Occupation of Independence

I w a nt to follow up with some suggestions about conquering the Uni nterrupted Prose Syndrome, by making verbiage "breathe" with some kind of pictorial illustration, gotten somewhere . (Let's ignore the fact that music might be eve n better for this purpose, since it's pr obably more technically difficult to get it into the blog post.)  So off I will go, searching for shareable photographs in the great charnel houses for internet photographs, such as publicDomainPictures.net, Picasa, or Flickr. Blogs that have a Creative Commons License, such as a commenter's blog , are also worth a serious look. Oops. There is a likely problem that we must address before rolling up our sleeves. Recall the controversy that good ol' Leo Tolstoy got into in the Colorado arts scene, one summer not so long ago. (grin) By invoking his arguments on "What is Art?" (free on Google Books), I am not trying to con you with an "appeal to Authority," as it might

Now don't be sus picious or skeptical if I boast of progress in my de-internetting project by reading adulterous love triangles. Thanks to getting a library card from the Yuma library, I picked up the late-1940s movie, Anna Karenina , starring Vivian Leigh. She was good in the role and, let's face it, agreeable to look at. It served as inspiration for a rematch with Tolstoy's novel. It took about 40 pages for the main characters to start the soap opera, proper, after which I just rolled my eyes and put the book away. Ahh but wait. Maybe things are different when re-reading a book.  Let's try to learn something from rewatching a movie. Years ago I learned the trick of focusing away from the center of the screen. Without any special effort, you prob ably would be focusing dead center, where the action is an d the leading c haracters are.  Perhaps this could work for re-reading a novel? For example I am merely skimming the main chapters in Anna , all ghastly s

How many years has it been since Time magazine switched from their famous "Man of the Year" award to "Person of the Year? " But that's still anthropocentric, you know. The award would be more PC if it were opened up to all species. Coyotes come to mind, especially wily ones. Since the financial turmoil of 2008 it has become almost common to picture our economy -- actually the world's economy -- as Wile E. Coyote running over the edge of a cliff, finally looking down and realizing the situation, and then disappearing into a shrinking point and a final poof at the bottom of the canyon. Despite its aging, th e coyote metaphor is so perfect that it should get the award for 2012. Just think of all the time and effort you could spend discussing so many issues and problems of our times; it tires you just to think of it. And we are sick of it anyway. Sometimes the metaphor seems to apply to someth ing perfectly, but the coyote in question just hang s out t

An internet dieter does not have the advantage that food dieters do when they finally step on the scale. Perhaps there is an app out there that keeps track of the hours you are on the internet. Nevertheless, at the risk of fooling myself, I claim to be making progress with my internet diet. When wireless internet access got better around 2005, I really thought I was done with book-reading, and that the internet would be my main venue for reading in the future. But experience has shown that most blogs are too trivial and repetitive to waste much time with. Of course the internet is still good for many things other than reading blogs. Ever m indful that one can't cut b ack on a vice without replacing it with something else, I've gone back to reading books , which thankfully has become much easier the last few years. For one thing , reading is no w easier on the eyes.  Th is is crucial to older eyes on winter evenings, e s pecially when they are camping in an RV without el

Occasionally it is fun to see if I can catch the readers sleeping by giving them a pop quiz. A couple comments about eReader gadgets recently revealed an opportunity for me to move in for the kill (grin). There seems to be a misunderstanding of what it takes to read a book comfortably .  This is an important topic for those of us who see internet addiction (on trivial and repetitive websites) as a serious problem to overcome. Has anyone ever beaten a vicious habit by trying to replace it with a vacuity? I doubt it. They need to replace it with something that has a positive existence; something that is tangible, lively, and takes up time. In my case that means giving up the insulting trivialities of the blogosphere and going back to reading "books." Now for the multiple choice quiz: which factor has the greatest beneficial effect on your comfort, endurance, and attention span when reading a book? Display size of the eReader, i.e, 7", 10", etc. Operating system

