TubaOrNotTuba

There was a time when having data with you when you traveled meant that you had packed a book or two into your luggage. That was then. Now it is we have greater expectations and better technology. The idea of going with my iPad to the wilds is no longer a question of can I play tic tac toe. We thought about taking the Starlink on vacation but it seems that getting a travel plan from a company that has no visible means of communication with you is not possible. The option is to cancel what we have and buy something new a lot to pay for a short time. So we have turned to other methods. I am able to put a SIM card in my iPad and collect data from that cell phone system. Even there you have to shop. This morning we moved the family cell phone to another company because that company offers better options for tablets. At a better price. Sometime this week we will receive a new card to insert in the unused slot and then with help from customer assistance the iPad will be connected to the outside world. Not the simplest solution but until Starlink evolves for travellers, the only one we can afford. Will it be enough? We will only know after we try it. It could be that next year we will choose another method. For now we’re trying something different. Sadly I cannot go back to those days when having a couple of books in my luggage was sufficient. All the words have disappeared from the pages. I now depend on technology. I’m not going to complain. A lifetime ago I would have been kept in the house out of sight and out of mind. In this century I can go and be in public even if I do not see them. They will see me. A minor victory I guess. I can’t do this sort of thing on my own anymore so I handed the question off to my partner. She spent the time talking to customer assistance and she put together what I hope will be my salvation for data through summer months.

Feeling bored? Seeking a reason to bang your head against the wall? I have a solution. Try to compare data plans from the major telephone suppliers. I think they have pages of fine print. And worse no rationale. We took on a simple question. Go to a nearby province and try to decide what sort of data plan would make sense for a tablet. A simple question but the answers are very complex. First of all the alphabet soup. I understand wanting to let the customer know the various levels of service you offer. But please, not on the first page. Try to draw them in a little closer before throwing all the nails into the path. And then take your maps. And shove them. Most cell providers actually share their towers. I think they are required to by law. For one company to tell you that their service is far superior to everyone else is nothing more dental I. I know a venial sin but align nonetheless. Do not expect clarity in this world. Next try to discover how many hidden charges are out there. For a company that wants to sell me data do I have to bring my own SIM or will you sell me a SIM or will you read me a simbas tapan the quality of my blood. Not clear. And when that SIM is empty. What happens then? They don’t want to talk about that part. Be very careful of terms like auto renew because you can find yourself belonging to them for a very long time. Right now we’re seeking a marriage of convenience. 30 days and gone. Do we have an answer to that question? Not at all in fact we will probably have to go to one of the local cell phone stores and try to convince the person behind the desk that we really do not want to buy a new phone. I think that’s where they make their real profit. We shall see. Still have a few days. And from what I’ve seen we will probably take something very expensive and lacking features. Telling ourselves that the next time around we will be more cagey. I realize I am an easy prey for those who hunt down innocent customers. I also realize that maintaining such a large infrastructure over half a continent cost money. I support your rationale. I just wish you had something a little more to my liking.

 This province gave up UN railways along time ago or the railways gave up on us. In any case the nation in sharp contrast relies more on the rail system than any other point is history. A lot of things move by rail. Tied to what is called a jit economy. Just in time. And if the trains stopped running a lot of other things, stop as a consequence. We have been put on notice that the real system is about to go on strike. I saw in one report the term unprecedented, unprecedented perturbation. We shall see. One of my sons works in logistics and he is on notice. For the next little while his job just got more interesting. How do you get that load of material from there to here. I know he thinks about this kind of stuff because he’s already pointed it out as recently as this morning. For those of the world who no longer think trains are important, they are. We did get rid of our rails to ferries reliance although even there unions tend to follow the leader. We could see the ferries tide up the wharf because the trains have stopped. Also, once the strike starts the government will be on high alert. How many days before they pass a law. The government can seem inconsequential to many but when it comes time to keep the trains moving they’re on top of the situation. And that is probably a good thing. We all want to go into stores that still have stuff on the shelves and in our economy it only takes a matter of a week before most of those shells are empty. Ask yourself. What do you do if you have no food at home? I know that I would not want to go back to foraging in the fields. OK truth told, I never did that, but I know about it. I’ve read a lot. And I want the reliance that food will be down at the store at the corner. If the trains stop that is not a guarantee. So I like others will be keeping an eye on this one. Who wants to go into the summer with nothing at home.

