniable facts. We should be able to see that process, to chart it, and books provide the evidence of our journey towards understanding.

If we can look at the old books and theories contained within, we have a view into how knowledge evolves and how new data can, and should trigger re-evaluation of a theory or belief.

I always believed that books, and the written word were somehow sacred. That is why the Nazi book burnings were so abhorrent to me.

During our conversation, discovering that books were no longer being treated with any kind of reverence, it dawned on me perhaps digital media was too ephemeral to be trusted with the knowledge of our species.

Maybe a better method would be to have books start out as digital, collect the data and facts then publish a hard copy (a snapshot if you will,) that would be placed in every library all over the world. Then you’d publish addenda in hard copy as warranted.

But even as I had that thought, I knew the genie was out of the bottle. People will always choose convenience over having to do the actual work of locating a book in a library stack and opening it. The books would simply rot to dust on library shelves.

That was the beginning of my journey toward a more conservative view of the world. That journey continued the more I became aware of subtle changes to books. Specifically Ebooks.

I bought into the convenience of having a book on my phone or computer to read at lunch. I purchased a lot of Ebooks but as I read them there were changes. At first it was small corrections, reasonable edits that corrected a typo or made a sentence read better.

These changes were within what I considered, the realm of reasonable. I could see an author making those changes in the Ebook because it was simple and didn’t require an entirely new press run. The changes would be folded into the printed copies of the book as needed.

But the edits became more plentiful, and far reaching. Soon some of my favorite books diverged in their Ebook form from the hard copy I’d had for years. Then I started seeing it in movies.

The weirdest example was in “Alien”. A friend had a laserdisc version of Alien. When we’d seen the movie in the theater we’d noted that the Nostromo’s shuttle had a name. When we’d purchased the movies on videotape there wasn’t a name on the shuttle.

At the time, we thought it was probably something to do with the resolution of the videotape. When my friend purchased the laserdisc version of Alien, the name once again appeared on the shuttle. But DVD and Bluray versions, the name was gone again.

This suggested that there were multiple versions of the movie and there was no way of telling which cut you actually were purchasing. Shortly after our “discovery” multiple cuts of movies were being repackaged as “New” xyz cuts, thereby maximizing profit to the studios. I think at one time, this friend and I had 6 different cuts of Alien and who knows how many other movies between us.

I lost my DVD / Bluray collection and all of my books in a house fire. At the time, I chose to invest heavily in streaming movies and Ebooks so that I’d never have to face the heartbreak of losing collections again.

Except that’s not how it works.

Movies and books available online can disappear suddenly and with no explanation.

Gone with the Wind,for example now has a whole Social Justice disclaimer before you get to watch the movie.

Looney Toons collections have Whoopie Goldberg reminding viewers that some of the depictions in the cartoon are representative of an era when racial relations were horrific. She even has to comment on Bugs Bunny having a go at German and Japanese soldiers.

All she needed to say was that those cartoons were propaganda from World War II and in context, they were supposed to give theater goers of the time, a laugh and bit of hope. But instead we’re subjected to the whole Social Justice Warrior education about a 6 minute cartoon.

If you’re sitting down to watch Looney Tunes, you’re not looking for any deep political lessons, you’re looking for some mindless goofy antics to put a smile on your face.

The point here is that if everything in malleable, if everthing can be edited and altered then we risk corrupting and losing our global knowledge.

If we eliminate dissenting opinions, we eliminate healthy discourse that could lead in new directions. If we censor comedy, or free speech, in my opinion we accelerate the decline of civilization.

If all that you believe is given to you in little spoonfuls of “Approved” narrative then you shouldn’t be surprised to discover that almost nothing you know is true.

We all know that a large percentage of the population will be surprised, then angry, then possibly violent. When that happens… Well, you have book burnings, and stuff akin to the fall of Rome.

This time, it will be worse than the dark ages. Because libraries have fewer and fewer books, some libraries are even destroying books rather than curating them.

A large percentage of late 20th and early 21st century information is digital only. After everything is burned, the power goes down, the internet doesn’t work, and the cell towers go offline what resources will be available to rebuild from?

We’ve written our knowledge and history in the sand on a beach. When the tide comes in, it will be lost.

