* * Arrivederci Italy!

I’m just back from vacation in Italy, one of the world’s truly fascinating, beautiful places. Let me tell you about it.

I went first, before my wife and daughter, and spent nine days hiking the Dolomites, the Italian Alps. I’d always wanted to go there, and I wasn’t disappointed. Not the Alps’ highest peaks, the Dolomites are among the most scenic. I hiked with a touring company called Alpine Hikers, headquartered in Arizona. I’d hiked with them twice before, in 1999 and 2006, so this was my third trip. They provided a guide who walked the entire journey with me and two other hikers.

We averaged around 7-9 miles each day, and it was seldom flat. Cumulative climbing was typically 2000 to 3000 vertical feet, and it was a strenuous six to eight hour walk each day. But gosh it was worth it!

One morning stands above the others. The day before, day three, we’d done our longest hike, around 12 miles, ending atop a mountain called Lagazuoi. The Refugio, or mountain hotel, is situated at 9300 feet of elevation. The morning after our arrival was one of the most breathtaking in my life, with the sun rising over craggy peaks to the east, the full moon setting over newly illuminated mountains to the west, and in the foreground below, fog swirling up and down over minor ridges. Wow!

At the conclusion of my hiking trip, I took the train (Italy has extensive public transportation throughout the country) southward to Venice, where I met my wife and daughter. We stayed on the eastern, less developed part of the island, and explored on foot and boats each day. The canals are the best known feature, but I loved that there are no cars whatsoever. The entire city is traveled on foot and boats. It was bizarre to see everyday items such as fruits and vegetables, sofas and washing machines, delivered by boat.

We took the bullet train to Florence, where the digital display in the car indicated our car was going an amazing 300kph (186mph) and toured the museum that houses Michelangelo’s David, perhaps the world’s most famous and revered granite statue.

We toured the medieval Tuscan cities and towns of Pisa (with its iconic leaning tower), Lucca, San Gimignano (with its 14 towers), Montepulciano, Monteriggioni, Borgo a Mozzano, Siena, and Cortona. Each had its own distinctive geography, architecture, and history. We benefited in having a private tour guide, a man named Federico Ciavattone whom we met in August when he attended a conference at Tech and happened upon our bookseller’s booth at Steppin’ Out. The best meal of the trip was prepared by his mother at their two-bedroom flat in Pisa.

We then stayed in La Spezia from where we drove to the Mediterranean coast at Portovenere. I watched and took photos of a thunderstorm crashing over the mountainous shoreline. We took the train to each of the five villages in magnificent Cinque Terre National Park. Our final lodging was a mountain retreat in Brosso near Torino where my daughter and I climbed a 4700 foot mountain while watching paragliders launch towards the valley below.

Observations?

The Italians are warm, friendly people, eager to connect with travelers. But oh my gosh!, put them behind the wheel of a car and they turn into maniacs! I’ve never seen such antics; particularly frightening was the double-line passing on blind corners. We only saw one accident, however, as the Italian drivers are totally attentive; nobody is on their cell phone.

And they love their wheels! Some of the iconic names on the road, in bicycling (Colnago, Bianchi, Campagnolo, and Cinelli), motorcycling (Ducati, Moto Guzzi, MV Augusta, and Benelli), and cars (Lamborghini, Maserati, and Ferrari) hail from Italy.

The roads are in generally good shape, with ample warning signs when under construction. The default interchange is the roundabout, and they work great, always keeping traffic moving. We should emulate that! My daughter navigated using Google Maps on her cell phone and we never took a wrong turn.

There are fees for many things we get for free, like public toilets, parking, and highway tolls. On our longest day on the road, the cost for the autostrada (equivalent to our Interstates) was 26.50 Euro (around $31).

Italians are proud people with a fascinating heritage in food (especially wine, cheese, and olive oil in the region we visited), culture, religion, science, fashion, art, and music. Sculptor Michelangelo, inventor Leonardo da Vinci, explorer Christopher Columbus, astronomer Galileo Galalei, luthier Antonio Stradivari, painter Raphael, philosopher Cicero, explorer Amerigo Vespucci (who America was named after), singer Luciano Pavarotti, scientist Enrico Fermi, and many others are household names. Their culture is ancient and monuments, relics, and art keep the culture alive.