In the current news cycle we are noticing an uptick in student protest. Not all students. The major noise is coming from some very important university campuses. In both the US and Canada. Schools that are big enough that when you see their T-shirts or sweatshirts you recognize the name. And what I have noticed as those students face down the police is that they seem to have lost touch with the reality of being a student. Or perhaps these particular students never had it. There was a time when a student at the end of the semester was worried about two things. Exams and summer employment. But for a small small number of people there are those who decided to go camping in the middle of a lovely university campus in the hopes that someone will listen to what they have to say. I wonder, if they looked around to see if they have any audience. There are many ways to protest. Sitting in a tent on campus pretending that you have all the rights in the world is probably not a very good one. The average person on the street does not care and as for your fellow students they have more important priorities. Pack up and go along with your life. Even if your school decided to withdraw finance support for a particular project nobody else will notice. The numbers are too small. You can tell the rest of the world is all symbolic and believe me I concur. What you’re doing is nothing more than a symbol. A cheap political stunt. You’re going camping at the end of the month of April will not change the rest of the world. Will it bring fame to your campus? Will it bring fame to you? I doubt that you can put your protest experience on a resume when it comes to getting a job later on. And if you have enough money, that does not matter then you are a part of the problem and not the solution. Pack up your books and pack up your tent and go on with your life. I agree protest is a wonderful right but you are not protesting you are just waving in the wind.

For some reason the conversation had turned to the utility of having a drone. I was confused yes this is one of those words that comes with a whole set of meanings. We were not talking about bees so I ruled that one out. I do try to modulate my voice so that wasn’t it. I consider whether or not we were talking about my getting a set of bagpipes but that couldn’t be it either. Not quite musical enough. And finally I realized that a lot of people talk about the idea of flying. By proxy. You see you can get tiny machines carrying a camera that will extend your visual range. Not mine but yours. I remembered from those days of flight simulator that what goes up must come down. Perhaps that’s a rule of gravity. In any case I knew that I could crash such a thing with the best of them. An expensive toy. I must point out that there are so much usable videos out there all with people looking around them selves from on high. The God view if you will. And if you take the time to check the wind and the proximity of obstructions and all the rules of the government has put in place you could probably have a lot of fun getting out there and seeing what is ahead of you. They now have drones that can almost fly themselves. Or at least land softly. As long as you avoid the open water or sea. I am not shopping for such a thing right now but I will not stop anyone else from going ahead. Technology has come a long way in my lifetime. We had paper airplanes with a virtual range of oh let’s say 100 feet. There were even ones that were powered by rubber bands. I would not trust such a craft to carry my camera aloft. I want something more robust. Thanks to other people I have a pretty good idea of what lies around my property. Out on the open road. Where I cannot predict my surroundings a drone could be useful. I will keep it on the thought list. If someone decides to gift us with their old drone I will try to integrate it into our lifestyle. I must check with my son to see if he’s grown tired of his own. Anyhow there you have it. My examination of a word with multiple meanings. Perhaps those bagpipes would be a good idea.

Go ahead. Tell me all about your new rig. Actually please do not do that. We have gone through a couple of sessions of shopping and right now we’re in that quiet time when looking at new rigs is not part of our daily bread. We learned along the way that there are many ways to describe the same thing . For those that review RV’s there are standard ways and then there is hyperbole. Actually, all we do now is look to see what is coming out new. Our way of forecasting our future. Someday there will be a better rig than we have now at that point we’ll decide what happens. Like the refrigerator. Or the sink. Those must go into their own place before everything else. And do not forget the beds. Please, do not forget the beds. What is probably the most important feature in an RV be otherwise he would just sit up front in the seats and sleep in a lunch over position. The manufacturers go to great lengths to try to provide new elements that will surprise you and right now the only way to get a detailed idea of what is happening is to watch endless videos from people who do not all have equal powers of description. Part of the price of entry. What I do realize is that we have been fortunate. We have not come up with very many things that were bad choices. Just expensive ones???. Back to the bed. We have had great luck there. No need to invest in secondary mattresses because we have been able to sleep on those that came from the companies. As for the other options, we have not found anything that says reach out and buy me, too. Not saying that won’t happen. After all we are watching videos that are the result of the dreams of others. But on the whole it is fun to see how many ways people can describe the same thing. There are some very imaginative individuals in this space. Title descriptive dialogue

Some of the best stories begin with long time ago. I have a lot of those. Different stages in my life I guess. One that comes to mind today is the strangest place I ever slept. It came about during a cycling trip to a set group of small islands just north of here. A windy place. Given two moments of very bad weather. And one of the evenings the combination of rain and wind an electrical activity left my partner and I seeking shelter. Real shelter, better than that of his pup tent. In a nearby marsh there was a small concrete building. About the size of a small home with a fortified door and a missing window. We made our own choice and climbed inside. Out of the rain and the wind and everything else. To sleep on a hard floor was no big deal and we knew this building was not going to blow away. As it turned out the building was the antenna centre for a loran system I’m not going to go into a technical explanation but I wish I had photos. Inside even while disaffected the place looked like a set from a Frankenstein movie. Lots of big switches and ways to let the electricity go to ground. What you want during a big electrical storm. And so without any more thought to the situation we simply spread out our sleeping bags and went to bed. In the morning weather had softened and so we climbed back out through the same window and looked at the nondescript shelter we had used for the night I knew little of what the building had actually been used for but there was no longer any worry. This was fully retired. Simply too expensive to remove all the electrical infrastructure. Including a huge antenna off in the field. I am not sure if the building still exists decades later. I should go on Google and ask the right questions. But it provided me with a dry night with little danger of electrocution and it gave me something to think about years later. The best kind of a once upon a time story.

