MrG's Blog & Notes

* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.

[MON 05 JUN 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 22

* THE WEEK THAT WAS 22: For the past few months, there was a lot of noise from the crazy-Right House Freedom Caucus (HFC) about refusing to raise the debt ceiling and bring the US government to a screeching halt. Anyone with sense could see that the majority of House Republicans weren't going to go along with it, and that it was a hollow bluff. Nonetheless, the Biden Administration negotiated in good faith with Congressional Republicans, and came up with a compromise solution. It was handily voted through this last week. A surprising number of House Democrats voted against the compromise, though it appears only casing NO votes after it was obvious the measure would pass.

The bill will rescind about $28 billion USD in unspent COVID relief funds. It will cut $1.4 billion USD in IRS funding, and shift about $20 billion USD of the $80 billion provided to the agency through the Inflation Reduction Act to non-defense funds. It will restart federal student loan payments, after a long pause begun during the pandemic. In addition, it will place work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits on people up to 55 years old -- the current threshold is 50 -- with carve-outs for veterans and homeless people. Finally, the bill will update the National Environmental Policy Act to streamline permitting for projects.

The White House, in turn, has been playing up the reality that the spending cuts are modest, in particular making no changes to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. The bill will also preserve the climate and clean energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, and leave Biden's executive action on student debt forgiveness untouched. The IRS cuts are troublesome, but they mostly hit long-term funding and don't hurt current efforts. Most importantly, the debt ceiling won't be reviewed again until after the end of Biden's first term.

It was pointed out Joe Biden, in pushing through the bill, had made good his election promise to pursue "bipartisanship". It was also apparent that the HFC was not happy with the bill, in particular because their bluff about shutting down the government unless there were massive spending cuts had been called. The HFC can bark loud, but it has little bite. How this plays out remains to be seen, but promises to be interesting.

* Another interesting item that's come up was a survey of 1,500 Americans from early April 2023, conducted by YouGov -- the well-known British internet-based analytics firm -- on the level of trust Americans have in the media.

When broken down by party alignment, at first sight the results seem predictable, with Democrats saying they had higher trust than Republicans in many mainstream centrist or center-left media outlets, such as the Associated Press and CBS. The surprising part was that more Democrats than Republicans said they bought off on many conservative media outlets, including THE DAILY CALLER, THE NEW YORK POST, and THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER. Only, say, a fifth of Democrats trusted them, but only a few percent of Republicans did.

In fact, only a few media outlets are more trusted by Republicans than Democrats, including Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart News and One America News -- with Fox News being the only one that a majority of Republicans trust. It's hard to sort out exactly why this is so, but it may well be that the fact that Right-wing outlets even report negative news about Donald Trump that's causing the distrust. In any case, we now have a faction of American society that doesn't really believe any media any more.

* As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Securonomics Is Fuzzy New Lodestar For Investors" by Felix Martin, 2 June 2023) Rachel Reeves -- the UK Labour Party's "shadow" Chancellor of the Exchequer, previously an economist at the Bank of England -- recently made a dramatic statement: "Globalization, as we once knew it, is dead." She went on to say what had replaced it: "securonomics". The era of free-wheeling global trade is over, with politicians willing to say: "Not so fast."

The principles of securonomics were laid out by the Biden Administration in late April 2023. Significantly, the roadmap was not laid out by the US Treasury Secretary or the US Trade Representative -- but by Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's National Security Advisor. Sullivan made it clear that the era of unqualified support for free markets is over.

Domestically, industrial policy is back. According to Sullivan, the government will subsidize "specific sectors that are foundational to economic growth (or) strategic from a national security perspective." As important examples, consider the Biden Administration's two main pieces of economic legislation of the past twelve months, the CHIPS & Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which aim to build up the USA's semiconductor and green energy industries, respectively.

Internationally, securing supply chains will take priority over minimizing costs, and bilateral or regional trade agreements will be designed to support foreign and environmental policy. "Friendshoring", meaning the push to source parts and manufactured goods from friendly countries, will replace offshoring. Sullivan said almost nothing about the World Trade Organization.

Securonomics does not mean economic isolationism, instead seeing the world as divided into trade blocs that share common general principles. Countries that have economically powerful friends are going to benefit, though they will be required to abide by environmental rules and the like.