Baby Boomers should have something to say about consuming information as a way of life. When we came into this world, the great blight of television befell the world. Today, toward the end of our passage, the internet is taking over. These are two information revolutions just as big as, but far more sudden than, the invention of the alphabet or Gutenberg's movable-type printing press. Baby Boomers, destined to eventually become America's Worst Generation, started off life as the first generation raised on television. TV-haters (like me) would love to believe that that proves cause and effect. Whether you buy that or not, it is strange how uncritically many parents welcomed TV into their homes in the 1950s. Soon the living room furniture was all arranged around the TV set. Many children grew up with no restrictions on their TV habits. How ironic that many a traditional father in the 1950s kept a gun in the house to 'protect his family', you know. And yet he allowed th

So far I've resisted adding links to dozens of "me too" mainstream RV travelogues because, when I'm the reader, a mile-long list of such links is too daunting to even dig in to. So I've restricted the list to friends' blogs. In other cases I haven't listed links to certain blogs because they already have huge readerships, so my referrals wouldn't give them the slightest bump. (Examples are toSimplify.net and theBayfieldBunch.com) But even more fundamentally I don't list mainstream RV travelogues because they are stereotypical to the point of self-parody. They are too much alike and too predictable. Does it sound like I'm in curmudgeon mode today? I admit to being fairly hard to please. But there is a constructive way to use reputed "cynics" and "negative thinkers": when they give a recommendation it really means something . I added cheapRVliving.com to my list of links. It's been built by somebody who I have never

Arriving in Cuba NM I made a mistake that an experienced traveler has no excuse for: I asked some low-level employees in a couple stores where the Verizon cell tower was. If you want an assured, blank, uncomprehending stare from a local, that is the question to ask. But in fact I first asked two firefighters this very question, and they gave me the wrong answer. (Please don't tell me the answer is on the internet. The internet is full of inaccurate and obsolete information. Nobody ever corrects any of it.) I went away feeling like a fool for even asking. After such an experience it is always tempting to conclude that the average person is a know-nothing. But there might be a kinder and gentler explanation: most lives are actually quite circumscribed. Most people have little curiosity about things they have no immediate need to know. "Life" consists mostly of routines built around work, driving to work, household chores, shopping, and television. Asking where the cell

I really enjoyed my stay at Glenwood, especially at their public library since it goes a long way toward wiping out the hole in the Verizon coverage there. And they allow visitors to check out books and DVDs, which encourages you to stay longer.   It's always fun to drop in on the Cat Walk again: On the drive from hot Glenwood NM to cool Luna NM we passed a classic New Mexico wreck. There was nothing special about it except that I love all such wrecks. Using my notes from the past I chose a boondocking site near Luna NM that is quite high. We just barely made it in. Then I walked over to my RV community camper, pulled a sad face, and apologized to her for only being at 7000 feet. She was gracious about it, and promised not to rub my nose in it, too bad. As it turned out, the GPS needed a little longer to find the satellites through the ponderosas. We're actually at 8250 feet. It's easy to see the hotspot of the Whitewater/Baldy/Gila f

Even people who don't watch television can't help but be aware of reality TV hit-shows. Although I've never watched "Survivor", I can imagine it. It seems that our Quest-for-Community caravan is becoming the show. In fact, it looks like a 17-year-old miniature poodle is likely to be the eventual winner. So far, we've survived being towed up mountains, infected doggie sutures, possible food poisoning, cargo doors that wouldn't close, tooth infection and pain, bad U-joints, a holding tank's drain valves being smashed against a rock, and nearly stepping on a rattlesnake. To the hard-bitten realist, solving problems and surviving disasters is a better way to build a real community than rhapsodizing about dreamy platitudes in the clouds. So maybe all these problems are a blessing in disguise. The latest disaster created an educational opportunity. In cellphone service-free Glenwood NM, we were struggling to find an old fashioned public phone in order

