Category Archives: General

General

My lucky day…

So I’ve got this friend who plays scratch-off lottery pretty constantly.

For shits and grins, I’ve given him some $10 every week/two weeks and played a single scratch-off ticket as well.

Today, this happened…

Incredibly, I hit with every one of the winning numbers, though each individual prize was pretty small -alternating between $5 and $10- for a total of $100. I gave my friend $20 for getting me the ticket so my grand total winnings wound up being $80.

I suspect that amount just about covered all the previous losses for the past two months!

Still, never have seen anything like this before and thought I’d share my good luck!

Maybe by seeing this ticket, some of my luck might rub off…!

General

So hard to talk about anything…

…other than politics nowadays. And I’m so loathe to do so on a consistent basis. I have my beliefs just as others have theirs and we may agree about a great many things and disagree about a great many others but that doesn’t make us mortal enemies.

Well, it shouldn’t. At least not here in the U.S. of A.

Yet it feels like its devolving into just that. You’re on your side and I’m on mine and you can go insane watching/listening/reading about whatever happened today.

Yesterday, of course, and on Halloween itself, a resolution was passed by the House of Representatives concerning Impeaching President Donald Trump.

Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the House, has been very cautious in her movement toward impeachment, taking things step by (sometimes painfully drawn out) step but it would seem we’re on the verge of getting televised hearings with witnesses detailing, finally to the public, the inappropriate actions taken by Trump which merit his Impeachment.

Those who don’t know, the House of Representatives can Impeach the President but it then has to go to the Senate, which has a very slim Republican majority, to actually -and formally – throw him out of office. As of this date, it appears doubtful the necessary 2/3rd majority is there to formally Impeach the President but we’ve got a long way to go yet and, unlike the House of Representatives, there are several Republican Senators -perhaps even a majority- who likely would vote for Impeachment if their vote were taken in secret.

Right of the bat, one thinks: Is this therefore necessary? With elections coming next year, do we really need to go through all this?

I say: Absolutely.

Trump is, in my eyes anyway, a deeply flawed human being who very purposely flaunts the laws for personal gain. For him, that’s what it is all about: Personal gain. I suspect he could care less about anyone other than himself. I suspect he could care less about the institutions which have guided the country all these years. He could care less about his supporters, who I also suspect he views as suckers and/or idiots… but useful ones at that.

As we near the end of the year, I have to admit I’m tired of hearing about all this. I’m tired of the way this man and his particular brand of insanity seems to take up all the oxygen of all news all the time.

I fervently look forward to the day we no longer have to hear/read about any particularly egregious act or lie or just plain stupidity he was involved in.

But that’s just me.

General

To better days…

It’s a heartbreaking decision, one that everyone who has a pet faces at some point: The pet’s mortality.

Over my life, I’ve had many pets. Two in particular lasted a very long time. The first, we had to put down after some 12 years of life because his heart was simply giving out on him.

The other, we had for 15 and a half years and yesterday evening, we had to put him to sleep.

Oreo was given to us back then as a five or so month old ball of energy. He was named by my eldest daughter, who, along with my other daughter, loved him to pieces.

When we first got him, he would take me out on walks -he was the one guiding me– that took us around several blocks in the neighborhood. He was always a few steps ahead, darting this way and that and chasing after any stray lizard that had the gall to walk in front of him. He never caught them, but sure loved the chase.

As the years passed, he had certain health issues. His teeth were always crooked and weak. He would get most of them removed over time. When the teeth on the left side of his mouth were mostly gone, he began hanging his tongue off that side of his mouth… as you see in the above photograph.

The walks grew shorter. I distinctly recall the day we set out to do our regular multi-block walk but when we reached the edge of the first block, he slowed and stopped, looked up at me, and turned around to return home. That would be the last time we did one of our usual long walks.

Over the next few years, he slowed down even more, as any dog who reaches a very old age does. The now one-block walks became walks back and forth down our street. We no longer could use a neck collar as he pinched a nerve one day thanks to their use.

His favorite perch, which you see in the photograph above, used to be one he could jump from the floor to the couch to. No longer. We had to get him a small footstair to climb up to the couch and then up to the pillow.

Two weeks ago he had a strange episode which I thought was a muscle cramp. He stretched, then didn’t seem to stop stretching. His head turned back, and he howled in pain and dropped to the ground.

He seemed ok afterwards, but the fact was that this was the first sign of the bad things to come. Over the next few days, he had a couple more episodes like this, which I realized were seizures. Some were so strong he would lose control of his bowls.