Some economists don't see a problem. Jacob Soll -- of the University of Southern California -- argued in his 2022 book FREE MARKET: THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA that the era of economic globalization was an anomaly, that securonomics was once much more the norm. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, economic policymakers such as the French statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert and Alexander Hamilton, the first US Treasury Secretary, believed that free markets had to co-exist with government support for industries essential to national security.

The real question remains of just how bureaucratic and heavy-handed the push towards securonomics will be. Can it be made to work, and work well? Those who defend securonomics point to the Ukraine War as demonstrating its necessity. Vladimir Putin attempted to use Russian energy supplies as an economic weapon in his invasion of Ukraine -- but realization became widespread that becoming economically dependent on authoritarian societies was a bad idea, and his ploy backfired badly. It also did a lot to promote the shift to a low-carbon economy, meaning Putin lost business he can't get back.

* As discussed in an article from ENGADGET.com ("Company Responsible For 7.5 Billion Robocalls Sued By Nearly Every Attorney General" by Peter Cao, 26 May 2023), a bipartisan group of Attorneys General from 48 states, plus the District of Columbia, have filed a lawsuit against Arizona-based Avid Telecom, its owner Michael D. Lansky and vice president Stacey S. Reeves.

The suit claims that the company illegally made over 7.5 billion calls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry. The suit ads that Avid Telecom spoofed phone numbers, including 8.4 million that appeared to be coming from the government or law enforcement, and others disguised as originating from Amazon, DirecTV, and others. Avid is accused of violating the Telephone & Consumer Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and a number of other telemarketing and consumer laws.

The AGs are asking the court to enjoin Avid Telecom from making illegal robocalls, and to pay damages and restitution to the people it called illegally. They're also pursuing several statutory avenues to make Avid pay on a per-violation basis -- which, given the number of calls, could pile up to a lot.

For a comparison, in 2017 Dish reached a settlement that cost them $210 million USD. The company allegedly made millions of calls to sell and promote its satellite TV service. In the end, Dish had to pay a $126 million USD civil fine to the US government, and $84 million USD to residents in California, Illinois, North Carolina, and Ohio. Avid is likely to get hit worse.

[MON 12 JUN 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 23

* THE WEEK THAT WAS 23: The big news this last month was that ex-president Donald Trump was finally slapped with a Federal indictment, over his mishandling of secret government documents. After he left the White House, he had boxes of secret government documents stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Photos show crates of the documents around a toilet in a bathroom.

If it had been a case of simple sloppiness, Trump would have returned the documents and not much more would have happened. However, he pushed back all the way, giving back nothing until the Feds raided Mar-a-Lago and snatched the documents up. What else could have been expected of Trump? Worse for Trump, there's plenty of evidence that he knew he was breaking the law, and had even shown secret documents to journalists who didn't have security clearances. The indictment not only listed mishandling government documents, but also obstruction of justice and violation of the Espionage Act.

There are concerns that he passed on secrets to foreign governments, which would mean much bigger trouble for Trump. No evidence is available to the public that he did -- but this is Trump, he's capable of anything. Given that he's clearly been under surveillance 24:7 since 1 January 2021, it's not like he could get away with it undetected.

In any case, when I saw the news it knocked me back a bit. I knew Trump would be indicted by the Feds eventually, and that the classified-documents case would come before the much more complicated conspiracy to steal the 2020 election. However, I'd got so used to biding my time that I was surprised when it did happen. No trial date has been set yet.

* Early this month, my website was penetrated by a bot that caused me anxieties. I decided immediately that I had to secure my website, getting rid of the direct "mailto:" that I'd been using for years, and replacing it with an indirect email form, with a "captcha" to block bots.

I got to thinking I could find some free app to do the job, and ended up with a service named "emailJS" -- short for "Javascript email". It looked like it could do the job; I'd just define the form, and it would generate HTML code that I would upload to my website account at Fatcow. Alas, it took me the better part of a week of tinkering off and on to find it was just one obstacle after another; I'd overcome one, to be confronted by another. For example, I could get a free "captcha" from Google, but the instructions on how to hook it up to the form code were unclear, and I hadn't been able to dope out the form code yet, either.

