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LavaCon 2026 and the future.

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LavaCon is a conference now going on 25 years. Its always fun at conferences where folks collaborate on what the future holds. This year I drove to Charlotte NC from Duluth GA to attend. I used the Tesla in Full Self Drive. I went park-to-park without touching the wheel for over 200 miles. It's crazy. I don't think most people understand how well it works. Lots of nay-sayers still, but it really does work. Be on guard, but enjoy. I spent some of my time "driving" while conversing with Grok as part of my daydreaming. I was discussing with Grok an idea I have of building a West system (cold molded) old style barrel-back runabout maybe 20 feet long- all varnished Mahogony. Of course this boat would have an exotic 12-cylinder engine under a transparent engine hatch between the twin cockpits. We discussed the designs, available actual study plans and pre-lofted design documents for the hull. We also discussed the best engine (perhaps a BMW N73) coupled with a Velvet Dri...
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Columbia, Guyana, and Suriname

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We are back-- again. This time from Northern South America. As we planned, we spent midnight Christmas eve in a new and interesting place. We were at 35000 ft above the Eastern Venezuela jungle. We had a flight leaving Bogota at 11:00 PM arriving in Georgetown Guyana at 3:00 AM. We have noticed at lot of what you might call "odd hour" flights outside the US. It makes sense, the Western world (West Europe, US, etc.) connects with these flights. It makes sense to schedule flights as "connecting". On our initial flight from Atlanta to Miami one of the passengers was arrested when we landed. We don't know the details, but it was noteworthy and a minor inconvenience. After we landed, the pilot came on the PA and admonished the cabin crew "Do your Jobs". He left the airplane shortly afterwards while were requested to stay in our seats. Eventually, We are allowed to deplane and the police showed up to deal with the person. Subsequent segments took us to...
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Central Asia

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We are back from our most recent crazy trip. This time it was Central Asia and the "five stans" - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. We made all of our objectives. And we have now been to 104 countries. Angie has 95 and I have 94 countries. Together it is 104. These five countries were packed into 12 days, 7 flights, 2 high speed trains, 1 cable car ride, 1 horse ride, and lots of hours in car trips. They are all Muslim countries, but they are better characterized as former Soviet countries. Russian langauge is a strong second language in all of these countries. There isn't much English spoken in any of them. Angie being fluent in Russian made all the difference and did intrepreting for me as well as a couple of British backpackers we met in Turkmenistan. Tajikistan is the Country with the distinct langauage being a derivitive of Persian with the others being Turkic. Ethnically, Southern Uzbecs are Tajik. Interesting, the spelling of many...
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