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Mystery Date Letter

(Inspired by https://reddit.com/r/writingprompts)

Initially it seemed like a hoax, or a terrible joke. The news took several months to figure it out, piece by piece. The envelopes came in slowly over a year or more and no one really took note of it and most people ignored it. Many initially threw them away. An afterthought. After all, there was only some random date printed in perfectly centered, large solid black serif text on high-quality paper. It was delivered in a fine envelope with the owner’s address printed neatly in the same font, but smaller, and a postage stamp from the recipient’s own country. The date was always in the future.

There were rumors, to be sure. Urban legends that seemed to spread faster than normal. Chatting at the proverbial water cooler speculating what the date meant. Even Snopes.com even had a page devoted to it, but the rating was listed as “mixed” and for a long while there was no good information, no consensus and for a while people forgot about it.

But the way the internet works, people began to come together with bits of information and supposition and anecdotal evidence. Websites spring up, forums were opened, even a subreddit, /r/mysterydateletter, was created to discuss and speculate.

It was in these forums, in the news aggregation and analysis that bits and pieces were put together.

An elderly retired wife and grandmother whose husband had just passed away. When caring for a loved one with Alzheimers, many things tend to fall by the wayside. She hadn’t had time to open the envelope and while going through all the old mail after his passing, she opened his envelope. It was the date he died. It made the local news.

The girlfriend of a college man killed in a freak accident while skiing found his letter days later. She posted it on Reddit.

A father who lost his family in a terrible car crash. All their letters had the same date except his. That made the national news.

It was no longer speculation. Data began pouring in. People who had died in the past months had received their letters and when they were discovered again, the date corresponded to the date of their death. Initially most people rejected the theory that the date was the date you were going to die. But the evidence, a deluge pouring in every day was unstoppable and undeniable. A hundred and fifty thousand people die every day across the earth. Even five percent of reports were enough to convince the world that this was real. That suddenly everyone alive between February 2016 and June 2017 knew on exactly what day they were going to die.

That’s when things changed. There was, of course, panic and denial, for sure. Some people ran, trying to outrun and hide from their fate, but they were inevitably found days or weeks later, some with the paper still clutched in their hand. Few people could believe that this was happening. Many wealthy people tried to hire the most expensive and prestigious doctors to be with them on their day, to keep them alive to cheat death. It became an niche industry, for a while, and a lot of doctors became very wealthy themselves. But it was futile.

Things in the world started to change. Wars and conflict continued, yes, but they didn’t seem to have the morbid enthusiasm that they used to have. The news once reported that an entire village in war-torn Africa got letters with the same date. That was before we’d solved the riddle. That was the day their entire village was killed. The news also reported that knowing the date of their death also gave villagers the courage to defeat their would-be murderers and bring peace back to their country. This was repeated again and again. How do you defeat someone that knows they can’t be killed?

Three years on, however, those types of news stories were few and far between. Conflict among warring factions for the myriad of reasons that humans fight among themselves had dropped to an all-time low. Possibly in all of human history there had never been such a quiet period when it comes to strife and war. Even common events, such as deadly car crashes, were replaced as many people chose to spend their last day with family and friends in a sort of “deathday” party.

Instead, people rededicated themselves to creative endeavors. The arts were flourishing. The amount of literature, theater, and music being created was only matched by that of the Renaissance. In three hundred years, science had never made such strides. Fusion energy, quantum computing, and already the first shipments of supplies for the first base on Mars. All within three years!

And those whose dates were near learned to give the remainder of their lives to the rest of the world, to leave a kind and generous mark on the world. Those whose dates were far in the future learned quickly to not live too reckless a life. Terrible injuries could still hold back a long life, but knowing you have seven decades to live gave people the security in knowing they could do much good with their lives.

The world had indeed changed.

—

You turned off the television after watching the news and smiled. It was full of positive stories coming out of the your city and country and all the good that was happening. There was only a brief 90-minute segment on a plane crash that killed two people. Both had known it would happen, of course, but not how. There’s still an amount of surprise when two healthy people who live in different parts the country have the same date. Usually it’s coincidence, isn’t it?

You get up from the sofa and walk back into your home office. You’ve been thinking lately about what it all means and where it came from and after three and a half years, you still don’t have any real idea.

You open up the filing drawer and the folder named Personal Info and draw out your own letter. Dated and stamped, just like everyone else’s. Once again, probably for the hundredth time, you pull out the letter from the envelope, feel the fine paper under your fingers, unfold it and read it. It hasn’t changed.

The page is still blank.