I finally realized that emailJS was a tool for experienced Javascript programmers, who didn't need to have everything laboriously spelled out for them. I went back to square one, trying to find a turnkey app to do the job. I'd got off on the wrong track because I didn't know the right search terms. This time around, I did some experimenting with queries, to finally converge on a solution -- finding a set of firms set up to provide forms for online services, including AidaForm, MailJet, Cognito, and Jotform.

They all offered free service for small-time users, typically limited to 100 form submissions a month. Since I typically get less than a query a week, certainly never even once a day, I'd never get close to that limit. I set up an account on all four services, but couldn't find one that just gave me the simple email form I needed -- until I got to Jotform, which had almost exactly the form template I wanted. The only thing missing was a "captcha", which was easily added. The form was easily modified, but I'll tweak it some other time.

It turned out I didn't need an app as such; all I had to do was link from my websites to my Jotform account. It only took me a few minutes of tinkering and I was flying, sending myself emails securely from the form on my websites. After struggling with emailJS for days I was relieved that, once I got on the right track, it took less than two hours of effort to get the solution I wanted all along. It was fun, too.

I did other related tweaks after that, for example turning off the autoanswer reply Jotform sends out to queries: nobody gets an answer unless I send it myself, otherwise the query just disappears. I don't know if I've defeated the bot yet. It may be a long-term effort. It's never wise to meet such trouble head-on; it's better to just raise obstacle after obstacle to complicate life for the bot, until it gives up.

[MON 19 JUN 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 24

* THE WEEK THAT WAS 24: Donald Trump was arraigned in Miami Federal court on Tuesday on 37 counts of mishandling government documents and obstructing justice. This was the direct result of a mad comedy in which Trump shuffled around boxes of secret documents, lots of them, to evade investigators. Photos showed the boxes piled up in a bathroom -- with a chandelier -- and it seems they were stored in a ballroom as well. There was no security. Trump attempted to get his lawyers to help with the cover-up. The lawyers, realizing they were being dragged into a criminal conspiracy, didn't play along.

After the arraignment, Trump went to a popular Cuban-American restaurant, said meals were on him in front of the cameras, and then quickly left before anyone ordered. CNN's Jake Tapper, on viewing the clip, said:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The trial has been assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, who became notorious when she issued a judgement infamously favorable to Trump over DOJ handling of documents, to be reversed and reprimanded by a superior court. It remains unclear how she will handle the current case. [ED: She outrageously spun it for Trump.]

Incidentally, one Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) generated a very professional-looking fake commercial video:

_______________________________________________________________________

   LAW & ORDER:  SPECIAL TRUMP UNIT
      starring:
         ALVIN BRAGG
         LETITIA JAMES
         JACK SMITH
         FANI WILLIS
      and:
         DONALD TRUMP

   LAW & ORDER:  SPECIAL TRUMP UNIT
      created by:
         TRISTAN SNELL
_______________________________________________________________________

* Microsoft's Bing search engine has now obtained a generative AI capability, allowing users to pose questions and get a tailored reply. The first time I tried it, I was impressed -- but it seemed less miraculous later. I had to carefully phrase my queries, and even then what I got back was not always useful. Ultimately, I figured out that Bing could only give me back what it found on the internet. If it had confusions between sources, I'd get the confusions too.

[MON 26 JUN 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 25

* THE WEEK THAT WAS 25: The news this last week was dominated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, boss of the Russian Wagner mercenary force. For months, Prigozhin had been publicly complaining about the Russian war in Ukraine, in particular taking shots at Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. On Friday, Prigozhin announced that Russian regular forces had attacked Wagner mercenaries, with Prigozhin continuing his blasts against Shoigu, and even denouncing the war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin went public to call Prigozhin a "traitor" and said Russian forces would crush his rebellion. In the meantime, Wagner forces seized Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, while driving on Moscow.

Mass confusion resulted around the world, with speculations gone out of control. The confusion got worse the next day when Prigozhin called off the rebellion, a deal having been struck with Putin. Prigozhin went off to Belarus, where he had been offered sanctuary. Nobody honestly believed he would be safe in Minsk; it is unlikely he thought it either, since he knew the system from the inside. There were thoughts that he went to Belarus to coordinate a Wagner drive on Kiev, but that doesn't sound like a workable idea.

