Writing
- Real time traffic conditions
- Tolls
- Alternate routes
- Gas prices
- Hotel booking
- Restaurant recommendations
- Construction
- Weather
- Shopping (outlet mallls)
- You can keep a digital and a handwritten journal at the same time. There are proven benefits from writing things out by hand to reinforce them in your brain. Get a box of nice pens and a stack of composition books and put them somewhere easy to find. Make some goals and write about them each morning while you have your coffee. I did this daily during the most productive year I ever had
- Use Day One - a journaling app available on many platforms. It is one of the most well designed and useful apps I have ever encountered. Since January 2014, I've used it lmost every day. Day One Is Popular for a Reason | AppAddict
- Use Obsidian - Obsidian is an extensible app with over 2000 available plugins. If you are a data junkie like me, You can automate all kinds of data into it's daily note feature. My Daily Note in Obsidian - Byte Sized Chunks for Customizing Every Element, Plugin Recommendations and Links
- Discover 8 Journaling Techniques for Better Mental Health | Psychology Today - Ever wondered how you should journal? Learn eight ways that you can use journaling to reduce stress, increase self-reflection, and create a better sense of wellbeing.
- 10 Types of Journaling for Peace of Mind | Skillshare Blog - Journaling can be a powerful tool for self-care, but it also can be tough to sit down and write about your thoughts. The good news? There are so many ways you can put pen to paper. So, if you’ve ever thought that it just isn’t your thing, read on to learn about the different types of journaling to see if one speaks to you. (Or, if you’re already an avid journaler, see if there’s a new tool you can add to your practice!)
- How to Journal: 5 Pro Tips and 40 Prompts to Get You Started - Remember, journaling is supposed to benefit you. Don’t stick with a method because others you know enjoy that approach or because you feel like you “should.”
Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇 - Cook Out - home cooked, hand patted burgers. Get it Cook Out style with slaw, chili, mustard and onions
- Smithfield's Chicken and Barbecue - Pork barbecue served with vinegar based sauce, southern fried chicken, banana pudding and copious amounts of sweet iced tea
- Whataburger - a solid choice for a burger
- Buc-ees - You need to experience a Buc-ees to understand it. They are gigantic interstate rest emporiums that not only sell food, they also have over a 100 gas pumps and a whole crew of people just to sell beef jerky
- Backup
- Moving documents to a computer connected to a local printer
- Information shared between your and your partner or spouse
- Installation files for programs you want on more than one computer
- Consolidating a family photos album
- Moving downloaded movies or music to your home media server
- FactCheck.org - A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center
- Fact Check: Political & News Fact Check | AP News
- Fact Check | Reuters
- .Full Fact
- BBC Verify
- FactCheck – Channel 4 News
- Lead Stories
- Truth or Fiction? – Seeking truth, exposing fiction
- International Fact-Checking Network - Poynter
Admiration Society
Joe Hill, Labor Organizer, Murdered by the state at the behest of mine owners
I've always enjoyed reading a good biography. Taking a deep dive into the life of an interesting person is a fun way to learn, not only about them, but also about the times they lived in. Aside from books, just picking up facts about various people is a natural inclination for me. I'm blessed with the ability to remember facts, which makes me good at Trivial Pursuit and impressing myself while watching Jeopardy, if nothing else. Occasionally, when I discover a particularly admirable person, I feel cheated for having lived so long without having had the opportunity to know about them previously.
I can be picky about the people I let into my admiration society. Take Steve Jobs, for example. His decisions and leadership at Apple went a long way in providing me with a career I enjoyed immensely, and also a continuing fascination with technology. The problem is that he was a stingy man who was cruel to his daughter and a real asshole to many other people. He doesn't make my list. I'm not 100% consistent, though. John Lennon wasn't the greatest dad to his firstborn son, Julian. He was also a jerk to Julian's mother. Still, his devotion to his family later in life, his absolute genius and his honesty override all that.
One of the people it took me too long to discover was Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the giants of the civil rights movement. A tiny woman from Mississippi, she uttered a phrase that captures my life's philosophy perfectly, "Nobody is free until everybody is free." She was famously courageous, organizing voting drives during the days when the KKK routinely killed activists. She was outspoken and effective, so much so that Lyndon Johnson was held an emergency press conference to try to upstage her during the 1964 Democratic Convention.
When Bruce Springsteen released his live album in 1986, he included the song by Woodie Guthrie that everyone knows, This Land is My Land. While introducing the song, The Boss mentions a book, Woodie Guthrie, A Life by Joe Klein. I bought that book and read it. In my estimation, Woodie Guthrie was one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Not only did he influence Bob Dylan and the whole mob of folk singers who came after him, he also did a lot to inspire other artists to take the kind of political stands I admire. Born and raised in Oklahoma, he grew up with the racial attitudes of the day, but later in life, outgrew that and developed a more nuanced and thoughtful outlook on race, becoming friend with and an advocate for Leadbelly, among others.
Hugh Thompson was an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam, like my father. On the day when a company of infantrymen from the Americal Division were systematically murdering hundreds of elderly men, women, and children in the hamlet of My Lai, Thompson landed his aircraft outside the village and ordered his door gunner to open fire on the next American he saw murdering civilians. He got out of the helicopter and tried to reason with the rampaging soldiers, eventually saving several lives by evacuating villagers before they could be killed. He later testified against the accused killers at their courts-martial.
My grandmother's brother, Gratton McFadyen, died a hero fighting the Nazis in Italy during World War Two. Although his military specialty was technical and not in combat arms, on the day he died he joined the fighting against the Germans anyway. He was awarded the Silver Star posthumously for his actions.
Harper Lee lived and wrote in Alabama during the years when the Klan was killing schoolchildren in church. She had the courage and the skill to write a novel that the MAGA movement shamefully is banning from schools, To Kill a Mockingbird, the story of a white lawyer who defends a black man accused of raping a white woman. The book shaped my own racial attitudes at a young age. I'm forever grateful that my mother insisted that I read it.
