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Every schoolchild knows the story of George Washington’s resignation at the end of the Revolutionary War. Washington, the winning general who secured the independence of the United States, solemnly stepped down from his position. This action would set the standard that once one’s term in office is over, that person will leave and let the nation decide what different way they wanted to govern themselves. Washington would go on to reluctantly serve as the first president, and when he knew his time was over, he once again showed his character by stepping down and peacefully transferring power to the next president. Each president thereafter has respected the same precedent, assuming the choice to leave office was their own, and not forced by resignation or death.

That is until the election of 2020. Having lost, President Donald Trump was faced with a choice: accept his loss solemnly and peacefully pass power to Joe Biden – perhaps with a chance at trying for office again in 2024 – or press forward with a conspiracy that he had not lost, and try every effort, privately via his campaign and with his powers as president, to keep a grasp on power. We all know which option he chose. When it came time to do his one job as an outgoing president, he utterly failed to live up to the moment.

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A couple weeks ago I mentioned that this place was transforming a bit, to become more of hub for contents of all types. Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to do things. I’ve been experimenting with adding a Reply button to the Friends plugin and I’ve been experimenting with modifying the specific content posted to social networks from this blog, trying to remove links back to the blog for simple statuses (they seem spammy) while maintaining it for regular posts like this one. The Reply button trial has worked but I ran into some roadblocks with modifying the post content.

I’m giving it another try with this very post. Let’s see if I’ve broken the plugin. If not, I’ll try to expand on my experiment by optionizing the concept.

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I mentioned last week that I’ve installed the SemPress theme to take advantage of IndieWeb features like microformat labeling to enable parsing in webmentions, a kind of new-era trackback but better. Well, it’s more than just that. As I’m sure most people reading this are aware, there’s been a lot of activity in the world of social media in the past month or so. A new owner at Twitter, people moving to different platforms, and Elon Musk having a bit of a meltdown. All of this has gotten me thinking about the future of my own online presence and has encouraged me to look into revving this blog back up and using it as a hub for my own content of all types.

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Today I updated the site theme to Sempress, the great offering by Matthias Pfefferle, to take advantage of the built-in Indieweb features such as Microformat labeling for use in Webmentions. Though the theme itself is updated, for the most part the layout won’t change. However, there have been some improvements to the comments section to make them threaded.

It was a long past time for the update. This site was using a theme based on the very old Default theme that was created back in 2005 and was custom-coded to a great degree, meaning some newer features were unusable. Though the site styling is mostly finished, a few pages still need to be worked on and will look a little off, and a few other styles need to be tweaked here and there. I’m planning on more updates in the coming weeks and months as I try to turn this into more of a hub for my content of all kinds, not just long-form posts.

Stay tuned!

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Now that Elon Musk owns Twitter, the time has come to shape how the platform will move forward to meet his goal of it being a public forum that is free from algorithmic manipulation, bias, and meets the spirit of of freedom of speech. But, as the first week has come and gone, it hasn’t been without controversy and a little backtracking.

How can Musk take the platform to its next stage while meeting his philosophical goals, but not allow it to completely fall apart? I have some thoughts and ideas, stemming from my own past as a community admin.

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Over the course of this campaign cycle, Donald Trump has frequently gone after people or organizations who have criticized him in some way. Usually that person or organization has been related to journalism. They’ll say something about him and he’ll hop on Twitter to fire off one or more tweets in anger about those he feels have slighted him.

I think many people will brush off criticisms about these Twitter, thinking something like “They’re just journalists. They definitely deserve it for lying about him.”

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Globalization

I see a lot of commentary these days from liberals regarding the “globalism” boogeyman. I don’t get what’s so bad about countries competing to attract business to themselves. This even happens within a country. For example, in the U.S. Texas or Florida might attract businesses from Connecticut. There have actually been some high-profile wooing from both states toward CT businesses in the past several years. I’ve seen some snark and some grumbling about it, but never the same level of concern that “globalism” brings out.

