Hurry Up!

When I was young, I wanted technology to hurry up so I could partake in new endeavors. Hurry up and send people to the moon, so I have a chance to go! Hurry up and make aircars so I can have one! Hurry up and find other planets, outside our solar system!

I haven’t yet made it to the moon. I don’t have an aircar, or even a hybrid car, and I don’t think anybody is even trying to make a hover car anymore. And they have started finding other planets around other stars, even a couple that might be considered vaguely ‘Earth-like’. But I never became an astronomer or even an astro-physicists, so I’m not involved in any of those discoveries, and probably never will be. Bummer!

Now that I’ve slipped into middle-age (when I was young, someone who was my age would be considered old), I still want technology to hurry up, but I’m looking a lot more at medical technology. Hurry up and find a better way to deal with bad knees. Hurry up and find a way to make me no longer reliant on reading glasses! Hurry up and find a way for me to actually lose weight and not have to live on dry salads and/or exercise 12 hours a day!

Today, I went to a pre-screening to see if I qualified for a new study of a new lasik surgery procedure that would eliminate my need for reading glasses. I did not qualify. I was at the upper end of the age group they were looking at, so possibly if I were 5 years younger, I would have qualified.

Hurry up! I don’t want to be ‘a little too far gone’ every time one of these new procedures comes along!

Electric Cars Are Not Electrifying

I've been researching electric cars, wondering if it was time to consider getting one to replace our older car. How long have the car companies been working on these? They've been saying they were around when cars were first being made, and the limitations then were the same limitations they've got now; only a few dozen miles per charge and long re-charging times. They haven't made much progress with those problems, they say, because electric cars were abandoned in favor of gas burning cars.

I was a little surprised to hear this is a second chance for electric cars; I was greatly dismayed to hear they haven't made any progress in eliminating those early problems. No, electric technology has not specifically been looking at being used in cars for the past hundred years, but hasn't it made any progress at all?

I even went so far as to look at re-charging stations that have been established for these cars. I was especially interested in the quick re-charging stations, which can recharge you to 90% in only half an hour. I was sadly disappointed. The closest recharging station of any kind was in Kansas City, and beyond that on the way to Florida, St Louis. There are none in Omaha, where I live. Since electric (and hybrids) get about 100 miles per charge, I could not use one to get even as far as Kansas City, which is not quite 200 miles away.

I like my traveling. I'd like to do a lot more of it while I'm still able to. But unless these people making electric cars get serious about it, I'm still going to have to burn gas to do it.

Bummer.