HinesSight

If you need rural cellular internet, I recommend MobileData2Go

Recently I spent a lot of time checking out providers of rural cellular internet, which basically set you up with a router and plan that accesses the internet via one of the major companies: Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T.

If someone lives in a city, they probably have many internet/broadband choices. People like me who live in a rural area with poor cell service, don't. Out here in rural south Salem, Oregon, my wife and I suffered with 6-7 Mbps CenturyLink DSL over ancient copper phone lines because that was our only option.

Then I was selected to be a beta tester for Starlink satellite internet, and our broadband life changed markedly. We were thrilled to have shows on Netflix not buffer constantly, and be in sharp focus. 

However, it's an open secret that Starlink customer service can be slow. There's no way to talk to anyone in person. It all happens through support tickets. So even though our Starlink equipment has been trouble-free so far, I wanted a viable backup to Starlink in case we had to wait weeks for replacement equipment to arrive if something broke.

That led me to Googling rural cellular internet companies after my daughter visited and I noted that her AT&T iPhone was getting a 5G signal. My hope was that I could find a reasonably priced plan that used AT&T (Verizon and T-Mobile are very slow at our house) so we could still have decent broadband if, or likely when, our Starlink system stopped working.

The clear winner in my search was MobileData2Go. Their unlimited plan was the least expensive; they sell a router so you don't have to keep paying for a rental; they have plans for all three major cellular companies; and I found that their customer service was superb.

The only downside to this otherwise happy story was that after several days of tweaking the AT&T router  that I promptly received from MobileData2Go, the signal we were able to receive was too unreliable and slow to make it worth continuing with the service.

This wasn't the fault of MobileData2Go. It simply was because our house is in a low part of the south Salem hills with no direct line of sight to a cell tower. I was hugely impressed with the competence and diligence of the people at MobileData2Go. I know good customer support when I experience it. 

Having contacted several other rural cellular internet companies, my strong advice to anyone interested in their services is Buyer Beware. One of the worst offenders would go nameless if I didn't share the name: HomeFi. 

HomeFi advertises on Facebook, where I learned about them. Luckily, I Googled "HomeFi reviews" and "HomeFi scam." I recommend you do the same, not only for HomeFi, but for any rural cellular internet company you're considering. Here's one of the HomeFi results from ScamPulse. 

I ended up ordering a Mobile Starlink system intended for RV users, even though I'm only going to use it as a residential Starlink backup. Don't know why I didn't think of this before, since a Mobile Starlink account can be paused during the months someone doesn't need it, which will be almost all of the time for us.

So I'm returning the MobileData2Go router. There was zero problem doing this, as this is a reputable company.

One sign of this is that MobileData2Go accepts PayPal in addition to credit cards, and includes a link to where PayPal lets you cancel a recurring payment in their FAQs. That impressed me, since I'd read numerous complaints about MobileData2Go competitors from people who had great difficulty in cancelling their rural cellular internet plan.

CarMax beat Capitol Subaru's offer on my 2020 Crosstrek

When it came time to sell my 2020 Crosstrek Limited because I was getting a 2024 Crosstrek Limited, the choice was between Capitol Subaru and CarMax. In the past I've sold cars on my own, but I don't enjoy doing this anymore.

My wife and I have bought quite a few cars from the Capitol Auto Group, starting back when they were on Mission Street. Now the four Capitol dealerships -- Chevrolet, Cadillac, Toyota, Subaru -- are adjacent to the Martin Luther King Parkway, which enables the Capitol slogan:

Your way on the parkway

Usually I've agreed with that slogan. But sometimes I haven't, especially when it comes to trading in a car. That's what happened this time. I found CarMax much easier to deal with than Capitol Subaru when it came to getting an offer for my 2020 Crosstrek.

That car was fully loaded with every possible factory option. I ordered the Crosstrek, which was built in Japan. It also had low miles, about 24,000, in part because I did so little driving during the initial Covid period.

Understand: I only have good things to say about the Subaru saleswoman I worked with, Emily Campbell. You won't go wrong if you buy a vehicle from her. My problem is with the trade-in policies established by Capitol management that Campbell had to operate under.

