It's funny how I've fallen into the senior transportation bag and apparently it's big business around the U.S. It makes sense, a huge portion of the population (baby boomers) have hit that mark where they need transportation services to get them around.

So I started out applying my mobile template to the local MyRide thing here in Lawrenceburg. It was an interesting start into a transit oriented app but I had all these individual programs performing various things to various database tables and it had quickly become unmanageable.

One night I went to bed at seven and woke up four hours later with a concept of consolidating tables and code, and proceeded to develop version two.

It has now evolved into really nice code. At the core I have created five tables:

 • A User table which contains the records of the four different user types, Admin, Staff, Driver and Client. This is basic information like ID number, username, password, name, address, email, phones, and geo-location.

 • Supplement tables, one for each type, containing their own unique record layout requirements.

Then I created five layout files which define the fields for each of the five tables, the idea being you can customize the data based on a companies requirements. If you need to add or change a field in any record layout the entire system will recognize that new field, or change, and handle the data appropriately. No diving down into the code to change anything!

This is damned cool stuff, and this morning I ported all of the code for a generic MyRide Tennessee operation, which nobody bit on, into a new app called, wait for it, jimcube.com.

There are a ton a start-up senior transportation companies around the country and maybe I can catch the interest of one, or two.

btw: This effect is my creation...

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My email from Amazon was trying to sell me a cat bed, then I turned around to check on Piper and realized she don't need no cat bed, she has mine. She's been sleeping on my bed with me for many years now and lately at night she finds the nook of my leg and curls up into it to stay warm.

I recently saw a thing on TV mounting a campaign to stop pet obesity. Those people can go to hell and Piper can be just as fat and happy as she wants. As I glance out my window at my huge back yard I think a campaign to stop groundhog obesity would be better.

I should mention that the blanket her nose is on and the crocheted one are both my grandmothers old blankets. In fact, she made the crocheted blanket. They are two of my prized possessions.

I mentioned Crazy Louie in my last post, and thought I would expand on that. Louie was my best friend in Paradise CA, during high school and the few years that followed that. He really wasn't crazy, that's just what people called him because he was different. To put it honestly he was slightly retarded, but he always looked upon life with childlike innocence and was always smiling at the wonderment of it all.

We rented a run down little apartment in Chico one mid-sixties summer and payed the rent with whatever odd jobs we could find. At night we roamed around town and dumpster dived for furnishings. We lived off of tomato sandwiches. Life was wonderful.

One day we decided to hitchhike to Mexico. As I reflect back on that idea, it was probably mine, and Louie was just up for the adventure, because he was crazy.

We each packed up a suitcase with clothes, hit the road, and crossed into Tijuana two days later. The first thing we did was hit the bars and proceeded to blow all of our remaining cash on booze. At one point we were sitting on the sidewalk selling our clothes to the Mexicans for more bar cash. We met an American there who asked if we wanted to drive to Ensenada with him, he had tequila, we said sure. Along the way we picked up some Mexican hitchhikers and the party was on.

When we got to downtown Ensenada, Louie was passed out in the back seat and the guy suggested he and I walk around the block in opposite directions looking for a good bar, and meet up on the other side. "That's a good idea!", I slurred.

Ok, not... While I walked around the block the guy disappeared with Louie and our suitcases. So there I was, flat broke, 65 miles from the border, and my compadre who really needed me to take care of him, had been kidnapped.

I wondered around looking for him for a while, realized it was hopeless, hitched back up north, crossed the border and landed in a park in downtown Long Beach. My plan was to go visit my other good buddy Ricky on his Navy ship and get a meal, but I was exhausted and crashed on the grass for several hours.

When I woke up, god spoke to me. Instead of walking over to the street that led to the base, I headed for the middle of the park. Up ahead I saw somebody slumped over on a bench with his head in his lap and an old man with a grey beard was standing over him. Suddenly Louie looked up and came rushing into my arms.

The old man vanished and there by the bench were our suitcases. Louie told me he had been dropped off at a beach down the road (after probably being sexually assaulted) and had been sleeping in phone booths until landing in this park. The old man had walked up to him and after hearing his story told him they should pray together. That's what they were doing when I walked up, I swear to god. And to be clear, this park had no significance, it was not some place we agreed to meet at, if ever separated.

We then hitched on home and got on with our lives.

It all started at a Four Square Baptist church in Paradise CA. I was hanging out there because my best friend Crazy Louie wanted me to. I met a girl there named Jenny Arcuri who was as bored as I was and invited me to her place for sex. We continued that relationship for a while and she became pregnant.

The church people said we should get married so we did. Wild times happened, I ended up as my daughters sole parent, and proceeded to fuck it up.

