I have spent large portions of my adult life without a car. I college I lived in Boston and took the T everywhere and even took trains to New York and DC. That was a while back, but even now I recall the experience being superior to air travel. Roomier and actually faster, door to door, than flying or driving for even fairly long trips.

As an adult I spent time in the UK and Japan and used their trains fairly extensively. Japan’s shinkansen were amazing, and they were probably 1970s technology. I’m told China has a great national rail system.

So what is wrong with America? I would say a knee-jerk reaction against anything “public”, but as a replacement for the airlines, it still seems attractive. That may be the real problem. In America where there is so much money in politics, entrenched interests get their way. I heard that many, many years ago a Texas project to connect Dallas, Houston and San Antonio was scuttled by Southwest Airlines.

I would love to be able to jump on a train and get to Dallas, Houston or New Orleans at 200+ MPH. Hope I get to see it one day.

Gen Z’s high-speed rail meme dream, explained

I try to live in the real world. I (perhaps foolishly) think I am pretty good at it and that it more a survival technique than anything philosophical. That said, I am certain I have my delusions, most of which I imagine I don’t want to examine too closely. I think it is ok to pull the wool over you own eyes a bit, to suspend disbelief. Just a little, though.

The Usefulness of Our Delusions

Now that I have some free time I’m noticing all the things I’ve left in a state of benign neglect over the years, like my house, yard, photos, files, etc. The yard is an acre with lots of trees, mostly live oaks. They push out leaves in spring, leaving the yard mostly covered. Over the years I’ve let them go, letting the mower much whatever it could telling myself it was good for the grass. Of course, being honest I have very little grass these days and lots of leaves. I thought about raking them and using them as mulch in the big beds in the front, but that seems like lots of work. Tried the leaf blower but it just seemed to wedge the leaves down into what little grass was left. I have my little Worx Landroid robotic mower in the back, and soon in the front, so a bagging mower wasn’t really available. Same for my electrified riding mower (still in development). I figured I would try a small battery electric push mower and use it more or less as an electric rake. Bought a Worx since I’ve had good luck with the Landroid. I was told the 20V batteries would work with my Black and Decker tools but they appear to have a gratuitously different interface. But so far so good with the leaves. Gonna take a while but it is only once or twice a year. Maybe I’ll have real grass again.

I have been watching the news on the Myanmar coup. I was trying to figure out what the point was. I was tempted to make a cynical comment about how it is always about the money. I suppose that isn’t strictly true. But follow the money first if you want to save yourself some time.

Myanmar coup leaders tried draining $1bn from US account

I still remember tracking the news from China and then Italy about the emerging virus. I was hoping the US would be able to isolate and control it, but I didn’t see any movement in that direction. By late February 2020 we started to stock up on food. My last meal at a restaurant was February 28. I realized things would get bad when I went to visit a colleague at a tech company up the road and saw this notice on the door. This was a little over one year ago.

A couple of weeks ago our printer started complaining about lost WiFi connections. Then it stopped working completely. We went to buy a new printer but they seem to be in short supply. We ordered one and it finally arrived, but it did not work. It kept giving a cartridge error and wouldn’t print (but it would scan). Packed it up for return and realized we don’t have a printer to print out the return label.