Tag Archives: socialnetworking

The Joys of Social Media

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My ever-changing take on social networking.

I’ve been thinking a lot about socialization these days and I thought I’d say a few things about how I stay in touch with friends (and strangers) while living a relatively solitary life.

Twitter and Mastodon (and Facebook)

I’ve been on Twitter since April 2007 and have tweeted more than 147,000 times. (I have a lot to say.) I’ve always liked Twitter since it filled a gap in my working life. In the years when I worked from home writing computer how-to books and articles and video training materials, I had no social interaction with co-workers. Twitter became my “water cooler” — the place I’d go when I needed a short break from work and some interaction with other people.


I don’t tolerate bullshit. I block all trolls and assholes and mute all advertisers.

Twitter changed over the years, of course. It was weaponized by political parties and states through the use of misinformation, bots, and trolls. I kept ahead of most of this by simply blocking the accounts I didn’t want to see. I’d also mute accounts that promoted their tweets. And I curated my timeline by being very careful who I followed and unfollowing people who tweeted or retweeted a lot of crap. Still, doomscrollling became a thing, even in my carefully curated timeline.

Of course, in recent days, after the takeover by Elon Musk, Space Karen, Twitter has pretty much gone to hell. It started with the new policy that allowed users to buy a Verified tag for their account and the rampant impersonation of real people and companies. Some are funny, some aren’t. One impersonation cost Eli Lilly (and Twitter) millions of dollars. Then there was the return of hate speech, in force, starting with rampant anti-semitism. That was only made worse with the reactivation of the previously suspended accounts for Donald Trump and Kanye West. Thanks to the loss of more than 75% of its staff, Twitter has become somewhat unreliable and there’s virtually no moderation of content.

Basically, Twitter is flushing itself down the toilet and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

Like a few other folks I know on Twitter, I opened an account on Mastodon (@mlanger@mastodon.world), which is a Twitter-like service made possible by decentralized networked servers. It’s a lot like Twitter was in the early days, but because it’s a bit funky to set up, it’s naturally weeding out the social media idiots most of us don’t want to see anyway. I’ve decided to build my Mastodon experience to be a politics-free, hate-free, anger-free world and I’m doing that by simply not following accounts that toot (instead of tweet) politics, hate, or anger. I’m filtering out posts with topics that I don’t want to see or don’t interest me. I’m muting accounts that post primarily politics. I’m basically building a social networking bubble.

Now before you get all critical about that, try to see it my way. I don’t go on social media to get the news or to learn what’s going on in the world. I listen to NPR and have a subscription to the Washington Post. That’s where I get my news. I have no interest in the stories put out by MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, Mother Jones, or just about any other media outlet so why would I want to read social media tweets that link to them?

What am I on social media for? Well, I mentioned it right at the top of this post: social interaction with other people.

Here’s how I see it: I live alone and don’t go out to a job like most people. My daily social interaction is minimal. In addition to meeting up with friends and neighbors at occasional social gatherings, I’m pretty much limited to text and phone conversations with friends and brief messages on Twitter and Mastodon.

(Don’t talk to me about Facebook. That site will rot your mind — it’s a cesspool of hate and lies. And don’t give me the excuse that it’s the only way to keep up with family and friends. These people don’t have phones and email addresses? The only way you can communicate with them is in a toxic environment where you won’t even see their posts unless the algorithm shows you? The only thing Facebook is good for is finding out how stupid/bigoted/gullible your friends and family really are.)

Now that I’m on Mastodon and building a whole new social media world from scratch, I’m really enjoying meeting people with similar interests — especially those that aren’t trying to sell a product or idea. It really is just like the old days on Twitter. You’d meet someone and hit it off and interact, chatting about things going on in your lives. You’d build friendships. Heck, I’ve met in person at least a dozen of the people I’ve met on Twitter, including the first person I ever followed there, who lives in the UK.

Nebo and the Boating Forums

Now that I’m seriously into boating — as I once was seriously into aviation — I’m making friends in the boating world. There are two main tools I’m using to do that.