Campbell gave me a test drive in a 2024 Crosstrek after I'd brought my 2020 in for service and got to looking at the 2024 model, which was a redesign with some marked improvements from my 2020. Notably, a larger 2.5 liter engine rather than the underpowered 2.0 liter I had. Also, wireless Apple CarPlay and a bunch of other new features that appealed to me, including upgraded safety equipment.

I was curious to learn what my 2020 was worth. Campbell took some photos after my car had been serviced and said she'd let me know what Capitol would offer for it. But I never got that offer. I'm pretty sure it was because Capitol didn't want to give me an offer before it was time to trade-in my 2020 on a new car.

That happened fairly quickly, since Campbell found a 2024 Crosstrek Limited on its way to the dealership with the color and options that I wanted. I put down a $500 deposit on the 2024 around mid July and the car was scheduled to arrive on September 3. So it wasn't like I was asking for a trade in offer way ahead of time.

At any rate, in early to mid August CarMax gave me an online offer of $25,000 after asking a bunch of questions about my 2020, including the VIN. Around that time I'd gotten an email from Subaru saying they were interested in my 2020 Crosstrek.

I recall that I wasn't asked for the mileage, which I thought was strange. Regardless, I gave Subaru the info on my 2020 and got an offer back: $23,550, which was good for up to 45,000 miles on the car. The offer had an expiration date of August 31.

That led me to text Campbell, saying that I'd gotten an offer from Subaru that was less than what CarMax was offering for my car, and seemingly didn't take into account the low mileage -- though maybe they had that from my service record, all of which has been done at Capitol Subaru.

I figured that after Capitol learned that Subaru had offered me less than CarMax, they'd raise their offer.

I'd been telling Campbell that I wanted to have the trade-in set several days before the 2024 Crosstrek arrived, because from past painful episodes with various dealers I've learned that what should be a pleasant car buying experience can be hurt by an unpleasant car selling/trade-in experience.

Plus, how about that slogan Your way on the parkway. The way I wanted was to get a firm trade-in offer from Capitol Subaru before the 2024 came in, so the car buying and car selling were separated.

That never happened. A week or so before the 2024 was to arrive, I got an updated online offer for my 2020 from CarMax. This time the offer was for $25,600, six hundred dollars more than the previous CarMax offer. 

Since my 2020 had a MSRP of $32,103, I was pleasantly surprised that the value of my Crosstrek had held up so well. I headed off to CarMax (on Lancaster Drive) to have them confirm the offer by looking at my car.

Melanie Zuniga worked with me at CarMax. She was wonderfully efficient, as was the CarMax appraisal process. Within about 40 minutes I was told that no problems were found with my car and the $25,600 was a firm offer good for the next seven days.

Leaving CarMax, I felt that they deserved to buy my 2020 Crosstrek. After all, Capitol Subaru had plenty of chances to give me a fair offer. (The CarMax offer was right in line with the midpoint of the Kelley Blue Book trade-in price for my car, which CarMax showed on their offer sheet and which I'd already confirmed with my own KBB research.)

When I got home, I told Campbell that my wife and I were going to sell my car to CarMax. Campbell then told me that if I sent her the CarMax offer, Capitol would match it. That didn't seem fair to me, since Capitol was just piggy-backing on the CarMax offer, which had taken some time of CarMax staff. 

However, it turned out that the 2024 Crosstrek was delayed in arriving at Capitol Subaru.

By the time it came in, my wife was planning to go to the coast for a few days. We were going to be able to buy the 2024 on the evening before she was due to leave, but since I didn't want to sell the 2020 before I'd seen the 2024 and confirmed that I liked the Sun Blaze Pearl color (I do, a lot), my wife would have had to leave later for the coast than she wanted to if we were going to sell my 2020 before the 7-day CarMax offer expired.

Thus we ended up trading in the 2020 to Capitol Subaru for the $25,600 CarMax had offered. I regret doing this, because the CarMax car selling process was much better than the Capitol Subaru process that I encountered.

CarMax was straightforward, fair, and efficient. With Capitol Subaru, I couldn't get a decent trade-in offer until CarMax gave me one and Capitol matched it. Yes, I was told by Campbell that CarMax is huge and can shift cars around the country, which is true, while Capitol is local.