His strength rapidly diminished. He could only walk a very short distance before being exhausted and run the risk of having another seizure. We took him to the vet and gave him medication for the pain, but in the last four days in particular it was clear he was on a rapid downward glide.

Yesterday, we left for a movie and when we returned home, he was on his feet, walking to us wagging his tail, but we realized he had just emerged from another terrible seizure and had laid -for who knows how long- in his own urine and defecation.

It was clear to us, even as it ripped our hearts, that he wouldn’t last much longer. By this point, he could barely walk and we feared leaving him alone for any length of time. His breathing was ragged, his strength almost non-existent. He was in bed most of the day and night, and we feared for him whenever he was up and walking, however short the distance.

We made the most difficult decision we could and took him in last night for his final ride.

In the end, Oreo lasted longer than most dogs of his breed. 15 and a half years is a very long time to live for any dog, and I know the joy he gave us -and I hope the joy we gave him- made up for his last few very rough days.

Here’s to you, Oreo.

You’ve earned your rest and you will be missed.

General, Movies, TV

Odd news…

For those who are roughly my age, you may know actor Ron Ely. Though his heyday was a little before my time, I caught his work here and there and enjoyed it.

He Is perhaps best known for playing Tarzan in a TV series of the same name which aired from 1966-68…

A little later, in 1975, he would play famous Pulp hero Doc Savage in the film of the same name…

In truth, while those two features are what Ron Ely is best known for he acted in many other movies and TV shows from 1958 to 2014.

Now 81 years old, this bit of news appeared on CNN and its a wild story…

Police fatally shot a homicide suspect at “Tarzan” actor Ron Ely’s home in California

The basic story is this (and pardon me for giving the information away): Someone stabbed an elderly woman to death at Ron Ely’s home. The woman’s husband, who has a speech impediment due to a medical condition, nonetheless was able to indicate the killer was a family member. The indicated family member was subsequently found on the property, confronted, and posed enough of a threat to the police that they took him down.

Yes, the alleged killer him/herself was killed.

That’s the extent of the report to this point and anything else is speculation…

Having said that, I can’t help but wonder if the woman’s husband may well be Mr. Ely (who is, obviously by this point, elderly himself). The speech impediment due to a medical condition, sadly, makes me wonder if the person suffered a stroke.

Was the killer the son/daughter of the elderly woman?

Again, its all speculation at this point yet a very sad set of circumstances, regardless of whether they more directly involved Mr. Ely or not.

UPDATE:

Well, it now seems that the situation was as I speculated above. Ron Ely’s wife Valerie was stabbed to death by the couple’s son Cameron Ely. The police arrived on the scene and killed Cameron Ely.

This is all according to TMZ and the article can be found here.

A very, very sad set of circumstances.

Obviously I have no knowledge of the Ely family situation and clearly things went way overboard here for the son to murder his mother.

The weird thing is that apparently Cameron was the one that originally called the police and, again according to the TMZ article above, said it was his father -Ron Ely- that tried to attack his mother. Was Cameron trying to pin the blame of his mother’s murder on Ron Ely?

Regardless, the police arrived and somehow figured out Cameron was the one that killed his mother and then they killed him.

Wow. And damn.

Some days you just can’t believe the news you read.

General

EV Charging Stations

When I finally got to the point of needing to trade in my car and get a new one, I was already half-way there in going electric.

While I read up on the Volt and Bolt and was dimly aware of the Leaf, my main interest was in the Tesla Model 3. The car’s reviews were generally through the roof and I was determined, since I figured it was time to trade in my current vehicle, to at least give the Model 3 a shot. I took a test drive and that completely won me over and I’m now a very proud owner of a Model 3.

But I have to admit, I didn’t cover all bases in my thinking. For example, though I was aware of the Supercharger Networks Tesla had, I must admit I wasn’t all that familiar with how many of them there were and how useful they would be if/when I should choose to make a trip far outside my home range.

You see, if you have a house or apartment with an accessible 220 V plug, having an electric car is a no-brainer… provided your use of the car is within the range of your batteries.

Or, to put it another way, if you have a theoretical range of, say, 200 miles on your vehicle, if your main/only source of charging is your home, you don’t want to get your car more than 100 miles out of the range of your house.

Now, 100 miles is a pretty long range to travel, and as I’m sure many of you are aware, there are more and more charging stations -not necessarily Tesla Superchargers- appearing in all kinds of places.

However, Brooke Cruthers at forbes.com notes that…

EV Charging Stations Are Still Few and Far Between – For The Rest of Us That Don’t Drive A Model 3

The upshot of the article, which is pretty clear in its title, is that if you drive an electric vehicle OTHER than a Tesla (Model 3 or the others) you may find it difficult sometimes to find a good charging station in which to charge your car.