Nebo is a boating app that lets you share your boat’s location with others. The idea is that you can keep track of where your boating friends are, show them where you are, and possibly meet other boaters in your area. I used it on my other two boat trips to share each day’s cruise with friends and blog readers. But now that I’m cruising at my own pace and meeting folks along the way, I’m using it to keep track of where they are.

Nebo has a built-in chat feature to get in touch with boaters you find on the app. (There are privacy settings to keep your boat invisible or your information invisible to strangers, in case you’re wondering.) As I prepare to return to my boat very late in the season, I’m trying to connect with other boaters in my area. I’ve successfully chatted with a few, including one couple that has done the Great Loop 33 times.

Because I’m not using Nebo every day (since I’m not currently on the water), I’ve pretty much switched over to texting for my closest boating friends. But I still use Nebo to see where they are. (I can’t wait to get back to them.) And if you’re interested in seeing where my boat is, you can find it here.


I can see that this morning both Pony and Nine Lives are at the Columbus Marina with a bunch of other Loopers on Nebo. La Principessa is heading south on the Tennessee River a bit farther north. I’ll likely catch up with them before we hit the Gulf.

Other sources of social interaction with fellow boaters are the two boating forums I follow:

  • TugNuts is the Ranger Tug/Cutwater boats support forum. It’s a great place to share information about our boats. I scan the new messages every morning and participate in conversations where I have something to add. I also use it to get information when I have a question or problem. For example, I was having a heck of a time getting engine computer data to interface with my chart plotters. I posted about my problem and had two good answers within 24 hours.

  • MTOA is the Marine Trawler Owners Association. Like TugNuts, it’s a great source of information for boaters, but it’s not boat specific. I use it to get more general information about cruising, especially about places to cruise. A list of new posts comes to me in email every morning and I use that to pick out the discussions I might want to see and participate in.

Both of these forums require membership. MTOA requires an annual membership fee. Both forums have resulted in members contacting me directly via e-mail — I allow them to do so — about topics I’ve participated in. I’ve gotten a lot of excellent information and offers for meet ups with other boaters. It’s nice. (And yes, I know I did gripe about some of the old guys in these forums, but they are the exception and not the rule.)

My Point

I guess my point is this: Social networking doesn’t need to be an addictive anger- or hate -inducing doomscrolling mechanism. It can be pleasant and informative. It can be a way to meet people with similar interests and keep in touch with them.

It can be what you want it to be — if you focus on what you do and don’t want to see and take steps to get the content you really want.

—

Featured image by Image by Freepik.

Never Stop Thinking

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I think of an experiment to test a theory.

As I age, I find that my mind often wanders into different directions, normally unbidden. I think it’s because I have very little in the way of distractions in my home: I live alone and I don’t have a TV going all the time. This gives me time to think — and sometimes I think about unusual things.

The Science of Hot Coffee

This morning, I thought about why it was so important for me to warm my coffee cup before brewing coffee into it and why it was equally important to get the metal teaspoon I use to add sugar and stir out of that cup as quickly as possible. It all has to do with temperature: keeping that coffee hot as long as possible so I could enjoy it at my own pace before it got cold.

The warmed coffee cup is pretty obvious — we’ve all had the experience of putting a salad on a dish still hot from the dishwasher. The salad touching the plate isn’t as cold as the salad that isn’t. This is why they chill salad plates (and forks) at good restaurants. It follows that putting something hot into a cold vessel will do the same. I guarantee you’ve experienced this yourself. I know only one other person who takes the time to warm his coffee cup before putting coffee in it.

(And yes, I know a lot of folks don’t give a damn about what they likely consider a minuscule temperature change. But I do.)

But the spoon? Why is it so important for me to remove the spoon quickly?

This morning I thought a little about that. I’d always assumed that the stainless steel teaspoon would act as a heat sink. One end is in the hot coffee and the other is in the relatively cool kitchen. The heat from the coffee would heat up the spoon, which was made of metal — an excellent conductor of heat — and that heat would travel up the spoon handle to its end. The handle, which was constantly being warmed by the coffee would be constantly cooled by room temperature. That heat energy that is lost would have to come from somewhere: the coffee.

This is something I’ve always assumed. It makes sense to me. But this morning, for some reason, I wondered if I was right. And then I came up with an experiment to test my theory.