Most people spoke some or fluent English, although the signs (other than “STOP”) were in Italian. I learned a few words and had fun using them.

Like most vacations, we had a few minor mishaps. But overall, it was a wonderful experience to a beautiful place. I returned wanting to do more things, go more places, and experience more of the world. I hope to do a trip of a lifetime every year!

Arrivederci Italy!

* * Electric cars are here

The next transportation revolution is underway now, and it’s going to be awesome!

I’m looking at two photographs of busy traffic from street scenes in New York, one from 1903, the other from 1913, ten years a part. The former is crowded with horse-drawn carts. The latter is completely populated with cars. In a mere decade, Henry Ford’s model T changed the landscape completely in the wink of a proverbial eye. Since then, almost exclusively, cars have been powered by internal combustion engines, fueled by liquid petrochemicals. That’s about to change.

Blacksburg’s David Roper is on the leading edge. An octogenarian and self-described geek, he sees electric cars as our future and has devoted considerable time and resources towards pursuing them. He made the grave mistake the other day letting me drive his new Chevrolet Bolt, a fully electric car.

Dave is a retired Virginia Tech physics professor, and he’s obsessed with graphs and mathematics. He’s convinced that within a decade, over half the cars on the road will be electric. The ramifications will ripple through the economy. I’ll tell you more about predictions he and I discussed in a moment, but let me describe the ride.

The Bolt is a small hatchback, with comfortable seating for four. The first thing you notice behind the wheel is that the two “dashboards,” the one in front of you and the one at the center of the car, are entirely digital, in effect computer screens. There is no key; it “starts” with a push-button. More than “quiet,” the car is utterly soundless, other than the radio and the ventilation system’s fan. Perimeter cameras give a 360-degree view of the surroundings, assisting with maneuvering out the garage. Once underway, the car responds briskly to the “throttle,” and accelerates quickly and seemingly effortlessly, from 0 to 60mph in 6.3 seconds. As we whoosh onto a busy city street, Dave tells me that the car’s required maintenance is to change the cabin air filter annually and rotate the tires. That’s it!

“Gasoline cars are inefficient, around 25-30%. Electric cars around 95% efficient,” he told me. “The miles-per-gallon equivalency for this car, the way I drive around Blacksburg, is around 138 mpg. I can drive 220-300 miles between charges. So gasoline cars really can’t compete.”

Knowing that the car is hyper-efficient, I floored the throttle, feeling none of the guilt associated with a joy-ride in a typical vehicle.

Electric cars cost more up-front, but their reduced fuel and maintenance costs help them become competitive. And with ongoing advancements and price reductions, the balance will soon shift entirely towards electric cars, maybe only in 3-4 years.

David said he was less motivated by return on investment than pure desire. “I bought this car because it was what I wanted. Nobody buys a Cadillac because of ROI.” He has also invested in solar panels, which cover much of his south-facing roof, to “fuel” his car and home. His motivation was not purely economical, but to help save the world from the myriad maladies of fossil fuel use.

So what will change when most of the cars on the road are electric? Who will be the winners and losers? It’s anybody’s guess how the future will play out, but these are likely:

• ·      
• ·       No more poisoned air and water with ozone and particulate pollution
• ·       No more destroyed coal-bearing mountains
• ·       No more devastating oil spills
• ·       No more tyrannical petro-states and no more oil wars in the Middle East or elsewhere

New electric vehicles are equipped to handle the upcoming software advances that will enable cars to drive themselves. Frankly, 15 years ago I was convinced that self-driving cars would never happen in my lifetime; now I’m equally convinced they are inevitable. Then what happens?

