i think your smart watch is watching me

Time is ticking, and change is coming one way or another four days left three after today.

My all-time favorite article just hit ten million views (The Pizza Delivery Drone). I love the concept of a drone, trying to deliver a pizza to the wrong address.

Of course, in those views, I am curious how many are actual humans. How many are search bots, and how many are repeat views? The formula on the web usually is 7.8 to 1 (bots, reviews, and other automated source site views compared to 1 actual picture). So ten million is closer to about 2.2 million individual viewers; big numbers become small on the internet fast.

It is one of the reasons writing sites often struggle. A great post on a writing site might get 10,000 even 15000 views. A great base on the internet as a whole gets 1 million to 2 million views. It makes writing sites hard to build and make money with.

Many years ago, I used to post fun things my smart swatch was doing. I thought I would replay a few of those.

My smartwatch keeps flashing 12:00

My smartwatch keeps flashing file not found.

I asked my smartwatch for directions; it told me where it wanted me to go. That was not where I wanted to go.

How many smartwatches does it take to change a lightbulb? One. If it is allowed to tighten the band!

Sometimes we have had to have fun in the world around us. Many things are not fun!

Have a great Saturday!

.doc

The end is near

Five days and counting

One of the things I frequently watch is the reality of logistics. Why? It is a geeky hobby.

But one of the things that interest me overall is the reality of shipping and delivery. When FedEx first released the concept of package tracking, you could from the seller or shipper get a number. Then going to the FedEx website, you could look that number up, and it would tell you when your package was being delivered. Seems pretty commonplace now, but at the time, that was a massive investment in making sure they knew where boxes were all the time. The numbering system allowed them to route the package and track the package and realize it was.

The changes in the past three years are remarkable. Now they can notify you that your package is only four stops away from your house. You don’t know how far that is, but you can assume that four finishes are probably less than 2-3 miles overall. Just amazing how much information. Another thing they have had to change in the modern world is they send you a picture of your box, letting you know it is on your porch. The number of porch pirates has continued to increase every year. A porch pirate steals packages from your patio when you are not home. There is even a nomenclature for them, porch pirate. That, sadly, is another recent increase in terms of the world of packages.

Why am I bringing this up>? Well, automated communication isn’t hard. The admins on this site could that if they wanted to. I will leave you with something my grandfather used to tell me many years ago. When you get in a carboy, always check the parking brake. I never understood what that means, until recently, when I watched a show on Model T Fords. You used to leave the parking brake accidentally and not know it until your parking brake was on fire. My grandfather learned to drive in a Model T. I get it now. Always check your parking brake when you get in the car. You never know when the last driver set the parking brake!

If you haven’t done so check your parking brake here on the site. Make sure you have a backup copy of your critical information!

,doc

Time is ticking

Six days

I remember when I came to This site. It seemed to be a green field. I know now that it was more than that. I have, as a pixie reminded me, made good friends here. People I trust and respect. People that I would, without a doubt, call a friend. Some of us came to this site from Niume. As Niume crumbled around us, we scurried to the next site hoping to continue doing the thing we love to do, write.

I thought it would be fun to play a fun game of did you know, technology!

Radio waves were around long before humans discovered them; the initial concept (AM) had a limited range (less than 10 miles). FM had a more extended range. But that was not the technology that would survive. TV pushed radio to a second tier in less than ten years.

Cellular phones came to form the original packet radios designed for military use. The cellular telephone has survived, and now more people have cellphones than automobiles in the world.

Automobiles were introduced nearly 80 years before cellular phones.

GPS has had three versions s(GPS I, II, and III at each change, the number of Satellites required to operate the Global Positioning System has decreased.

You still need 12 connections for a full lock on your phone but what once took as much as 11 minutes now happens in less than 30 seconds!

YouTube gets more than 600 new videos every minute of every day.

Television was originally said to cause cancer (like 5g now) because they say 5g is today.

I hope you had fun with this brief sojourn through history.

.doc

Time is ticking

Seven more days.

There has not been a peep, no new posts from pending authors. Nothing approved or added to the site other than a few Adsense focused posts.

The site is way down, literally down to less than 24 new posts a day. Yesterday my noon post was visible this morning when I logged in in 4 years on this site that has never happened before. That made me sad.

I have published a lot of posts here on this site. So part of me is a little sad right now. I know that there are other sites out and around now. I have tried a few, and some stuck. I really, as I’ve said before, like to do my in-depth philosophical posts on Hubpages. It is a longer format and lets me explore the entire thought. But there is a piece of me because I have adapted to this site, making me sad now. Over the last four years, I have changed my wander project. The evolution is making it fit this site and the limits. I have moved my technical posts to fewer reviews and more essay driven technology discussions. I have met people that I will treasure as friends. Carol, Albert, LaJenna, Introvert, Hannifar, Kim J, Ghostwriter  Alex L, John L, Lado, Vidocka, etc. People that I would go so far as to call friends. I made fast friends on Niume; people like Angie, the Pixie, and Carol T. All of these people have enriched my life (and there are many more I have not thought of or mentioned by name.