The Scientific Method


Scientific Method diagram by Wikipedia user Efbrazil used via CC 4.0 license.

I was in fifth grade when I learned about the scientific method. That was a long time ago and, not being a scientist or in any way involved in lab work my entire life, you’d think I’d forget it. But some things just stick with me. I think the scientific method stuck with me because it made sense logically — and I’m definitely a logical thinker.

Don’t worry — I won’t go into the scientific method in detail here. I’ll just focus on this diagram, which shows all steps to the method. The important concept to take away from this is that it starts with a question you might want answered and then goes through the process of coming up with a possible answer (hypothesis) and testing that answer (experiment). If the results (analyzed data) support the hypothesis, you might be done; if they don’t, then you’re definitely not done. In either case, you’d likely explore other hypotheses, going through the process again (and again and again, if necessary) until you either couldn’t get an answer — i.e., the experiment results simply do not support any hypothesis — or you were confident that one of your hypotheses was correct.

When I thought up an experiment to test my theory about a stainless steel teaspoon as a heat sink, I realized I was using the scientific method. In real life — not in a lab, not as a scientist. It was a great example about how some of the stuff we learn in school that we don’t think we’ll ever use in life does become relevant every once in a while.

Want to see the process for my experiment? Here are the first four steps:

  1. Observation/Question – More of a question: does coffee get cold faster if you leave a teaspoon in it?
  2. Research Topic Area – Well, understanding what a heat sink is is probably important to forming a hypothesis.
  3. Hypothesis – Yes, coffee does get cold faster if I leave a stainless steel teaspoon in it than if I don’t. (This would not apply to a plastic teaspoon since plastic is a poorer conductor of heat than metal.)
  4. Experiment – Take two identical cups. Add an equal amount of boiling water to each cup. Put a room temperature teaspoon inside one cup. Take temperature readings every 5 to 10 minutes to see if the one with the teaspoon gets cold faster. (You could expand the experiment to include three cups and put a plastic teaspoon in the third to test the hypotheses that plastic teaspoons would not have an effect.)

That’s as far as I got. I thought up the experiment but I didn’t do it. It simply isn’t that important to me to know, one way or the other, if I’m right. But it might make a nice at-home experiment for home-schooled kids if you happen to know any. Science is important — and heat sinks are a part of our every day life — they’re inside every computer we own.

Why Blog about It?

Why am I blogging about this? Well, I think I surprised myself this morning by my train of thought and where it led me. I wanted to share that with other folks who might find themselves consumed with things that prevent them from thinking for themselves.

All for clicks and likes

Let me take a moment to mention how outside pressures, especially from social media, get people to do things just for clicks and likes. Just this morning, I read another gender reveal tragedy story — too many gender reveals exist solely to impress others with their outrageousness. People are dying because a blog post that went viral has convinced people to make their own viral moment centered around the gender of their unborn child. Are we really that dumb? That 15 minutes of fame can put lives at risk?

This is an extreme, of course, but think about the not-so-smart things you’ve done to impress your friends and others over the years. Those “watch this” moments. Ever think of why you were really doing them? Or what the consequences could have been if what you did backfired? Is it really that important to impress others?

How about impressing yourself instead?

Every day, we’re faced with a barrage of inputs from family, friends, strangers, advertisers, and the news media. Direct conversation, text, and email; social media posts by people with their own agenda; print, audio, and video advertisements on billboards, in magazines, and everywhere online and on television; network and cable news broadcasters. Too much of that input is trying to fill your head with someone else’s thoughts and ideas and manipulate your opinions. If you follow politics at all, you know exactly what I mean. It’s hard to have a moment to yourself, a time to just think based on verifiable facts and to form your own ideas and opinions.

I do this a lot. Yes, I spend a lot too much time on Twitter but that’s the only social media I allow access to my brain. (Seriously folks, #DeleteFacebook.) And even then, I’m careful about who I follow. I don’t want a diet of political nonsense from either side so I tend to avoid accounts that post just politics. Instead, I try to get tweets from fellow thinkers — or at least from folks who have a life that doesn’t revolve around cable news and the latest political/celebrity scandal. And when I’m not on Twitter — which really is most of the time — I keep active and work on ways to make my life fulfilling.