But somehow local small Capitol was willing to pay just as much for my car as CarMax was -- after CarMax had given me a firm offer. I can't say that my trade-in experience was typical for the Capitol Auto Group.

Still, based on my experience I'd advise getting an offer from CarMax, then selling your vehicle to CarMax even if a local dealer is willing to match the CarMax offer. This just seems to me to be the right thing to do, regardless of how large CarMax is. I like to reward good service, and like I said, I regret not being able to sell my Crosstrek to CarMax, given how well they treated me.

Also, when my wife and I were buying the 2024 Crosstrek, we were presented with a sheet that had the price of the car about $4,000 more than the MSRP that I'd expected. It turned out that Capitol Subaru had loaded up the price with every dealer add-on that I almost always reject, like a windshield treatment and clear coat for the paint. I've never had a dealer add that stuff on their own. In the past the financial guy asks about those options during the purchase paperwork, when I go "no, no, no, no." With the 2020 I did get a Rain-X sort of windshield treatment, which was basically useless. Capitol needs to stop doing this.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that in addition to the trade-in offer I got from a Subaru email message, I also got different trade-in offer estimates by clicking on a "what's your current car worth?" link on the general Subaru web site and by clicking on a similar link on the Capitol Subaru web site. All of those offers were less than the CarMax offer, though the general Subaru offer gave me a range of $23,470 to $26,765 for my 2020 Crosstrek. But I was never asked to get a firm offer by coming to Capitol Subaru. The only way I got a firm offer was by going to CarMax and telling Capitol that my wife and I were planning to sell the car to CarMax.

Oregon State and WSU score legal victory against Pac-12 departers

Usually I like to root for the underdog in sports. It's just more satisfying to watch a team that's expected to lose defy the odds and beat the supposedly more powerful team.

That's one reason I was hoping Oregon State and Washington State would score a legal victory against the eight members of the Pac-12 who have announced that they're leaving the conference for other leagues after a media rights negotiation gone bad left the Pac-12 with less TV money than the departing members wanted.

USC and UCLA had already announced they were heading to the Big 10, which means currently the Pac-12 is really the Pac-2: Oregon State and Washington State.

At least, that's how OSU and WSU see the situation. That's why they went to court to prevent the ten departing members of the Pac-12 from being able to divvy up the financial and other resources of the league, possibly as soon as a league board meeting scheduled for next Wednesday.

Today a judge ruled in favor of OSU and WSU. Here's excerpts from the Oregonian story. 

Washington State and Oregon State scored a major victory in court on Monday when a Whitman County (Wash.) judge agreed to their request for a temporary restraining order preventing the Pac-12′s presidents and chancellors from meeting until the court determines the makeup of the board of directors.

“That makes everybody equal,” Superior Court Judge Gary Libey said in issuing his ruling a few minutes after 12 p.m.

A preliminary injunction hearing to determine which schools have voting rights -- all 12, or only the Beavers and Cougars -- is expected to be scheduled in the next few weeks.

“I am pleased with today’s decision,” Oregon State president Jayathi Murthy said on social media. “As the two remaining Pac-12 members, Oregon State and Washington State must be able to chart a path forward for the Pac-12 -- not the members that have chosen to leave it.”

...The Pac-12 bylaws state that if a school gives notice of withdrawal prior to Aug. 1, 2024, then its “representative to the Pac-12 Board of Directors shall automatically cease to be a member of the Pac-12 Board of Directors and shall cease to have the right to vote on any matter.”

What defines a notice of withdrawal?

The bylaws don’t specify. None of the outgoing schools have delivered written notice, according to a source. But WSU and OSU believe the public statements by executives from the 10 schools — and the “welcome” announcements blasted on social media by their new leagues — constitute notice, thereby rendering their presidents ineligible for the board.

Major strategic and financial issues require super-majority approval (75 percent). If the court determines the 10 outgoing schools retain board-of-directors status, they could do as they please. One option: Vote to dissolve the conference as of next summer, which would result in all assets being split among the 12 schools.

But if the Cougars and Beavers are deemed the sole board members, they would control the assets and potentially use tens of millions of dollars in Pac-12 funds to rebuild the conference and offset the loss of revenue resulting from the collapse.