Just as a lot of old knowledge had to be rediscovered when the Dark Ages waned, humanity will have to claw their way back from the abyss and start over.

For just a minute, imagine what this world would be like if the industrial revolution had started 300 years earlier. What might we know now? The people of Greece, Rome, China, MesoAmerica, and Egypt were all equal in intelligence to us. What they lacked was knowledge, science, and resources.

All of these civilizations were working on those problems when they fell. We’ll never know how much was lost or suppressed. But we do know they contemplated the stars, and studied mathematics. We know they could build massive structures and grasped art, literature, and rudimentary physics.

An argument could be made that had these civilizations conquered their greed, need to control each other, and war, choosing instead to work together we’d be a lot further along in our development than we are today.

Then again, I’m reminded of the line from The Fifth Element, “Everything you create you use to destroy.”

Perhaps that kind of cooperation would have just reduced the population.

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At the risk of being labeled Transphobic…

I think it’s time for the trans community to separate from the LGB community.

LGB has become pretty accepted. There are still issues to address and probably will be for the next 20 years or so.

The problem I see rising is that the Trans community has become so conflated with the LGB community at large, that Trans issues are damaging the LGB community and their hard won gains.

Comments in various online publications which were once about 50/50, pro/against LGB issues. Have become increasingly hateful and vicious about just “normal” LGB folks with the addition of the Trans communities never ending strident yelling.

While I agree that everyone should be teated kindly and equally. I don’t think that Trans issues as presented belong in the LGB spectrum. I also think that the way the Trans community is behaving has drawn the LGB part of the community needlessly into an agenda that is not representative of the average LGB person.

Comments in recent articles about Lia Thomas, and Rachel Levine demonstrate in my opinion that America is growing very tired of the Trans community and by extension the LGB community.

Many of the comments paint Trans people as gay or lesbian. Moreover, comments paint the entirety of the LGBT community as deranged, mentally unfit, sick, disgusting, evil, or perpetrating some kind of con on various institutions (Lia Thomas, I’m looking at you).

The Trans people that I have personally known may start out being homosexuals, but that appears to be a transitional phase. The person is homosexual because they believe with all their heart and soul, they were born in the wrong body. They’re intimate with the gender they find attractive but they still feel that their body isn’t right. Several of the Trans folks I’ve known, have entered into loving straight relationships after they’ve transitioned.

A former man, completes the required surgeries, and then marries as a woman to another man. They aren’t homosexual at that point.

The full transitions I’ve known, left the LGB community and went off to live in suburbia with their husbands and most have adopted children.

The LGB folks don’t believe they were born wrong. Typically they believe they were born a bit different but they’re content being whatever gender they were born. They don’t feel alien in their own bodies, they’re comfortable in preferring intimacy with members of the same gender.

I know for some, this is a difficult distinction, but it’s an important one.

My personal experience is very different from the strident demands of today.

What passes for the Trans community these days doesn’t seem to have the same appreciation for the gravity of the decision Transgender people had in years past.

It’s not just about pumping hormones into your body. Yes, that is part of it, but it’s about where your head is at. A transgendered friend told me that before the surgery when she looked in the mirror she perceived her male body as a suit she was trapped in. She said that she’d felt this way for her entire male life. When she woke up from surgery, during the months of healing she anticipated seeing her true self.

She said that the first time she saw herself in a mirror after healing, she cried with joy because she felt like she’d awakened from a terrible dream. For the first time in her life, she saw herself as the person she had always been.

As a male, she’d been somewhat androgynous. As a female, she was beautiful. You had to really look closely to see minimal telltales left by her time as a male.

As a male, he’d had a slight physique very little body hair and an average sized penis and testicles. His personality was sparkling, witty, and intelligent. He was a lot of fun to be around, a great entertainer, classy, with a sense of understated style. He was a great date, and knew how to please a man.

Post Surgery, as a woman, she had beautiful breasts. they were not ostentatious or out sized. The hormones added a little padding to her hips accentuating a femininity that I’d never noticed. She was still all the other things. Sparkling, witty, intelligent, classy, stylish, a great date, and she still knew how to please a man. She was different from any other woman I’d been with, in that she was always 100% engaged in sex. Her vagina was beautiful, and visually indistinguishable from any woman I’d been with.

