Monday Meanderings - 7.13.2015

Just when I was starting to have Soccer withdrawal, along comes the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament. It's the men, but you go with what you've got.

One of the teams in the competition is from Cuba, which has issues that most national teams don't face. One is travel documents; for Thursday night's game, the coach and 6 key players were missing because they were stuck in the Antilles with visa problems. The other major problem is that team members keep defecting - usually before playing in the tournament - so the coach never knows who he is going to have on hand for the game. For that matter, last night an assistant coach defected, along with two players.

Two of Google's self-driving cars are scooting around town these days. They figure Austin's traffic problems are a great testing ground. There are always two people in the cars when they are on the road, so the only way to spot them is all the extra gear bolted on the top and sides. Not to be mistaken for the camera gear on top of the Google Street View cars, which are also in town.

Barb's primary physician is retiring this month. She has only been going to see him since March of 1973 - 42 years!

In my biography of Robert E. Lee that I am reading for Learning Ally, the war is over. Lee surrendered to Grant and is now President of Washington College, at this point a little back-water school in Virginia. Later, of course, it will become Washington and Lee University, the ninth oldest institution of higher learning in the US.

If your home phone service is provided as VoIP - from a cable company, in other words - check out NoMoRobo, a free service that stops annoying robo-calls. Really. Love it!