I sure hope that Oregon State and Washington State can rebuild the Pac-12 by bringing in new members. The most viable option to do this seems to be folding in all or most of the members of the Mountain West Conference into the Pac-12, assuming OSU and WSU succeed in gaining legal control of the league.

Sure, it would be a whole different Pac-12 with the Mountain West Conference members: Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, San Diego State, San Jose State, UNLV, Utah State, and Wyoming.

But the Pac-12 has a lot more visibility and prestige than the Mountain West Conference. Seemingly that would be a selling point if OSU and WSU make a pitch to the MWC to merge the two leagues under the Pac-12 banner. 

After all, the MWC has "west" in its name, which goes well with "Pac" or "Pacific." I sort of understand why Stanford and California are heading to the ACC - Atlantic Coast Conference. It just seems bizarre that two universities located so close to the Pacific Ocean would be part of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Oregon beats Texas Tech, thanks to a fourth quarter

I'm glad I don't have a heart problem, because even without one, I was feeling palpitations in my chest for most of today's Oregon - Texas Tech football game in hot Lubbock.

It was a familiar feeling, given past occasions when Oregon unexpectedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

I get excited about being able to watch the Ducks play, since we rely on DirecTV for television watching, and DirecTV still doesn't carry the Pac 12 Networks, which is where the Oregon - Portland State blowout game in favor of the Ducks was last week.

(Of course, now that Oregon is headed to the Big Ten, and the Pac 12 is down to the Pac 2 (Oregon State and Washington State), likely the Pac 12 Networks won't exist after this school year.)

So I got our DVR recording the Oregon - Texas Tech game, which was on Fox, thankfully. I'd noted that Oregon was favored to win by several touchdowns. After all, the Ducks are ranked #13 in the country and Texas Tech lost to Wyoming in its first game.

That made the first three quarters tough to watch. 

I started all optimistic. Then reality set in. Oregon was playing in an uninspired fashion. Lots of penalties. Lots of dropped passes. Offensive play calling that seemed drearily predictable. Not only weren't there any creative trick plays, the standard plays often weren't having much success.

Still, at halftime Oregon was ahead 18-13. I hoped that Oregon would pull away in the second half, but the opposite happened. In the third quarter Oregon didn't score and trailed Texas Tech 18-27. 

Visions of any chance the Ducks had of making the national playoff being flushed down the football toilet danced through my head.

Until the fourth quarter happened. Once again, quarterback Bo Nix came up with clutch plays, as did the  Oregon defense. A couple of interceptions sealed the deal. Final score: 38-30.

Whew! My heart felt way better after Oregon put up 20 points in the final quarter while Texas Tech managed only three.

Hopefully this bodes well for the rest of the Ducks' season. They've got the makings of a great team. I do have to admit, though, that the Texas Tech Masked Rider has a flair that the Ducks' mascot lacks.

Some of our oaks are losing all their leaves in early September. Global warming.

We've lived at our home in rural south Salem, Oregon since 1990. In those 33 years, my wife and I have never seen some of the oak trees on our ten mostly natural acres lose all of their leaves in late August and early September.

Repeat, never.

But this is what the area in front of our well house looked like today. It sure seems to be a result of global warming. We didn't get any rain during June, July, and almost all of August. Maybe May also. And it's been considerably hotter than normal. The oaks must be stressed.

Update: Just saw this post from the National Weather Service on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. Supports my thesis. The years 2021, 2022, and 2023 were three of the top five hottest summers in Salem dating back to 1892, with 2014 and 2015 being the other two. 

Usually the oaks lose their leaves after other deciduous trees, not before. This is how part of our Y-shaped driveway appears. That area of our property near the road gets the most sun. The oaks here are the ones losing their leaves.


Close to our house, where there is more shade, the oaks are still green. So this indicates that it isn't any sort of disease that's causing the falling oak leaves. It's heat stress, almost certainly.

This is just one sign, among many, of a dangerously warming world. All over our country, and in other nations, what used to be highly unusual is becoming commonplace as the Earth becomes steadily hotter.

Everybody has their own global warming freakout sign. For me, the falling oak leaves are my latest sign. Sadly, there will be many more so long as temperatures keep rising.

