Category: technology

A New Bag

Here’s an unsolicited product testimonial.

I bought a new laptop bag at the end of April. It was about time. I go through laptop bags about every five years. The one I was using had a shoulder strap. I use a large HP laptop. Because it doesn’t have a long battery charge, I carry a power brick and cords with me. I walk one to three miles before and after my writing sessions. Carrying that weight had become comfortable. It was especially so in the summer’s smoky heat, when temperatures popped into the high nineties to over a hundred, and the valley trapped wildfire smoke that drifted down from the mountains.

Besides that, my laptop bag had worn through in a few places. I’d paid fifty dollars for the leather and vinyl creation, more than twice what I’d paid for the fabric bag it replaced.

I’d decided that I needed a back pack variation. I found an Eagle Creek convertible laptop backpack that was large enough for my HP. This one was available for one hundred fifty-nine dollars, over three times what I’d paid for the other one. But, I use it every day, and I needed a more comfortable way to transport my laptop. So I pried open the wallet and put out the cash.

I’m pleased that I did. I’ve used it for a month and it’s much easier to strap that thing onto my back and hike around town. It feels surprisingly light.

I also have a large, wheeled laptop bag that I employ for flying. I decided I’d use the new Eagle Creek bag for my travels to see how it worked.

Again, I was pleased that I did. The Eagle Creek bag has multiple zipped compartments that helped me organize my books, boarding passes, gum, glasses, etc., along with the laptop and its accessories. The new bag fit under the airline seat with ease. It was small enough that I could pull it out from under the seat and put it up against the edge of my seat and have the legroom available during the flight.

All in all, a worthwhile purchase. It looks sturdy and durable. I’ll see if it lasts five years.

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Minor Rant #143

We began having Internet connectivity issues in the beginning of May. It was intermittent, and service typically returned in a few minutes.

We were planning a trip, and busy with those details, so I didn’t call it in. On the day before we left, the outage was a few hours in the morning. Logging in at a coffee shop,  I sent my ISP, Ashland Home Net (AHN) an email through their support website. They said someone would get in touch with me.

They didn’t.

Returning after our vacation last week, we found our connectivity worse. Calling in meant waiting by the phone for return calls and staying home so they can come by and check our systems. But, last Friday, I called it in.

Yes, they could see that we were online but our signal was very weak. This would need to be called into the city IT.

The City of Ashland supports several local ISPs. They do so through a community-owned entity called Ashland Fiber Network (AFN). The city’s support helps reduce the cost, right, and provides an alternative to the big commercialized entities that dominate the field, like Charter, Century Link, Comcast (which all might now be the same company). I use Ashland Home Net to buy local and help defray that cost.

Friday our connection went out in the morning and returned in the afternoon,  apparently on its own. I called AHN for an update before they closed for the day. The agent said a ticket had been opened with the city. The city would call us. They would come by.

They didn’t. 

Our connectivity came and went through the evening.

Saturday found another outage that lasted several hours. Support was called. Messages were left. Nothing was heard back.

Sunday…the same.

Monday.

Internet connectivity was good in the morning. I returned from writing and walking at about 2 PM. My wife said the connection had dropped at noon. I called it in. The same agent that I spoke with on Friday told me, yes, a ticket with the city had been opened. The city will be calling me.

The hours passed…

I called them each hour to remind them my net was still down and that I hadn’t heard from the city. We heard back from an Ashland Home Net at 5:40 PM. Yes, a ticket had been opened with the city. Unfortunately, they were closed for the day. Nothing could be done.

Our connection returned at 6:53, and then left a hour hour later.

It came back again at 8:50, but dropped at 10:20, and didn’t come back.

We had a connection the next morning, Tuesday. Since I didn’t hear from Ashland Home Net or the city, I called AHN  to see what was going on. The agent said the city was backed up. They would get hold of me, but it would probably be another twenty-four hours.

“Really?” I said. “It’s already been ninety-six hours.”

“What?”

“We opened the ticket on Friday.”

“Your records show that the ticket was opened on Monday.”

“No.” I had my notes and referred to them.

“Oh, you’re right,” the agent said. “Okay, I’ll call the city now, and I’ll call you back.”

He did. “The city is sending someone out now.”

