To The Top Of Cobble Hill Mountain & A Dropcam Review

Paulette has been on quite a fitness kick this summer and on occasion I get dragged along too. In the past week alone, including yesterday, we’ve hiked all the way to the top of Cobble Hill Mountain 3 times. Sunday morning was perfect as it was mostly clear and cool when we left home at 10am for the 10 minute drive to the park and trailhead.

At the top of the mountain I took this photo using my iPhone 5S

Arriving at the parking lot we were surprised to see so many vehicles. In fact, we had to park in the overflow lot. This was a good sign for Rylie as it meant there would be lots of people with dogs on the trails so Rylie would get to meet lots of friends along the way. I snapped a photo using my iPhone 5S and after getting home and looking at it I could see it looked more like fall than I ever imagined. I’m using my iPhone for quick pics a lot and its been working out quite well. It sure comes in handy a lot.

Looking at Cobble Hill Mountain from our front yard

Although it’s still summer like weather here on the Island, the signs of fall are around us. It’s getting dark earlier at night, it’s cooler in the mornings and on our walk in the forest Sunday morning the leaves are beginning to change color and fall to the ground.

The more I learn and use my Dropcam video security system the more impressed I am with its performance, simplicity and WiFi features that make it the perfect device for monitoring a home or RV while away for just a few hours or even a few months.

In my blog on August 17th (Dropcam – Super Simple Video Security For Home Or RV) I wrote about how simple it was to setup and start using the Dropcam video. After the first 2 weeks of use, I can say it has performed flawlessly and is sending alerts to my iPhone when motion or sound is detected just like the promotional ads promised.

Why would I be getting alerts? Wouldn’t that mean our home is being burglarized? Nope – it just means Rylie is up on the couch in the living room barking at dogs daring to walk by on the street in front of her home! We don’t leave Rylie home alone that often but sometimes, like going to Costco, she does get to stay and guard the home front. Normally, we assume she just finds a place to rest and sleeps until we get home. But, not always it seems.

Here’s the photo alert I received while at Carrie’s showing it was just Rylie

A few days ago while we were out for about an hour, Dropcam sent an alert to my iPhone along with a snapshot that showed Rylie up on the arm of the couch looking out the front room window. Out of curiosity, I switched to my “live view” and I could not only see Rylie but hear her barking ferociously at something outside. Now, I could have actually talked to her by using the camera’s remote speaker to say “Rylie, no barking” but didn’t for fear of scaring the wits out of her.

Our Dropcam automatically turns on when I leave and turns off when I return

Another great feature of the Dropcam that I really like is the iPhone apps ‘Control by Location’ feature that when selected automatically turns the Dropcam “on” when I leave home and “off” when I get back. The app uses the iPhone’s Location Services to determine when I leave home. It then turns the Dropcam on. When I return home, the app senses that and turns the Dropcam off. In the image above, you can see the alert I got after returning from our hike up Cobble Hill Mountain. Love the Dropcam!!

Thanks for visiting!

iPhone’s Hidden Function That Records Where You’ve Been And How Long You’ve Been There – Want To See It?

As August comes to an end and with it summer for some, I thought I’d just write a quick post to let you in on one of the iPhone’s little hidden secrets that many of you, I’m sure, may not be entirely aware of: Apple’s phone has a hidden function that records where you’ve been and how long you spent there. That may strike fear into the hearts of many knowing that Apple along with the more nefarious Google is tracking everything we do but, thankfully for now anyway, not what we’re thinking!

Note:  The following only applies if you have Location Services Turned On

Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services

It is kind of Orwellian to realize that your iPhone can keep a perfect record of where you’ve been in the last month or so along with the exact time you arrived at and when you left. Just think of the possibilities if someone who you didn’t want to know where you were at ever got a hold of your iPhone and knew how to check this. Well, I’m going to show all of you amateur detectives exactly how to do this!  To begin, just follow the steps in the image above.

On the System Services screen scroll down and click on Frequent Locations

The System Services menu shows all kinds of different option but the one we want is Frequent Locations. This is the nasty little option that tracks where you’ve been and for how long. Clicking on this might just shock you but it’s worth a look anyway!

Frequent Locations is displayed in both text and map form

Looking at the image above, the first screen that displays after clicking on Frequent Locations is the History section on the left that shows how many times you’ve visited this location in the last month or so and the date range. Selecting one of the items will show a map like the one on the right.

A Map display showing where you’ve been, on what date and for how long

As you can see by the image above Frequent Locations knows to the minute how long you’ve been at a specific location. It’s quite frightening in a way especially if you had no idea the iPhone was doing this.

