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As you (I hope) know, most cell phones now have the ability to use the Global apositioning System (GPS) to locate themselves anywhere on the planet. The accuracy of the GPS is amazing.

That is OK, quite useful even. The problems begin when you realize that the devices can not only locate themselves, but can send that location information to others as well. Randall Stross, an author and a professor of business at San Jose State University calls the cell phone “…the most personal computer we own”.

The potential for misuse scares the crap out of me. We Americans now live in a country where this information can be used by the same folks who are authorized to make warrant-less searches and who then “disappear” our citizens. Companies are now actually betting that we will be so gullible as to disregard our right to privacy and pay $225 for a phone that will tell everyone else who has a similar phone where we are.

This terrifying concept is called “Social Mapping”. Stross wrote an article about it called Cellphone as Tracker: X Marks Your Doubts. Read it before it is too late.

We spent Sunday afternoon looking for a replacement for our old leaf blower/vacuum that had begun to spit sparks instead of leaf mulch. Now, you know you have passed your prime when you do stuff like that on a weekend rather than having a riotous good time playing with your toys.

I am ashamed to say that I even read the manual that came with the new Leaf Hog 2500. It was full of such low-level safety tidbits that it was clear to me that if any users actually needed to be told this stuff then we would all be better off if they were skimmed from the gene pool.

Those three maple trees in our front yard sure looked pretty when we bought this house 15 years ago. They get bigger and produce more leaves each year.

Now, if it would just quit snowing long enough for the last of the fallen leaves to dry out.

I just found our next car. Are you reading this, Peggy? Its the BMW M6.

It has a 5.0 liter V-10 engine that cranks out 507 horsepower, a seven speed paddle shifted transmission, does zero to sixty in 4.5 seconds and has a top speed of over 200 miles per hour. Oh yes, don’t foget the Bluetooth® Hands-Free Calling, which “links a compatible Bluetooth® enabled mobile phone to rhe vehicle for hands-free calling”. Wanna see one in action?

I have just added a Tech News page. It shows current news stories that are pulled from their source by RSS. I hope it may be useful to some of you.

Devil’s Night is a Detroit, Michigan phenomenon that migrated up I-75 to Flint. It originally involved the “trick” portion of “trick or treating”. It occurs the night before Halloween. In Flint over the last fifteen years or so, the event changed from routine seasonal pranks to the arson of vacant houses in economically depressed neighborhoods.

To those living in other areas this practice seemed to be rather barbaric. It therefore scared the hell out of many folks who had no experience living with abandoned houses in their neighborhoods.

Let me present you with this situation. You live near one or more houses whose owners have either not been able to keep up with their payments because they have lost their jobs, or they were owned by remote owners who no longer wished to maintain the property to the level that it could be rented. Those houses became homes to the homeless, rats, drug dealers and rapists. All of whom appreciated the free rent.

Now, picture yourself as an area resident who is rightfully distressed about your new neighbors. You have requested your local government to deal with the problem through economic development, or failing that, demolition of the property. For many reasons nothing much happens.

Your choice is now either to live with the problem as it worsens daily, or to apply direct action in the finest American tradition. In this case, that was arson.

Looking at it through their eyes it was perfectly logical. Unfortunately, some of the arsonists were lacking in skill and burned down a few good houses at the same time.

After the Flint Fire Department’s arrogance over being a full time department rather than an “on call” department like most of the out-county departments who would have provided mutual aid if asked almost got the entire city burned, Flint finally asked for help. The request was late enough in being made that Devil’s Night had by then become a local institution.

After a decade of cooperation, Flint and the other county fire departments now have a much better working relationship. Even if it is biased toward Flint’s more often being the recipient of mutual aid.

Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) was involved from the beginning of the Devil’s Night mutual aid. Operators were used at Genesee County Central Dispatch, Flint 911 Center, the main Flint firehouses and they always rode on the apparatus with the task force units. They provided needed interoperability between departments using several incompatible radio frequencies.

The Flint Journal ran a story about this year’s events and listed the departments that assisted. Once again, as has been the case for a decade, no mention was made of the involvement of approximately twenty members of ARES over the two nights.

It is a testament to the civic-minded attitude of the local ARES that they keep showing up every year. No one in ARES expects much in the way of recognition, but at least mentioning that they were there would be nice.