The Epic Train Trip

I’ve always loved trains. There something about them that I can’t pin down. Maybe it’s the little boy in me that still has a fascination with big machines. Maybe it’s the romance surrounding trains and train travel. Maybe it’s that I consider trains to be a more civilized form of travel as compared to planes, where I feel like cattle in a tin can, or driving, where it can take many hours of paying attention while driving to get anywhere. So I’ve always had it in my head to take sine dirty of long train trip across the country.

Last summer, two of my good friends, John and Charlotte, got married. While there, my wife and I ran into an old friend, Kristin, from the JoCo Cruise, who is an avid traveler. I don’t know how we got onto the topic, but I must have mentioned that I wanted to go on a long train ride somewhere, like The Trans-Siberian Railroad. Kristin and I talked in the following weeks and decided that Siberia was a bit much and settled on Canada. It was relatively easy to get to (Toronto or Vancouver, airfare isn’t too bad) and it was a good enough length to not be excessively long: Siberia is seven nights, Canada is four. In March we picked our dates, destination, and booked the train: Toronto to Vancouver in early September. It was a go! My wife wasn’t interested in spending four days on the train, so she would stay home. We, the travelers, asked our newly married friends if they wanted to come along and they said yes, so it was a party!  

As the months went by, I decided that I wanted to spend a few days in Toronto to see some friends who live around there and to not have to rush to the train station and to get a chance to see a city that I’ve only ever briefly visited. Kristin was planning to go to Montreal and Quebec City, buy those plans fell through, so she spent three days with me in Toronto.

My first impression of the location immediately surrounding the hotel was one of New York, with small oddball shops with the roll-down grates to secure the store at night. Food places, electronics stores, luggage stores, a few gift shops. And oh, look a strip club. And another. This was the more interesting part of the city. At no time did I ever feel unsafe, however. My second impression of the city was it is big. The last new city I’ve been to recently was Portland and its tiny be comparison. On Sunday we walked upwards of 15 miles and barely made a dent in what we traversed.

On our first day in Toronto, we decided to walk around and explore the city. It was hot and humid for such a northern city, a heat wave they called it. Regardless, we found our way down to (insert park name here) and saw lake Ontario, a cool, old, locked (yes, I checked) lighthouse, and not one but two different ferries! Suffice to say, we did a lot of walking that day. And the next and even some more on Tuesday.Toronto is a pretty sprawling city, and there’s no strict delineation between downtown and not downtown.

Other things that stand out are the St Lawrence Market (who needs three cheesemongers? I do!), the Distillery District and a labor day market they were having, and just general people-watching in Dundas Square near our hotel.

The food was good there, too. We found a great ramen place and went there twice for dinner. You know our good when there’s almost always a long out the door and everyone there speaks Japanese.

The other place that stands out is an Ethiopian restaurant/coffee house that we found on yelp. It was closed on labor day, but we went back on Tuesday and it was so worth the wait. The lady who owns the place doesn’t have a menu. She just asked about how much heat we might like in the food and prepared whatever she had that day. We ended up with pickled beets, caramelized carrots, lentils, greens, egg and probably something I’m forgetting. It was amazing. I felt like I was a guest in her home while at the same time she seemed surprised and humbled that we were even there. To drink she had Ethiopian tea and Turkish coffee, among others, both of which were delicious.

Then it came time for the train. Well, not really. We received word that the train was going to be two hours late. Then three hours late. Then ten hours late. Via Rail put us up overnight in the nearest hotel since we already checked out of our own hotel. Turns out the closest hotel was there Fairmont. Niiice. We had a drink or two in the Library Bar there, which was good, and it was also paid for by the train. And then we went to sleep to be up early to get our very late train.

Traveling in the “sleeper plus” class on the train afforded us a few benefits. The first was access to the business lounge at Union Station in Toronto. Since the train was late, and we missed breakfast on the train, they had a continental breakfast in the business lounge. Which also had free WiFi. Finally we boarded the train. Woo! And then we say for an hour. Yep. We were now 11 hours late.

At this point I was of two minds. On one hand, I hope they would not make up time because the journey was the point of the trip. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to miss having dunner with my friends when we arrived in Vancouver. In the end, we got a little of both. The train made up about 5 hours, so we arrived in Vancouver in the early afternoon. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The train was the longest I’ve been on. It was 24 cars long, not counting the two locomotives. Most of the cars were sleeper cars with cabins of varying sizes and berths that converted to seats in the daytime. Mixed in there were a pair of luxury sleeper cars, two dining cars, two activity/observation cars and the bar/lounge at the end of the train. Our berths and cabin were near the front of the sleeper plus section of the train. The economy passengers had three cars of seats at the very front of the train and a single activity/observation car. But they couldn’t enter the rest of the train. I have mixed feelings about this, the separation of classes. But at the same time, I got the impression that very few people take economy class across the country.