Now the good news – you can prohibit this type of tracking by turning off Location Services on the Settings menu. This, however, will disable many of the features required by valuable apps like GPS, Maps and others. Another way, if you don’t want to turn Location Services off, is to simply turn off Frequent Locations.This option is for those folks who visited somewhere they shouldn’t have and want to keep it a secret – ha, ha!!  Google will probably get you then.

Thanks for visiting!

Bullets & Burgers – Fries? “No, I’ll Have A Side Of AK-47’s”

In White Hills, AZ, about halfway between Kingman and Las Vegas, NV, there’s a place of business called “Bullets and Burgers”. It’s the burger joint/machine gun range where a 9 yr. old girl shot her instructor to death using an Uzi sub-machine gun.

Charles Vacca, 39, of Lake Havasu City was shot last Monday morning, airlifted to a medical center in Las Vegas and pronounced dead shortly before 9 p.m.,

It’s since been labeled an accident but surely the correct finding should have been an “accident waiting to happen.” How in the world was a 9 yr. old girl ever allowed to fire such a powerful weapon as an Uzi on fully automatic?  It appears that in Arizona its perfectly o.k. Bullets and Burgers allows children 8 and older to shoot firearms as long as their parents(????) are there to supervise. What happened to taking kids to Mickey D’s for a Happy Meal? These parents thought she should shoot a machine gun?

With your burger, you get a choice of machine guns not soup, salad or fries

In reading the story about this tragic event I clicked on a link that took me to the actual website of Bullets and Burgers and what I saw there absolutely astounded me. It’s a private outdoor range that boasts of a “unique 'Desert Storm' atmosphere and military style bunkers.”  Also “Our guests have an opportunity to choose from a wide variety of machine guns. Our 50 Cal. selections includes the Barrett Sniper Rifle, the Browning BMG .50 Cal ('the deuce'), and the Desert Eagle.”

And, that’s not all as “you will be treated with the World Famous All American Hamburger, fresh cut french fries, and a drink. The All American Burger is guaranteed to be the best hamburger you have ever eaten.”  This range offers tour packages out of Las Vegas tailored to meet the dreams of every gun nut including the Extreme Sniper Adventure.

All kinds of different packages to choose from at Bullets and Burgers

Bullets and Burgers offers several packages ranging from Bronze at $199 to Ultimate Platinum at $999. The Platinum deal provides you with 8 Machine Guns of your choice including the Barrett 50 Cal.

A spectacularly tone-deaf NRA Women Tweet 2 days after the shooting

Less than two days after the 9-year-old girl in Arizona accidentally shot and killed Charles Vacca, the National Rifle Association touted new ways for children to "have fun" at shooting ranges. The story linked in the tweet lists a number of new and colorful targets that it says will engage young shooters who have grown bored with the standard bull's-eye. Boggles the mind how they can be so tone-deaf!

Personally, I think I’ll stick to 5 Guys and In ‘n Out for burgers while were in the USA!

Thanks for visiting!

Do You Have Medical Insurance For Your Dog Or Cat?

We don’t, but we’ve often thought about it. Just recently when we lost our 10 yr. old Cockapoo, Molly, the vet bills for her care and treatment amounted to nearly $2,000 and we would have spent more had there been anything the vets could have done to try and save her. It made me wonder how many times owners have lost their pets simply because the cost of diagnosis and treatment was just too high.

Just the other day while browsing some web tech sites, I stumbled across this headline: Pet-Insurer Trupanion Sees IPO Pop. While there are well over a dozen other companies offering insurance for pets,Trupanion broke new ground recently by being the first ever with a singular focus on insuring pets to debut on the NYSE. They claim to cover 90% of all covered costs of veterinary care which includes:

If your puppy, adult, or senior gets sick or injured, we reimburse 90% of all covered costs of veterinary care, including: diagnostic testing, surgeries, medications, hospitalization, and medical care from emergency veterinary clinics and veterinary specialists.

I decided to check into Trupanion a bit more as I’d never heard of them before. To my surprise, I found that Trupanion was founded by current CEO Darryl Rawlings as Vetinsurance in Vancouver, B.C. in 1999. The very first member enrolled in the new health care plan was Monty, CEO Darryl Rawlings dog.

In 2007 Trupanion moved its headquarters to Seattle, WA in an effort to raise funding from local venture capital investors to help them penetrate the United States market.

One of of the venture capitalists who invested in the company was Howard Schultz of Starbuck’s fame and fortune. When Schultz isn’t selling coffee he and his partner, co-founders of Maveron a venture capital firm, invest in startup ventures.