I think therefore I am. If you can’t think for yourself, do you really exist?

Anyway, does leaving a stainless steel teaspoon in your coffee make it cool faster? If you do the experiment, let me know.

The 2022 Ranger Tugs/Cutwater Rendezvous

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A great opportunity to learn new things and meet new people — and an excuse to take my new boat on a 250-mile round trip journey.

Last week, I wrote a blog post covering my maiden voyage in my new boat. The purpose of that voyage was to attend the 2022 Ranger Tugs/Cutwater Rendezvous, back at Roche Harbor on San Juan Island after a two-year Covid break.

In this blog post, I’ll try to fill you in on how this event was for me.

New Friends

I want to cover new friends first since that was the first thing that happened for me after securing my boat at J Dock. I was doing something inside the main cabin when a woman came up to my open window and invited me over to their boat for drinks. And just like that, I met the folks who sort of adopted me for the long weekend: Cindy, Tony, Joan, and Mark. They were all aboard Cindy and Tony’s 2022 Ranger Tugs R-43, which is the top of the line boat Ranger Tugs makes. With a length overall of close to 50 feet and a beam (width) of 14 feet, this boat has two good sized sleeping cabins and two full heads (bathrooms), making it a perfect boat for four people to be comfortable for an extended stay on the water.

The boat’s name: Infinite Loop. Cindy worked for Apple during the late 1990s and into the 2000s. She jokes — or maybe not? — that her Apple stock paid for the boat. (My Apple stock paid for my divorce so we both got good deals.)

I eventually took them up on their offer — I had to walk my pups, hose the salt off my boat, and do some organization things inside first. I brought vodka for a martini, made it with the wrong kind of vermouth (but I only used a little so it was okay), and joined them on the back deck at a table with plenty of room for all of us. (I joined them for dinner three times, too, and was glad to be able to contribute with my eggplant and goat cheese pizza and a vegetable dish.)

While we were sipping our cocktails that first night, another R-43 backed in across the dock from them and next to me. On board were Janet and Sandy who were all business as they coordinated their parking jobs with headsets on. Although they kept more to themselves, we did see a lot of them at events and on their boat.

We started referring to J Dock as where the cool kids were.


I love this group selfie that Mark took. Front row (l-r): Tony, Cindy, Joan (holding my dog Rosie), Mark. Behind (l-r): me (holding my other pup Lily), Janet, and Sandy (holding their dog Yogi Bear).

The Others

There were an estimated 200 Ranger Tug and Cutwater boats at the event. Ranger Tugs and Cutwater are sister companies owned by Washington based Fluid Motions LLC. The boats are very similar but I think Cutwater boats are built more for speed. All of their boats are built in Washington State, at a number of factory facilities in the Seattle area.


Here’s an aerial view of Roche Harbor shot from my drone. All of the boats on the Guest Dock on the right side of the photo were Rendezvous participants. J dock is on the other side of the marina; it’s the first dock on the right off the dock on the left. My boat is the smallest one there and I had to get the drone camera pretty high to see it behind the larger boats there.


The Home Screen of the Rendezvous app.

The Rendezvous had an app and the app had social networking capabilities. But although it let you share photos and comments, it didn’t alert you when you had a response to a comment or a private message. So although I tried to connect with other R-29 owners to see how they had modified their boats over the years and learn some tips and tricks from long-time users, and I got some responses, I could never quite connect with any of them. It was a bit frustrating.

But part of the problem is that I just kept very busy while I was at the event. Seminars, organized social events, socializing with friends, taking my pups for walks — I was constantly on the go and not consulting that app as often as I should have or making more of an effort to connect. My loss.


Here’s a look at the Guest dock at night. Our boats come equipped with underwater lights and colored lights for the aft deck and everyone seems to have turned theirs on.