She joked about it a little one night as we were cuddling in her bed in the dark. She said she’d paid for the full top of the line package and one of the best surgeons. She felt she was worth it since she was reclaiming her real body. Then she asked if she’d gotten her moneys worth.

I kissed her and told her, “Yes,” as far as I could see.

She later told me I’d been her last sexual partner as a man, and her first sexual partner as a woman. She liked the symmetry. Later she made a comment that stuck with me through the years. She said, “The unhappy old me died on the operating table, the new me is going to live savoring each day.”

About a year later, after all the documentation was settled, she took a job on the East Coast.

Several years later, there was a Christmas card with a picture of her, her husband, and his child from a previous marriage. The note inside said simply, “Can you believe I’m the ‘evil’ stepmother! I love my husband and while my life may be shorter than it would have been otherwise, it’s been marvelous so far. This is the life I always wanted. P.S. You were right I think. When we got serious I told him everything and let him decide from there. He thought about it for a week or two, then decided he didn’t care. We were married six months later. Thank you my friend.”

We’ve lost touch over the years, the last I heard she was still married, living in upstate New York and very happy.

Perhaps the fact that I’ve known intimately and personally someone who was transgender is coloring my view. When she began her transition, she dressed as a woman, and was never concerned about using the ladies room. She’d sometimes comment ruefully that she’d miss urinals because they were just so much easier to deal with. She had a group of close supportive friends and we all just accepted.

Perhaps it was easier for her and us, because pre surgery she could easily pass as a woman. Perhaps, it was that at the time that the LGBT community was far less divided, more forgiving, and more accepting than today. Perhaps, it was that he/she was really a she trapped in the wrong body.

One thing I learned from her is that people see exactly what they want to see. Pre surgery, Miranda took me to The Magic Castle in LA for my birthday. She wasn’t fooled too often in the close up sleight of hand room. Later in the evening, we bumped into the magician she’d inadvertently made sweat. He asked how she knew his tricks and if she was a magician herself. She smiled sweetly and said, “Yes, in a way. You think I’m a woman don’t you?” She hugged the stunned magician and thanked him for an impressive show.

I wondered at the time if the knowledge that people see what they want to see, was why she was so good in business negotiations.

The difference I see now, versus then is that the Trans community today is very much in everybody’s face. They’re apparently angry and hostile and I don’t get why.

The Trans people I’ve known in years past weren’t angry, they were kind and gentle spirits. They were in intense counseling, not to make them be something they were not. But to make sure that they fully understood all the ramifications and risks. They were the people most in-touch with their feelings. They’d put in the time to understand themselves. They’d done all this work prior to beginning the hormones and transition because at the time, it was one of those things that you only got one shot at. They also had very realistic expectations about what they’d look like afterwards.

Some Trans people just aren’t that pretty or believable when they’re done. Back in the day, if the outcome wasn’t going to be a good one, a surgeon might simply refuse.

It makes no sense to take a decent looking man or woman and turn them into someone that will never be happy with the results of the transition surgery. Why modify someone that’s already lonely but has a shot at dating, perhaps love, into someone that is unattractive and has no shot at dating or happiness? Doctors used to take an oath to do no harm. Lately I’ve begun to wonder if the oath they take today is set to Pink Floyd’s Money.

I mean really, would you date Rachel Levine? It’s not necessarily about age, even Lia Thomas looks much better as a male than as a female. In Thomas’s case artful surgery might make him somewhat appealing as a woman but he’ll always have the proportions of a man.

In this time of gender fluidity or non-binary sexuality it seems that folks aren’t thinking that way. What future will an ugly, angry, old, Transgender have? What ever happened to honestly estimating/evaluating the outcome of a surgical procedure?

Why don’t surgeons say, “You’re too masculine / feminine for me to make you look like the opposite gender. Your hips are too narrow or wide, your shoulders are too broad or narrow, your face is too characteristically male or female. We can do this surgery if you insist, but my professional opinion is I don’t think you’ll be happy with the results.”

The same could be said of tattoo artists. If a tattoo is the first part of a large piece, say a tattoo sleeve, then isn’t it incumbent on the artist to tell the client a particular tattoo isn’t going to work in the sleeve?