There are a great many more people on my list, Joe Hill, Howard Zinn, Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, the Freedom Riders, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, St. Augustine, Oskar Schindler, Pete Seeger, Alan Turing, Jackie Robinson, Barak Obama, the Suffragettes, FDR, Abraham Lincoln, Grandma Gatewood and so many more.
Who is on your list?
Belief Makes it Real, or Does It?
During my working life, my boss in the school IT system, bless his heart, had to counsel me numerous times because I just didn't grasp the concept that different people have different realities. I was a pretty rigid thinker about most things. I'm a big guy with a deep voice, and in those days, I tended to appear pretty serious about most things. First year kindergarten teachers, who, let's face it, have a lot more important things to worry about than how to connect a vintage white iBook to a first generation Smart Board, found me intimidating. They wanted someone to show them, again, how to hook up their laptops, but they were afraid to ask me.
I was pretty offended by this. I took pride in being professional and thorough. I didn't mind going the extra mile to help out my customers. When I told the boss, he assured me that he knew my heart was in the right place, but that (here it comes), "People's perception is their reality." He probably told me that once or twice a week for a decade. It doesn't matter if you're Mother Teresa. If people think you're Margaret Thatcher, they aren't going to want you in their space.
Eventually, I adopted an attitude where my primary concern was making people feel comfortable first, and then solving their tech issues. Any technically competent person can figure out why your machine won't connect to the Internet. Evidently, it takes experiences to turn off airplane mode for you without making you feel stupid. I've probably closed 100 tickets in my life where a person's issue was caused by their computer being unplugged. I never put that in the ticket, though. I always just put "electrical problems." That way they don't feel dumb and no one but me and them know they had to get help for the most basic of issues.
I had to adopt that attitude at work to be successful. I don't have to adopt it in the real world, nor should I. Nor should you. Racists live in a world where their reality is founded in the belief that other racial groups are inferior. That most certainly doesn't make it real. Right-wing Christians think that Jesus loves them although they don't help the poor and immigrants, don't turn the other cheek and most importantly don't treat other people like they want to be treated. I don't have to respect their faith or give them credit for tithing to their all white church that lobbies to take away a woman's right to choose. Finally, I don't have to respect a person's belief that their sexuality gives them more rights than my LGBT friends. I have the right to my own reality, in which people with that attitude are hateful bigots.
I know I am not the arbiter of anyone's reality but my own. I have some odd beliefs, mostly about inconsequential stuff. Although I've consumed copious amounts of coffee, tea, liquor and beer, I don't believe that any of it tastes good without being sweetened. Me and every other person who is a fan of those beverages enjoys them for the drugs they contain, caffeine and ethyl alcohol. If you drink decaf coffee without cream and sugar, you have a mental illness verging on masochism. Hey, like I said, that's my reality. It doesn't have to be yours.
Even our own memories challenge what is real and what is not. When my siblings and I sit down with our Mom to tell stories from the good old days, we frequently have completely unique recollections of when and how things went down in the early 70s. Occasionally the differences are pretty big. We remember things happening in entirely different towns or with different people. Obviously, we aren't living in parallel universes. There is one "real" version of events. It's just that none of us is sure after five decades what the real version is.
Overall, it doesn't matter, I suppose. We have to be true to our ideals. The willingness to be a better person should never leave us, but failing to hold people accountable for bullshit is not an attribute. Remember what St. Augustine said. "Love and do as you will."
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Interstate 95
If you do much traveling along the East Coast of the United States, it is hard to escape doing some driving on Interstate 95. It runs from the Canadian border with Maine to Miami, a distance of 1924 miles, passing through 15 states and the District of Columbia, more than any other Interstate. The final leg of I-95 wasn't connected until 2018 in New Jersey. 110 million people live in proximity to the highway and it facilitates 40% of the US gross domestic product.
I live about five miles from the closest exit. I'm most familiar with the stretch between central Florida and Washington, DC, although I have traveled as far north as New Jersey on it on a single trip in the 80s. I've also been on short stretches in Maine and the Miami metro area.
If you plan to make your way down it at any point, I suggest getting the excellent iOS app, iExit, which tracks your location and gives you information on all the amenities you need while traveling.
For planning purposes, there is an entire website dedicated to traveling the highway.
I-95 Exit Guide | #1 Road Trip & Planning Guide - This comprehensive website offers information on:
As always, you can take a deep dive on Wikipedia.
Remembering Poor Me
Getting a state job in 1986 ended a few of the common problems I'd experienced as a member of the Working Poor™️. The biggest one was finally having health insurance. Except for military doctors, I hadn't gotten health care since I was a teenager. My birth of my two children, like roughly half the kids in the US, was paid for by Medicaid. After that ran out, we were on our own. I also became eligible for paid sick and vacation leave, an absolute luxury. Few hourly jobs in my region offered such benefits, at least among those who worked in the trades. If rain or snow canceled a day's work, a day's pay was also canceled.
One thing working for the state didn't alleviate was low wages. In 1986 as a married man with two children, I barely made $15K. There's a long list of issues that come with not making much money. Not being able to save meant that any unexpected expense had the potential to become a catastrophe. For years, I owned a succession of high-mileage, low-end, thousand-dollar cars. Any attempt at taking a long trip was always a gamble. I owned cars where the windows wouldn't work and a car that burned two quarts of oil every day. I was well into my thirties before I ever bought four new tires at one time. I bought a great many used ones for $25 apiece, though.
These days, I like to look back on my decision not to have cable television during my kid's formative years as a moral choice to keep their minds from becoming polluted, but the reality is, I just could not afford it. I was more fortunate than many, since my mom had herself graduated from Working Poor™️ status into the professional ranks. An extreme generous soul, she bought lots of school clothes and shoes for my kids through the years.
Even after a miracle happened, and we were able to get a mortgage on a home, I quickly learned about the challenges that posed when my water heater died. There was no landlord to call to get it fixed. I was lucky enough to pick up a couple of timely computer-side jobs to pay for a replacement, or else we'd have all been taking cold showers for a while. I'm not too proud to admit that I even had to borrow money from my high school-aged son, who worked a fast food job until the next payday when our refrigerator died unexpectedly.