Most of us use taxis sparingly because they’re expensive. Most of the money we pay for a taxi goes to paying the driver. If there’s no driver, the cost will plummet. If you have two family cars now, you may go to one. If you have one, you may go without. Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft will proliferate, and they’ll buy cars in bulk, likely directly from the manufacturer, killing the traditional dealership model. Whenever you need to go, you’ll summon a car on your smart phone and one will appear to take you. So you won’t need a garage, driveway, or car insurance. Repair shops will wither and die, as will insurance companies. There will be no parking lot at your office, factory, school, or church. Crashes will diminish, because computers frankly are better drivers than we are.

The forces that benefit from the current system will resist mightily. But there will be no turning back, just as there was no turning back to horse-drawn carts in 1910. And David Roper will be seen as a visionary.

* * Marie March sees a way to better nutrition for our children

Marie March is a visionary. Or perhaps just back to the future.

She sees that our children aren’t being well fed in school and she’d like to help fix that.

“My kids have gone to public schools; my oldest just graduated. They have always complained about school lunches. They say the food looks horrible, tastes horrible, and it isn’t healthy.”

Marie is in a position to know, because she’s in the food business, the founder of two Christiansburg restaurants, Due South BBQ and Fatback Soul Shack.

“The kids have tons of carb(ohydrate) options, but little protein on the menu. I’m sure the menus comply with the American guidelines and the Food Pyramid. My husband is a doctor and both of us feel the options aren’t that great.”

They go to Hillsville every week to buy fresh produce and then can it. They meet the local farmers at the produce market. “I started thinking how great it would be if we could incorporate fresh, local food into the school menus,” she said. “We could get higher quality, fresher food from local farmers.”

At her restaurants, she buys local. She procures cornmeal and flour from Big Spring Mill in Elliston. She sources sea-food from the Chesapeake Bay distributors. And she’s working to find a supplier of beef and pork from local farms.

Her impression was that most of the school lunch food was sent to the cafeterias already cooked and highly processed. For example, corn would arrive in gallon cans. It may have been grown in the Midwest or even Mexico. It may have been processed with artificial sugars and preservatives. The industrial canning process cooks out many of the nutrients, and the can itself has a coating that seeps into the food. And the corn may be GMO, or Genetically Modified Organism, thought by many to pose a risk to humans. The corn has little of the original flavor and the kids hate it.

“I believe the better way is eating your local foods, supporting your local economy, the same tax base that provides the money for those school systems to begin with. If this money is being extracted from the (residents and businesses) of this community, wherever possible it should be spent back here. I am big on that in every aspect of my business life. We always support the folks we know.

“Our tabletops were made in Floyd. Our T-shirts were sourced locally. We use reclaimed and salvaged materials for all our store decorating. And of course, our restaurants are in old buildings that had sat vacant for years. My whole world is salvaged!

“We’ve been successful because we support local companies. People who work at Big Spring Mill, for example, eat with us because we know we’re supporting them.

“My husband Jared and I feel so grateful to be here. The community has been so accepting of us. We’ve been here 12 years. The community has helped us. People are so kind.

“What I envision is an overhaul of the school lunch programs. They have to be interested in and willing to make changes and to admit that school lunches suck. That’s the first step to recovery; you’ve got to acknowledge the problem. It’s not that hard (to fix). You get the farmers together with the processors and distributors and you commit to a system of local procurement. You start a pilot program at one school. The kids would need to buy into eating it and the parents would need to buy into supporting it.”

I asked if she thought each lunch would cost more to the students. She wasn’t sure. But she was convinced the cost would be worth it. Noting that schools are for teaching and learning, she said that we teach our children about nutrition, but we don’t honor that education by feeding them well.

I noted that for many of the poorer kids in our communities, the school lunch is their best meal of the day. And then it’s not as nutritious as it should be.

She said, “I think these epidemics of diabetes, hypertension, and obesity are all from the food we eat. We offer the best food we can to our customers. Why are we feeding our children so poorly? I would be willing to donate some of my time and expertise to get this going.”

We noted that in bygone days, school lunches were sourced nearby and cooked fresh. Only with the advent of industrialized food production did that so dramatically change. It was all farm to table; that was all there was. Maybe it’s time to go back.

