I took many pictures during our trip last week, and some of them are too good to not share. Therefore, expect more pictures over the coming days. This one is the sun rising over Mackinac Island.
I learned via HPC Factor that Microsoft’s extended support for Windows CE 8 has come to an end, completing the embedded operating system’s 26+ year life span. Windows CE was the operating system for the Handheld and Pocket PCs that I moved to after Steve Jobs orphaned the Apple Newton MessagePad. The operating system not only powered my favorite mobile devices in the early 2000s but it also was a platform for which I wrote four editions of my books.
Fall colors are not just about the leaves, it is as much about how the sunlight hits the leaves. My wife took some incredible photos during the golden hour in Houghton, Michigan on Saturday, October 21, 2023.
We traveled from the southern most point to the northern most point of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan last week during near peak fall colors.
I understand the frustration that Dodger, Braves, and Orioles fans feel right now, their teams won divisions and had the best season records but are no longer playing for the World Series championship. Once something different, the World Series today is a tournament, and the season records are merely tickets for entry into the tournament and the scheduling of opponents and games. Every tournament format of every sport brings to the fore the hottest team at the moment, which is not necessarily the best team of the field. Tournaments exist because they generate a lot of money and do so because of Cinderella stories. March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, basically funds the entire NCAA. My recommendations to fans are, first recognize your team just only won opportunity to play in the tournament, and next, make note of how well the team is playing in the weeks leading up to the start of the tournament. Finally, consider the possibility that the real best teams might be the ones capable of overcoming what others might claim are disadvantages.
The smoke alarm near our bed room decided to notify us that the battery was getting low at 4:15 AM. It’s a sealed, ten year unit so I will need to replace the entire unit later today.
I recommend this article in The Atlantic, What Happened to Empathy? From it this question, “How emotionally healthy are we, as a people, when, in moments of profound and painful tragedy, we feel compelled to insert our political opinions or policy positions?”
Morality cannot coexist in a world in which the ends justify the means. A world void of morality is barbaric. This article by Zack Beauchamp of Vox is worth reading.
I’ve read some common themes regarding Google’s change to seven years of full support for Android on the Pixel 8 phones. The comments boil down to whether the hardware performance will keep up or whether people really use a phone for that long. (Others are skeptical that Google will live up the promise, but I think if they don’t they will face lawsuits.) I think both are examples of missing the point. For me there is a difference between having the ability to use a phone that runs current software for more than three years and a circumstance where I must replace the phone after three years if I want current software. Most likely there will be new features in the Pixel 10 or 11 that make buying a new phone desirable but there is a big difference between wanting to buy a new phone and having to buy a new phone. I would be very surprised to find many people still using the Pixel 8 seven years from now, but it’s nice to know they can if they want to.
Personal computing is a tool used by humans for good or bad, as is the case for every tool ever invented. The problem then is not with the tools, but with the humans. The ability to alter photos has existed since the beginning of photography, as has been the ability to ghost write or impersonate authors. As I see it, the real problem is with the increase in incentives, like how “influencers” make money, to use computing for bad. (Computational photography and Large Language Models are recent iterations of computing.) We need to strongly enforce norms and laws regarding fraud, and reinforce that a right to free speech does not give one the right to intentionally commit fraud by lying.
The temperature outdoors dropped to the low forties over night and it got down to the low sixties in our house, so my wife turned on the furnace. I think this is a couple of weeks later than last year.
Google announced the Pixel Watch 2 during the Pixel event earlier this week. I’ve been wearing the original Pixel Watch and the sports band it came with, for about a year. I am not planning to buy the Pixel Watch 2 so when I learned about the Spigen Lite Fit band I decided to buy it to change the appearance of what I have been wearing. The band is elastic nylon in a single loop with size adjusted by a buckle. I find the band is very comfortable to wear. One thing I have found is that charging the watch is now a bit more cumbersome because I can’t just place the watch on top of the charging puck and let it magnetically snap in to place, instead I have to slide the puck underneath the watch and some times the alignment isn’t perfect. Not sure whether the pins on the Pixel Watch 2 charger will make this alignment easier.
If you think you are not religious then you don’t know what is religion. I think Americans are more religious today than ever before, but don’t recognize it because we equate religion with a specific association to specific organizations or specific beliefs in deities.
Religion is much more fundamental to who we are as humans. For example, if you identify yourself with an NFL team, like I say I am a Packers fan, you are religious. The religion, which is that to which you connect or bind yourself (re-ligio) is professional U.S. football. Republicans? Democrat? Conservative? Liberal? Progressive? All religions. Yes, even atheism is a religion. Religion is an aspect of our ego.
The problem in all of this is we have no understanding of our true selves, and the decisions we make are to maintain all these false selves that don’t really add value to who we are and what we truly need. It is the stranglehold of our religions that is driving decisions that we make against our own best interests.
All of the MLB wild card series games of both leagues are done with sweeps of each. The NL wildcards that I preferred to advance won. The Diamondbacks play the Dodgers and the Phillies play the Braves, and I look forward to watching both series. The Brewers, who finished the regular season nine games ahead of the Cubs to win the NL Central division, were swept in two both games by wide margins. Had the Cubs hung on to the third wild card they would have played the Brewers, who I am sure wish that had happened.
We have had temperatures well above average the last few days, and today could be the last one in the 80s so I’ve tried to get outside often. Perhaps one of the last days of shorts and tshirts.
I had an early meeting this morning so that enabled me to take my morning walk earlier than normal. The morning sun is glorious in what might be one of the last hot weather days of the year.
My 2023 MLB Playoff Preferences
I am not as crazy as to pretend that I can predict what will happen in this year’s Major League Baseball playoffs, but I did want to go down on record about what are my preferences given that the Chicago Cubs are not in the tournament.
Given I closely follow the Cubs, I am more emotionally invested in the National League games, so I will start with the easy part, which is that my preference for the American League champion is any team other than Houston. Houston has won it recently, most of the others have not, and that is the bottom line. For some reason I find myself drawn to the Baltimore Orioles, so I will prefer they play in the Word Series for the American League.
Wild card teams seem to excel in the tournament and do so at the expense of the higher seeds who are division winners. I think the wild card teams have the advantage of actually having played under playoff pressure for weeks up to the tournament just to make it in to the postseason. Of the the wild card teams, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Arizona Diamondbacks made it to the NLCS, and I think a championship between them and Atlanta would be very fun to watch.
My emotional preference is for Philadelphia to represent the NL in the World Series because of Kyle Schwarber, but I expect Atlanta to make it to the World Series and win it all because they are the best team in all of baseball. A big part of me likes the idea of Schwarber having the most success of the former Cub players after the 2016 World Series given how the Cubs front office gave up on him waaaay too soon.
The mornings of sitting outside on the patio drinking coffee are numbered for this year. The leaves are falling.
The intoxicating drug of wealth and the power it affords is driving the human race toward extinction, it appears to only be a matter of when and how.
“The Trump campaign is very good at manipulating the media, because it understands that liberal ideological bias is not the primary factor in shaping media coverage. The press, instead, is biased toward having a spectacular or interesting story that people want to read or watch or hear about. If you�����re clever, you can manipulate the press into telling the story you want by making it seem fun and exciting, even if the story is incorrect or misleading. Given how easily the Trump campaign got the political press to take the bait here, there’s little question we’re in for a long campaign season in which it does it over and over again.” – The Atlantic, emphasis added. In other words, it’s not about reporting nor civic duty, it’s all about making money, as is every facet of United States society.