Now, after all these years, I have thirteen grandchildren from Beckys multiple relationships, and from what I can tell they were all given up for adoption or abandoned to the state. If ever there was verification of the phrase we reap what we sow, this is it.

Yet if I had never met Jenny, all of these beautiful lives would not exist. I haven't met most of them but from what I know the genes handed down to me on my grandfathers side out of Joplin, MO have prevailed and my ancestry lives on now strongly and varied.

I have decided to make it my goal to meet every one of them and share my knowledge of their heritage, which expands back through this country for hundreds of years. I'm sure they don't know any of this and coming from broken homes, maybe they would appreciate it.

Here is a grand-daughter I knew existed but have never seen before until a few days ago:

The resemblance to my daughter Becky is striking and heart breaking...

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I shot some video of dancing horses at a parade in Kent, WA many years back, and put it on YouTube. It's been pretty popular and has generated a lively comment discussion. Click the photo below to go there.

If the video fails to load, click Here.

I've launched my new template myridelab.com out into the wild. It has evolved into a very nice app and I'm pleased with it. We'll see what happens...

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In 1981 I was making $65 an hour coding mini's and had a bunch of cash saved up. One afternoon I walked into a Computerland store in Oakland, CA, plopped down $5k and walked out with one of the very first IBM PC's to hit the market, a nice color monitor from Canada and a printer. I knew it was the future, shifted coding gears, and it turns out I was right.

Now I sit here forty years later and I'm still typing code into an Intel powered machine running a Microsoft OS! What the hell?

I've created a new website btw. It's called MyRide Lab (myridelab.com) which I'll use to pitch the concept around Tennessee, and the MyRide Lawrence site can just die a slow death. (what, me bitter? nah... :-)

And yes I know the site title still says Lawrence, working on it. Also, all new Photos and Videos...

btw: Here's the original photo for that artwork:

I didn't get that job running the MyRide Lawrence program, hell I wasn't even called in for an interview, and I had to email them twice to see if they had made a decision! I suspect they had someone picked all along but had to go through the motions, it is a small southern town after all. Oh well, they don't know what they missed and at least now I'm free to explore other life options. I've been pouring my heart and soul into a website for them, knowing full well I probably wouldn't be able to implement it, and now I need to just have fun with it.

If you do a Google search for myride lawrence my site is right up there with their Facebook page, and a DuckDuckGo search has it at the top of their list! It has been truly rewarding to create an amazing piece, my creative mind is happy, but watch out now. :-)

I haven't given up on it at all, in fact I'm converting it to a generic MyRide template and there are several around the state. Maybe I can find an interested party...

myridelawrence.com

 

Sometimes I question where I've landed in life, (a small house on a dead end street in southern Tennessee) and then I think of what might have been. I guess we all do that don't we. My new technique in dealing with this is to imagine the worst scenario, like ending up unibomber style in a maximum security cell with just a hard cot, a toilet, and a small little writing shelf, until you die. My place is a palace in comparison and I'm free to live my life how I wish! So shut the hell up brain.

Speaking of that, my creativity is running rampant, my brain is exploding with new ideas and concepts and it's truly out of control and I need to settle it down a bit or I won't be able to focus on anything. Right now I'm going to get my ass off this chair and go to the store for food, just because I can. Have a great day and thanks for dropping by!

GPT-3 is a neural network powered language model which predicts the likelihood of a sentence existing in the world. It's being made available by OpenAI, and I've applied to it's API. Elon Musk initially invested in and supported this artificial intelligence entity but bailed when they sold it to Microsoft.

It could be the next big thing in tech so I decided to hop on board and grab a domain while I can. Stay tuned to mygpt3.com!

My friend Crissinda signed up as a Driver at my new website and made my afternoon. As a result she now appears as a driver on the site and I got an email notification that it happened (I wrote that notification code btw, hell I wrote everything...). When she added her vehicle type to the supplementel data it showed up under her photo. Worked great!

Here's the email:

MyRide Lawrence Database Structure and Login:

Tables

There are currently six database tables within the MyRide system:

 • The Drivers table contains basic information about each driver (name, address, phone, and email).

 • The Drivers Supplement table contains additional data about the drivers personal and vehicle licensing, insurance and hours of availability.

 • The Clients table contains basic information about each client.

 • The Clients Supplement table contains additional data about the client such as services required and additional contact info.

 • The Staff table contains a basic information record for each staff member.

 • The Admin table contains a basic information record for each administrator (typically one).

Logins

There are four different user login procedures, each requiring a User Name and Password. The Driver and Client logins offer the ability to Sign Up if they are not yet in the system.

 • The Driver login gives each driver access to procedures relevant to them.

 • The Client login gives each client access to procedures relevant to them.

 • The Staff login is a subset of the Admin level, allowing maintenance of non-sensitive Driver and Client information along with report functions.