It’s not impossible, mind you, and as I said before it seems more and more charging stations are coming online, but the reality is that Elon Musk and Tesla have done a great thing with their Superchargers, which are very numerous and spread out all over the country and allow Tesla owners like myself the convenience of being able to make trips far from home and not worry too much about finding a great place to quickly charge your car.

The problem for owners of other EV cars is that sometimes the charging stations available are either charging at a diminished rate (ie 1 hour to get maybe 60 miles of range), not working at all, or have a long line of vehicles also waiting to use the chargers.

Again, this is not, at least in my experience, a problem for my Tesla Model 3. As I wrote before, I’ve already driven across the state and had absolutely no problems with a mid-state charge up at a Tesla Supercharger Station and, once I arrived at my destination, was able to charge up at a Supercharger Station there.

I’ve looked at the Supercharger Maps available online and I’m quite sure I could make trips through most of the United States and not have much of a need for other charging stations beyond the Tesla Superchargers.

But if I had a Volt, Bolt, Leaf, or any other EV car that cannot use the Tesla Supercharging network, I’d be facing a far more interesting time finding and using other chargers out there and for the reasons I noted above.

Will the charger work? I’ve seen posts where people lament the fact that they head to a charging station and once there find that it is not working. The Tesla Superchargers are listed on your car’s navigational map. Further, if you tell your Tesla you want to charge up, it will offer instructions to get to the closest Supercharger and will even tell you how many docks are currently available. If the station is out, it will also inform you of that and redirect you to another.

Secondly, what “speed” will the charger operate at? Will it be a lower lever charger, one that might take a good hour plus to get you a decent range? With the Tesla Superchargers, I believe they are all at least Level 2, which means they charge up your car quickly. In my case, I charged some 190-200 miles of range in a matter of 30 minutes or so the times I was “low” and charged things fully (My car has a range of 310 miles if 100% charged but I tend to charge the car to roughly 270 miles. It is recommended you do not charge 100% to help the overall life of the battery, though you can do full charges when going on longer range trips).

Frankly, I wasn’t aware of issues regarding charging stations when I purchased my Tesla. As I said above, my main interest was the car itself, and the reviews and my test drive convinced me the car was absolutely for me. It wasn’t until afterwards I realized getting a Tesla also made sense BECAUSE of the charging stations, and that having this car allowed you to make longer trips without too much worry.

Which begs two question: 1) Why the hell haven’t other EV auto makers made their cars capable of using the Tesla Superchargers?

The answer is pretty simple: Elon Musk has stated he doesn’t mind allowing other EV cars use his network but he has asked the automakers to provide some funds to maintain them. It seems eminently logical to me and would be a great boon for other EV car makers to be able to say they use the Tesla Superchargers but these car companies either don’t want to pay or want to keep their product separate from the Tesla cars. A dumb move, IMHO. If the networks are available, why not take advantage of them, even if it means paying Tesla a little something to maintain them?

But no. So far the only cars that use these networks are the Teslas themselves.

Which brings us to question…

2) Why the hell don’t the other EV car makers have something similar? Why don’t companies such as GM (makers of the Volt and Bolt) or Nissan have their own Supercharger systems?

The answer is: I have no clue. It almost seems like these auto makers are doing half-assed attempts to burst into the electric market. They seem like they’re hedging their bets, coming out with one or two EV cars which are getting decent reviews but feel like maybe the EV market will dry up and fade away so they continue to work harder on their gas-powered cars.

It seems Tesla, a company solely devoted to EV, is the only company that really thought through the needs of the EV market. They not only created the best EV cars out there, they thought farther ahead and realized that such cars not only needed to be manufactured, they needed to have a vast network of reliable charging stations and undertook the difficult, surely quite expensive task of creating these networks for their vehicles.

I firmly believe that the days of the gas powered car are rapidly coming to an end. The EV vehicles, as exemplified by the Model 3, are simply better cars and, I strongly suspect, in a matter of a few years I wouldn’t be surprised if new battery innovations result in ranges of 500+ miles on a full charge. Perhaps even more.

I hope the other car companies put more of an effort into releasing their EV cars… and thinking through the things that need to be done outside of the car itself to make it more desirable for the common consumer.

In the end, competition benefits the consumer.

General

Life on Mars…?

It’s one of David Bowie’s all time best songs (and he made many great ones)…

…and its also something scientists, academics, novelists, musicans (yes), and the general public have grappled with for a very long time: The question of whether there is/was life on the planet Mars.