You’ve wandered with me, we’ve discussed the impact of technology, parenting, children, and travel. We have wandered the Philippines of life.

A good friend of mine always used to say the best part of acting (he was prominent in community theater) is walking back out on stage and taking a bow. But the best thing of all he said was that feeling of getting it right!

So to those that helped me get it right occasionally, thank you!

.doc

The reality of 5g

Eight days and counting.

As we head down the path of 5g networks, there are several exciting things to consider. The first is, what do you need all that bandwidth for? I know that I consume a lot of bandwidth at home. It is part of what I do every day. Not as many people find the need to stream information. But in the world of tomorrow, many more will be doing the streaming reality if you consider one aspect of streaming, YouTube. What began a little over ten years ago and then was purchased by Google is now a vast entity. YouTube, on average, gets 600 new videos every minute of every day. If you think about videos on YouTube, that means in an hour, they have 3600 new videos. Now a percentage of those are pulled because they shoundb’t’ be on youtube (copyright or content issues). But it is a lot of videos.

Netflix continues to buy old TV series so that people can binge-watch shows they low. I remembered years ago, we never really got to binge-watch. Binge-watching is something that many more people do now. Netflix and Hulu drive a lot of binge-watching. The exciting reality is that things continue to evolve. I thought I would share three areas where 5g will change how people correctly operate in the world.

1. Remote medical procedures, small real-time medicine allows a doctor in New Jersey to perform surgery in Montana. It means in really tricky cases where sometimes patients die; now the Dr. That knows how to fix that issue can perform the surgery!
   1. Using connected robotic surgery equipment, the doctor can remotely do the surgery.
   2. Real-time live to watch the process and help the on hand doctors troubleshoot any issues
2. Real-time data for cars. Not driverless cars today, but providing vehicles with real-time traffic, weather, and other road conditions.
3. Over time the ability to reduce the existing digital divide.

The world is going to change rapidly with 5g!

.doc

Is the end near?

Nine more days.

I like Carol’s suggestion calling it a line in the sand. But it is more a line in Granite now. September 30th, 2020, is the last day I am posting here. Four years is a long time, I will swing by and check on the site from time to time, but for now, I am moving to other publication sites. That reality saddens me. But I see no other options.

I have several technical reviews that I need to get to; I probably won’t post them here in the near term. I am still reading and commenting on posts every single day. I am and will continue to support this wonderful community.

Someone once asked me maybe two years ago the impact of a comment. At the time, we had over commenters (one person who commented once on 40 or more posts every day). That behavior cost us the ability to get paid for commenting on other people’s posts. The funny thing is, that person swooped in, took the money, and ran to greener pastures. Oh well.

But the value of a comment is three views. You end up with an idea and a comment. You open your post and reply to the word, and the other person opens the center, and either likes ore replies to your comment. The value of a story is not only the initial comment; it is the reply and conversation that results from that. So, sadly I can now tell you the impact of no one being able to comment on posts. Well, I should say no one being able to reply to comments. The number of views is down by 50% or more. The number of authors is declining every day but comments still have value. A comment versus an upvote is a significant difference. In fact, in these days of fewer words, I can start to pull numbers together.

One comment is worth roughly four views today.

Being on the most commented list is also worth about four views. I cannot tell you if that is in addition to, or just because of the comments.

.doc

sometimes i wonder

Dear Admins:

When people couldn’t post on this site for 30 days, you were radio silent.

When we lost the draft folder, you were radio silent.

Now, still radio silent, we have no way to reply to other authors’ comments.

Come on, team! All you have to do is pick one user and tell them what is going on.

I am now only ten days from ceasing posting here.

I want to end today with a little pontification about the shortsighted nature of some posts. Yes, you, Jaylar. Your post was rude. i would report it, but what’s the point the admin team doesn’t respond.

1. Comments still work. You can comment on anything.
2. Comments are still visible in the site’s notification area per author.
3. We cannot see comments in posts to reply to them.
4. That is all we know.

Andre, you are right. We can see the comments in the notification area of the site. I would also point out in notifications; we can see who doesn’t comment or makes a comment on posts. Those that only upvote is also revealed. Plus, if the word is more than around 30 characters, you don’t know what else they said, and you still can’t reply to the person.

