A matter of minutes

I almost thought it was a Christmas Miracle when it was revealed that Trump flew to a base in Iraq and visited the troops.  But like a visit from Santa it was very short lived; I read he was there for only three hours before he hightailed it out and flew to Germany.  Maybe his bone spurs were acting up.  Some of the pundits have claimed that the visit was a stunt and nothing more than an elaborate photo op but they are surely mistaken.

But now he is back in Washington, safely ensconced in the White House doing whatever it is that he does, including lying, blaming others for his policy failures, and watching Fox and Friends.  For him, things are back to normal but maybe not so much for the rest of the government.  We'll see what happens next week when the new kids show up in Congress.

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Those ancestry kits are interesting but I don't know how accurate or specific they are.  Some kits don't go too deeply, stating something like "you are 80% Northern European," even if the saliva sample is from your pet dog or cat.  The kits could be fun but I remain wary.

I think I read something recently about scientists working on a process to determine a person's appearance by examination of DNA.  Give them a sample and they'll show you an image of what the guy looks like, but this could be a figment of my imagination.  But if it is true it would turn a criminal investigation on it's head.  It's almost impossible to not leave DNA behind wherever we go, shedding hairs and skin cells constantly.  I'll have to put my plans as a criminal mastermind on hold.

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While I was fiddling with the laptop, getting it in an operational mode, I decided to compare the time of day between it and my cell phone.  Since they both sync to some time servers they should both be the same but there was a two minute difference, a lifetime as far as computers are concerned.  Pretty weird, I thought, since the laptop is set up to automatically sync with a time server on a constant basis.  I thought phones did the same, but no.  At the Christmas dinner table I asked about it and my niece almost laughed at me, happy to correct my ignorance.  The time on my phone was two minutes off from every other phone at the table.  I was then told that the only time a phone connects with the time server is when it is turned on and is not being constantly updated.  Why didn't I know this?  So I turned my phone off and then back on again; the two minute difference disappeared.  Now my phone and laptop are in agreement about the time and I consider it a small victory in the struggle with technology.