“We are indoctrinating our children at a young age that nutrition doesn’t matter,” Marie claimed. “And that’s terrible.”

* * Why not say yes?

One of the things I’ve learned in life and in business is that “yes” is a good answer. Really, it’s the BEST answer, the one to use whenever possible, unless truly extenuating circumstances dictate otherwise. So I suffered intensely negative emotions when the Christiansburg Town Council said “no” to a request from the Moose Lodge 1470 and me last month.

My day job is the management of a multi-tenant commercial building in the Christiansburg Industrial Park, where we rent space to a number of businesses. The building was completed 15 years ago. Currently we have a 5000 sq-ft space vacant and available. Meanwhile, the Moose Lodge sold their building on Ridinger Street, and they wanted to rent it from us. This would be good for us and them.

Christiansburg is a zoned community, meaning that only specific functions can occur in the various residential, commercial, and industrial zones. The particular zone in which my building is located does not allow “clubs and lodges.” So as written, the Moose Lodge was not eligible for occupancy, although nothing the Moose Lodge planned to do in our industrial zone was prohibited.

In discussions with the Planning Director for the town, he encouraged us to petition the town to change the zoning to allow for clubs and lodges. The Planning Commission considered our request, held a public hearing (during which no opposition was voiced) and voted 10 to 0 in favor of allowing it.

But when it went in front of the Town Council, the liaison abruptly changed his mind and voted “no,” and then was promptly joined by the other five councilmen. Thwarting that request also prevented the Moose Lodge’s other potential option, occupancy by a conditional use permit.

Town Council had their reasons, but they were then and remain now wholly uncompelling to me.

They said it would set a precedent, and other clubs couldn’t be prohibited. True. But to my knowledge there are no clubs in town that might want a clubhouse in an industrial zone. And so what? There would be no damage if they did!

They said they would be forced to relax restrictions on other types of businesses. But that’s simply not true. What we requested was limited and specific; just because they let in clubs and lodges wouldn’t mean they’d need to let in pig farms or plutonium enrichment facilities or anybody else.

They said they wanted to save precious industrial space for large industrial employers. That may have been a compelling argument years ago. But we no longer live in an industrial economy. The park is over 25 years old and there are still vacant lots. Our space has been vacant for two years and I’ve had zero interest from industrial prospects. I am happy to rent it to anyone who will make good use of it and not negatively impact the neighbors.

So there many reasons to say “yes” and none to say “no.”

Who are the losers? Who is hurt by this decision?

• ·       The Moose Lodge spent considerable time and money researching options and applying to be in my building. The money is wasted and they have to start over again.
• ·       The Planning Commission’s members must feel marginalized, as their careful deliberation on this issue was thoroughly ignored.
• ·       The town may ultimately lose the Moose Lodge to a neighboring community, as the Lodge felt unwelcomed and is now looking elsewhere.
• ·       My family is the biggest loser, as the town has prevented us from benefiting from the considerable investment we’ve made in the community.

Who were the beneficiaries in this decision?

• ·       As far as I can tell, nobody.

Successful commercial, industrial, and research parks are not beholden to antiquated, indefensible, and self-defeating laws. The economic environment under which the zoning ordinance in question was conceived and approved, in significant ways, no longer exists. The world has changed; policies much change accordingly.

I have requested, as politely as I know how, that they reconsider. But they seem entirely disinclined to do so. It is maddening and deeply disappointing that the town in which I grew up, and worked and invested in over the last 25 years, would be so blithe as to prevent me from reaping the fruits of my investments. It’s really heartbreaking to feel so unappreciated. I have spoken to several of my professional contacts – businesspeople, bankers, and commercial realtors – and all have expressed their dismay at the council’s inflexibility and insensitivity. 

Following all our disappointments, life goes on. I continue to look for a tenant who will pay rent and help me make a living. The Moose Lodge, colloquially known as the “Christiansburg Moose Lodge,” will continue their search, likely ending up in Blacksburg, Riner, Shawsville, or elsewhere outside Christiansburg. And hard feelings will endure, all because six men decided to say “no” when they could have said “yes.”