The confusion continues, nobody having a clear idea of what had just happened -- the only thing being obvious was that things are not going well in the Kremlin. For now, things have gone quiet, but they are unlikely to stay that way. Incidentally, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a notorious blowhard, announced while things were going to the devil that his personal troops would protect Putin's regime. Observers believed Kadyrov had no intention of taking any action. In any case, in the aftermath of the excitement, a meme went around on Twitter: "Putin beginning to believe three-day operation to take Kyiv not going as planned."

* In much less significant news Hunter Biden -- President Biden's wayward son -- announced that he had come to a plea deal with Federal prosecutors over charges of tax fraud and violation of firearms laws. It is generally believed that he won't do any time, just probation and community service.

The MAGA brigade online and in Congress were outraged -- in particular being annoyed that Hunter Biden got off so easy, while Trump is in so much boiling hot water over mishandling classified documents. MSNBC's Steve Benen pointed out there was no evidence the White House had done anything to interfere with or influence the prosecution, and added that the prosecutor had been appointed by Trump. When asked about the conclusion of the case, President Biden said: "I'm very proud of my son." That was the only really good answer; Hunter Biden had taken ownership and was working to get his life under control, so his dad had good reason to be pleased.

Benen contrasted Hunter Biden's cooperative attitude with Trump's blatant efforts to confound the investigation against him, and concluded:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

* In somewhat related news, last week John Durham -- who had been appointed a "special counsel" late in the Trump Administration, to "investigate the investigation" of Russian involvement in the 2016 election -- was at the center of a Congressional hearing that was a perfect fizzle, with Steve Benen reporting:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) grilled Durham mercilessly, calling him a "partisan hack". It is certain that Jim Jordan and friends will continue to declare "complete victory" in yet another one of their foolish investigations -- but only fools are fooled. It is sad to see such a performance from John Durham, who once had a reputation as a competent and honest prosecutor. As with so many people who threw their lot in with Trump, he now has a reputation for neither.

* I go for a walk in the morning five days a week, and usually pick up litter. The litter is typically plastic bottles or cigarette boxes and the like, but this last week I found an empty spray can of "Silly String" -- y'know, press the spray button and a colored plastic string shoots out.

I got to wondering how anyone invented such a useless novelty -- OK, all such novelties are useless -- and looked it up. Silly String goes back to a 1972 patent by Leonard Fish and Robert Cox, an inventor and a chemist respectively, who had been working on a spray-on cast for injured limbs. They came up with a formulation that worked, but then they got to playing with different nozzles for the spray can, and found one that shot out a string. Fish thought it might be a fun toy, and the two went to the Wham-O company, which had made the frisbee famous, to pitch the idea.

Wham-O officials liked the idea and produced Silly String in a range of colors including blue, red, and green. The Car-Freshner company bought up rights to Silly String in 1997, and manufactures it today. Similar toys have included "Goofy String", "Streamer String", "Wacky String", and "Nickelodeon Smatter".

[TRIPLOG] THE LAST TOURIST FLIGHTS

* THE LAST TOURIST FLIGHTS: I went on a long road trip from my home in Loveland, Colorado, to Ohio in 2022 -- which proved satisfactory, but suggested that I didn't want to take long road trips any more. That conclusion led to the thought that I ought to take a couple of quick air trips to cross a couple of things off the list -- leading to a visit to Disneyland in California later in 2022.

That left a second air trip to take: a visit to Washington DC, primarily to get pictures at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum (NASM) with my Samsung S21 Ultra camera-phone, and also tour the National Mall downtown. That would be a follow-up to a road trip I took in 2016. I started thinking about the DC trip after the new year, and got airliner tickets for a flight from Denver to Dulles Airport near DC on 4 April, then back again on 6 April.

I got a reservation for two nights at the Hampton Inn Dulles just south of the airport. I was going to arrive at mid-day on the 4th and then canvass the NASM annex at Dulles, which stood likely to crunch me for time. I figured I could leave my kit at the Hampton Inn and just walk over to the annex, Google Maps showing that it was about a half-hour walk. Later I got to wondering if the road to the annex was actually open and checked the street views on Google Maps, to find that the road was restricted access with a guardhouse.