Near Patagonia AZ. These days another blogger, Ed Frey , claims that he is reading the entire archive of Fred on Everything , start to finish. So am I. I'm not sure if he influenced me to do this or vice versa. But it honks me off to think that somebody else came up with my brilliant idea before I did. There is only one way to settle this honorably. I must demand "satisfaction". That's right, I am publicly challenging this idea-robber to a duel: after a couple more weeks of reading he is invited to join me on the field of polemical battle, if he's valiant enough. The rules of the duel are simple enough: I propose that we each select one of Fred's essays as the "best" or most important, and then explain why it is so. A substantial number of quotes from the essay will be permitted. How about the end of April, Mr. Frey? My factor will call on your factor:

Every internet junkie gets in a rut now and then. At that point some friendly help is needed. I got some recently from fellow blogger, Ed Frey , who brought Fred Reed's website to my attention. I was familiar with Fred Reed as a writer, but the website is a new discovery. Fred has the proper attitude toward contemporary American culture and politics: sheer disdain and curmudgeonly wit. I put his link in the link section of my blog. There are too many juicy quotes to begin listing them all, but just to give you a brief slice of the flavor of Fred's blog: "Things change, usually for the worse, and always against the innocent. (This truth is a principle of curmudgeonry.)"

Soon after most people become acquainted with the RV travel blogosphere, they start to see patterns, enough so that they might classify them like this: RV 101 blogs. How to. Chock full of useful information for newbies. They work pretty hard for their nickels and dimes of Google ad income. Too bad there are so many minute details, which are intended to be practical but really aren't, since the reader's circumstances are different than the blogger's. Readers can feel insulted when such blogs appear to offer friendly advice to a "fellow" RVer, but then the reader learns he is just a chump being hit with a thinly-disguised ad. (The Linkbait Syndrome; it gets 'em every time.) Ah dear, the sordid topic of coin... RV travelogues. Where are Fred and Mildred today ? Aimed at armchair travelers and RV wannabees, these blogs offer pleasant entertainment as long as you live life purely through your eyeballs; mentally you will leave the blog completely starved. Final

No, I didn't go out and buy one, the gadget that is. But I did follow through on a commenter's suggestion of downloading Kindle ebooks from Amazon onto my netbook. I chose a freebie of course. Buying books is a "bridge too far". I firmly rejected the option of reading the eBook in the over-hyped "cloud" since that requires an internet connection, the very thing I want to liberate myself from. Instead, I opted to download the Kindle eReader onto my (Windows PC) netbook and to do the same with the eBooks themselves, since an internet connection is only needed during the downloading process, itself. Soon I was using it on a free classic, Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare . By his own admission he could write a preface to anything, even a cookbook, and the preface would be more popular than the book, proper. There is no "Edit" tool at the top of the screen; to copy a juicy quote you must highlight it first and then right-button for copy

At the moment I am in the Valley of the Sun, the Phoenix megalopolis. (If only it would run out of water and start shrinking. It would be a better place.) Its only real significance to me is that it is still on the Gila River migration route. But I can't help wondering about Verizon's 4G wireless service, available only in big cities like this. My mi-fi gadget is only a 3G model, so I can't actually sample the 4G service. It seems like I should be as excited about this improvement as I was when Verizon upgraded from 2G (1xRTT) to 3G (EVDO) a few years back. But back then there was no 5 Gigabyte per month limit. It makes sense that there should be a limit like that, despite the howls of gamers and video-addicts on the tech forums. So I have no real complaint against Verizon. But it does make a customer wonder what is so great or important about 4G wireless service: the only thing it's good for is watching videos, but if you give in to that temptation, you'll smac