* * Is your computer safe?

Rafeal Stewart was by my office this morning to help me live safely in a dangerous Internet world.

Rafeal works for Gentoo Technologies, a Blacksburg company that provides IT (information technology) services to companies from Princeton to Salem and points between. He was in to make a full system backup of my computer onto a spare hard disk. I realized that even if I backed up my files religiously and could restore them if needed, restoring all the software and configurations would be a nightmare if they were ever lost.

“We solve computer problems for businesses,” he told me.

The company was founded by Lee Talbot. Now, Lee, Russell Shock, and Rafeal make up the entire staff, with contractors from time to time.

“Any issues a client has regarding computers or networks, we address. We see lots of malicious stuff online these days. A pop-up may say, ‘This is Microsoft. Call us at 800-whatever. You have a system error.’ Microsoft doesn’t accept customer calls. It’s to a fake company that wants your credit card. They tell you something is wrong and charge you a couple hundred dollars to fix it, even though nothing is broken. The fake IT scam is most common. You might be browsing the internet. You’ll see a pop-up that takes over your browser. It instructs you to call a number for IT support. People can solve these themselves by closing the browser, often by going to the Ctrl-Alt-Delete task manager and forcing it closed. Many of our clients will call us anyway to help them fix it. Then we can run an anti-virus and anti-malware scan to make sure nothing bad has been left on the computer.”

Making news these days is ransomware. Malicious people will send a file attached to your email. When you open it, it infects your computer and locks it up, sealing away all your files, until you send them money as ransom to open it back to you. Once this happens, if you don’t have proper backups, you’d best have some butter and jelly (or a few bitcoins), because you’re toast (as the expression goes).

I asked Rafeal how a user knows something is wrong. “First, some warning will show up on the desktop,” he said. “It will take over your desktop. It will say you have until a certain time to send money in the form of Bitcoins to a certain location or the files will be encrypted forever. The money goes through what’s called a TOR browser, which is used by people to keep locations and browsing habits hidden and anonymous. Lots of nefarious activities go on there because it’s harder to track.

“Once you pay them, they send a key in the form of a stream of characters. That is supposed to unlock your computer and give you your files back. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. And even if they do, there’s nothing to prevent them from doing it again.

“We suggest to our clients that they don’t pay them. It only keeps the scam going.”

He said the encryption was sophisticated, typically beyond what they could break. So generally these attacks were successful enough for the criminals to keep it going. A couple of months ago, a massive attack was unleashed, targeting mostly Taiwan, Russia, and Ukraine. But the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and global firms including FedEx were also under assault. Cyber-security experts have been working feverishly around the world to halt these attacks.

The malware took advantage of vulnerability in Microsoft’s Windows program. Microsoft quickly released a security patch, but unless users updated their systems, users were still vulnerable.

Rafeal thought the criminals often adjusted the ransom amount by the size and importance of the owner. When these attacks target health care organizations, their loss of data can lead to improper patient treatments and potentially even deaths. He said one of the more recent attack programs identified itself as “WannaCry,” because that’s what you want to do when you realize you’re a victim.

So what can you do?

“Backups!” Rafeal said. “Everybody should minimally keep a backup system operational that backs up all the files on his or her computer every day. That way if you do get infected by ransomware, you can restore your files. With your computer, we’ve done the additional step of making a duplicate hard disk. So if you are ever infected, we’d just put the spare hard disk in your computer, use your file backup system to restore your files, and you would be safe.

“We prefer all our customers do both these things. For most people, restoring operating systems, software, and configurations is as troublesome as restoring files. With a backup drive, that’s easy. Many people don’t even have the source CDs and would need to buy the software over again.

“(To protect yourself,) stay away from downloading files on your email system if you don’t know the source. Never open an executable file sent to you unless you requested it. The file name will be innocuous enough, but don’t be fooled. Keep your antivirus and anti-malware programs current.

“Above all, have a good back up and be prepared to restore your computer,” he shrugged.