Perhaps what is most concerning to these folks is that it’s easier for businesses to move than it is for people to move. This is even true within the U.S., though the obstacles for it are fewer. To move countries requires a lot more time, documentation, and money. It’s one thing to take a vacation in Europe for a while – an activity for which U.S. citizens have arguably the easiest of times – but it’s much more difficult to move countries on a permanent or semi-permanent basis.

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Not long after getting to Union Station, we boarded the final train trip of this vacation, the Southwest Chief. As its name implies, it goes through Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, in the Southwest particularly, then up into a sliver of Colorado, into Missouri, a sliver of Iowa, and into Illinois.

I have to say that I think I liked the California Zephyr better. Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good mountain range, but there was definitely greater range of landscape to see, including desert, mountains, rivers, plateaus, and yes, grassland. The Chief mostly goes through miles of desert then miles of grassland. Also, I slept through the one trip through high elevation we had.

There were some highlights, though. The people, for one. I had dinner on the first night with an elderly man, a Korean War veteran with loads of stories of his time in the Navy. There was also a guy starting his first semester of college in Arizona. His stop was during the early morning and his classes started just a few hours later. I wished him luck with that! There was also a breakfast with a guy going to play a gig in Kansas City but who felt flight too much of of hassle these days. And the couple taking the Chief to Chicago connecting to the northerly Empire Builder en route to Glacier National Park.

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I decided to get to the next cross-country train by way of Los Angeles by taking the Coast Starlight, a train that goes from Seattle to LA. I only took the Southern portion of the route.

After Billy Joel the previous night, my intention was to get some sleep on this train, but that didn’t really happen. Oh well. This ride did give me some insight into the extent of the drought. We passed by hundreds of miles of grass that had a dull yellow color to it, other than on the top of some hills and mountains.

The most exciting part of this trip was being next to water for a good extent of the length of it. On the train itself, the best part was the Pacific Parlour Car, a 1940s/1950s-ish style car with couches, armchairs, and a full bar. It even had wi-fi enabled when we were in an area with reception.

We got into LA’s Union Station about an hour early. I found my hotel pretty quickly – nothjng special – but it was near the hotel and good for a night. I’d had dinner on the train, so desperate for some sleep, I headed to bed.

The next day I got up early to take a trip to Santa Monica to visit Ed, one of my cousins. I got to see his recording studio (he does recording and the Santa Monica pier. We also had breakfast at this great Mexican place that also serves a traditional breakfast. They had like four full pieces of toast and a few pieces of bacon for about $7.00. That’s a lot of food! The pier was busy but not unmanageable, and I was able to see the Pacific Ocean and the promenade.

After that, I thought I should get back to downtown LA so I could get my luggage, which I left at the hotel and head back to Union Station. By the way, they need better signage for the subway. The sign says Red Line, but is the entrance for all the lines served out of Union Station.

I was able to spend a little time in the station’s Metropolitan Lounge, which was pretty swanky. After about half an hour wait, I boarded the Southwest Chief back to Chicago.

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So I arrived in San Francisco – actually, Emeryville, which is just outside the city, near Oakland – only to find out that I forgot to add on a bus trip connection from the trajn into the city. Whoops. Got an pass in the station and got on the bus to Fisherman’s Wharf. Not knowing the bus routes at all yet, I took a taxi to my hotel.

The Chelsea Motor Inn, in the Marina District, is part of a set of hotel that emulate a motor inn. It was pretty no-thrills, but I needed a place to sleep, and it was relatively cheap for a hotel in the city proper. It is surrounded by bars and restaurants, especially brunch places.

Just getting in and it being pretty late by then, I took it pretty easy, especially as I hadn’t slept very well on the train. Got some necessities at a nearby Walgreens and took a walk of the immediate area, selected a nearby Italian place for dinner, then went to bed.

Got a late start the next day due to wanting more sleep. I think people oftentimes want to get a full day of activities, but I think a late day here or there during a trip is okay. I’m having a very early day on Sunday, so it’ll balance out.

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