Maveron has a 25% stake in Trupanion and the IPO that debuted last month on the NYSE raised $73 million. That’s small potato's (or is that Tall Potato’s) to Schultz but the potential for growth in pet insurance is staggering in the U.S.

You can get a Dog or Health Insurance cost quote from Trupanion’s website:

The biggest question to most pet owners is undoubtedly “what does it cost”? According to Trupanion’s website, the cost of insuring a pet varies based on age, breed, gender, where the animal lives and whether the pet has been spayed or neutered. The average monthly premium for a cat is $26, and $40 for a dog, which represents 85 percent of its policies. At first glance, $40 a month does seem like a lot of money to me and that’s probably why we never pursued insurance.

On the other paw, $40 a month is $480 a year and as we all know just one visit to a vet can add up to $500 pretty fast especially when further tests and medications are involved. We’ve always been concerned about emergency pet costs while we’re down south each year and far away from our family vet. This usually means a whole battery of blood tests etc. if emergency care is required. I just might check into this and get a quote for Rylie. If I do, I’ll let you know what I find out.

Thanks for visiting!

Netscape Browser – Whatever Happened To Its Founder?

Many of you may not be familiar with the name Marc Andreessen. Well then, how about Netscape? Netscape was the browser that made the Internet explode and Marc Andreessen was one of its co-founders and the face of Netscape. Before Netscape, the Internet was pretty much text based but with Netscape's graphical interface it blew the doors off. Netscape was the way tens of millions of people were introduced to cyberspace. I still remember seeing my first demo of Netscape. Wow!

Netscape Navigator blew the doors off the Internet when it was introduced

At the University of Illinois in Champaign in the early 1990’s, Andreessen and some college friends worked 2 months of 80 hour weeks to develop a graphical browser called Mosaic which used pictures and mouse clicks to navigate through information. The team gave the Mosaic browser away free, and before long, some two million people were using it, This caught the attention of Silicon Graphics Inc. founder James Clark out near San Jose, CA.

Moving to Silicon Valley in 1994, Andreessen and Clark founded a company called Mosaic but quickly changed it to Netscape when the University of Illinois objected and threatened to sue.

No problem. Andreessen recruited his buddies from college, where some were still working for $6.85 an hour, and they created a new version of the browser from scratch called Netscape. They went public with an IPO in 1995 and became instant celebrities with their enormous wealth.

It looked like clear sailing for Netscape on the world wide web until Bill Gates of Microsoft became a  convert to the Internet. Starting from behind, Gates and Microsoft simply licensed the Mosaic source code from the University of Illinois and called it Internet Explorer. Simple! Microsoft embedded Internet Explorer in its Windows OS and steamrolled Netscape to become the world’s most popular browser. In 1999, at age 35, Andreessen sold Netscape to AOL for $4.2 billion.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Netscape and still have an original box of its browser on my bookshelf in my computer room. Also, I never heard much about Marc Andreessen after that and always felt kind of bad for him as he pretty much had no chance against the Microsoft behemoth. Boy, was I ever wrong (again)! It turns out that Andreessen went on to found a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Andreessen Horowitz invests in entrepreneurs, products, and companies in the information technology industry and boy do they know how to pick them. The two became known as super-angel investors. Among the startups they invested in were Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Jawbone and Pinterest which has raked in billions for them. Marc Andreessen also serves on the board of directors of Facebook and eBay so he’s doing quite nicely.

I’m not sure why I still have this 20 yr. old Netscape Communicator box

In another quirky twist of fate, in 2009, an investor group that included Andreessen Horowitz acquired a majority stake in Skype for $2.75 billion which at the time was considered a risky investment.  Not for the super-angel investors. Just two years later in May, 2011 they sold Skype to Microsoft for $8.5 billion. That must have been some sweet signing ceremony for Andreessen and I’ll bet the champagne corks were popping that night. I’ll never feel sorry for Marc Andreessen again!

Thanks for visiting!

Terror Is Never Sacred – Guest Blogger On Hellfire Religions

While surfing around the web early Tuesday morning and checking in on some of my favourite bloggers, I came across one blog post that had this simple link: Terror is Never Sacred. That was all, so being a curious type I clicked on it and was taken to the site of The Sea Gypsy Philosopher. What I found there was a very thought provoking and extremely well-written essay on religions.

To say the least this essay is “not your Mother’s Kool-Aid” – of any flavour. To many, it will seem like bitter Castor Oil rather than Sweet Cherry. But like I said in my blog just the other day getting off the same Kool-Aid once in a while can be a good thing. To some readers, Ray Jason’s words will come across as sacrilegious while others may see his thoughts as totally reasonable.