It wasn't so long ago that "AT&T" charged $20 per month for wi-fi at Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, McDonalds, and various hotel chains. Now all the wireless telecoms are delighted to give you free wi-fi at such places. Off-loading data to wi-fi hotspots to lessen the data traffic jam at cell towers is a huge trend these days. In theory this should be a nice help to travelers. Having failed to win any looks of envy (or even respect) at Starbucks with my new $200 netbook, it seemed like McDonalds might promise more success: surely some toothless old man would be impressed with my spiffy new machine; you know, the old boys who find section D of yesterday's newspaper and read it in slow motion while drinking bottomless refills of senior coffee. Old habits die hard: walking into the store my eyes scanned the walls for an electrical outlet. First, they seem to design public wi-fi places without a single electrical outlet. That must be deliberate; they're not

It was a thrill for this chronic late-adopter and used-computer-buyer to finally have his first new computer. I boldly squatted in the parking lot outside the Target where I bought my new 11.6" Acer netbook at the loss-leader price of $200 and brazenly challenged a security guard or parking lot Zamboni to even try to kick me out. Nobody dared. I stayed up until midnight -- real midnight, as in media noche , as in mitternacht , not motorhome midnight of 9 p.m. -- transitioning to the new netbook. I had always feared doing this but it ended up being fun watching functionality and the software breath-of-life appear on a soul-less machine, step-by-step. At 530 in the morning I practically leaped out of bed, wondering if Starbucks would waken at 6 am. I didn't have to drive far in New Mexico's megalopolis, Albuquerque, to find one. Soon I was ensconced in a chair next to a personable floor lamp, with a scone and a (disappointing-tasting and over-priced) espresso, and pr

Act fast if any of this pertains to you. November 12 is the last day! How nice it was to be shopping for a new laptop when the old one isn't quite dead. What an energy hog the old laptop was, consuming 4 amps DC during normal operation. And I use it many hours per day! It's hard to find power consumption data on the internet or on the boxes at the stores since nobody really cares except a traveler who is running down his coach batteries. Fortunately I got some good numbers from tdhoch of RV Sabbatical, who has a Kill a Watt device for measuring power consumption in watts. (I use a resistor-based DC current sensor in the line between RV frame ground and the negative post of the battery.) Going through a Target recently (blush) I noticed a superb deal on an 11.6 inch netbook by Acer, model Aspire One AO722-0473. You can't get it online at Target since they are using it as a loss-leader to drive the consuming masses wild and bring them into the store. It would have been an

The challenge for me as a blogger has always been to gradually migrate my readership away from the pure travel genre and towards the topics that I'm interested in enough to write about, as given in the subtitle at the top of the blog. Somehow I have to do this without knowing much about my readers or where they come from; most readers probably still come from RV travel blogs. A cross-category blog is inherently difficult to match with readers. Perhaps that's why most blogs are "pure-breeds", such as news, politics, financial, vacation-like travel, sports, friends and family, etc. Imagine the disappointment of a the standard armchair traveler/RV wannabee who stumbles onto my blog. He wants escapist dreams and pretty pictures to help numb the pain of having four more years to go, in his cubicle prison; there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not what I do here. Offering anything but sugary fantasies will come off as being overly-earnest at best, or neg

It's rare for me to experience gadget lust. Normally all the sex appeal has gone flat for the boring ol' gadget by the time this late adopter gets one. But recently I've gone crazy reading about Tablets; not the iShackle line of products made by Apple, of course. Their gadgets are for aspirational consumers, whereas I am a maximum bang-for-the-buck, no-nonsense type of customer. This is about the Toshiba Thrive tablet, 10 inches, with the Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) operating system. The Thrive is distinguished from all the other Android tablets by its user-removable battery and its ports: it has a full-sized USB port, a slot for a full-sized SD card, and a full-sized HDMI port. Thus, the Toshiba Thrive tablet is the one most suitable for functioning as a substitute for a mini-notebook computer. So you can see why I got excited. Then I searched for Android versions of the programs that I use now on my Paleozoic laptop: Firefox with AdBlock, Picasa on disk (not in the cloud)