I finally escaped that cycle through longevity and promotions at work. Of course, marrying Wonder Woman who makes pretty good dough, was also a big factor. She's a CPA, and ever since we got married I've just turned my paycheck over to her, and like magic, the bills get paid, my debit card never gets rejected and the holidays aren't a ball of financial stress. It's magic, I tell you.
My personal experience informs my feelings for the people who are still members of the Working Poortm™️. I saw the teacher's assistants, custodians, and cafeteria workers from my public school paying the same amount for their family health insurance as the highest compensated administrators. I've been to plenty of restaurants in the summer where my waitress was a schoolteacher working a second job. I've had the same experience at the grocery store, watching a high school business teacher ring up my groceries. I've seen the legislature go years without raising teacher pay, cutting benefits, and taking away paid incentives for graduate degrees. All this happens because we have a state law forbidding collective bargaining for public employees.
You'll notice that I haven't even touched on the criminal refusal of the ruling class to raise the wages of our lowest paid workers at the same time they created the economic system that foisted Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg on us.
No warfare but class warfare. Workers of the world, unite.
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Exploring Journaling Techniques
I've been keeping a journal of some sort consistently for many years. My motivations aren't that complex. I like journaling because it gives me something to do. To me, the act of organizing and recording my thoughts is just an enjoyable activity in its own right. I also enjoy looking back at past entries quite a bit. It's fun to see what I did on trips with Wonder Woman in years past or to see photos from family get togethers. Since I started blogging, much of what I once wrote just for myself now gets shared with the Internet.
Here are a few tips based on my experience and some links from others to help you get started:
This Weeks's Bookmarks - Monetized Spirituality, Victims of AI, No Brave Browser, iPhone Settings, Bad Accessories, Trump Tariff Formula, Goodbye to Democracy in NC
Celebrities are monetizing spirituality with the most popular app on the iPhone - Hallow - The thing about meditation is that it's totally pointless unless you can somehow monetize it. /s
As AI Takes His Readers, A Leading History Publisher Wonders What’s Next - His World History Encyclopedia — the world's second most visited history website — showed up in Google's AI Overviews, synthesized and presented alongside other history sites. Then, its traffic cratered, dropping 25% in November.
Why I recommend against Brave - Haha, did you think the Brave browser's only problem was the bad politics of the CEO? Think again. There's a long, historical list of sins and missteps.
20 Key iPhone Settings to Change | WIRED - Apple's software design strives to be intuitive, but each iteration of iOS contains so many additions and tweaks that it's easy to miss some useful iPhone settings
These iPhone Accessories Are a Total Waste of Money - Your iPhone is a premium device, but not every accessory marketed for it is worth the price. Some, as you'll soon see, are pure gimmicks that prey on fears and misinformation.
Posts online correctly cracked the formula for Trump's tariffs | Snopes.com MAGAts lie about almost everything, including easily disproven economics fallacies
Allison Riggs: This Is a Fight for the Very Soul of Democracy - Democracy Docket - In my home state of NC, a Republican who lost by 65,000 votes in November 2024 is coming close to succeeding in reversing his defeat by appealing to Republican dominated courts full of his donors and supporters.
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Early Evening, April 4
Early evening, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
Pride, In the Name of Love - U2
Shortly after 6:00 PM on this date in 1968, the bullets of an assassin took the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the only American born in the 20th century honored with a national holiday. At the time of his death, King was one of the most unpopular men in the United States. He's probably received more death threats than anyone involved in the Civil Rights movement. Many people believe that he foresaw his own death.
King was in Memphis that day in support of striking sanitation workers. He was stridently anti-capitalist, dedicated to a world where wealth wasn't relegated to a tiny minority while working people lived in poverty. In his speech the night before his murder, King's prophetic words are chilling:
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
I was only three years old when Dr. King died, so I have no memory of him. I do remember the struggle to get his birthday made into a holiday. Some Southern states insist on co-honoring Robert. E Lee on the same day because, well, some southern states are run by racist assholes, kind of like out whole country is now.
Later on the evening of April 4th, Robert Kennedy, Sr., gave a speech in Indianapolis that he led off by annoucing King's murder, eliciting screams of rage and pain from those in the audience. He spoke for the first time in public about the murder of his brother in Dallas five years prior. Then he uttered the words that were to be engraved on his memorial, for he too was to die by an assassins bullets just a couple of months later.
"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."
Every honest person in the US knows that we still haven't gotten to the promised land. We still have the same division that Kennedy spoke about. Despite the fascist victory last November, the dream isn't dead, though. We still have the time and the means to make it come true. It's going to take hard work and courage. Will you help?
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Iconic Restaurants and Chains
I've written before about my enjoyment of regional dishes. . Close behind that is my enjoyment of iconic regional chains. I'll grant you that they rarely serve haute cuisine but I don't care. Fast food is popular because it's usually reasonably palatable and consistent. Often, I just want some food, not a dining experience.
If you're ever in my neck of the woods (North Carolina), two places you definitely need to check out are:
When visiting Texas, a couple of can't miss chains are:
California
Midwest
Miami
I'd love to know what's iconic where you live. You never know where I could go.
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Road Tripping With Teenagers
Wonder Woman and I are taking two of our high-schools aged grandsons on a road trip to Gainesville, Florida on Friday. We are going so that Connor, the 17-year-old, can participate in a charity bike ride for Friedreich's Ataxia, the degenerative nueromuscular illness he lives with. It's one of the few times a year he gets to be around other FA folks. It does him good to see people who have made it to adulthood, living successfully with disease. He was provided with a recumbent bicycle for participating in a clinical study and he is able to pedal it on the four-mile closed course with his Nana running along beside him.
Aiden, his younger brother is coming along to ride his bike in the event too. Even though he and Connor bickered literally all the time, he's always there to steady him when he walks or to help him with his wheelchair if it's one of those days. They are typical teenage boys who speak with great authority on video game culture, anime, fast food deals and the most influential people on YouTube and TikTok. I learn a lot from them.