After getting Starlink's Gen 3 router, I'm liking it

I've had, and enjoyed, Starlink's satellite internet service since January 2021, when I was approved to be a beta tester and got to put the original round dish on our roof. Not for free, sadly, I had to pay for it.

Recently Starlink emailed me with an offer to purchase their new Gen 3 router that works both with the first generation round dish and the second generation square dish. This time I had to pay $200 for the privilege of being a beta tester.

I decided to get the router because the original router was still in use. It's worked fine, but I figured that the Gen 3 router had to be an improvement. This is part of what the Starlink email said about the router.

The new Gen 3 router introduces WiFi 6 and tri-band radios to Starlink. With improved range, performance, and device support, the Starlink Gen 3 router will extend your WiFi network throughout your home to provide a more consistent and reliable connection with faster speeds.

 

The Gen 3 router can replace your current router, and multiple Gen 3 routers can be meshed together to extend the range of your WiFi network.   

I'd agree with those claims by and large. The Gen 3 router has a minimalist design and fits nicely on the table where the vertically oriented original router looked like it could tip over at any moment.

Installation was easy. Or at least it would have been, if I hadn't inexplicably put the ends of the ethernet cable in the wrong places, even after reading the instructions several times. You can read all about that misadventure in my blog post, "My guide to happiness: act stupid, then undo your stupidity." 

The Gen 3 router seems to start up with a connection considerably faster than the original router. That's a plus, since at times the old one would take forever, more or less, after being plugged in.

I did experience much slower speeds at first with the Gen 3 router. However, after a few days the speeds returned to their normal range of 30-125 Mbps or so depending on the time of day and how the Starlink gods are feeling.

At one point the speed dropped to the dreadful DSL range that my wife and I were stuck with for many years out here in rural south Salem, Oregon, 6-7 Mbps.

I was about to submit a support ticket to Starlink, but after I read the tips to fix a slow connection I decided that I was capable of unplugging and plugging in the router again, which led to a marked speed increase right away.

At the moment, 9:50 pm on a weekday, I'm getting 58 Mbps download and 16 Mbps upload, which is fairly typical. 

The wi-fi signal in the most distant part of our house from the router seems less strong but also faster than the original router. In the early morning I've gotten speeds of over 100 Mbps in that area, which never happened with the first generation router. 

So I'm pleased with the Gen 3 router so far. 

I declare a winner in the Decaf Instant Coffee contest

For many years I was a coffee addict. More accurately, I craved the caffeine in coffee. I'm still in recovery. Probably always will be.

But even though my withdrawal several years ago was difficult, I've managed to give up the hard stuff and get by with a little help from my decaffeinated friends.

I'll share their photos below. One of them has become my best Decaf Instant Coffee friend. Here it is.

Republica makes an organic decaf instant coffee from Arabica beans that to me tastes like brewed coffee. I just use a level teaspoon in 16 ounces of hot water. It's made by a woman-owned company in Australia  that checks all of my environmental/fair trade boxes. Republica uses a water-process for decaffeination rather than chemicals. I get it from Amazon.

I had to seek out alternatives to regular coffee after developing a bladder problem in 2017. Because caffeine is a bladder irritant, I discovered that my body was happier without caffeinated coffee. 

Plus, I found that after a difficult coffee transition period -- full caffeine to half caffeine to no caffeine -- I felt like I had even more energy without the ups and downs of regular coffee. And my sleep was considerably improved.

For a while, though, it seemed that even the minimal caffeine in decaf coffee was causing me problems. That led me to explore alternatives to coffee. 

I started with Roma. It's a roasted grain beverage. I liked it. But naturally it didn't have a coffee taste or smell, though the longer I stayed away from coffee, the more I forgot what I was missing.

Cafix appealed to me more, though it is very similar to Roma. It just seemed to have a bit more of a coffee vibe to it.

I gave Dandy Blend a try. It has a mixture of grains and dandelion root. While it had the most coffee-like flavor, dandelion root turned out to be a bladder stimulant. I didn't need that, so decided to stop using Dandy Blend.

Eventually I decided to ditch the coffee alternatives and try the real thing in decaf. A friend told me about Kava, which had the apparent benefit of reduced acid. However, the chemical used to accomplish the decaffeinating didn't get along well with my digestive system. 