So what to do? I thought it over for a while and decided to use Lyft, installing the Lyft app on my smartphone. I was concerned about how effective it would be -- given the limited time I had to cover the annex, I couldn't afford much delay. After scratching my head a bit, I decided to see if I could line up a Lyft here in Loveland, and found I could easily get a ride in 15 minutes if I wanted one. Finding a Lyft in the Dulles Airport area would be even easier. I was still a bit nervous about having time to cover the NASM Annex on the afternoon of 4 April, but I'd have to see how it went in practice.

The next problem was going to the National Mall on the 5th. I figured I could take the Metrobus 5A from Dulles Airport, as I had on my 2016 trip. First thing I wanted to do once I got to the mall was tour the monuments and get pictures before the museums opened, which was a lot of ground to cover. However, in 2016 I'd considered using the Capitol Bikeshare system -- a rent-a-bike network around the mall and inner DC -- and I figured that a bike would get me all the way around the mall in a timely fashion.

My major objectives on the mall were the NASM center and the Afro-American History Museum (AAHM). I'd missed the AAHM in 2016 because it was too crowded, and I was curious about it. I did some checking online, which was fortunate, since I found out that I had to make reservations for them; they were the only two museums on the mall that required them. No problem, I got the reservations, printed them out, and put them in a little cardboard folder I put in my travel backpack. That left getting my kit all packed up, with persistent worries that I was missing something. Finally, I was as ready to go as I was going to be.

* I went to bed on 3 April and got up in the dark hours of the morning on the 4th, to drive to Denver International Airport (DIA) to pick up my flight. Weather forecasts said there would be some snow, which was worrisome: we can get snap blizzards in the early spring in Colorado, which would make driving dangerous and also might lead to canceled flights. I considered going down in the evening and spending the night at the airport to dodge the snow, but weather reports told me I would be ahead of the snow. Not quite; fortunately, it wasn't much more than a bit of light sleet, and in fact it was dry when I got to DIA.

I left my car in long-term parking, took the shuttle bus to the terminal, got a boarding pass at a kiosk in the United service area, then went through security. That left me with some time to kill, so I toured the airport to get pictures with my S21 Ultra. DIA is huge, with a main terminal and three concourses, connected by a shuttle subway, and there are some artworks and such in hub areas. I took the subway to the most distant "C" concourse, back to the "A" concourse, and then to the "B" concourse in the middle, to pick up my flight. Although there were some sights to take pictures of, particularly a Learjet 31 on display, that tour ended up being nothing much.

I departed somewhat after 0600 AM, the flight being delayed a bit. The flight was uneventful; fortunately, we had a tailwind, so we got into Dulles a bit ahead of schedule. I had to phone to get a shuttle van to the Hampton Inn, but it was no real trouble. Incidentally, since I never call on my phone when I'm in Loveland, I have a very cheap phone contract, with 100 minutes of voice, a gigabyte of data, and unlimited texts -- leaving me with some worries about running out.

Since I got to the Hampton Inn before check-in time, I asked if I could check my bags at the desk -- but they told me my room was ready, so I just threw my bags on a bed in the room, then went down to the lobby and called for a ride to the NASM annex on Lyft. It worked like a charm, I got a quick pickup and a quick ride to the museum for cheap, even with a $5 tip.

I was making better time than I expected, and I had plenty of time to cover the museum, taking shots with my S21 Ultra. I learned more about how to use the gadget. First time I did it at the USAF Museum in October, I had a bluetooth shutter to take the shots, which proved clumsy. Now I just told the S21 Ultra to "shoot", and it took a shot -- or at least it did sometimes. To get a good low-light shot, I had to stand as motionless as possible, since the image stabilization can only handle slight movements. When I used voice control, the S21 Ultra would not take a shot if I wasn't standing still enough, so I typically had to tell it to shoot multiple times. Using the bluetooth shutter had been a mistake, since it made the S21 Ultra take a shot whether it was ready or not.

I hadn't eaten much since leaving Loveland, subsisting on a bag of little Payday caramel-peanut bars I stuffed in my travel pack. There was a Shake Shack fast-food joint in the annex, so I decided to get a meal. Turned out to be a bad idea; the Shake Shack wasn't set up for handling large crowds, and it took much too long to get served, with a fair amount of aggravation in the meantime. I got a hot dog, fries, and a shake; they were overpriced, which is what I expected from a museum concession, but aside from the shake, they wouldn't have been a good value for a more reasonable price.