They aren't thrilled about getting up early for the drive but it's worth it for the carte blanch Wonder Woman gives them to load up on gas station goodies and the freedom to pick out where we eat along the way. They even like hotel breakfasts.
Connor is a fiend for Mac and Cheese. He loves the way they make it at The Cheesecake Factory, so I know we will be going there on one of the nights. He's a kind and sweet kid who constantly asks me if I'm OK. I'm not sure what kind of issues he suspects I might be having, but it always seems important to him that I'm comfortable and happy.
I'm not sure how much they'll communicate with their parents while they're gone. It's not that they will have separation anxiety. The boys just love their folks. They like to keep them informed of what they're up to. Plus, they have a little sister who was a bonus baby. She's in kindergarten. Aiden is her best friend. She'll miss him a lot. Their older brother started college this year. They alternately miss him and celebrate the extra room they have in his absence.
I'm looking forward to spending time with them. They make me laugh and feel young and woefully out of touch with pop culture. I love watching Wonder Woman shine when she's with them. She's really good at being their Nana.
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Pozole Recipe
1 1/2 lbs pork shoulder
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tablespoon cumin powder
2 onions, chopped separated
4 garlic cloves, chopped and separated
2 tablespoons oil
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
2 tablespoons annato powder
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 teaspoon oregano
4 cups canned white hominy, drained and rinsed
3-5 cups pork broth, from cooking pork shoulder
salt
2 whole fresh jalapenos, chopped (optional)
This recipe requires a simple prep.
Prepare by the onion, peel the garlic, chop the onion, peel and chop the 2 garlic cloves,
Place the meat in a large saucepan and just cover with lightly salted water.
Add one onion, 2 cloves peeled garlic, pepper, cumin, and oregano.
Bring to a boil over medium heat, skim off any foam that rises, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 45 minutes.
Saute the second chopped onion and garlic in oil until translucent.
Add the remaining spices, stir for a minute.
Stir in the canned hominy, pork broth (if there is not enough pork broth, add chicken stock, I like to add it anyway for flavor, about 2-4 cups, eyeball the amount you like), and jalapenos
Cook at a simmer, covered, for 45 to 60 minutes until the meat and hominy are tender.
If necessary, cook for up to an additional 60 minutes until the chilies and onions are well blended into the broth
Degrease the stew, taste for salt, and serve in soup bowls.
Garnishes that are always served with are:
lots of lime/lemon wedges.
sliced radishes.
chopped cilantro.
Shredded cabbage(not red).
fresh packaged fried corn tortillas.
School Starts in August
This is my entry in the April IndieWeb Carnival hosted by Jamie Thiglestad on Renewal.
One of the things I miss about working in public schools is the comfortable rhythm of the annual cycle. Unlike teachers and junior administrators, i worked twelve months of the year, not ten months like most of them. I wasn't jealous of them, not exactly. I loved the summer months when the giant high schools were mostly empty. The county adjusted our work schedule so we could have Friday's off. Some summers were non-stop projects on big technology renewals. There were others when it was tough to find things to do.
When August rolled around, and a new school year was about to kick off, it was the beginning of the cycle of life for a gigantic educational machine. I enjoyed seeing the first year teachers, regardless of whether they were young college graduates or second career types. What I really liked was seeing the paraprofessionals who sent to school and finally became teachers themselves. My district hired many teachers from northern states where it's challenging to get a job because the vacancies are few. Down here in the dirty south, where we don't have teacher's unions, it's a struggle to find qualified people.
At the high schools, before classes even start, the athletes show up on campus for fall sports. I can still hear the chants of practicing cheerleaders echoing through the empty halls. I can see another cohort of football players trying to survive another August afternoon practice, with the humidity above 90% and the temperatures near 100 degrees. I'm just so glad that these days, coaches know enough to let the players drink water. In my day and before, we were denied water for fear that it would cause cramps. In the middle of a three-hour August practice they'd give us a small handful of ice chips. That was it. Crazy, huh?
When the first day of school rolled around, I'd always try to be at a primary school to watch the spectacle of sobbing parents dropping off little Tommy and little Susie for the beginning of kindergarten. The veteran teachers were excellent at taking the kids and getting rid of the overly dramatic parents like a border collie herding sheep. Occasionally they'd even have to get the school resource officer to ask parents to leave because they were having such severe separation anxiety.
In the upper grades, I'd pay attention to what the kids were wearing and all the new haircuts and hairstyles. Almost everyone is nervous at the beginning of the year, except those veteran teachers. A new school year always meant a lot of work for me. Problems that went unreported the previous spring would pop up as emergencies. Some things, power cords for example, would always mysteriously disappear over the summer. Laptops that worked fine in May would be non-functional in September. It would normally take until about the first of October to get everything working at peak efficiency.
I worked in a county with 26 schools. Every one of them had its culture. Some had tremendous community involvement, while others would have trouble getting parents to come to open house. I learned which lunchroom ladies took the job of making tasty food seriously, and which lunchrooms to avoid at all costs. Things would evolve, though. People would retire or move on, and their replacements could make things better or worse. I've seen faculties devastated by the transfer of a beloved principal. I've seen the opposite effect when an unpopular administrator finally moved on.
Every month was predictable. Holiday breaks and exams came and went. Different sports seasons had their peculiarities. The growing sense of excitement in the spring as summer approached always felt nice. Watching another senior class get ready to move out into the world was sobering. I saw kids go all the way through their K-12 education, leave, go to college and come back as teachers. Like I said, it's a cycle and every new year is the renewal of that cycle.
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File Sharing Roundup - The Best Ways to Move Data Between Devices
There are many reasons sharing files between computers for even the most basic of home users:
I got an email from a friend today who explained to me that he's used a particular method to create a folder on his parent's computer into which they can drop their various tax documents as they receive them so that he can access them all when it comes time to fill out the forms. For them. I just set up a method of file sharing to copy nothing but downloaded video files from my laptop to my iPad in preparation for traveling when I need something to watch.