Over at scientificamerican.com, author Gilbert V. Levin offers this intriguing article, wherein he states…

I’m convinced we found evidence of life on Mars in the 1970’s

The article is presented on Scientific American, so don’t be terribly surprised by the dry analysis presented.

If you can work through it, you’ve got yourself a very fascinating article that posits the Viking craft that landed on Mars back in the 1970’s actually detected possible life, in the form of microbes, on the planet… but the results were considered tarnished for various reasons and not accepted.

Mr. Levin feels this is not the case, that the results are solid and prove we did discover “life on Mars” back then.

Give it a look. It’s fascinating stuff!

General

Lidar and Archaeology…

Absolutely fascinating article presented on nytimes.com and written by Zack Zorich concerning how…

Online map leads Archaeologist to Maya Discovery

One of the most interesting things about modern technology is that we’re able to discover things previously hidden thanks to satellite imagery and, as the article notes, lidar.

At the risk of giving away the entire article, it concerns how lidar images, some posted free online, allowed an archeologist to “see” buried structures. In this case, Mayan buried structures.

From the article:

These structures, which have been buried for hundreds of years, likely would never have been seen had it not been for the lidar photographs.

With photographs such as these, the buried structures, some under foliage or trees, are suddenly crystal clear and allow archeologists a clear guide to where to search for such structures.

Fascinating, fascinating stuff, and one wonders how many more buried ancient cities/towns/structures will be uncovered in the years to come all over the world!

General

Maddening…

Heard about Greta Thunberg? She’s the 16 year old environmental activist who has managed to push the issue of Global Warming and its negative effects to a, well, global audience.

Which has made her a target of many in power and especially those who operate in businesses which ultimately negatively affect the environment and which she vocally criticizes.

One of them would be Donald Trump. Now, Vladimir Putin has weighed in on her activities.

They like to put her down as young and uninformed or, barring that, an agent of her “wacky” parents.

Maybe I’m naive, but I see a girl who is more informed about the globe and the strange and very worrisome things happening within it and is, if nothing else, sounding an alarm we should all be listening to.

And at the very least, what’s so damn bad about wanting cleaner air and water and less destruction of natural habitats and animals?

Anyway, so Putin makes a snide comment about her and, in this article by Josephine Harvey, she took the comment and made it her own…

Greta Thunberg Just Sassed Putin With Her Classic Clapback Style

General

Tesla batteries…

Over at Forbes.com there’s an interesting article by Bill Roberson concerning the life of their cars’ batteries:

The clock is ticking on electric car batteries – and how long they will last

The article is quite timely: Some of the first production Tesla vehicles were released in 2012, ie 7 years ago, and the company’s warranty period is for 8 years meaning that some of the oldest Teslas out there are about to go out of warranty.

At the risk of giving most of the article away, the author discovered the batteries in those older Teslas appear to still be in remarkably good condition, degrading in some cases only some 10% at most in terms of their distance/range.

A nice thing to realize!

One thing I would note regarding this article and electric cars in general: We’re still in the very early days of the electric car “revolution” (if you want to call it that) and, as noted, some of the older Tesla vehicles are only 7 or so years old.

The battery life has already improved. My Model 3 is a “long range” vehicle that, in theory and when charged to 100%, is supposed to have a range of 310 miles. Now, to be clear, the range depends on several factors, including how fast/slow you’re driving, using AC or the heater, etc. etc. The new Model S cars, however, have a range of 377 miles, an astonishing increase compared to previous models.

Again, we’re at the beginning of the electric car revolution and I strongly suspect in time we will see better and better batteries and better and better battery life.

Within the article there is talk of newer battery modules which may give these cars a range of 1000 miles and charging which will be as quick as getting gas in your car is now.

Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

But it is encouraging to see that the Tesla vehicles are showing such durability regarding their batteries.

It can only get better with time!

General

Ancient Statues…

We go to museums and, often, get to see some beautiful statues which have survived hundreds, sometimes thousands of years.

But very often, the statues we see aren’t presented the way they were originally presented in ancient times.

Why?

Sometimes its because the statues are broken here and there (the famous Venus De Milo, which I wrote about a while back concerning what she was doing with her lost arms, is a perfect example).

Other statutes were originally painted, often with very vibrant colors, and over time these colors have been lost or fallen off.

Over on CNN.com writer Jacopo Prisco offers a fascinating article concerning…

The true colors of ancient statues

I won’t give much away here, but its a fascinating look at how some are trying to figure out how some statues were originally presented when they were first created, and offers some intriguing examples of the same.

Good stuff!