I did another circuit of the annex, and then got a Lyft ride back to the hotel. I went out to see if I could find a place to get some cherry pepsis -- and found a 7-11 convenience store right around the corner from the hotel. I didn't notice it when I was scouting out the locale on Google Maps, missed a trick. Anyway, they had cherry cokes but no cherry pepsi, so I bought two cokes. On the way back, I saw jetliners flying overhead, coming out the Dulles runway, and stopped to take pictures of them. I got bored quickly; planespotting is no longer of much interest to me.

I checked the data usage on my phone in my hotel room. I was worried that the gigabyte of data I got on my cheap Tello contract would be exhausted swiftly, but it turned out the two Lyft rides only took about 50 megabytes of that. As long as I only used the phone for roaming communications when I had to, a gigabyte was plenty for a short trip. I also drank a coke; I much prefer the sweeter pepsi, but found if I got a sugar packet from the hotel coffee bar and added just a pinch of sugar to the coke, it worked just fine. I went to bed after settling in, since I was going to have to get up early to go into DC.

* I did get up early on 4 April, and took the hotel shuttle to Dulles to pick up Metrobus 5A to the National Mall. However, Metrobus 5A didn't show, so I asked around, and found out it had been discontinued. I was told to take the Metro rail instead. Later I realized that when I had been in DC in 2016 and took the Metrobus, the Metro line hadn't been extended to Dulles; it had been extended in the meantime, and the Metrobus became redundant. I was confused because I'd downloaded a PDF of the Metrobus 5A schedule, later realizing it probably was from an archival website, not the DC Metro website.

No problem, really. I made my way to the Metro station -- it was a fair walk, but with moving walkways that sped me along. I had to puzzle out how to use the ticket machines and figure out which line to take, the Silver Line as it turned out, but a day pass didn't cost any more than the bus would have.

I was planning to end the ride at L'Enfant Plaza, but the Silver line came to Smithsonian station, and that sounded like a very good place to get off. I was a little disoriented walking out of the station, but I quickly got my bearings and made my way towards the Smithsonian Castle. I already knew there was a bike station for Capitol Bikeshare nearby and rented a bike -- somewhat complicated by the fact that the buttons on the rental controls were worn into illegibility, but I managed to guess what they were and get the bike out of its lock stand. It was a heavy, sturdy bike with a three-speed twist shifter.

I hadn't ridden a bike in a long time, but it wasn't too much trouble. One problem was that, when I ran across a pedestrian crowd I'd slow down, and the bike would of course become unstable and difficult to manage. I should have just got off and walked the bike. I rode west from the area of the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Monument, taking shots -- and noticing near the Lincoln Monument that the lawn was mixed clover and grass, which I've been trying to establish on my own yard. From there, I rode across the Potomac to Arlington Memorial Cemetery, though I didn't go past the gate -- and then looped back east to the Tidal Pool and the Jefferson Monument.

That done, I did a loopback circuit of the National Mall to the Capitol Building, stopping at the Grant equestrian statue in front of it, and went back to the museums, just as they were opening. I put the bike back into a stall, but it didn't seem to lock in right, making me wonder if I'd have some trouble later. Nothing I could do but go on about my business. I did have trouble later, incidentally, but nothing that couldn't be straightened out talking with the support people.

Anyway, I got to the American Indian History Museum (AIHM) at 1000 AM, when it opened. It was a very nice and attractive facility, but I had little interest in it. Next stop was the Afro-American History Museum (AAHM), having a ticket for 1030 AM. When I got over there, I found a crowd -- but as it turned out, I had no problems getting in, the crowds were tour groups.

As with the AIHM, I didn't find the exhibits all that interesting, except for one on "Afro-Futurism", or the black experience in sci-fi. There was a nod to Sun Ra -- a big-band leader with amusing cosmic pretensions -- plus tributes to black sci-fi writers like Chip Delaney, Gardner Dozois, and Octavia Butler. The music of Jimi Hendrix was coming through the sound system, coupled to videos; I was disappointed that they didn't play up Hendrix's sci-fi tune THIRD STONE FROM THE SUN. On leaving the exhibit, there was a manikin of the Marvel Black Panther, with a black dad and his two kids posing in front of it for the wife's camera. I thought that was a nice touch.