I’d really appreciate a tattoo artist telling me something like, “This isn’t going to work, let me see if I can redesign it so that it fits better with the whole piece. Come back in a week and I’ll show you some options,” I’d appreciate the thoughtfulness and concern.

Instead, what we seem to have is, “let me prescribe some puberty blockers or hormones for a while and let’s see how you feel.”

Having lived for a long time as a Bi man, I found that while my sexuality is non-binary, my gender very much is.

I searched for love and found it. I don’t and didn’t care what gender package that love was wrapped up in. Arguably, I’m far more comfortable with another man but I’ve never excluded the possibility that I might find an equally loving relationship with a woman.

Looking back, I loved Mark/Miranda. (She claimed she didn’t want to change the monograms on the towels. I think it was that Miranda or ‘Miri’ was an uncommon name and it’s as pretty as she was.) I wasn’t in a place where I was ready for commitment or marriage, She was. That doesn’t discount the fact that it was the person, not necessarily the gender that I cared for.

I throughly enjoyed our time together and yes, loved him/her in both genders.

The point is, you don’t just wake up one day and declare you’re a woman or man arbitrarily. Just saying you’re Trans doesn’t give you the right to play dress up just because you want to mess with people. Drs handing out hormone therapy or puberty blockers as though it’s not a big deal, to people who’ve not done the really hard work involved in counseling and therapy is, in my opinion, a very bad idea.

I’m not Trans. I can’t speak from inside a Trans person’s skin. But I’ve walked alongside a person who was. I’ll never know all the introspection and questioning that Mark did.

I do know it was years in the making and that I came on the scene only in the last few years. When I met Mark, he was content with his choice & still dressing as a man. During the time I knew him he began dressing as Miranda moving toward full transition. He was the most stable, put together, person I’ve known.

When Miranda came home from the sabbatical, during which she had the surgeries and recuperation, she was still the most stable person I knew. She was also the most serene person I’ve ever known.

The same is generally true of the other Trans people that have passed through my life. None of them were hostile, angry, or pushy. They were respected, and conformed to the social norms of the society at large. They were dressed as a specific gender, and acted accordingly. They weren’t about doing bad drag (which has its place,) they were making a very serious life decision that was theirs and theirs alone.

I’d bet Miranda would be at the forefront of demanding parents have a choice in what their children are taught, and when, regarding sexuality. I’m also pretty sure that she’d put a verbal smackdown on anyone who remotely pushed a child toward transitioning or puberty blockers before a child could understand what that really meant.

I suspect Miranda would ironically be called Transphobic by today’s standards.

I can almost hear her laughing about that label, in some activists face.

I don’t know if she’d agree with me about LGB folks distancing themselves from the current Trans community. She might not, and she’d have excellent reasons that she could defend. In the few arguments we had, it was 60% likely that she was right. 40% likely that I was. Her position was always well thought out and backed up with facts.

Even in winning, she was gracious and beautiful. She didn’t rub it in, and she’d hug me when I was crestfallen.

“You can’t be right all the time, settle for half… Do you want something to eat, or would you like to just cuddle,” she’d ask. Id always reply, “I’d feel better about it with both.” She’d just laugh.

I think that Miranda would appreciate my opinion. She might not agree, but she’d see where I was coming from. It’s about being silenced, told what I may and may not say.

It’s about being forced to accept things that I find fundamentally wrong. (Hormones, Puberty blockers, and a rush to transition without doing the work.) Today I can’t even speak that conviction without being labeled or cancelled.

Nowadays, being a part of the LGBT community implies that you agree wholeheartedly with anything and everything Trans. Which makes being a part of that community a complete non-starter for me and many others.

I’d prefer to see an LGB community and a separate Trans community. I’d prefer to see the LGB community support the real Trans community as we used to. With love, acceptance, and the knowledge that our Transitioned brothers and sisters may leave us, not in anger, but to move on with the life they’ve always dreamed of, and deserved.

Miranda… Miri, if by some weird chance you should ever read this, all my love to you and your family. You deserve all the happiness in the world, I’m very glad you’re living the dream you wanted.

