Losing Your iPhone

My mom recently lost her iPhone. It was in her purse, which got placed on the top of the car, where it stayed when the car was driven off as she and my dad went home. There’s no way to know where it ended up. I spent a couple of hours helping them reset passwords and figure out how to deal with the situation.

My siblings and I have been pretty proactive with getting my parents online and connected. They’re both over 70, but also both have iPhones. My dad has a MacBook Air and my mom has an iPad. They share an iMac in their home office. For my mom in particular, this level of connection is a real blessing. She is stuck in a wheelchair most of the time, and so being able to communicate with everyone via phone, email, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. is a huge improvement in her ability to connect with her family on a day to day basis.

There were a few lessons from this event:

1. All of your devices, whether iOS, Mac, or another platform, should require a passcode or password to access the device whenever you want to use it. This may be a minor hassle, but if the device is ever lost or stolen, you will be very, very glad you had this in place. The security problems my mom had would have taken twice as much time to deal with if the phone hadn’t required a passcode.
2. All devices should absolutely be logged into an iCloud account. This gives you some ability to interact with them when lost or stolen.
3. Given the above two points, if the phone is lost or stolen, don’t do what my parents did and call the carrier to cancel the account. As soon as they did that, we couldn’t use iCloud to locate or lock out the phone. It would have been preferable if we could have used iCloud to do this, but since AT&T had already canceled the phone, we couldn’t.
4. In my opinion, the technology industry has failed so far when it comes to user authentication. Making my parents try to keep track of a dozen or more passwords for their various accounts does not work.
   They are not technical enough to use anything like 1Password, and yet keeping track of passwords on paper has its obvious security flaws. I hope Apple extends Touch ID to the Macbook and iMac product lines and that developers integrate it into their authentication mechanisms to reduce the need for passwords.

~John Newhoff

Have Phone, Will Travel

Last year I took an extended trip to Latin America, a dream I had for a long time. As my husband and I prepared for our adventure, we considered what to do with our cell phone plans. We didn’t want to continue to pay the AT&T bill while we were abroad, so we looked into having our iPhones unlocked by AT&T, which turned out to be incredibly easy. I didn’t want to lose my existing cell phone number entirely so I opted to have the phone number ported to Google Voice, for a one-time fee of $20. With my number in Google Voice, I downloaded the Google Hangouts app, where I could send and receive texts and phone calls from my existing phone number. This works out really well to maintain that phone number without having to have an actual cell phone plan tied to it. Once the phones were unlocked and we began our journey south, we were able to purchase SIM cards in each country we visited. It typically went like this. We entered a country and in the first few days we would ask the locals about which provider had the best cell phone service. In South America, there are two pretty big competitors, Claro and Movistar, but there are others depending on which country you are in. When we decided on a provider, we would inquire where we could buy a SIM card. It was always an adventure trying to determine where to purchase the SIM card. In Nicaragua, we were sent to about 5 different stores before finding the right office. After purchasing the card, typically for around one dollar, we would visit a corner store where they would be able to load our cards with money so we could use the phone. In all of the countries we visited, the cell phone companies offered very cheap promotions when reloading a card. In Colombia, there was a promotion where you could have two chosen numbers and when you called either of these numbers, the first five minutes of the call was free. Making local calls, texting and surfing the web were quite cheap. I usually put a few dollars on my phone at a time and that was enough to get by for a few weeks. Any time I wanted to call the States, I would use the Google Hangouts app. With Google Voice, it is free to make phone calls to the United States and Canada. The process of finding, purchasing, and setting up the cell phones was a little tedious at times, but I happen to enjoy this kind of travel - where I get to interact with locals, force myself to learn the language, and learn about something I typically would not. So for me, the adventure of using an international cell phone was part of the fun. Plus I didn’t have to give up my existing phone number when I left the country. It was a win-win! ~Kate Waldhauser

And Now for Something Completely Different

Yes, it’s true. I had design work in a 4th Dimension database to do, and testing in a FileMaker one. There were end user questions to handle. But it was a beautiful, cool, misty fall day.

What wouldn't I do for that face?So, after answering the queries (we try to get to them in a timely fashion, even when the outdoors beckons), the dog and I jumped in the car and headed out to an off-leash dog park in Everett that has winding trails through acres of woods.

Post mud discoveryAs it happens, there is also a pond. And mud. Far be it from Tully to avoid either. What with the wooded trails, the undergrowth, the logs, the pond, imaginary squirrels to chase (I’ve never seen one inside the fence), and a few other dogs to chase through the underbrush, I now have an exhausted pup sleeping away the afternoon. Hurray!

There was also beautiful fall foliage, moss, bracket fungus, asters, large firs and pines, and all the other wonders of the Pacific Northwest in autumn.

Now I guess I need to get back to that 4D design work...

Note: This is an off-leash dog park (Loganberry Lane). Please obey your local leash laws.