I had been worried about staying fed for the day, fearing that I wouldn't find much of a place to eat, but there was a restaurant in the lower level of the AAHM that offered a fried chicken dinner. I killed a little time until it opened, then got my supper: two fried chicken fillets with coleslaw and mac-&-cheese. It was about $20 USD with a cola -- refills included -- which was maybe slightly spendy, but not bad. The mac-&-cheese looked nice and cheesy, but it was funny, with a bland, almost sweet cheese; it wasn't bad, but not to my taste. The coleslaw was good, and the fried chicken succulent.

That done, my next target was the Smithsonian NASM on the mall. I had a ticket for 1230 PM, giving me some time to kill, so I looped through the very pretty gardens around the Smithsonian Castle, taking shots -- including of a mockingbird, keeping an eye on me. It was good to see a mockingbird, they don't live in Colorado. I got to NASM at the appointed time; I had noticed while going to the AAHM that it was under repair, but I was hoping that most of the exhibits were still open. No such luck, it was mostly shut off from tourist access, and I only got a few shots.

That left me with nothing much else on my list, and was getting tired. I thought of going back then, but decided to check out the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. That was a fun visit, dinosaur skeletons and the like, but it was getting crowded, and I was getting more tired. I left the mall and went to the Smithsonian station to pick up the Metro back to Dulles. It made so many stops I wondered if I had got the wrong line, but then I relaxed: it was the only Metro line in that direction and I couldn't get the wrong line. I made it back to the hotel, killed some time, then crashed out.

* I didn't have to be in a rush on the morning of Wednesday, 5 April. I ate breakfast at the Hampton Inn, and took the hotel shuttle to Dulles to pick up my flight. I was surprised to find that security had new walk-through scanners, no muss no fuss, no taking off shoes and such. I had to make a transfer through the Atlanta airport, but it was only an hour. I got back to Denver in the early evening, then took the bus shuttle to the Pikes Peak parking lot to get my car.

At that point, things started to go somewhat wrong. First thing that happened was I found out that I'd lost my Mastercard. Later I mentally backtracked, and realized that I'd carelessly stuffed the card in my pocket after I got my boarding passes for the return trip at Dulles; it probably fell out. No worries, I had my Visa card as a backup.

Second problem was after I stopped at a Fazoli's in north Denver for a spaghetti & meatballs dinner. I didn't have any problem with the dinner, the problem was that there was a mom there with some kids, and one of the little boys was a hyperactive brat who was totally out of control. I moved away from them, finished my meal, and left as fast as possible.

The drive north to Loveland put me into a traffic jam, as it turned out to be due to an accident. Anyway, I got home, cleaned up, and went to bed. Next day, I killed my Mastercard and ordered a replacement; when I got it a few days later, I used the occasion to update the charging mechanisms for my online accounts -- going to direct bank draft when I could -- and streamlined my passwords a bit. It was a useful exercise.

The trip, despite the difficulties, went well and met its objectives. However, the primary objective was simply to do it and be done with it. I won't ever go on a trip to play tourist again. I do want to see the big Aviation Nation airshow at Nellis AFB, near Las Vegas; it's a day's drive out, a day's drive back. It's typically in early November, but I found out that it was canceled for 2023, to be run in early April 2024. That actually works out better for me, since driving over the Rockies in early November can be hazardous, due to snap blizzards -- I've been caught in such things and they're no fun. There's some hazard in early April, but not as much.

* I got to thinking later in April that I would still like to photo-shoot the NASM facility on the National Mall when it re-opens. That led me to wonder: what if I took a night flight from DIA to Dulles, rode the Metro into DC in the morning, toured the National Mall, and then got an evening flight back to Denver? I'd get my sleep on the jetliner and the airport.

Since I would have to go through security checkpoints at the museums, I wouldn't be able to take much kit along with me -- about as much as I would carry to the super to shop. I did a flight scheduling on Expedia and it seemed to work out. Of course, the NASM facility won't fully re-open until 2025, so I put it on the back burner.

However, a few days after that, I got to considering a trip I was planning to take to Spokane, Washington, next year for my niece Jordy's wedding. I was thinking about maybe going further to Seattle to get photos at the Museum of Flight (SMOF) there -- but that would likely turn a four-day trip into a week-long trip, and I didn't like that idea.

