A different garden

 

 

This one a patch of grass in a park.

 

With shaggy mane mushrooms popping up.

 

Welcome mat garden update

 

 

Still looking fine.

 

But no secondary leaves yet to I.D.

 

For years

 

 

Maybe decades.  I’ve been joking with the kids that as we get older, and it’s time to take away the car keys, we totally understand.  But caution them that, at the same time, they need to understand that it will be our job to provide a moving target.

 

Well, we’ve just added a layer of complexity to that exchange.  Now we have a car that doesn’t require a key.  No key.  No fob.  Nothing but a cellphone.  The car is linked to Judy’s cellphone and mine.  When we get close to the car, it recognizes us, and wakes up, assuming the driver configuration for whoever is closest.  Now, when the kids do track us down, there is no key to take away.  And would you take away a smartphone from an old person and deprive them of that powerful digital link to the outside world?  And not only that, what safer option for an ageing driver but to take a robotaxi everywhere they go!  Oh yeah, I like the way this is going…

 

Remember when?

 

 

When you would reach for a slice of bread from the opened loaf and find green or gray mold?  Have you noticed that hasn’t happened lately?  It hasn’t for us in years.  The bread is just always good.  We can open a loaf of supermarket bread, use some of it, go on a trip for a week, and when we come home, the bread in that ten-day-old opened loaf is still good.

 

That’s not how it used to be. 

 

 

Robotaxi

 

 

For years I’ve been wanting to take a ride in a robotaxi.  Fully autonomous.  That would be so cool.  I had an opportunity a couple years ago in Phoenix when I needed to take an uber from where I was, back to Matt’s house.  I got all the way to push the “go” button (on the phone app), and it refused the ride.  Matt’s house was just a little out of the test zone for robotaxis in the Phoenix area.  Soo close.

 

Fast forward to last weekend.  We downloaded Full Self Driving (Supervised) for the Tesla.  (Supervised means that the driver has to pay attention.).  We told it where we wanted to go and turned it loose.  It’s not fully autonomous driving, but stops, starts, turns, complicated intersections and traffic; it drove us door to door.  We navigated to another place.  Nice.  We told it to take us home.  It drove to the freeway onramp, merged, kept up with traffic, changed lanes whenever it needed to.  Not a left lane driver, always got back into the middle lane when it could.  That was amazing.  It wasn’t flawless.  It twitched and slowed down once when it didn’t really need to (or I wouldn’t have).  Minor.  Nothing dangerous.  And overall, a very smooth ride.

 

There are headlines any time there is a failure of autonomous driving, but there are also statistics demonstrating that a supervised self-driving car is right now less likely to get in an accident than a regular car with a human driver.  With that as a starting point, and me behind the wheel in case we need to override anything, I’ll take that.  Our own private Robotaxi.  (And it’s as easy to turn off as it is to turn on.  Any time we want to drive, we can.  And any time we want a robotaxi ride, it’s one click away.)

 

Quote of the day

 

 

"I know a morning cup of coffee on the porch with your best friend is a simple and universally small thing. But it is also everything."   Christina Koch, astronaut.

 

 

 

 

 

A walk in the park

 

 

 

This time a people park.

 

 

Esperanza.

 

Pride of Barbados.

 

 

Texas sage bursting forth.