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Turn off the dang lights!

I haven’t been sleeping too well. Apologies for being a bit cranky. We’ve had a number of city neighbors moving in to town who apparently don’t know how to turn off a light switch.

There are nights I feel like I’m living on the runway of LAX.

When I first moved up here, it was to get away from the city. On a clear night I could see the Milky Way easily from my yard or deck. The stars were bright and clear. You could even see that some of them were different colors with the naked eye.

Over the decades, light pollution has become increasingly problematic. Now the lights of the Victorville area have grown to the point that you can’t see any of the night sky near the horizon if you’re looking to the North. Victorville and surrounding communities drown out the starlight. If you looked up you could still see the majority of the stars, so that was okay.

However, as more city people moved into my little town, they’ve gotten in the habit of leaving their exterior lights on all night. Some of them have floodlights that blink on and off all night long.

Night isn’t dark anymore. At 3am I can easily wander around my house with no lights because the light from surrounding neighbors spilling through my windows is so bright.

Over the past year, I noticed that I couldn’t see Orion anymore. At first I thought I was just looking for him on cloudy nights, but on a clear moonless night in January I realized the truth. I could not longer see my friends Orion or Ursa Major because my neighbors have the entire town lit up like an LA street. The only thing missing now is stadium lights on the tops of the mountains shining down on the village.

Right now, every night the light is brighter than what we used to call twilight. It’s only getting worse.

Why are city people so afraid of the dark?

Night used to bring out owls, raccoons, opossums, cute little kangaroo mice, the occasional bobcat, and bats. Coyotes could be heard howling & yipping while hunting. On nights with a full moon, you could watch their shadows moving along the wash as they commuted to preferred hunting grounds for their nightly meal.

A UV light would show you insects that you didn’t normally see. While I’m sure the insects are still around. The UV light isn’t strong enough to reveal them. Either the UV is being cancelled out by the background light, or the fluorescence that some insects reflect back is too dim to see. During some seasons, a UV light would make the ground around my house look like an 80s disco scene.

All that is gone, driven out by humans from dazzling urbanite cities and their terror of the dark. Also gone is my ability to sleep soundly with the bedroom shade up. I like falling asleep enjoying the changing moonlight, and on moonless nights looking out at the stars.

When I first found this place, in Spring, Summer, and into Early Autumn, the door to the deck and yard would be open while I was awake.

My dogs would routinely trot out to inspect the yard and keep out unwanted visitors. They’d come back in after their rounds, proud of a job well done. They’d lay on the floor near me ears pricked for an unusual sound. When something sounded odd, they’d be out again checking the perimeter, then if all was secure, they’d come back in and lay down. Bedtime was signaled by me brushing my teeth. They’d head out for one last look around then come in and I’d close the door. We’d all head to the bedroom where one or both of them would assume guardian position facing the bedroom door.

Nights were dark and peaceful. I rested well, secure that my boys could see anything in the night that I couldn’t, should someone or something come into the house. They were the best alarm system in the world. Smart, automatic, and selectively defensive. If they recognized you they’d greet you happily. If they didn’t, they’d let you know you were not welcome until I said you were.

I miss the days of never locking my door. I miss the dark nights, stars, and occasional asteroids leaving streaks of fire in the sky. I miss watching the constellations march across the night or dip below the horizon depending on the time of the year.

These are some of the reasons I came to this little town one weekend and decided to stay.

Now that so much of what I loved about being here is gone, I find that I stay out of nothing more than habit. Fearful humans have robbed me of the joys I used to find in everyday life here in the mountains.

It’s time to move on.

One last place to call home where I can see the night sky again.
One last place to appreciate the beauty of nature without car alarms chirping, people shouting, and nature itself hiding from all the cacophony humankind can’t seem to live without.
A place of silent beauty that somehow seems magically eternal.
A place with seasons.
Summer thunderheads rumbling the ground, flashing lightening, marching across the sky.
The sound of rain on the roof and smell of rich ground soaking up the life giving water.
The feel of a brisk Autumn wind blowing leaves across my path.
A cool bite of gentle snow landing on my cheeks in the gray time of deep Winter.
The riotous miracle of Spring as plants wake from their slumber.