So I went back to Republica, which I'd tried early on in my alternatives-to-caffeine seeking but set aside for a reason that I no longer remember. I still had a jar in the cupboard. As noted above, it's agreeing with me.

Hopefully I've found my forever Decaf Instant Coffee friend. Read the user reviews on Amazon and you may be tempted to give Republica a try yourself, if you're into decaf coffee.

My guide to happiness: act stupid, then undo your stupidity

Everybody wants to be happy. And everybody has their own ways of accomplishing this.

Recently the New York Times had an interview with a Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard. When I saw that the story was called The 'World's Happiest Man' Shares His Three Rules for Life, I got excited.  

Yay! Finally I'd know how to be happy all the time. Sweet. But when I read what Ricard said the three rules were, I felt my Perpetual Happiness Balloon popping. 

You know, once I was on the India Today Conclave. They said, “Can you give us the three secrets of happiness?” I said: “First, there’s no secret. Second, there’s not just three points. Third, it takes a whole life, but it is the most worthy thing you can do.”

Ugh. No secret. Not just three points. Takes a whole life. Bummer.

Then I realized that while I'm far away from being the world's happiest man (I'm not even the happiest sentient being in our house, being eclipsed by my wife and dog, and likely also by the mice who live in our crawl space), I do have a secret to happiness that works for me.

Since a New York Times reporter isn't going to be beating down my door to learn what it is, I figured that I'd share it in this blog post.

Well, I already have in the title above. I ran out of space or I would have made it: Act stupid, then undo the stupidity and feel the bliss of relief.

There's no end of examples that I could offer for how I've applied this (no longer a) secret to aid in my happiness. Here's a good recent one.

Though I live just six miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital, Salem, our neighborhood's primary "broadband" provider, CenturyLink, offers a pitiful 7 Mbps via DSL that travels through ancient copper phone lines. 

When Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service came online several years ago, I was thrilled to have my application to be a beta tester of Starlink approved. That got us a decent broadband speed.

A few weeks ago Starlink sent me an email saying that because I was an early beta customer, I was entitled to send them $200 for a third-generation router that offered better features than our first-generation router.

OK, I fell for the pitch. I'm always up for a chance to improve our broadband life, especially since in the not-so-good old days of sloooooow DSL, streaming shows on Netflix often had us watching the buffering spinning ball as much as Bridgerton.

The new router arrived a few days ago. After I opened the box, I downloaded a PDF file that had the simple instructions for installing it. 

I read the instructions several times. I laid out the power supply cord and the ethernet cable. Connecting the power supply was a no-brainer. But the ethernet cable had two dissimilar connectors: one long and one short.

The place on the router where one end of the ethernet cable was to be inserted was strangely deep. So deep, I got out a flashlight and looked into the depths of it. My mind thought, "That must be where the long ethernet connector goes." 

I then studied the installation instructions again. Closely. Intimately. The instructions showed where the long connector of the ethernet cable was to go and where the short connector of the ethernet cable was to go. 

Supremely confident that I knew what to do, I inserted the long connector into the deep recess of the router and the short connector into the normal looking hole in the power supply.

Then I expectantly waited for the flashing white light on the router to turn solid, showing that a connection with the Starlink satellites had occurred. After watching the flashing light for a while, I got concerned and reviewed the instructions again.

Which elicited a loud F*CK from me. You can easily fill in the blank.

Somehow I'd gotten the two ends of the ethernet cable in the wrong places. Yes, even though I'd read the instructions several times, paying special attention to the images of the long and short connectors of the ethernet cable.

Worse, the short connector was stuck in the power supply. The little clip used to release an ethernet cable was nowhere to be seen. Or felt. I fiddled with it for a while, but didn't want to break the connector in the power supply.

Panic started to set in. If I couldn't undo what I'd just did, our broadband speed would plummet to near zero, since we have dismal cell service out here in the not-very-wilds of six miles from the Salem city limits.

However, with the aid of a very small screwdriver, I was able to push on the clip and release the short connector of the ethernet cable. Which then fit easily into the router, just as the instructions had said. And the long connector fit easily into the power supply, just as the instructions had said.