The city did. I saw their truck out there. I saw their agent. He went to the side of our house. I waited for him to come to the door.

He didn’t.

I waited for the city to call.

They didn’t.

Our connection was up and remained up, and it has since then. We’ve never heard anything back from the city or Ashland Home Net.

I’m going to give them a call when I get home today. I want to know what the problem was, or is, if it still exists, and what’s been done, or will be done about it.

Then I think I’ll check out other ISPs.

Just in case. Because right now, I’m not too damn pleased with Ashland Home Net, Ashland Fiber Network, and the City of Ashland.

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How

Just before his grandmother died, she told him stories about her grandmother. Her grandmother had gone across America in a covered wagon, traveling from the Appalachian Mountains to Seattle. It’d been a long and bumpy journey. She didn’t remember how long it took. She didn’t like it there, so she took the train back. It was hot. Black smoke and cinders filled the car whenever they opened the windows for a breeze, so they kept the windows closed and dripped with sweat.

His father heard the story and and remembered his father telling him about driving a Chevy station wagon across the United States. They’d started in Indiana, where it was raining, and drove across the flat plains of corn to the towering Rocky Mountains and up them, and down into California. It took five days to reach San Francisco. They stayed in motels every night. There was a swimming pool at one. Gas was less than two dollars a gallon.

His father’s brother remembered flying from San Francisco to Washington, and how it took almost a day to get there. He remembered looking out the window and watching the ground roll past as the engines roared and the plane climbed into the sky. He remembered the clunk of the wheels going up into the aircraft’s belly, and the change in the engines’ whine, and the wisps of clouds slipping past the windows. They’d had to be at the airport a few hours early, and then they stood in line to check their bags, and stood in lines to go through security, and stood in line to get on the plane, and stood in line to get off and get their bags.

He’d asked each of them, what’d you do when you traveled like that? Well, they said, we sang, and ate, and talked, played games, read books, watched television, listened to music, slept, looked at the scenery, and met people.

He remembered all these things in the time it took him to teleport from his home to the teleport center and out the other end at the moon colony. His last thought before he glanced out at Earth and went into his meeting was, what he would tell his children in his old age, and how they would be doing what he was doing now?

 

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The First Major Injury

It might just be me, but I think it’s pretty damn impressive that the volcano in Hawaii has been getting more and more jiggy, but it’s only today after two weeks, that the first major injury was reported.

I don’t envy the victim. Sitting on his third floor balcony, lava splatter hit him on his leg and shattered it below the knee. That’s how it’s been reported.

I appreciate technology more with this eruption. It’s amazing to see those explosions and flows, something that I can see from my home’s safety in Oregon as the volcano blows thousands of miles away. Jaw-dropping is the term I often hear when the footage is described. I, with my limited imagination, think, stunning and powerful.

 

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Salazin – Seven

My conversation with Salazin brought creeping memories of conversations with Dad. I played the part of Salazin, then, bearing good news. Dad was the skeptic.

It was about his new truck. I’d made my first million, thanks to Salazin. Dad was retired from the military, paying the mortgage, working two jobs, and driving a Chevy pick-up that leaned to the left when it was going straight. The engine sounded okay, but its interior was squalid. Dings and scratches pockmarked its blue and white body. It seemed like it always needed new tires, too.

So, hey, wouldn’t it be nice of me to buy Dad a new, loaded truck?

Do y’a think?

Proud and excited, I went to his house and was there when the new Dodge truck was delivered. “Come on, Dad,” I said when the truck pulled up. “I bought you something.”

Mom was looking out the window and talking about, who was that? Realization struck her. Her blue eyes went wide.

Dad isn’t dumb. Hearing the noise, he’d probably begun to guess what was going on. He was reading his Sports Illustrated. He didn’t move.

“Dad?” I said.

“In a minute,” he said without looking up.

Mom gave him a look. Then she looked looked at me with a weary head shake of frowns and an eye-roll.

“Your son brought you a gift,” Mom said.

Dad kept reading.

Mom said to me, “Let’s go outside.”

We went out. She asked questions. Her reaction pleased me. “He’ll really like it,” she said as she walked around the truck. She didn’t sound convinced. “He might not show it, but he’s really proud and impressed by what you accomplished.”

