Okay, that’s a little much. For a while I’ve been thinking about cutting some walking paths through some of our heavily wooded property. Nothing fancy, maybe four foot wide. Just to make it easier to take a little nature walk. Barb and I did a little scouting over the weekend.
My original thought was to map out a path and try to follow that on the ground…
but I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to just start walking and cutting (with my handy little electric chainsaw), making it up as I go. Truth be told, it’s pretty unlikely this will get much use by anyone except Barb and I. To launch the project –which will take a long time to complete– I picked a starting point.
Which this space for progress reports.
Author Archives: Steve Mays
“World War Wired”
Following are a few of my favorites nuggets from an essay in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman:
“On the first day of the war, we saw invading Russian tank units unexpectedly being exposed by Google maps, because Google wanted to alert drivers that the Russian armor was causing traffic jams.”
A large-scale modern war will be livestreamed, minute by minute, battle by battle, death by death, to the world.
Russia, has an economy that is smaller than that of Texas.
The musician and actress Selena Gomez has twice as many followers on Instagram — over 298 million — as Russia has citizens.
Vladimir, the first day of this war was the best day of the rest of your life.
Television on the iPhone
When commercial television was introduced in the 1950s, a 16-inch set was the biggest available. Twenty years later, the biggest screen size was 25 inches.
We recently purchased a 60 in OLED TV and it’s amazing. But last night I watched an Apple TV episode on my iPhone using my AirPods (3rd gen).
There was no sense of watching (for an hour) a small screen. And the sound was unlike anything I’m used to sitting across the room from the big screen. Occasionally had the sense of being in the room with the characters.
We called them “pay phones”
There was a time (before mobile phones) when I knew the location of every Casey’s and Hardee’s pay phone in Iowa. They were the only way to stay in touch with the office. Check for messages, etc. Here’s how I remember making calls from the road:
- enter 10-digit Sprint Card number
- enter 10-digit number of the person being called
- enter my personal Sprint number (10 digits?)
And while I couldn’t recite those Sprint numbers, I could punch in the numbers without thinking.
Men in masses, and of causes
“I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. […] And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have – for what they are – are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.”
— Master and Commander (Patrick O’Brian)