Road Trip

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I am back from my most recent roadtrip. I loaded up the Tesla and started letting the hands-off Full Self Drive (FSD) supervised take me to to points North. First stopping in a campground in Tennesee and up to Pittsburgh for the CIDM Convex Conference (which was the best conference in years). There was a celebration of the 20 years of DITA XML. I was an earlier adopter. My presentation went well and I semi-stealth launched wisdomino. I demo'd some extra cool software we developed and will be selling in weeks to come. It's truely game changing. Of course, there will be much more than that to come. After that it was on to Franklin, PA. to meet with some colleagues in the mining division and onto the farm stopping in Olean NY for the night. I am pretty sure it was the first time I had driven across the entire Allegany National Forest. I ended up driving through the very dark forest expanse during a night time thunderstorm. Although I normally trust the Tesla FSD on the Inters...

I am home in Duluth doing the domestic stuff, yard work, car work, cleaning, painting, blah blah blah, all the stuff that makes life "normal".

I had quite a trip in Brazil. It was over a year since I had last been in Brazil. I had studied quite a bit of Portuguese in that time. Although I have a ways to go, it was quite a thrill to have a much better understanding of what folks are saying. My speaking was much better even if I was politely saying "I didn't understand" in Portuguese. In these situations they would rephrase or I could perhaps read some Portuguese to get it. Actually, it is a simple "thrill of alchemy" to look at people in the eyes say something and have them understand without hesitation, or embarrassment (mine or theirs), and overall have the ability to articulate in THEIR native tongue. Too cool, in Portuguese, "LEE-Gow". I remember watching a movie in high school intended to motivate studying foreign languages. It was a lot of celebrities saying that they regretted NOT learning another language. What kind of motivation comes from losers? None! Institutionalized pedagogical retardation. Relearning things is the most important thing an adult can do.

The pic with the butterfly is not photo-shopped.

















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Road Trip