Here are a variety of ways to share files, both temporarily and continuously connected.
Blip - this app transfers individual files between two devices no matter where they are located using end to end encryption. Files can be as larger as 2 GB. It works on Macs, iOS and Windows devices. Free. Blip - Free Cross Platform File Transfers | AppAddict
Local Send - this works like Blip but is limited to devices that are on the same network, like your home Wi-Fi, or between you and your partner in a hotel. It works on Mac and iOS. https://appaddict.app/post/local-send-easy-to-set-up-and-easy-to-use
Native File Sharing - File sharing has been baked into Macs since the first version of OS X. Most experienced users can set it up easily enough. Set up file sharing on Mac - Apple Support
Cloud Services - If you use iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or a similar service, sharing is built in, whether the recipient has the service or not. You can generate links. In a case where you want to share between two computers that you own, you can install the client or sign into the same account in the case of iCloud on each of your computers. There are Windows and iOS clients for most services.
Nord VPN Meshnet - If you use Nord as your VPN, you can use Meshnet. Meshnet is a way to safely access other devices, no matter where in the world they are. Once set up, Meshnet functions just like a secure local area network (LAN) — it connects devices directly. This makes Meshnet a great fit for activities that require high speed, low latency, and advanced security — activities like file sharing, active work collaborations, and intense multiplayer gaming. - Meshnet explained | Meshnet docs
Syncthing - You can set this up between any two devices and automatically and securely keep an entire directory of files securely shared. Syncthing - Free and Open-Source Cross Platform File Sharing | AppAddict
Email - You can just about always use the modern equivalent of Sneaker Net, like a caveman and just email files in a pinch. it's the the fastest or the most secure or the most efficient method, but it will do in a pinch.
To tie these different methods together, a good file manager comes in handy. If you want to upgrade Finder on your Mac, my recommendation is Qspace. Qspace
For file management on an iOS device, you can't go wrong with FileBrowser Pro. - FileBrowser Pro - For File Intensive Network Connected Workflows | AppAddict
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Oh Death
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” ― Joseph Stalin
During the pandemic, while half of America was arguing that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu, the city government of New York was hiring refrigerated trucks to keep bodies in because they ran out of space in their morgues. I've known may people who've been sick with COVID-19, but only one who died from the illness, a man I'd known since childhood. He was a retired judge, the father of a childhood friend and the wife of my former boss. While Wonder Woman and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail, he and his wife picked us up and took us to their Western North Carolina vacation home for a couple of meals and a shower. The next day they hiked with us almost to the Tennessee line. His fight with COVID-19 was short, One day he was joking with his family about not being able to talk and the next day he was gone. Forever.
My personal encounters with death have been just that, personal. I cam home from school one day in the ninth grade to find out that the matriarch of the farm I lived on had dies during the previous night. As a result, my entire family had to move to the home of my aunt's father. It was on the same farm, only 50 yards or so from where we lived.
During my school years, my class was lucky. We didn't lose anyone in the way that I witnessed numerous cohorts lose members during me educational career. As soon as we graduated, though, the toll started to mount. Within a year or two, car crashes claimed lives. A fiery plance crash in Gander, Newfoundland with nearly 300 members of the 101st Airborne Division aboard claimed the life of the trainer from my high school football team along with everyone else on board. Cases of cancer and sudden heart attacks took some of the star athletes we had as well.
My father talked about death often. Having spent two years in Vietnam, he'd witnessed too much of it. His generation died in that war in the tens of thousands. Additionally, since he was a pilot, he knew too many other pilots who had died in accidents at the hands of flight students or just by stupid bad luck when their helicopters hit unmarked power wires.
Even those of us who are not wrapped up in celebrity culture can still be affected by the deaths of famous people we never knew. I remember the August morning when my mother told my brother and me that Elvis Presley had died during the night. It seemed like that was a big deal for a long time, especially to the hucksters on television selling tribute albums and all the people who wrote books about The King. I remember when presidents Truman and Johnson died, pretty close together. Then it was Pope Paul VI and a month later his successor, John Paul !. I learned more about Catholicism during that period than I had ever know, mostly because there are so few Catholics in the small southern towns where I grew up.
John Lennon's senseless murder also impacted me. It seemed like so much of the 60s culture was gone before I could grow old enough to appreciate it with so many influential musicians dying young Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, John Bonham and more.
All of my grandparents survived until I reached adulthood. I was 40 when the last one passed away. The fact that my children got to know them is a source of great joy to me. Now that my oldest grandson is entering his 20s, I have hopes that my Dad will live to be a great-great-grandfather.
Some deaths are seemingly impossible to recover from. My youngest daughter isn't my biological child, but she is mine nonetheless. Her mother and I were married for 18 years. Four years after we separated, she died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. My daughter has struggled with it ever since. Today is the anniversary of the death of the father of my two step-daughters, who passed away only a year after his marriage to their mother ended. It was a tragedy and one that is still painful for them.
I try not to think about my own remaining years too much, or those of my parents and senior relatives. Yes, I know it is inevitable, but there is little I can do to prepare for it, and I'd rather just deal with it all when the time comes. It's a beautiful day in my corner of the world today, and I think I'll go outside and enjoy it for a while.
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Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Probably the most influential time in my life were the years I lived on my uncle's farm, roughly 1979-1983. Although both of my parents were the children of farmers, I didn't have much exposure to agriculture before a fateful Easter vacation I spent with my uncle at an industrial pig farm he was managing. I was in the eighth grade, years away from being able to drive on the road. On the first day of vacation, he showed my brother and me how to operate his 1976 Ford Ranger pickup on the dirt roads of the farm. We also got to use a pressure watcher and assist in all kinds of chores, including a day in the breeding barn.