 • The Admin login gives access to everything, update control over all information, along with add and delete control over all Drivers, Clients and Staff.

Pending

The next logical table is Rides which will put the entire structure to work...

btw: When a new driver is added they automatically get included in the Photos / Drivers section of the website. :-)

We got a dusting of snow around here last night, southern Tennessee is treating it like a major snow day, and they shut down the schools! Piper and I are not impressed as it took at least a foot of snow to bring transportation down where we came from.

I just can't seem to get anyone to embrace this web template of mine. I started it out with the tubing company last summer and they blew it off, I ported it over into a site for Riley's auto body business and it died the slow death of waiting for content from the partners wife. Now I've ramped it up into a database driven transportation entity that appears to be going nowhere, again.

Maybe I have to face the reality that I'm delusional, that it really sucks and people I show it to are just being polite when they say, that's cool. To accept that premise would shatter my ego and drive the knife deep into my failing grip on sanity.

The web world is funny though. I did a Google search on this latest piece and it appeared at the top of the list, right before their facebook page, and they probably don't even know it. I've got a YouTube video about dancing horses out there approaching 40k views, 200 thumbs up and tons of comments, I've got a mapping app on this blog that's had 1.4 million hits, and yet I still can't make a website stick...

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Pronounced Ahhs-New.com, it stands for "Another Web Site Nobody Uses" and I just grabbed the domain name. Why? Why the hell not. I can do it because I know how, I can put code up there that simply spells out the name because I know how, it only costs me $10 bucks, and five letter domains are cool.

Now all you need to do is click here and you will see how brilliant it is...

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When a new Driver or Client signs up to my new system, a basic record is created in the database containing their Name, Address, Phone and Email. They are then presented with the option to enter supplemental information about themselves. If they choose not to, or want to do it later, that's fine.

Each Driver and Client record then may or may not have a Supplemental record associated with it. The System Admin wants everyone to have all their information on file so he needs a tool to manage that. He needs to know if they have even bothered to fill out the supplemental info, and have they filled out all of the fields.

My Admin Tool Database Status gives them the power to keep the whole thing in line. It shows them who hasn't filled out the info at all, and who hasn't filled out everything. It then presents their Name, Phone and Text so they can just click the number, initiate a call or text, and remind them...

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To whom it may concern,

Greetings! My name is Jim Hamilton, currently residing in Lawrenceburg, TN. I'm a former computer scientist, turned transit specialist, and now retired. I recently became interested in the MyRide Tennessee program from an ad in our local paper looking for a coordinator to take the reins of their volunteer program, for which I have applied.

I realized quickly that the program here has no internet presence other than facebook, and they use the domain name myridelawrence throughout, which begged for it's own website, so I created one. Then I wrote some great code to go with it.

Before I proceed here I should make my intentions clear. I do this for the love of the game, I'm not a hustler trying to work an angle with these fine people. Whatever comes from this will resolve itself honorably.

As to the code, besides being a pleasant landing spot for anyone interested in the service, it's phone friendly and looks like a native app, yet it's real strength lies in it's database structure.

There are three main components to a service that hooks up volunteer drivers with seniors to provide them rides around town to stores and doctors. You need a database containing the drivers, the clients, and the trips. Then you need an interface that individually allows drivers to signup, clients to signup, and then a system to handle the bookings.

I have created the driver and client signup systems, with state of the art security, along with administrator functions which oversee everything. The database is lacking financial information for the clients because it's a nonprofit, but otherwise complete. There is no bookings system, yet.

I have not met with the Lawrence county folks regarding this job yet, and quite frankly, if they have a person in mind who can handle it, I will support them, pass the code over if they're interested, and get some road trips in.

If anyone else within the MyRide system has an interest in what I have created, hit me up! You can reach the website here: myridelawrence.com. If you go to the Links section you will see options for signing up as a Driver or a Client. Give it a shot if you like, it's only test data. The Administrator functions are very cool with control over everything, but you need to ask me directly for the Username and Password to try them out.

Sincerely,

Jim (tetonpost at gmail.com)

I sent this to all of the MyRide Tennessee operations in the state. Here's what the Admin Dashboard looks like:

I considered staying up last night to watch the ball drop but I went to bed at 7:30 instead. I woke up five minutes before midnight and thought about jumping up and grabbing the TV remote, but I just laid in bed and stared at my expensive watch as it marched quietly into the next year. I wondered if it was going to do something fancy, like a little animated show or something, hell I can send texts, make phone calls and it shows me a stupid happy face when fully charged!

Nothing, it read Jan 1, 2021 around the edge, a small explosion happened outside (firework or gun, you never know around here) and instead of watching the ball drop I let my own balls drop back into that warm spot between my legs they were hanging out at before I rolled over to look at my watch.

Happy New Year.