Sure. Dad was suspicious about my wealth. He didn’t buy the story of Salazin’s stock picks at all. He was certain I was doing something illegal like selling drugs, I guess.

I’d also bought a vehicle for Mom, a Cadillac. She was still driving this ginormous Olds Tornado. Red with a white Landau roof, I swear the front end was in a different time zone from the rear. It got terrible gas mileage and bounced along the highway in search of new shocks.

Her Cadillac was arriving now. “Here’s your car, Mom,” I said.

Gasping and smiling, she turned and hugged and kissed me, saying, “Thank you, thank you, but you didn’t have to do that,” as Dad finally emerged from the house.

Magazine in hand, he stood on the porch looking at the scene. He looked like he was chewing something. He looked at the Caddy first. Then he looked at the truck.

“It’s American,” I said, to point it out. Because of Grandpa Diehl and World War Two, Dad didn’t like buying anything from the Japanese, Italians, and Germans, especially a “big ticket” item like a truck or car.

“Who’s that for?” he asked, looking at the Caddy.

“It’s for me,” Mom said. “Look what your son bought me. And he bought you a truck. Come and look at it.”

“I’ll look at it later,” Dad said. “Thanks.”

He turned and returned to the house.

I felt crushed. As Mom tried softening the blow wtih soft touches and words, I said, “It’s a good fucking thing I didn’t buy you a new house, like I was going to.”

She said, “I like this house.”

She looked at her blue and brick ranch house. “I wouldn’t mind a new house.”

Smiling at me, she said, “But we’d better talk about it a while, first, okay?”

I didn’t answer. I never did buy them a new house, but I bought Mom a new townhouse after Dad died.

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Salazin – Six

Salazin didn’t let me ponder his comment, “And maybe further.”

That was probably good, because I was about to ask him where he thought his ship could go. The Moon? Mars?

Winking again, Salazin said, “I have prepared a model for you. Just a concept.”

He gestured toward the door. As it opened, Salazin said, “Behold the Nautilaus.”

As Salazin said, “I had this prepared to scale to help you visual it,” a young woman led in a cart. What looked like an upside-down ship was on it. Two young men pushed and guided the cart from either side. The upside-down ship’s bottom was glossy black. The top was charcoal gray. A red band divided the top and bottom. Nautilaus was in script in that band.

Salazin said, “I know that you’re a visual person but that you struggle to imagine things. I hope this helps you.”

After parking the cart, the three people left. When the door closed, Salazin said, “What do you think, Dylan? Is it not amazing?”

I’d been wondering what I thought. “It doesn’t look inviting,” I said. “It looks sinister.”

I was thinking that his model looked ten feet long and half a foot wide. Before Salazin could reply, I said, “How tall would this thing be?”

“Twenty-four stories.”

“Twenty-four stories?” I grappled again with his planned vehicle’s size. “Ten miles long, a half mile wide, and twenty-four stories high?”

“No, from the red band,” Salazin said. “Sorry, it’s twenty-four stories from the red band. It would be a total of twenty-seven stories tall, but three of those stories are below the ground level.”

“Jesus,” I said.

Salazin was walking and talking, and pointing what I took to be a remote. Tuning out of my bewilderment to his words, I caught, “The top is dark now so that I can have the pleasure of revealing the interior to you.”

The gray top turned lighter, growing translucent and then transparent. When that happened, it displayed a delicate framework on the upper part. It also displayed rolling green hills, a blue lake or sea, and multiple roadways, paths, forests, fields, and buildings. Some of the buildings were clustered like small villages. I saw a golf course, swimming pools, a needle-like building, like Seattle’s Space Needle, and what looked like vineyards, orchards, a ranch with horses and cows….

There was so much to see and assimilate, I felt like my mind was fusing into numbness. Without realizing it, I’d stood and walked over to the model.

Ten miles long, twenty plus stories high, and half a mile wide.

I didn’t see anything that looked like it could be an engine.

I saw Salazin slip to a stop beside me. I could see his face. A grin split it.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I think you’re crazy,” I said.

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Salazin – Five

“Start again,” I said. “Let’s start again.”

Salazin was posed to listen.

I composed myself to think and speak. “Ten miles is a very long vessel.”