The following fall, I decided it would be a good idea to use my saved up lunch money to buy my very first joint. I couldn't wait until after school to smoke it, so I went out on the playground, in full view of an entire wing of classrooms, where all of my matches were blown out by the wind. Dejected, with no buzz, I went back into the school building, where I was immediately accosted by a teacher who'd seen me out her classroom window. To make a long story short, the school took a dime view of marijuana possession. The next thing I knew, I was on my way to a new life in a new town where they might let me go to school. That's how I ended up living and working on a farm.
My aunt and uncle treated me and still treat me like one of their sons. Their capacity for love seems limitless. Since I had a knack for getting into stupid amounts of trouble, my uncle decided to keep me too busy to get into mischief. If I weren't busy, I'd be too exhausted. It worked after a few spectacular missteps on my part. By the time I left that farm, everything else other people considered hard work seemed easy to me.
Now, I'm going to get to my point. The one thing I was bitter about in those days was a lack of praise. The old man just didn't believe in handing it out except in small amounts and on very rare occasions. I could spend an entire Saturday splitting multiple cords of firewood—some of the hardest work I've ever done, and he couldn't be bothered to acknowledge it. It drove me nuts. I respected (and feared) him too much to complain much, but every once in a while, I would say something. His standard answer was, "Do you want me to pat you on the back for getting out of bed?"
These days, he's very much a different man when it comes to handing out compliments. He makes it clear in no uncertain terms that he is proud of me, proud of my kids, proud of Wonder Woman. He even brags about teenage me and the things I did way back then.
As a result of my feelings of being unappreciated back in the day, I resolved early on to make it my life mission to hand out props whenever and wherever I could. In the years I worked in public schools, if I saw a teacher doing a good job, I'd tell them how awesome I thought they were. I'd tell the custodians, secretaries, nurses, and lunch ladies the same thing. My children have never doubted that their dad thinks they are superstars. I don't do it insincerely or to be flattering. I just think it is a nice thing to do for people in a world that can often seem cruel and uncaring.
I even hand out real compliments on the Internet to people who have been friendly and helpful. I know how good it feels to get that kind of feedback, even from faceless Internet strangers. That's why I am out here, just waiting for you to do something cool so I can let you know how much I liked it.
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Advice for Grandparents
I'm lucky. All four of my grandparents lived into my adulthood. They were each wonderful people in their own way and each had a tremendous influence and helped me become the person I am today. I loved them all obviously and rarely does a day go by when I don't think of them in some way. My parents were teenagers when I was born, as was I when my kids came along. Mom and Dad were only 36 when they got into the grandparent game. Thankfully, my kids gave me a little more breathing room, but I've still been at it for twenty years now.
My personal advice to grandparents is to have as many adventures with your grandkids as you can. If circumstances permit it, give them the gift of your time. Take them camping, to fall carnivals and Polar Express Train Rides. Take them to see new Disney Movies. Remember their birthdays. Create some rituals. My kids know that every car trip with Wonder Woman and I involves a stop at the store for a snack and a drink. They know when they come to our house that we will have their favorite treats. We have always had a toybox in our house too.
Here are some more suggestions from around the internet.
10 Tips for How to Rock as a Brand-New Grandparent
Grandparenting Tips: How to be a Better Grandparent
How Can I Be A Fun Grandparent? 16 Tips For Grandparents – Retirement Tips and Tricks
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Don't Make Me Learn Something New!
I was directly involved in supporting education in a K-12 environment for a couple of decades and the in higher ed, at the university level, for a few more. My customers were the people who conveyed knowledge and, indirectly, to their students. I listened to plenty of enthusiastic teachers talk about teaching strategies, from the ones who were helping first-graders learn to read all the way through to physicians teaching medical students. Obviously, these instructors understood the importance of learning — for other people, but seldom for themselves, unfortunately.
Since the 90s, when technology started to become ubiquitous in the workplace and computer literacy became necessary in most professional level jobs, there have obviously been many changes. Just the way we store data has evolved from different sized floppy disks, to Zip Drives, writable CD-ROMS, larger hard drives, USB thumb drives to the cloud storage most people use today. Installing software went from typing esoteric commands into a terminal to merely clicking a single button in and app store. Yay for progress!
The problem is that the changes in the technology come too rapidly for many. It seems that there's a certain class of people who wake up one day and just decide they are done learning new things. They are just over it. It's like their brain is full and there is no room for any new information. I've been to countless meetings where I've listened to bosses agonize about how to implement something new while fooling end users into thinking nothing has changed. Bosses get to be bosses numerous times because they are people pleasers, and making people mad goes against the official boss code of conduct. When Microsoft decided to move the Start button from the lower-left side of the screen where it had happily rested since 1995, to the middle of the taskbar, there were millions of IT departments Googling "HOW TO MAKE WINDOWS 11 LOOK LIKE WINDOWS 10."
Doing something as simple as changing the naming scheme for network printers caused numerous professors, supposedly highly educated people, to lose their minds at my former job. They acted like the IT department had a meeting to see what we could do to make their jobs harder. In the early 2000s, Apple moved the power button from the right side of the original iMac to the front of the next generation of educational computers, the eMac. People freaked out about that too.
It's funny. When people go buy a fancy new car or the latest big screen television, they seem to have no problem learning the ins and outs of that tech. Some of that equipment can be pretty complicated, too. Those same people, however, are the same ones who can't seem to remember which password to use in the correct situation to effectively do the job their employer pays them for. Hell, there are more people than you probably want to know about who simply cannot create a password to save their lives following modern conventions. I've wasted hours of my life that I will never get back waiting for people to think of a usable password. Often, I would just have to step in and do it for them after they failed numerous times.
Huge numbers of people never read another book after they finish their formal education. Being entertained becomes the official purpose of life. That's why I get such a crush on anyone I see reading a classic novel or taking a night class at the community college just for the joy of learning a new skill or hobby. I have a long list of things I am interested in learning now that I have leisure time.
Thanks for reading. I'm sorry I missed a couple of days this week. Life gets busy.
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is for my tech blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
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This Week's Bookmarks - Privacy Guides, 21-Day Cyber Cleanse, Famous Resaurants, True Crime, Wild West Food, Ad Blocker Testing, Liberation Library
Privacy Guides: Independent Privacy & Security Resources - Privacy Guides is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run project that hosts online communities and publishes news and recommendations surrounding privacy and security tools, services, and knowledge.