There was a time in my life when I had many of these things. I was too young and impatient to really appreciate it. Where I live now, once gave me some of these wonders.

It’s said, “Adapt or die,” I think I choose to do neither.

I choose to find what I lost, and this time to really appreciate it.

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Too much static!

I’ve been finding it very hard to write lately.

There’s a lot of stuff going on in my life and my local environment that have created a bunch of noise in my head.

I’m worried about a lot of things, and even ignoring the larger issues of the world at large the static is making it very hard for me to put thoughts together in any coherent order.

There have been a lot of false starts in blog posts and other projects, they’re not progressing because lately I have the attention span of a gadfly.

The more I try to set aside time for me. Just me to sit quietly, collect my thoughts and plan a day, the more interruptions, or disasters, rain down on my life.

I’d love to actually plan a day and not have every single plan blown to hell almost instantly. Perhaps I’m asking too much!

The more distracted I am of course the less gets done that I need to do and the greater the frustration I have, because my stuff is piling up.

It’s a vicious cycle and really starting to harsh my buzz.

The latest annoyance is that the most recent MacOS update is killing my laptop’s battery in just a couple of hours. I discovered this when I decided to take my laptop and myself outside to enjoy the nice weather we’re having.

I thought perhaps being outside would assist me in clearing my head. The plan was to remove myself from all the distractions inside the house and just sit looking for a job, and perhaps writing a bit, in the sun and fresh air. HA!

On balance I got about an hour of what I wanted to get done, done before the unusual power drain became apparent. Then I was sucked down the rabbit hole of identifying what was causing the power drain.

Still unsure about that. After turning off all the communication channels. BlueTooth, WiFi, etc. The drain was still happening. That led me to all the crap running in the background, (most of which is Apple’s ill defined subsystems,) according to Apple’s monitoring software there was nothing wrong. Uh Huh sure! Looking at the UNIX monitoring software there were 600 processes running most of those were sleeping but several of their “New” modules were consuming a lot of CPU time. It’s unclear how to actually turn off any of these modules which I’d do in a heartbeat because I don’t use them.

This kind of thing annoys the crap out of me because clearly Apple dropped the ball again! They’re apparently not doing real world testing and that annoys the hell out of me because I’m a software tester that has applied to Apple at least 20 times for testing positions, only to be completely and rigorously ignored.

I’ve said it before. Automated testing has its place, but an actual human working with the machine is still necessary because automation can only spot those items it’s programmed to spot.

In other words, automation will confirm that the software completed the expected task. A human on the other hand will spot things about the requested task completing, with other collateral issues, (like excessive power drains,) and get curious about what’s causing them.

But God Forbid, the great and wondrous Apple actually considered that!

As I said, I’m annoyed. Here’s an axiom for you:

Shitty software is still shitty software regardless of the logo. No-one is immune to creating shitty software. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, are all guilty of unapologetically foisting shit on the public. Apple never apologizes for anything, no matter how bad it is! (Unless they’re forced to do so by a class action lawsuit.) Just once, I’d love to see Tim Cook apologize for a crappy Mac OS or IOS release in his opening remarks at a convention or online event. I’d probably have a heart attack but it would be worth it.

The MacBook Pro isn’t the only device having battery problems. Apparently, some iPhones are sucking their batteries dry after the latest release of IOS 15. Apples response, in typically Apple fashion is, “**smug** You’ll just have to wait until we get around to fixing it. **smug**”

So for the time being, I’m chained to my power adapter, instead of enjoying the spring weather and being able to write. What happened to my MacBook outlasting the competition?

Oh yeah… poor testing & verification on one of their products core advantages!

To make matters worse, this has been an ongoing issue for at least the last four releases so you’d think someone in their software development and testing team would have a big assed sign that said, “TEST BATTERY LIFE IN REAL WORLD SITUATIONS!”

I’d be happy to design a sign for them if they’d be willing to pay me a year’s salary for it.

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I noticed gas station changes the other day.

Let me preface with this. I hadn’t purchased gas for my car for probably 3 months. I haven’t been driving all that much and as such, the gas in the tank was mostly from late December or early January.

I went to a massage appointment in February but only burned a quarter of a tank in that round trip.