Tensions are high right now. A lot of us are watching money go down the drain. Not that we ever made a killing on this site (well, one user did, and she cost all of us virils for comments on other people’s posts). I am going to stop posting in 10 days. I am frustrated; I know the community is frustrated. Its time, I suspect, for all of us to draw a line in stone and let the admin team know we are done. My date is September 30, 2020. What is your date?

.doc

sad to see 4 years wasted.

September 30, 2020

I informed the admins via email, and now via this post that without communication or fixes (or both), I was no longer going to post on this site. I am not sure that impacts them or, for that matter, anyone. But that is my deadline. It is not a line in the sand; it is hard and fast.

I am going to split up my writing in the future anyway. My philosophical posts are going on Hubpages. I find a better audience there any way for that type of position. I’ve moved the Wander Project to project Blue-fire for the short term; I don’t know if I will stay there. It has many exciting features, but it isn’t as open as the community here is.

I am not quitting, and if the comments are fixed, I will return and clean up my remarks. But at this point, I am very disappointed in the admin team; it doesn’t matter what you are trying to do, communicate. The one thing I do enjoy about Project BlueFire is the admin team shares information every single day. It doesn’t take a great effort to do that.

I am also profoundly concerned about the content allowed on this site now. I saw that there were three approved posts on Friday. But they are predominantly Adsense driven posts. That makes me said.

A friend of mine once said this: “know what you need when you go looking.” Part of why I write, why I started as a poet is that I don’t always know what I am looking for. Sometimes the things I need, the things that I want are very different from those available to me. Based on that, I struggle with the process of reconciliation (what I wanted, what I see, and in the end, what is truly there). In that discussion, I find myself torn often. My goal for writing is to break my hand up now—philosophical pieces on HubPages. Wander project on BlueFire, and I am going back to technical blogs here on this site. It is a little bifurcated for now, but it is the best I can do.

This work is Copyright DocAndersen. Any resemblance to people real or fictional in this piece is accidental (unless explicitly mentioned by name.)

.doc

Don’t poke the bear

I think, at this point, it is critical to share what we know and don’t know. Speculation does nobody any good at this point.

1. Comments are not broken. We can still make comments on any post.
2. Comments are still saved in the system and appear on your post.
3. The authors cannot see comments and reply to them. The same is true of reading the posts of others. We cannot see the comments.

Let’s be careful overall that we don’t dive too far into speculation. It can be very stressful, and I would love for the admin team actually to communicate a path or plan. I suspect, after all my years in IT, that I have learned three simple rules.

1. Communicate information when you can
2. Document how things were built
3. Make sure you communicate changes

I guess today is the list day. I don’t know why sometimes I get lost in lists. I like organizing things on lists sometimes. Sometimes I do not! Anyway thanks for reading and a double thanks to everyone that leaves a comment. When comments return (they are simply not visible, likely due to a DB issue on the site) I promise to return all of them!

Have a great Friday!

This work is Copyright DocAndersen. Any resemblance to people real or fictional in this piece is accidental (unless explicitly mentioned by name.)

.doc

Holding on

At the end of the movie “Teachers,” a student pulls the fire alarm. The students all leave the building, with the teachers. They mill around, and then there is the all-clear. At that point one of the teachers begins to rush back into the building. The principal stops him, “why are you in a hurry.” He says (loosely I paraphrased) “The teacher responds “because my students are going in.” The principal looks at him and says “but ½ will not come back. They are already gone.” The teacher says something along the lines of “I am there for the ones that do.” I am here for those of you that are still posting, still commenting and fighting for this site. You are my heroes, and you deserve a pat on the back.

No, this is not me saying to the last person on the site, “hey, hit the light, son your way out the door. This is me saying thank you! I shared a great quote about the crazy ones. We are the crazy ones. But we have built a fantastic community. I will, however, continue to be here. My dad and grandfather taught me at an early age that the most important thing to do the right thing. Even if the right thing is hard, do the right thing. Yes, it is tough to watch something I have put a lot of time and effort into dying. I felt horrible when the site was chaotic, and lots of angry comments were thrown around. I was saddened by the reality of people not getting along.

I know that I find myself often wondering what’s next. It is a part of my job. I know that within that context, it is always essential to make sure you understand clearly where you are before you lose touch with that and head off to the great beyond! We sadly, still do not have consistent approvals. We haven’t had comments visible (you can see the number, just not the comments) for eight days. The situation saddens me, but I send a message to the admins every day. I am still bailing water from our boat. Many of you are still bailing water. I am still hopeful that the ship will turn around. I do not know that it can or will. I am just hoping that all is not lost!

This work is Copyright DocAndersen. Any resemblance to people real or fictional in this piece is accidental (unless explicitly mentioned by name.)

.doc