That led, eventually, to thinking: Why not do a one-day air trip to Seattle? I looked over airline options on Expedia, and found I could get a round-trip ticket on Wednesday, 10 May for $238 USD, getting me into Seattle-Tacoma (SeaTac) Airport at 0800 AM, back in Denver by midnight.

Getting from SeaTac to the SMOF was a bit of a puzzle, but not too much of one. I thought of using Lyft again, but checking showed me that would cost almost $40 USD each way. I did some poking around in the (Puget) Sound Transit website, and found I could take light rail from SeaTac to the Tukwila transfer station and get on Bus Route 124 to go straight to the SMOF. The Sound Transit website was not at all clear on how to use the system, but it seemed like it would cost me like about $8 USD. I could get to the museum in an hour. I'd spend a few hours at the SMOF, then reverse the trip back to Seatac.

Given this was a day trip, I didn't need to take much luggage; I could rely on my waist pack, with a camera case on the belt. I ordered a dual smartphone holster from Amazon to also put on the belt, and bought a small laptop computer bag that I could put under an airline seat. I already had a laptop bag, but it hadn't proven satisfactory -- the new one having a useful array of pockets lacking in the old one.

Incidentally, it turned out that Jordy was planning on getting married at Roche Harbor on San Juan Island in Puget Sound, not in Spokane. I did some trip planning to see how I could get there, and it turned out it would take two days each way -- I'd have to take a shuttle boat, and it only runs once a day, out in the morning, back in the afternoon. I told her I'd have to pass.

* I got up early on Wednesday, 10 May, and drove to DIA to catch my flight out at 0600 AM. The flight was uneventful, the only interesting thing was finding that Seattle was clear and sunny as I flew in, giving me a splendid view of Mount Rainier. Much farther to the south, I could see a large conical peak, to wonder: Is that Mount Hood? It's next to Portland, in Oregon. Later I checked online for maps and air images, and determined it was indeed Mount Hood. I also confirmed that the mountain to the east of the line from Mount Rainier and Mount Hood was Mount Adams -- I'd wondered if it was Mount Rainier early in the approach -- and the truncated peak to the west of the line was Mount Saint Helens. Geez, I remember the eruption, it was over 40 years ago.

I got into SeaTac and made my way to the tram station -- first walking up a block to a 7-11 convenience store to get a coke. I'd located the store on Google Maps before leaving, I'd even gone down to street view to trace out the walk, so there were zero surprises getting to it. I had forgotten how hilly Seattle is, and it turned out to be a bit of a steep climb.

Taking the tram and the bus to the SMOF was a bit confusing. The system is based on use of an "Orca" card that maintains an account; there was no day pass system, and it wasn't clear how to handle the transfer from tram to bus. I did clumsily figure it out, and I was at the SMOF about 45 minutes before it opened at 1000 AM. It's right at Boeing Field, so I did get shots of a Boeing 777X prototype while I was waiting for the museum to open.

I recall way back when that the SMOF had a B-47 Stratojet bomber out front, but these days it has a spiffy Lockheed Super Constellation propliner on display. Once it did open, I went through it thoroughly, taking shots. I figured it would take from two to four hours to cover it all, but it only took me an hour and a half. I went back to SeaTac, walking up to the 7-11 to get lunch -- a hot dog and a coke -- then killed time waiting to get back to DIA. I'd also bought eyeshades from Amazon so I could get some sleep in the terminal, but it didn't work out all that well, I couldn't get useful sleep. I flew back in about midnight, and I was in bed by about 0245 AM -- getting up as usual as 0430 AM.

I judged it a very successful trip, if an unconventional one -- flying cross-country for a brief activity, then flying right back, only about 24 hours from end to end, cost being less than $290 USD. It did beat me up a bit, disrupting my sleep schedule for a few days. That sort of quick trip only works when the destination is a big city with a good metro transit system, and it isn't dependent on any particular date.

As a footnote, I found out from my niece Jordy that she was going to get married in Roche Harbor, on San Juan Island in Puget Sound, where my brother has a little private resort complex -- yeah, he's a high roller. I tried to come up with a plan for getting there, but it was troublesome; I couldn't fly into SeaTac and take the shuttle boat to San Juan Island, or the reverse, in any less than two days. The expense wasn't great, but it was too much like work, so I told Jordy I'd have to beg off on her wedding.