The amenities were nice. The two daytime seats in our berth seated for people comfortably, and if requested, the staff could put a table between for reading, activities or games. Or you could put your feet up, gaze out the window at the scenery outside. During dinner (I’ll get to the food in a bit) our attendant would convert the seats into an upper and lower berth. The to section would fold down which contained both mattresses. The seats would fold flat and a matters would be placed on top to create the lower berth. A ladder then hooked onto the side to get to the upper berth. Both were quite comfortable, though the upper berth has no window at all. The heavy curtains blocked out most of the light and the motion and noise of the train helped to lull me to sleep.

The activity/observation car is sort of divided into three sections. The front section had booths with tables with a chess/checker boards printed on them. From here, the stairs leading to the observation Deck went up. The middle section was two floors. Below was the kitchen/galley and above was the observation Deck. The third section was more tables, but these have cafe-style chairs. Again, a place for games, activities, and even watching movies that they played in the evenings after dinner.

Finally at the very back of the train was another sort of car, similar to the activity car, but this one had a proper bar, an observation Deck and a lounge at the very back of the train with windows all around. This was the Bullet Lounge and though it was nice, we didn’t spend a lot of time here. It was a long walk. From our car (about #8 or #9) we had to walk through fourteen cars to get to the end. And nine of them were sleeper cars. All the same. Like you were stuck in some sort of sleeper-car nightmare. Or a national lampoon movie (“look kids, it’s Big Ben! “)

On the train were two dining cars. They are unable to seat everyone at once, so we ate in shifts. This was vaguely reminiscent of dining at my grandmother’s for thanksgiving when there were way more people than the mere ten seats at the dining room table. On the train, we opted for the most popular second seating, which was around 6:30pm. The dining tables were, due to the nature of being on a train, a bit smaller than we americans are used to. Elbows were bumped easy, so it’s a good thing that the four of us were dining together every night. The tables were well appointed and the food was excellent. Every night we had a choice of four entrees and soup and/or salad and then usually a choice of two desserts. I’m not going to go into details of what we ate, but everything was quite pleasing.

And of course the view out of the very large windows at the tables was excellent. That’s one thing we could always count on, something interesting to see outside of the train. We traveled through four distinct terrains. The first was most of Ontario, which looked to be a bit hilly, lots of green and birch trees, and many, many lakes. The second was the prairie which stretched on for as far as the eye could see. In some cases there were rolling hills as one would expect, but lots and lots of sky. (Speaking of which, for the most part, the weather was good during the whole trip. No rain, not that I would have minded, and only some clouds.) Then came the Rocky Mountains, most of which we missed due to the delays of the train, and finally, on the way out of the rockies, we followed a river valley all the way into Vancouver. It was definitely almost desert-ish in places, and very rocky. As I mentioned, we didn’t get to see much of the Rockies, despite having attempted to make up time throughout the trip across the country. We just couldn’t do it. Since we kept getting bumped by the freight trains, we kept losing time. So we started the climb into the mountains at dusk and didn’t really get to see anything. On the other hand, we did get to see the trip down the Thomson and Fraser rivers into Vancouver, which normally happens at night. The highlight of that was getting to see what’s called Hell’s Gate, which is a narrowing of the Fraser river where the width is only about 35 meters or 115 feet wide. It’s quite a spectacular view and the train even slowed down so we could all see it. Perhaps they were making up for us missing the mountains. Our arrival in Vancouver was ultimately six hours late, which means we gained five hours as we crossed the country. The bulk of that time was achieved after we passed the mountains, at which point there were two complete rail tracks, one for northbound trains and one for southbound trains. Despite the schedule having extra padding built into it (that is, there may be four hours on the schedule between cities, they can actually cover that ground in an hour if the way is clear) we simply didn’t make up the time. I wasn’t complaining, really. This time, the journey was the destination. Finally, I should make a note about the staff. They are simply great. They are friendly and helpful and pleasant and very good at their jobs. Regardless of whether they are the folks in the business lounge in Toronto helping us arrange a hotel room, or our cabin attendants who worked every morning and night to raise and lower our berths (which take about 20 minutes each!), or the engineer we spoke to who drives the train between Edmonton and Jasper six times a week, or the man in charge, the service manager, who was very friendly and happy to talk about everything train-related, they were all great and I look forward to hopefully seeing them again the next time I take the train.

And I will. Maybe in the winter. It was that fun. But this time I’ll go from Vancouver to Toronto.