The Seminars

What was keeping me busy was mostly the seminars. There were quite a few of them and very few overlapped. I attended a bunch but didn’t stay for all of the ones I attended. Here’s a quick summary:

  • Volvo Engine. This seminar was led by someone from Volvo that definitely knows its engines. It covered important maintenance and inspection details for the D4 (which I have) and D6 Diesel engines. I took four pages of notes. At the end, they gave out a USB drive full of factory publications to help me understand and maintain my engine. I’m determined to do as much regular maintenance as I can on the boat, not only to save money but to be more familiar with the boat’s components, including the engine.
  • Garmin topic TBD. The title of this seminar should have given all of us a warning: they had no idea what they were going to talk about. The Garmin representative rambled on somewhat incoherently about updating chart plotters and using Active Captain and buying maps. He bounced from one topic to another and made the mistake of taking questions so we all had to listen to the highly specific issues other boaters were dealing with on their setups. Cindy and Joan left first, I left after 20 minutes, and I’m pretty sure Tony and Mark left soon afterward. It was more confusing than enlightening.
  • Women in Boating. This was a major disappointment for me. I was hoping that she’d provide some insight into challenges facing women as boaters, but what she really presented was Boating for Dummies, that started with basic terminology like hull and gunwales. Her handout included images of every slide and I paged ahead to see if it would get any better. But no, it was more of the same. I realized that most of the women at the event were there with husbands or other male partners and I also understand that in most of these partnership, the man was doing the boat stuff and the woman was along to taken in fenders, tie up lines, cook dinner, and wash dishes. This seminar was geared toward them, not me. I left after 10 minutes.
  • Anchoring. I was very interested in this seminar because I plan to do some anchoring and had neither training nor experience. It was led by an R-29 owner named Glen Wagner, who also does most of his boating solo. (Actually, it turned out that he and I had a lot in common.) He covered basics and techniques in a presentation that was informative and entertaining. Although I didn’t take a lot of notes, I learned a lot.

There were other seminars, too, and although I thought I might want to attend them, I just felt as if I needed more down time. Being Whale Wise, Puget Sound Fishing and Crabbing 101, and Cruising Alaska were all topics I’d definitely explore later in my boating life, after I’ve gotten the Great Loop out of my brain and have brought the boat back to the west coast. The one about Exterior Boat Maintenance was being led by a guy who sold boat ceramic coating so I figured it was either going to be a sales pitch or concentrate on maintenance with that coating. (And yes, I could be wrong.) The boat insurance seminar was led by the folks I’d bought my insurance from, so I didn’t think they’d tell me anything I didn’t already know.

Sponsor Tables

There were tables at the event for each of the sponsors, including Volvo, Garmin, and the insurance folks.

Although we were encouraged to visit and ask questions, I hit a brick wall every time I visited the Garmin table. I needed to understand why certain features seemed to be missing from my chart plotters and why my remaining fuel indicator kept blinking at 103 gallons. The four guys there kept trying to me off to each other. Or to Volvo. After being passed from Garmin to Volvo and back to Garmin, I finally got a guy willing to walk back to my boat with me for a look. Sure enough, he passed me off to a Ranger Tugs guy who was busy doing something else but promised to stop by.

He stopped by later that day and showed me a feature on the Volvo engine monitor that I didn’t realize would do anything: a Back button. I thought I was already looking at the Home screen so I’d never tried that button. Back brought me to a menu that brought me to a Fuel screen. Duh. I felt pretty dumb.

In my defense, however, I did not receive a single manually that originally came with the boat. Although the broker and the surveyor both claim the manuals were on board, I went through every single compartment on that boat and did not find them. So it looks as if I’ll be downloading and printing the missing manuals so I can learn what I need to know when I need to know it.

Social Activities


Cindy took this photo of me and my girls sitting in front of my boat. The “Do It Now” sign was the only way I could provide the name of my boat for people who might be looking for it; I still did not have its name anywhere on it.

In addition to the seminars, there were social activities every night: a Sip and Chip Happy Hour on Thursday, a Margarita Happy Hour on Friday, and a Tropical Paradise Happy Hour on Saturday. I skipped Margaritas, but attended the other two with my new friends. That last Happy Hour included food, which I don’t think any of us expected, and was good enough to make a meal.

There were also games, including a scavenger hunt with flowers that I didn’t quite understand, a cornhole tournament and championship, a fishing and crabbing derby, a blindfolded dinghy race (which I wish I’d seen), and a tropical theme boat and costume contest.