Cleanse - The 21-day Cyber-Cleanse: designed to remove toxic tech from your life
Most Famous Restaurant in Every State - Business Insider - From fine dining restaurants to local barbecue joints, every state has at least one legendary restaurant that everyone knows about.
True Crime - Masters treasures went missing, then the FBI showed up | GolfDigest.com -
The first item the young man stole from Augusta National was a green and white golf towel. This was just after the 2007 Masters, when he had come to understand it was customary for warehouse employees to take one or two small things
What Food was Served at Wild West Saloons? - YouTube - It starts with cowboy bacon and beans and goes from there - From A Taste of History
AdBlock Tester: test your AdBlock extensions - How good is your ad blocking setup? Just go to the page to receive a grade. If you want to get a score of 99 or 100 out of 100, shoot me an email and I'll send you my setup.
Liberating Library - Liberating Library is a book distribution program and online collection of relevant radical resources run by a Pan-African socialist.
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Who Are You Thinking About?
There is a saying in the recovery community that if I could do anything to my worse enemy, I'd make him self-centered. There's nothing worse than continually being concerned with "How am I doing today?" I'm not knocking therapy. It's helped untold numbers of people, including me. Nor, am I smack-talking introspection because questioning your motives and evaluating yourself are healthy practices. No, what I'm getting at is the type of person who is always concerned with fairness, about what size your slice of pie is compared to his, about how life rewards you while it shafts him. I don't like that guy. I would rather not hang out with him.
What I find enjoyable is having a circle of people and a mind with enough space to let them all in. Most of us have our person, to borrow a concept from Grey's Anatomy. We have the one person whi is at the head of the line when we start making space in our consciousness when we begin to make room for something outside the scope of our wants and needs. No need to tell you that my person is Wonder Woman, my wife, my partner, my friend, and my coach. Although she sometimes doubts it, I evaluate almost every interesting fact in my life to decide whether I should share it with her. Tech-geek that I am, I have special apps and certain workflows just to be able to send her things during the day that she might like or be interested in.
One of my morning rituals is reading over my journal and looking at photos from this day in past years. Now that I've been doing the IndieWeb thing for longer than a year, I'm starting to see quotes from my favorite bloggers show up in my journal. I dig being able to send someone a screenshot to let them know, "Hey, I thought you were pretty astute last year and I still feel the same way." Who doesn't like to get fan mail, right?
For the people, like me, who share personal bits and pieces of their lives, well, it's better than a television show trying to keep up with what's happening in people's lives. During the day I start to wonder, How is mb feeling today, He's been ill. Or I wonder how Annie's son finished out the wrestling season or if Alexandra is freezing her butt off waiting for the bus on a Quebec sidewalk. When I think about the people working for the government, I think about Jen, Scott's wife her who had her dream vacation curtailed because of the fascists. and, OMG, if someone goes off the grid for an extended period of time, I start getting nervous. It constantly happens. Someone I enjoy reading, just gets fed up with the Internet and they disappear. I hate it.
It's a rare day when I don't send someone a photo I have of them. This week, I sent my youngest brother a shot of the one and only time he ever wore cycling shorts in his entire life. He called me stupid. I laughed. My brother-in-law scanned hundreds of my extended family's photos and shred them with us all. I like to find funny, early 1950s pictures of my dad with his flattop haircut and send those to him or pictures of my mom who was and is beautiful, just to let her know I am thinking of her. I have to stop myself from inundating my kids with constant pictures of their kids, most of which they sent me in the first place. It's just that all those grand babies are too precious not to show someone.
I have a vivid imagination. I consider it a blessing. When I was a third shift prison guard, stuck on a gun tower for eight hours, decades before cell phones were a thing, the only way I kept my sanity was an active mind. These days, I catch myself imagining the lives of my favorite fictional characters from television shows and movies. I gauge a show by how easy it is to bring its characters to life in my imagination. Take The Wire for instance. It was a show about the people of Baltimore, all kinds of people: cops, drug dealers, dockworkers, politicians, reporters, school teachers and more. One of my all-time favorites was Omar Little, a gay gangster with a penchant for robbing drug dealers, never regular people. He was courageous, funny, loving, intelligent and knew exactly what he wanted right until he was killed by a grade school kid in a corner store while buying his beloved Honey Nut Cheerios and Newport cigarettes. I think about Omar often and wonder what would have happened to him if he'd lived.
I'm not too good at striking up conversations with strangers, although in the right circumstances I don't mind it. My mother is the master at making friends with waitresses and clerks. She isn't putting people on either. She's genuinely interested in them. Mom admires anyone with a kind spirit and looks down on no one. Not once, ever. She might not approve of certain lifestyle choices, but she doesn't consider herself superior to anyone. She's just glad she doesn't have any tattoos and wishes I didn't either. My mother wasn't a big fan of me getting my ear pierced either, but that was a long time ago.
The moral of this longer than I intended post, is that if you want to be happy, think about others. Think about how you can make them happy. It will rub off. I promise.
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It Must Be True, I Read It on the Internet
One of the reasons that the United States is in the middle of an existential crisis is that too many damned people believe everything they read on the Internet. For these people, the Internet is not the information super highway. It is a cesspool of lies, misinformation, manipulation by foreign adversaries and scammers out to make a buck. It is beholden to MAGA and the right wing, who grow angry and vengeful when they are fact checked. To keep from being attacked by the government, Meta, the parent company of Facebook fired its fact checkers when Donald Trump was reelected. Elon Musk fired Twitter's fact checkers when he paid 44 billion dollars for the company.
No information source is infallible. Still, intelligent people should be able to separate fact from fiction. In the immortal words of way too may people Do your research.
Credible Information Sources
PolitiFact - Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.
Snopes.com | The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. - Snopes (/ ˈ s n oʊ p s/), formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.