“Yes.”

“Why does it have to be so long?”

“Don’t think of it as just a vessel.”

I waited.

“Think of it as a destination, Dylan,” Salazin said. “Think of it as an exclusive island floating in the sky. Think of it as an exclusive destination. We will grow organic food and raised organic animals. We’ll serve them in our exclusive restaurants.”

“We’ll have more than one restaurant?”

“Yes, yes, why not? We will have an inland sea and luxury villas. And vineyards, wineries, and breweries. We will sell Nautilaus wine. Imagine it.”

“I’m trying to. Why call it Nautilaus?”

“Nautilaus is the perfect name. Nautilaus is associated with adventure and technology.”

“Maybe for you, but I think of exercise equipment.”

“No, no, not exercise equipment. Think of Jules Verne and Robert Fulton.”

“Robert Fulton?”

“Yes, yes, he named his steamboat the Nautilaus, and Jules Verne named his submarine after Fulton’s steamboat.”

“That’s another thing,” I said. “The Nautilaus is a submarine.”

“It is a masterpiece, Dylan. It is a luxury jewel, a vessel to fire imagination, inspire adventure, and embrace luxury. It’s mysterious and unique.”

“Fine.” I’d drop it for now. Salazin was smarter than me, and he’d thought about this more, so I was behind. I knew I’d probably give in soon, but it’s my custom not to be graceful about these things. Actually, it’s not my custom, but my nature. I think I get it from my parents, or maybe the whole damn clan. None of us surrender with grace. We fit to the bitter damn end. Come see us at the holidays, and you’ll understand.

“But ten miles seems extremely long,” I said.

“It needs to be so long for what it will have and be.”

“It won’t be able to land anywhere.”

“Yes, it will. It can land on the ocean. It can land in many other places.”

Salazin leaned in toward me. “Dylan, Dylan. Listen. I know that you must think about things before you say okay. I love that about you. I do.

“But, let me give you more to think about so we can hasten the moment when you say okay. Imagine a floating island that can travel anywhere in the world and be there in a matter of hours. Imagine living in a place isolated from war, disease, and pollution. Imagine being able to dine in a fine restaurant while watching a volcano in Hawaii explode, or floating over Antarctica or the North Pole, watching the glaciers break off and float away. Imagine being able to go to the best place to see meteor showers, eclipses, and the Northern Lights. Imagine the greatness of such a vessel. This is why it’ll be more than a vessel, but will be enshrined as the ultimate destination. As a destination, it can be anywhere.”

“On Earth.”

Salazin winked. “And maybe further.”

0

The Take

Our utility bill arrived the other day. Coming from the city, this bill includes electricity, water, sewage, and a few other things.

Although there’s a total, of course – this is what I’ll pay – it’s categorized and subtotaled. The top part is about electricity. That part pleased me; it showed that thanks to the time of year and our solar panels, the city was paying us three dollars for our electricity. We owed nothing. That was sweet.

Next down was the water. We’d used less water than last year, but it came out to $45 due the city for water. The rest of the $89 bill due was for sewage, drains, street use, and street lights. That’s sobering, because there’s nothing I can do about any of that, except move to somewhere else.

Overall, I was pleased. To put this take in complete context, we have an eighteen hundred square foot single level stand-alone residence built in 2005. It’s located in Ashland, in southern Oregon. Two humans and four cats live there. All humans are over fifty. Our solar panels are rated at two thousand watts, but due to a number of circumstances, they usually won’t generate that much. I was impressed to see them putting out over two thousand when I checked on them the other day, and reflected on the perfect angle of the sun, ambient temperature, and humidity that coincided to create that miracle.

We depend on natural gas for heating, cooking, and the clothes dryer. That bill is $51 per month. That’s our comfort bill; they usually refund us a few dollars each year.

I post all of this because finding comparisons with others help put it all in context. When I complained to a friend about my water bill late last summer, they revealed that their bill that month was three times as much. Their house is larger by a thousand square feet, but it also has two occupants (and a smaller yard). They did have company stay with them that month.

Overall, my gas, water, and electric bills are not not bad. Hell, on reflection, I spend more on coffee in a month than I do on water or electricity. Food, though…

Well, that’s another post.

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