I remember when the library was where you went to find books. So many books. All of the good ones restored in random piles on top of huge tables. The same ones where someone had been studying only hours before. The time between use and re-shelving could be long so you became very good at searching for your book among so many. And those tables were solid. They had to be. But overtime those same tables have become obsolete. A flagrant lack of places to plug in your laptop for the main. So when I saw a news article yesterday about how my local university had started a campaign to get finances to replace those tables I was more than surprised. After all 1/2 century is not that long in terms of academic progress. I have to congratulate the people who made the original purchase of those tables. They bought better than they knew apparently. Will the replacement tables be of the same quality? Has the university moved beyond random piles of books? Probably not because in academia change is anathema. If I was rich, and I’m not, I would simply write a check to buy the university all the tables if required. So important to learning. I spent years at those tables and little did I realize that they would still be in use so many decades later. I mean, I did not have a realization of how things would change. I am not particularly apt at foreseeing the future. But I fully believe the books would remain the foundation of learning. Not exactly. A computer can hold so many more books period. And search through the contents if you know what to ask. No need to question the person at the next table. Although I admit that was usually more for social reasons then academic.

After listening to my weekly Thurber story I came to a realization. My life has been devoid of practical jokes either by me or others . Sure there was that time that somebody pinned me into my room but that was just a college prank. I’m talking more about the kind of events the Thurber uses as a source of so much humour. I have never seen anyone get a random roller skate, or a cold boiled egg in their pocket. Perhaps these were the stunts of a past era. Even my own children have failed producing tales that I can use as historical fodder. I guess we grew up in humourless households. Actually even in the real world the practical joke seemed to have gone the way of the dodo bird. Not something that people aspire to or practice as regular activity. We have other things to amuse ourselves. Like cat videos if you will. Am I too old for practical jokes? Yes I think that is the answer. The sort of sense of humour that takes pleasure in creating uncomfortable situations for others is something of another age. Of course we still have the classic stories like Thurber on a Friday. I wonder if my life would have been different if I had hung around with people who took pleasure in the discomfort of others. My friends were not like that. At least, I do not think so. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. Right now I am anxiously awaiting the end of winter. Sometime this weekend the annual lobster fishery begins locally which will distract everyone for about two months. No time for practical jokes when you have traps to haul. Even in the mail I receive nothing of note. Unless you count those offers of another credit card. Instead I have the daily scourge of phone calls from people who really want to know more about me. Offering nothing in return. Is that the practical joke of the new century? I will have to give this some thought.

At one point I was ruled by rudiments. Let me explain. My life was music but rather than depending upon tones I depended upon mathematics. I had to count all the time because I had to take something as simple as a beat and subdivide it so many ways then it became unrecognizable to the average person. We had pages of notes on what to do and how to do it. Unless you’ve tried to complete a flam tap under pressure you have not lived. Unless you have counted the strokes in a roll and I do not mean a spring roll or a bread roll I mean the roll on a snare drum you cannot recognize how many ways there are to get it wrong. Believe me 5 Rook stroke roll and a 13 stroke roll have little in common. I also had the virtue of being the only person in my class in the percussion section. In a situation where you cannot be right or wrong I had to be right all the time because others would hear what I did. And so I went forward in life with more then a cursory attention to subdivisions. I learned how many ways you could subdivide a beat. Even when you were trying to keep the beat you had to be on that. I have never had a teacher who was an expert in percussion so I guess I got off easy. Anytime I had to go before a jury I was quite aware that I knew more than anyone else in the room about what I was trying to do. I learned, early on, that the biggest drumstick is not necessarily the best. Pretty hard to do something with finesse when your tool is a broom handle. Or a tiny pencil. Of course I made rudiments in the background when I should have been doing mathematics. That was how I rolled. Even now I will tap my fingers and say the magic words flam or paradiddle or single stroke roll. There were so many and it was more than just a memory game it had to be the basis of everything you did in a musical situation. Take it from me a snare drum does not make music. After all that I went on to other instruments that had more charm in this social situation but there is nothing that can replace the pleasure of getting the beat right on the headrest of your buddies car. Distracted driving? That was me your honour. If someone ever offers to let you join a marching band jump to it . There is more than the bass drum.