Having being taught by Catholic nuns from Grades 1 to 8 and then by Jesuit priests and the Christian Brothers of Ireland through high school, I can identify with a lot of what the author says about striking fear into the hearts and souls of children. I’m sure that readers who have attended a Catholic school will identify with that.

Mr. Jason kindly allows his essays to be re-published under the conditions shown in the box below and I’ve abided by those terms.

RE-PUBLICATION INFO Please reprint my essays as much as you wish following these simple rules: 1) Credit RAY JASON 2) Do not alter the essays 3) Provide a link to my site SPREAD THE WORD!

TERROR IS NEVER SACRED - by Ray Jason

A handsome catamaran recently docked near my lovely sailboat. The captain is Russian and his wife is Turkish. They have two children, and although they are too young for passports, I suspect that they are from theKingdom of Joy. That’s because all day long they spread their laughter and happiness throughout the marina. Whether it is riding their tiny bicycles or fishing with their parents or trying to learn how to swim, their vibrant innocence delights and comforts me.

It has also inspired me. The essay that I had been working on seemed lost in a mental labyrinth. It deals with the immense subject of religion, and it had become too big and too confused. But then a wave and a smile from the two kids suddenly made me realize that I should narrow my focus, and concentrate on religion and children.

The Ultimate Terror

Witnessing the carefree exuberance of these youngsters, bequeaths me both joy and sorrow. I am happy that they live so effortlessly in the ecstasy of the moment, and that their youth shields them from the woes of the world. But I am sad that all around the world hundreds of millions of children are having such blissful contentment sacrificed on the altar of hell.

How do we not understand that churches that preach hellfire are the most evil terrorist organizations on the planet? The worst that a political enemy can do is torture and murder a person. At least that victim’s suffering ends with their death. But if a Christian fails to abide by certain rules, they are supposedly doomed to eternal fire and damnation. And if a person is NOT a Christian, they too are sentenced to endless fiery agony.

If such a virulent dogma was imposed on people when they arrived at adulthood, at least they would have enough life experience to evaluate it. But forcing such a terrifying vision on an unknowing child is so repellant that I can’t find a word for it – oh wait, here’s a good one – DESPICABLE.

Consider for a moment, the child-raising process. Human nurturing revolves around the parents steadily and incrementally passing along life-lessons to their offspring. The kids learn that snakes can be deadly, that deep water can drown them and that fire can kill them. As this knowledge is passed along to the children, a bond of trust is established. So when the parents claim that there is this horrible place called hell, where bad people suffer eternal torture, the child believes that as well.

And so their world, which had been such a magical, immediate, constantly unfolding realm of wonder, is suddenly darkened and poisoned by the horror of hell. Destroying the innocence, optimism and joy of youth with such a doctrine is an indisputable act of terror!

But even more appalling is the fact that it is also an act of deceit. There is utterly no way that a parent or a priest or even a pope can absolutely know that there is a hell. And yet they proclaim that this is the case. When someone insists that something is true, even though they cannot prove it, that person is telling a lie.

And how do the hellfire spreaders defend such a perverse dogma? They insist that without the threat of eternal incineration, these children would not behave themselves. And yet the huge portion of the world that is not hypnotized by hellfire religions, such as the Hindus, Buddhists and non-believers, do not rampage around the planet wreaking havoc upon it. Even though nobody is screaming at them from a pulpit with threats of devils and pitchforks, these people manage to behave with decency and compassion.

So this is my first example of how religion is profoundly harmful to children – it mutilates the innocence and wonder of youth with the terror of a hell whose existence cannot even be proven.

Morality Does Not Need Religion

One of the common defenses of religion is that it is the keystone that keeps the arch of morality from collapsing in ruin. This is a preposterous claim that is easy to disprove. There were about 10,000 generations of humanity that preceded the appearance of the sky god monotheisms that dominate today’s religious landscape – or should that be battlefield? Without any commandments from Hebraic gods, these people managed to discover enough moral principles to not destroy each other and thus they carried on the human line.

Furthermore, throughout history there have been hundreds of other religions that arose, prospered, declined and disappeared. As each of these disintegrated there was no widespread chaos and carnage even though their ethical precepts had vanished.

Moral knowledge - the awareness of the difference between right and wrong - is innate in all of us. We do not need priests or mullahs or rabbis to reveal it to us. The revered “ten commandments” are a perfect example of this. Four of them are just a megalomaniacal insistence on reverence toward one particular god and the other six are essentially self-evident. Any New Guinea hunter- gatherer has figured out these things without the need for stone tablets.