~Alanna

The Drive to Ke’e Beach

Your correspondent, coming to you from the back of a minivan ( a grand caravan to be precise), reports to you on a drive from Poipu beach to Ke'e beach on the island of Kaua’i. Yes, I'm on Kaua’i for 10 days, apologies to those of you suffering from the recent snow in Seattle.

I've never been to Kaua’i, so this 1.5 hr drive is my first chance to see much of the island. Friends I'm with have been coming here since they were 6, so the trip is full of exclamations of 'hey, I stayed in that condo there when I was twelve' or 'look, that's where my sister Adrienne was stung by a jellyfish'.

In Kapaa now and we’re driving by the remains of the Cocoa Palms resort, destroyed by hurricane Iniki in 1992 and not restored or torn down to this day. It’s a very odd scene as you drive by.

Leaving Kapaa, the sun is starting to reflect on the mountains to the east and the mountain range called 'sleeping giant'. Quite beautiful.

Jurassic Park was filmed partially on Kaua’i, and so traveling around the island is in some ways a tour of of the film. We did a tough 10 mile hike out to the Na Pali coast from Koke’e state park yesterday where it turns it some of the first scenes in the first movie were filmed. Yesterday we drove by a very large meadow where the scenes of the herds of dinosaurs running were filmed, and just now we passed a turnoff to the house that was used for the park visitors center. None of this was intentional. 

We just passed a big rooster on the side of the road. Kaua’i is literally overrun with chickens that have escaped into the wild or descended from original wild Polynesian stock. We even saw some miles into the Na Pali coast backcountry.

Passing through the countryside near Kilauea (of lighthouse fame I'm told), the van has broken out into a Don Ho song, a somewhat frequent occurrence.  This time, it was 'Beautiful Kaua’i '.  More chickens on the roadside.

I've been in Kaua’i for five days now and I still haven't had a shaved ice.

Now driving out of Princeville and a very pretty view down into fields of Taro and other crops growing in Hanalei Valley.

Rounding the corner to our first view of Hanalei Bay, the car breaks out into song again. This time its 'Bali Hai' from the musical South Pacific, which was of course filmed right here in Hanalei Bay. So were scenes from the recent George Clooney film, The Descendants. We drove along the shore road and found the beach cottage where they filmed the scene where George Clooney's character confronts his nemesis.

Past Hanalei Bay the road narrows quickly and becomes twisty and turny and in a short time we're at Ke'e beach and our destination- the trailhead for the Kalalau trail. Ahead: 8 mile round trip hike up the Na Pali coast to the Hankapiai Falls.

 --John Newhoff

MSF 2012

Technology as a way to get kids hooked on science

I hope that everyone is enjoying the new year! This is Rin, reporting in again after some more education-based travels.  Last November I had the privilege of participating in another NASA international collaborative event. We traveled to Melaka, Malaysia for the second Melaka Planetarium Space Festival. The Melaka Planetarium is run by a small but ambitious group of passionate educators. The Planetarium sponsored nine NASA scientists and educators to bring workshops, demonstrations and activities aiming to encourage interest in space and earth sciences among elementary- and middle-schoolers. 

This time, as at previous space festivals, I witnessed some exciting applications of technology in the hands-on workshops. Paulo Younse of JPL brought a set of easily programmable robots, which students “taught”  to navigate an obstacle course of a Martian landscape. Boys and girls of all ages find this activity exciting and challenging, and unwittingly learn the basics of programming.

Peter Falcon, also of JPL, brought a “magic planet” - a sphere-shaped screen that allowed students to visually see patterns and changes in a way that would be impossible out of a book. On this globe, students explored changing sea levels, being able to see the changes on a global level right before their eyes. They could also see temperature changes, cloud patterns, and many other aspects of earth science that are often difficult to grasp in the abstract. And it was beautiful! I know what I want for my birthday this year!

Another fantastic hands-on use of technology was arranged by Gabriel Alvarado from the SETI Institute. Mr. Alvarado wanted students and teachers alike to have access to real data and assist in actual scientific discovery. He brought this about by introducing festival-goers to PlanetHunters.org, a website where anyone can log on and view data from the Kepler mission, which searches for planets in other star systems. Users are trained in reading this data, and are then set loose to hunt for planets by looking for patterns in light output from far-away stars. Amateur astronomers all over the world examine the Keplar data, “tagging” stars that might have planets. When a star receives enough attention from amateur users, the Keplar scientists go in and examine the data as well. Just recently, a planet in a rare double binary star system was discovered in this way. The ability to access real data and participate in real science ignited the curiosity and excitement of many a festival-goer, child and adult alike.

Even with this astounding technology, the real motivators were the NASA team themselves.  Every team member was overflowing with enthusiasm and energy, encouraging students to ask questions and find solutions to problems that they might not have ever considered before. I was honored to be included and hope to continue to work with this team in the future.

~Rin Scherrer