Palm Trees in southern Florida

Monday, September 22, 2014

Displaced by technology

I was on my bike and rode by an empty phone booth hanging on a wall, I stopped and thought about it.

It has been a long time since I saw a phone booth with a phone in it. If I did I'd check it for change!

For years the example I'd heard for technology displacing a profession was "buggy whip maker".

I'd never actually seen a buggy whip but there are 175 results with that as a search term on eBay so they are still around.

Even more results when I tried "phone booth" but I can still find phone booths all over the place.

I wonder what will be next?






I just saw the next thing!
Grub Hub, "order your food on-line and never have to talk to another human again"

            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



This blog is set to publish later.... I had to come back and add this part.

I saw the empty phone booth & thought about that and the buggy whip, that lead to what I wrote here. Then I found this blog.

Dr Jerry Pournelle is writer whom I'd read & enjoyed over the years, he's writing this.



http://chaosmanorreviews.com/september-2014-column-part-1/




I'm looking at empty phone booths & thinking of buggy whips. This guy is talking about robots taking people's jobs, "more than 45% withing ten years".

45% of the jobs gone to robots? Maybe it's time to learn to fix robots...


Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Camping- Belfair State Park, WA

Went camping at Belfair State Park, WA with 3 of our kids and 6 grandkids, we had a good time.









Two camp sites, four tents and a fire going most of the day. Hot dogs & sausages are best cooked over flames




This place is at the far end of the Hood Canal, the water was almost warm when I walked into it. There was a creek too.



Like all Washington state parks that I have seen there was a fee for the showers
This one gave you around 3 minutes for a token.

 You could get to this shower without a campsite.

The token machine was attached to the fee booth.

 Talking about fees, two daughters rented the camping spots we just had to pay $10 a night as an "extra car" fee

    The park is a good sized place, RV sites & tents were mixed together in some parts & others were just too small for, the sign said "No trailers over 18' "
Camping right next to the moving water is always a plus.


Not our camp this time

The creek leaving the campground

The creek entering the Hood Canal
Hood Canal











Hood Canal runs into Puget Sound which goes into the Pacific Ocean, so you could go from here to Hawaii with the right equipment. 
It's good to dream!

 I had a good time.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Adventureland workcamping review, season 2

Season two at Adventureland in Altoona, Iowa is over for me.  I left as soon as the full time work ended (6 days a week) and weekends only started.  I went back to Washington to take care of a few things.

Hood Canal in Washington state
 
There is a penalty for leaving early, I had to pay for the RV park time I was there after July (that 17 days came to $87.74) and I lost the 25 cents a hour bonus (689 hrs when I left) that I would have gotten if I'd stayed for the last six weeks.

I worked the rides @ $7.50 and hour, we were seasonably labor so the overtime rules did not apply, it was all 'regular' hours.
After the first four "weekends only" we started full time.
The RV space with full hookups was provided between 1 April and when they closed in October, the cost was $160 for June  & $160 for July if you stayed for the whole season.
Broadcast television is what I used & the RV park provided Wifi (too many on it during the weekend days, I had a solid 4 bars of Verizion on my mifi for those times).
I used the bathhouse for showers the entire time and they have great showers.

This year I chose to work the PM shift (2:40 until close at 8 or 9 or 10pm) and I volunteered for AM shift reliefs 5 days a week (the AM lunch started at 11am and usually was finished between 1 & 2 in the afternoon).
This averaged out to 48.5 hours a week for the 13 full time weeks.

The work was fun, the people I worked with (and for) were great and the guests were all there to have a good time. No complaints at all.

The money... Between the 7th of April and the 18th of August they deposited $3,959.24 to my account and withheld $407.74 for rent.

This second season was at least as good as last year.


The best rides for me this year were the train (as long as it wasn't raining), the SpaceShot as an assistant and running the ferris wheel. Running the Outlaw (a roller coaster) was fun too....