All I can figure is that when my brain thought early on that the long connector must go into the deep recess of the router, that erroneous thought won out in an unconscious battle between it and what the instructions said.

The relief I felt when the flashing light on the router turned solid almost immediately after, duh, I'd done what the instructions said, created a jolt of happiness in me which lasted for a long time. 

It's worn off now. But the good news is that it won't be long before I do something stupid again, which, when I undo my stupidity, will make me happy. 

Obligatory warning for those who want to follow in my happiness footsteps: sometimes I do something stupid that can't be undone, which obviously doesn't make me happy.

Watch this video of Lahaina fire destruction. Then do what you can to help.

My wife and I have vacationed on Maui many times. We love the island. The town of Lahaina has a special place in our hearts.

Front Street in Lahaina was a delightful place to visit. We'd go there most evenings during our stay to shop, people-watch, see the art in the many galleries, eat. The atmosphere was like nowhere else we'd ever been.

Now much of Lahaina has been destroyed by the wind-stoked wildfires that have killed 53 people on Maui.

This screenshot from the video below shows the destruction. The three minute video was really painful for me to watch. It is raw footage, with no audio, but the pictures are more powerful than any words.

Here's the YouTube video.

Please consider donating to one of the relief organizations mentioned in this Travel + Leisure story about the Maui wildfires.

Here's a photo of Lahaina's Front Street from the visit we made to Maui in 2017, the last time we were there, which was part of an Adobe Spark slideshow I made about our vacation. Again, its unbelievably sad that this marvelous place has been mostly reduced to ashes.

US women's soccer shootout loss shows power of smallness

Understandably, most of us believe that in order to accomplish something great, you need to do great things. Meaning, large important things.

There's a certain logic to this, but it doesn't fit with reality. 

In the real world -- as contrasted with the ideal world constructed in human minds -- important outcomes often hinge on insignificant details.

For example, and as a progressive it's painful for me to think about this, if Hillary Clinton hadn't decided to set up a private email server as Secretary of State instead of relying on her government account, there's good reason to consider that she'd have been elected president in 2016 rather than Donald Trump. 

There's a saying, "for want of a nail the kingdom was lost."

Something of great importance may depend on an apparently trivial detail. The saying comes from a longer proverb about a battle during which the loss of a nail in a horseshoe leads to the loss of a horse, which leads to the loss of the rider, which leads to the loss of the battle, which in turn leads to the loss of a whole kingdom.

This relates to chaos theory, a subject I find fascinating.

Basically it involves the sensitivity of large scale systems to minute changes in initial conditions that then multiply over time. Frequently this is referred to as the butterfly effect: a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, which creates a tiny atmospheric instability that eventually becomes a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

Today the United States women's soccer team lost to Sweden in a penalty shootout after the teams ended up scoreless after regular play and two extra time periods. A shootout is used to decide a winner.

One by one, players from each team alternate at trying to score from the penalty spot in front of the goal. It's tough for the goalkeeper to stop a shot at such short range, so there's a battle of wits between the player taking the shot and the goalkeeper trying to guess which way to lunge to try to stop the shot.

You can see the United States-Sweden penalty shootout in this 7:39 long YouTube video.

After a strong start by the US and Sweden, there were misses-by-a-mile by players from both teams. But what really struck my eye was the shot by a US player that bounced off a crossbar and the even more amazing failure of the US goalkeeper to prevent a goal that she seemed to have stopped, but which technology revealed just barely crossed the goal line.

Here's a screenshot from the video:

The ball crossed the goal line by the narrowest of margins before the US goalkeeper swatted it away on a second try after it rebounded following her first attempt to block it.

And that decided the match. Which ended the US women's team competition in the World Cup at the earliest stage ever and dashed their chance to win three World Cup championships in a row.

Such is life. Large outcomes often are determined by very small influences. Sure, the US team would have won if several players hadn't kicked the ball well over the net in the shootout. Those were big mistakes.

But I suspect that the image which will haunt the US team is the one above. How the soccer ball ended up in precisely the right location to give Sweden the victory after taking an unlucky (for the US) or lucky (for Sweden) bounce off of the goalkeeper's hands.