I didn’t know about the boat decorating contest and was sorely unprepared, but my new friends kept adding flowers and leis to my railings. I even put an inflatable fish Cindy gave me on my VHF antenna. And I dug out a strand of solar powered fairy lights I used to use with my camper and strung them up on the bow. Cindy, Joan, and Janet were really into it and really decked out their boats. But I don’t think the judges came to J Dock; neither of them won.

At sunset, the marina did a colors ceremony that included playing music while they lowered flags. Flags were at half staff when Queen Elizabeth II died and taps was very sad. At the end of the colors ceremony, all the boat owners near their horns sounded them; I was never close enough to sound mine.


Roche Harbor Resort at night.


Here’s a post-sunset look at the ramp down to J Dock. It was gorgeous there, even at night.

One-on-One Training

I mentioned that Glen Wagner had an R-29 and it happened to be parked near mine. I arranged to meet with him in his boat to get part of the Ranger Tugs orientation that I missed out on by buying used instead of new.

The first thing that struck me was the modifications he’d made to his boat. He had removed two of the three rear deck seats — he said that they weighted 27 pounds each and he didn’t need them. He’d also removed his wine cooler and had somehow managed to get a door for the new cabinet space that matched all of the other doors and drawers on the boat. He’d moved the heating controls, too. But in looking around, I got answers to questions I had about my boat, including where to mount the fire extinguishers, which were on board but had never been mounted on my boat.

We went over his pre-departure check list, which was an enormous help for me. I wanted to create a check list and Sandy had given me his as a starting point — even though it was for an R-43 instead of an R-29. I grabbed a photo of Glen’s, which was a better starting point for me. He went over each item and went into detail about some of them. We opened the engine lid and looked at important inspection points inside. He filled my brain with new information, most of which was very important for me to know.

Then he came over to my boat to check my chartplotter set up. I’d been missing the Autoroute feature that everyone else seemed to have. Every time I told someone, “No, that button is not on my chart plotter,” they’d respond, “It has to be. Maybe you’re not looking in the right place.” Well, Glen came over and actually looked. It wasn’t there. (It turns out that the original owner only had the default charts installed; I need to buy G3 map cards to get additional information and that feature.) He also reviewed how to update fuel information in the chartplotter and explained why it was a more accurate reading when under way than the fuel gauge on the Volvo engine monitor.

Departure Day

The event officially ended Saturday evening with the Happy Hour and prize distribution. I went back to the boat and hung out for a while afterwards for some excellent nachos on Infinite Loop. I was exhausted — all the uphill walking I did every day closed all three of my Apple Watch rings daily — and turned in early.

In the morning, most folks headed out, including my new friends. We did a group photo — see above — and everyone packed up to leave.

Except me. I’d decided to stay an extra day to rest up and prepare for more training and a chartplotter update on my way home in Anacortes on Tuesday and Wednesday. So I mostly watched my friends get ready to move out. There were lots of hugs; Joan squeezed me long and hard enough that I thought I might pass out. Then Infinite Loop was on its way out of the marina. I sent my drone after it, but interference from the metal dock and the huge boats all around me prevented me from getting a good shot.


Here’s the best shot I could get of Infinite Loop cruising out of Roche Harbor. (I should have repositioned to a different location with less interference.)

Janet and Sandy left a short while later. I didn’t even bother trying to get a drone shot because I knew the drone would fail me.

I went for a walk with my pups and soon realized that the Guest dock was nearly empty. Most folks were leaving, going back to their marinas or continuing their cruises elsewhere. I took my pups to the dog park, where they just looked at the open, fenced in field as if they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.


I grilled up some halibut for dinner and ate it in the window seat facing out back.

And when I got back to my boat, the huge boats that were normally docked there started returning. I guess they’d just cleared the space for us. I wondered if another huge yacht was waiting elsewhere in the marina for me to leave.


My boat looks minuscule next to the large boats that returned to their slips around me on Sunday afternoon.

The colors ceremony was somber that evening. It was September 11 and we were asked to take a moment to think about the lives lost on 9/11. There were no tooting horns after Taps.


Sunset on September 11. I’d already removed the fairy lights and boat name sign I’d put on the boat in preparation for departure the next day.

I’d start my trip back to Olympia the next day, so I prepped my boat for departure as well as I could. I’ll tell you about that trip in another blog post.