One month of exercise

So it’s time to change my life. It’s October 1. I want to be healthier. I currently weigh 216 pounds, which is the most I have ever weighed, and according to the health assessment I did last month at work, I burn 1870 calories just sitting on my butt and I’m something like . To this end, I have

• Restarted my account at MyFitnessPal to track my food intake
• Cut out sugar and white bread as much as I can
• Bought a new bicycle to bike to/from the Metro on mornings where it’s not raining
• Added a pedometer app to my phone to count my steps with a goal of 10,000 steps a day
• Installed the 30 Days app on my phone to challenge me every day for strength
• Committed to writing a blog post every week

If you want to join in, find me on MyFitnessPal as cajunjoel. See you on Monday!

In support of Zoë Keating

I’m writing this on my phone because it’s on my mind and it needs to be said.

Zoë Keating was a performer on JoCo Cruise Crazy 3 in 2013. I had not heard of her before the cruise announcement, so I opted to not listen to any of her music before the cruise and instead enjoy the experience of hearing her for the first time in the shared experience that is JCCC. (If you’ve been on this cruise then you know what I’m talking about.)

The result was no less than I expected from JoCo Cruise Crazy. Zoë is talented and downright amazing. Her music is unique and magical and I enjoyed every moment of that performance.

Later in the cruise, I was volunteering to check badges at the doors of another performance and as things got quiet out front, I went inside where I could watch the show and still see the doors. Back there near me was Zoë Keating and her husband and their toddler, a child at that age where they want to roam around and explore their environment. It made sense that they were at the back of the hall, enjoying the performance of one of her colleagues while still attending to the newfound wanderlust of their child. I didn’t intrude, but I watched from afar, as it were. It may be a commonplace thing to do for a patent, but to me I found it endearing. I enjoyed their interactions and probably smiled at them once or twice. It’s something I’ll remember for a long time.

Today, Zoë Keating and her family find themselves in a crisis. Her husband has recently been diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer. Cancer sucks, I agree, but this is a bad situation.

My husband Jeff has been sick with a mysterious illness for several months. It’s not so mysterious any more. My man, my best friend, my soul mate, my partner-in-crime for 16 years has cancer. All. Fucking. Over. Lungs, brain, liver, bones.   Read more…

//twitter.com/zoecello/status/471401598384893952

Which brings me to my point…

I’m asking you to support Zoë Keating. Check out her music. Buy a song, buy an album. She is a professional musician, so this is her livelihood. The tours and concerts and album she had plans for this year are all on hold while she is with her husband. I promise you won’t regret adding her music to your collection.

Thanks.

Silverlight Getting it Wrong

It’s monday. This is a rant.

I work in Google Chrome, it’s my browser of choice. Today, I got yet another popup reminding me to update Microsoft Silverlight. So I said to myself, what the hell, I’ll update it finally, despite the fact that I see nothing horribly wrong with my browsing experience. (N.B. Our shop uses a Microsoft backend, including heavy use of Sharepoint.)

So after clicking through to update Silverlight, I am presented with this.

I think I stared at it a full minute before figuring out that I had to click the link for the “Current Version”. Current Version implies to me that it’s the version that I have installed on my computer. I had to compare the version numbers to see that the “Current” version was really the NEW version I needed to install.

Every other “Update this software now” installer I’ve used either A) started downloading the software immediately or B) at least provides a big bright UPDATE NOW button to send you on your way.

And people wonder why Microsoft is fading. They can’t get something this simple right. This smells like design by committee. Or design by people who don’t use their own software.

I think that everything else was just confusing the matter. Looking further, I have a 9×10 chart (NINETY different elements!) to look at to determine which version and OS Silverlight works on. As I said, I am on Chrome. I’m also on OS X. So if when I dug deep enough into this chart, I found that Silverlight is not compatible with Chrome on OS X 10.5.7+.

But wait, Silverlight was capable of telling me I needed to upgrade it, so SOMETHING was running on Chrome. But apparently it’s not compatible. Or maybe it’s no longer compatible. But compatible enough to harass me to upgrade every damn time I went to my company’s intranet homepage.

So, in summary, I have been badgered into updating software that is infuriatingly vague to install, but won’t provide me with the features it’s supposed to bring to my internet experience. Way to go, Microsoft.

At the very least, I hope that upgrading it will stop it from ever bugging me to upgrade.

UPDATE (Dec 4):

After updating Remember the big “INSTALL NOW” button I was looking for? It’s actually created with Silverlight. So if it’s not running because it needs to be updated, you don’t see it and the page isn’t confusing. I guess a PNG is too difficult to create at Microsoft.

On vacation

I find I have too much on my plate to keep this blog up to date with interesting things. So this is my official “I’m taking a break until I can re-prioritize things.” I hate doing this and I will not wear my “busyness” as a badge of honor as if my life is somehow more meaningful because I have a lot of stuff going on, but something is slipping and this is it. Until next time, take care.