Rather than being essential to morality, I find that religion is actually a keystone of immorality. For decades I have been arguing that the most far-reaching way to improve the world is to replace religion with “BASIC HUMAN DECENCY.” Consider this short list of things that you cannot do in the name of basic human decency, but that you can do in the name of Jesus or Mohammed:·

•   Witch-hunts
• · Suicide bombings
• · Inquisitions
• · Book burnings
• · Holy wars
• · Female oppression
• · Slavery
• · Homosexual bigotry
• · Ethnic cleansing
• · Unwanted children
• · Demonization of scientists

One of the main reasons that religion is such a malignant rather than benign force, is because it immediately allied itself with the kings and pharaohs after the arrival of so-called human civilization. During pre-Agriculture, in the long Paleolithic hunter-gatherer era, there was no hierarchal division of rulers and ruled. But when Neolithic agriculture provided food surpluses and then division of labor this also initiated what I call “division of importance.” In simple terms, this means a society comprised of a tiny elite of dominant people and a huge mass of subordinate people.

Those that ascended to the top of the political class tended to be the most ruthless and immoral. And since religious leaders wanted to be the handmaiden of these pitiless demagogues, they camouflaged their immoral deeds with moral platitudes. They had already sold their souls even as they were claiming that their mission was to save souls.

As I sit with my back against the mast, finishing this essay, the two beautiful children come scurrying past. A few steps behind them are their parents who are carrying tiny swimming goggles and life jackets. As they disappear down the dock this little scene of happiness somehow inverts itself in my mind’s eye. And I realize that halfway around the world there are two other parents sobbing in almost unbearable agony as they hold their dead child in their arms. Ten minutes earlier she had been the joy and blessing of their lives – a bundle of sunshine in human form.

I wonder on which of the current killing fields of the Holy Land this sad event is unfolding. Is it Gaza, where one religion opposes another? Or is it Iraq where the carnage is even more perverse - since it is warring sects of the same religion?

I quietly curse all of the senseless, cruel tragedy of life as I sit here pondering it from the evening of my years. And then I wonder about the future of those precious children on the nearby boat, who are only in the daybreak of their years. Will their twilight decades see a planet that has been purged of this evil force? Will their children get to savor a new golden dawn emancipated from this curse which has caused so much horror and suffering down the centuries?

I will not pray for this … but I will yearn for it … and I will work for it!

Ray Jason

---

So there. By now you are either nodding in agreement or your hair is on fire! Either way, it’s only one man’s opinion and therefore not a fact. And, each of us is entitled to our own opinions. I have to say that the idea of eternal torture in hell has always seemed like a real stretch to me and one that was invented my humans. I still remember Catholic nuns gleefully retelling the terrors of eternal damnation and thinking, even though I was not yet 10 yrs. old, that they were a bit wacko.

Thanks for visiting!

Bill Gates Donates $1 Million To I-594 Gun Control Campaign

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife have donated $1 million to a Washington state Initiative 594 campaign seeking to expand background checks on gun sales,
The donation to the campaign was given Friday but not made public until Monday, when it was posted on the state's Public Disclosure Commission website. I wrote about this gun control campaign in a post last week titled Gun Initiative Gets Big Boost From Gates, Allen and Ballmer – all former Microsoft owners/CEO’s.

Just pocket change……

The measure on the November ballot in Washington would require background checks for all private firearms sales, including those at gun shows or on the Internet. In a joint statement Bill and Melinda Gates said “we are pleased to join many others making a donation to the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility to support Initiative 594 on the November ballot,”  When I wrote my initial blog on this Gates had only contributed $50 thousand. He really stepped it up last week!

The huge donation from Gates comes on the heels of fellow Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's $500,000 donation and former CEO Steve Ballmer’s $600,000. It seems the ‘Big 3” of Microsoft are really serious about making sure this gun control measure is passed this November. One thing’s for sure – no opposition is capable or raising more money than these guys whose combined net worth is well over $100 billion.

Maybe there’s hope yet that the Burger King scheme to buy Tim Horton’s and move their HQ’s to Canada to avoid US taxes might just be too much of a “whopper” for some. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says displays the "contempt" that big business has for average Americans. A lot of Burger King customers are also boycotting the hamburger chain because of their tax avoidance scheme. I, for one, hope there’s enough pressure put on BK to make them change their minds.

This was the If This Then That “app of the day”!  I passed on it.

Moving on to far less serious matters In the category of “Apps I don’t think I need”, one arrived in my inbox yesterday. This If This Then That (IFTTT) app would send a alert to my iPhone whenever the International Space Station passes over my location. I talked about IFTTT in my blog on July 16, 2014. I’m not sure when the International Space Station was first launched but I’ve managed to live so far without knowing where it is or what it’s doing so I think I’m just going to keep it that way.

Thanks for visiting!