Last week I had another massage appointment and so on the way back, I stopped at a filling station. In this particular case I chose a station at the Morongo Indian Reservation where I paid $5.83 for premium instead of the $6.31 at the stations near home.

I was feeling pretty happy about the savings and went into the attached store for a drink and snack.

Coming out, I noticed there seemed to be a lot of people milling about. This is somewhat unusual since most of the time gas stations stops are a 10 minute affair at most. Gas, snacks, bathroom break, etc and then you’re on the road again.

Then I noticed that there were a lot of cars parked in the parking lot attached to charging stations.

That was my ah ha moment. There were a ton of people waiting for their EVs to recharge. This got me to thinking about the whole “Green” market. All of the charging stations had credit card slots. I’m assuming that you have to pay for those kilowatts just like you have to pay for gas. I doubt seriously that the gas station is going to give electricity away for free.

I stood there for a moment watching the bored people standing around their cars and thought this is trouble kinda waiting to happen. What happens if a single lady or wealthy man is stuck for a while recharging, at night? Does that make them “Fish in a barrel” for the more predatory elements of society? Especially right now. There are few charging facilities between Palm Springs and LA.

Then there’s the time. How many guys have gone out to their car after their spouse has driven it only to find that the tank is empty. The guy grumbles and drives to the nearest gas station and fills the tank then goes to work.

What does it do to your work schedule if your spouse forgot to plug your car in? Especially if your spouse took your car because they’d forgotten to plug theirs in as well. This presumes that both partners can afford to have electric cars.

I got into my gas vehicle and turned it on. The fuel gauge read “Full” and the indicated estimated range was 575 miles. On a cross country trip last year the furthest I pushed it was 550 miles.

I’d been at the filling station for 10 minutes and was ready to leave. I can’t imagine my frustration at sitting for 1/2 hour to an hour waiting for an electric vehicle to recharge. I’m far too impatient and I’d be losing my mind well inside 30 minutes

I should note, that 550 miles was me running the car in “Eco” mode and on a long flat straight highway with cruise control on. So that was kind of special and neat. I was comfortable and the A/C was on as the miles rolled by. I wondered what an electric car would do in similar circumstances. Would I be as confident and carefree on the trip or would I be worried about the next charging stop and how long I’d be stuck there?

More realistically, my car gets 31MPG consistently. That’s mixed mode driving between the “Comfort” setting and the “Eco” setting. I find that “Comfort” works best in stop & go traffic like in town with lights and stop signs while “Eco” really shines on the open road and also in bumper to bumper traffic in a freeway traffic jam.

On the trip I mentioned, there were two days where my car reported 45 MPG. That was a special circumstance because once you cross the mountains into AZ it’s mostly down hill. With “Eco” on and cruise control the car just kept going, only applying a touch of gas to keep up the momentum.

I suppose an electric would derive some recharging potential in similar circumstances. I’d guess that would extend the range so long as you kept the accessories to a minimum.

The trip across country took me 3 days. My car easily takes me 475 miles and I still have plenty of fuel to find a station, usually about 50 miles remain.

I looked up a Tesla long range. 375 Miles on a full. charge, 80% charge in 30 minutes with a rapid charger. The wallbox charger takes 11 hours and 15 minutes to give you a full charge.

This made me wonder how long it would take to drive across country in a Tesla. I guess the best way would be to assume you’re going 375 miles in the first leg and then 300 miles for each subsequent leg with over night stops at hotels that may or may not have charging stations. I’m betting that an electric vehicle would realistically add a day to the trip. That isn’t too bad if you think about it.

But I gotta say, there were some places where I stopped only for gas and jumped right back in the car. The “bathroom break” waited until a proper rest stop where there were lots of people around.

There was one place that made me swear I’d driven into “Deliverance” I didn’t wait around to hear, “You’ve got a purty face…”

As I left the charge lot, I was thankful for a full tank and the choice to gas up and go quickly.

The lease is coming up on my car. I’ve been shopping around and seen prices that make a Tesla look attractive. (Just Kidding) I’m thinking I’m going to hold BMW to the lease buyout. Who’d have thought that a lease buyout on a BMW would be more of a deal than buying a Toyota?

We are living in strange times.