Some other fact-checking resources similar to Politifact and Snopes include:
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is myapp review blog, delivered daily in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
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Browser Extensions Are a Secret Weapon
This is a special edition of AppAddict. Tonight, I'm covering one
of the best sources of computing functionality that often goes
overlooked in the hunt for productivity enhancements and better work
flows. There are many browser extensions that replace or enhance apps
you use every day. This is my personal aresenal that I use in my daily
workflow.
A modern Mac is a miraculous machine. My decidedly middle of the road laptop is an M2 with 16GB od RAM. I bought it in December of 2023 and hope to continue using it for years. The number of programs I have running at login (~40) would give Y2K Lou nightmares. The sheer number of installed applications would freak (628) that guy out. Finally, there are my browser extensions, and I'm only talking about the ones for my daily driver, Vivaldi, not the ones in the other five browsers I have installed. Where once I would have been concerned with somehow slowing down the Internet, today I just want to get the maximum amount of functionality out of my interface with it. I use A LOT of extensions. Let's get to them, shall we?
Aboard
Aboard does a a great many things but the way I use it is simple. It what I click when there is a webpage I want to share with my wife. She gets a notification on her phone when I share something and she can view it in the Aboard app or in a browser at the website. It's how I share shows I want to watch, restaurants I want to check out or news items that are blowing my mind.
Activity Watch
Activity Watch is a free time tracker that tells me how long I've been using my computer, which apps I use and for how long and what websites I visited and for how long. I can assign apps and web pages to categories and make the reports it creates as granular as I want to.
Activity Watch - Free No Effort Time Tracker | AppAddict
Language Tool
I use the paid version of this grammar, paraphraser and spelling tool, but I have used the free version as well and it is definitely a step up from native tools.
Language Tool - Free is Good, Paid is Better | AppAddict
Anylist Recipe Importer
I only activate this when I'm looking for recipes. Anylist importer clears all the cruft away from recipe sites and kust imports the ingredients and directions and leaves out all the SEO crap. It works with the Mac/iOS/Web app called Anylist, which is an app I've used for over a decade for shopping and packing lists and collecting recipes.
AnyList for Recipes, Shopping and More | AppAddict
Archive Today Automator
This is the extension I couldn't live without. Whenever I want to read a paywalled article from the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Verge, Medium, The Wall Street Journal or practically any other site, I just hit this button in my toolbar to obtain immediate access to a version from the Internet Archive. I subscribe to and support several progressive news organizations so I don't feel bad for reading MSM sites for free.
Block Party
Block Party is a paid service that inspects settings on invasive websites and changes things with your consent to offer yoy the most privacy possible. It works with Reddit, Google, YouTube, Strava, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, amd Instagram.
Bluesky Sidebar
Bluesky sidebar loads on web pages from the Bluesky social media platform and gives you extra information on the people you follow, the people who follow you, trending topics and the lists you are subscribed to.
Cloudhiker
Cloudhiker is a freemium service that is the closest thing you'll find on the wen today to the old Stumble Upon website. Use Cloudhiker to suggest and discover new sites in a large number of categories.
Cloudhiker - StumbleUpon for the IndyWeb | Linkage
Fedica
Fedica is a freemium service that allows you to schedule posts on all the major social media sites, you can crosspost to several of them at once. Paid customers get analytics and research tools, pluse reports from certain sites, like Mastodon and Bluesky.
Fedica - Post to Multiple Social Networks at Once, On a Schedule - For Free | AppAddict
Kagi Privacy Pass
Thiis extension is iused to authenticate to the paid Kagi search engine if you want to block all access toy what you are searching for. With this enabled, there is no history of your search activity using Kagi.
Using Kagi Search Engine on a Mac - Software and Tips | AppAddict
Markdownload
This is another one of my favorite extensons. It copies webpage links as Markdown links for insertion into posts and documents. It cam also copy whole pages as Markdown, although now that usefulness has been supplanted by the Obsidian Web Clipper. Finally is will create a markdown list from all the open tabs in a browser windos. It's great for bloggers and researchers.
MarkDownload - The Browser Extension that Works With #Obsidian | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
Mastodon Redirector
No matter what Mastodon instance I land on while browsing and following toots from others, clicking this button opens the page in my home instance, allowing me to like, follow and comment with ease. I find that ut works better for me than Graze, another plugin with similar features.
Obsidian Web Clipper
This free tool uses templates to download web pages as markdown files. Using AI, you can get summaries of the page and automatically assign tags. It will even download the transcript from YouTube videos. I have templates for IMDB, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, YouTube, Medium, Wikiepedia and general web pages.
Privacy Badger
This free extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is not an ad blocker. It works hand in hand with them to detect and block trackers using an algorithm and machine learning. The EFF is working on ways to prevent browser fingerprinting, the strategy used by tech companies to follow you around the web without cookies.
Privacy Badger Extension from the Electronic Freedom Foundation | AppAddict
Raindrop.io
Raindrop is a freemium bookmarking service from which I gety great value. I use it to create webpages of links I want to share, to save canonical copies of stories so that if the are removed from the Internet, I can still access them. I have never used my bookmarks more than I have with Raindrop.
Battle of the Bookmark Managers | AppAddict
Quick Pocket
I am a big believer in automation and in reading the work of smart people at depth. Aside from using Pocket as the excellent read it later service that it is, I also use it's integration with IFTTT and RSS to automate the saving of full text blog entries from Matt Birchler and Jarrod Blundy, two of my favorite tech oriented bloggers. Their articles are routed through Pocket right into Obsidian or Day One for preservation and reference. Pocket is owned by the Mozilla foundation.
Ublock Origin Light
The Original Ublock Origin is still the best as blocker ever made. It is no longer compatible with Chrome, Edge and Vivaldi, although Forefox users can still use it. Using a complete security toolkit that includes a customer DNS server, built in blockers in Vivaldi, Ublock Origin light and Freetube for YouTube, I routinely score 99 or 100 on ad blocking tests.
My Online
Security Setup | Linkage
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is for this blog, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter