The Chapel of Santa Lucia visit, Varano-Oppidi, Italy. July 19, 2025

  • The Chapel of Santa Lucia in the middle of the village.

(Click on the slideshow above to see larger version).

Kelly and I experienced a wonderful 14-day journey across Italy in mid-July 2025. We were joined by Kelly’s sisters Brenda and Mary, her brother Terry and their respective spouses Frank, David and Michelle.

Our journey was supposed to begin with a couple of days in Venice, but a canceled flight left us stuck in Newark for a day. After our abbreviated visit in Venice, we journeyed across the boot to Florence, followed by a few days in Rome, then to spectacular Sorrento on the coast, and finally concluding with a weekend in Naples.

The Naples segment was not part of the original itinerary. Brenda and Frank lived in Naples for five years back in the late 1990s while Franks was stationed there with the Navy. They came up with the idea of tacking on the extra days to visit there. Mary and David also decided to stay on.

I had another reason. After my cousin Carole contacted all of us cousins about our family’s chapel, built for my grandfather in 1955, I thought this might be an opportunity to finally see it after hearing about it for many years. After some searching on Google Maps with the help of Carole’s photos from her visit, I was able to not only find the village of my grandmother’s youth, Varano-Oppidi, but I was actually able to find the exact location of the church using the Street View feature of Google Maps.

Carole provided the email address for a distant relative who we would hopefully be able to meet there to actually visit the inside of the chapel. I sent a detailed email to her directly, and Kelly followed her on Facebook, but we didn’t get a response before we left. We chose to go find it anyway and hopefully find someone locally who might be able to help. (Kelly later saw a post on Facebook stating our relative was in Prague that weekend).

Kelly and I rented a car in Naples and began the drive southwest on Saturday, July 19. (Driving in Italy is…an adventure, but that’s for another post). The weather was lovely that day, but rather hot (most of Italy is in July – that will teach us!). Most of the drive was along freeways until we reached the Campagna region, where we exited the big road and wound our way through very rural areas until we reached Varano-Oppidi. We entered the village slowly, looking for any familiar landmarks. At one point, Kelly told me she thought we passed the church – and as she said this, I looked out the driver’s window – and there it was.

The village is small, much like many rural one-stoplight towns you see across America – except there was no stoplight. There was literally no one around, to speak of. I saw a man emerge from the house next door, but he drove off without a word. (I later learned this was actually a guest house where one could stay, like an AirBnB). The chapel was locked, so we were not able to visit the inside at all. There are no exterior windows looking directly into the chapel interior. One window in front opens to what looks like a small storage room.

We were a bit saddened to not be able to explore the interior of the chapel. At one point, I strolled down the road to Bar Tabacchi Luna to see if anyone knew who might help, but the few folks there weren’t much help (and neither was my bad Italian, probably) .

In spite of the disappointment of not seeing the inside, I’m very happy we stayed the extra days and made the trip to see it. Being there and seeing it invokes the loving memories I have of my grandparents. They’ve both been gone for many years, but I still think of them today, profoundly proud of how they came to America and eventually lead a large, warm and loving family.

I believe we tend to look at the world as small today, because we are able to communicate instantly – with words or live images – with literally anyone at any time. Making the journey to Varano reminded me that people like my grandparents came great distances for a better life, while still having attachments to anchor them to their original home.

I want to go back some day. The one hour Kelly and I spent there made the entire trip worthwhile and knowing where it is gives us a pretty good reason for another journey.

Linux – Debian new installs

I recently replaced my daily-use computer, an old Lenovo ThinkPad laptop, with a more current mini-PC, a Beelink SER5 MAX. Better graphics, better processor, more RAM, hefty NVME drive – everything about this little box is just better than what I had. Powerful and small.

While getting things running the way I like and want, I’m saving bits of information and processes, and decided to collect it all here in some narrative form in case I have to repeat anything. For example, my allegedly-safe UPS system accepted a split-second power fluctuation just this morning, and instead of keeping everything running, my entire network backbone and my NAS and my recently-installed Beelink workstation all took a brief nap. Apparently, the 5-year-old battery in the UPS has weakened to the point of giving up, so a replacement is on the way. This event not only took down the hardware, but when everything was restarted, my Docker containers did not reload. This kept my music and photo servers off-line until I figured out what happened.

So if you bother to come here and see posts like this tagged with “Tech-Geek” or something similar, you can skip to the snark.

Free Stuff!

My email spam folder receives new entries daily and I noticed an interesting trend a few months ago. There are “companies” that really want to give me a lot of free stuff!

This all starts when you innocently provide your email address to an innocent-looking website. I’m pretty sure the culprit in my case was some restaurant where I wanted to use the free WiFi. A common request: you see the location has free wireless, so you try to join. After your mobile connects, you get directed to “sign in” to the wireless network. OK, fine, you think, here’s my email address. Next thing you know, you’re hooked up.

In more ways than one.

Think about this “sign in” process for a moment. When you log into your computer, a personal account, you phone, your bank, whatever, your identity is authenticated in some way. You may use a password, fingerprint, face scan and sometimes an additional step, such as a one-time password code SMS text or an authentication code from an app. In other words, you not only say who you are, you have to prove it.

But when you “sign in” to free WiFi at some restaurant, coffee shop, beauty salon or other location, if their system asks for an email address, ask yourself why they need it if they’re not validating your identity in some way. Ask yourself if they’re not, why do they want your email address?

The address is stashed somewhere and later given or sold to some entity that will use it to send you stuff. Such as the spam filled with “free” offers.

The easiest and cheapest way to deal with these situations is to have a fake or dummy email address. Creating an additional email address with Google’s GMail, Yahoo Mail or a number of other free services is pretty trivial and you can use the address for specious sign-ins or on site that you know will send you a load of promotions, ads, updates and, unfortunately, spam. I have an old account with an former ISP that I recently discovered is still active and available. That’s where all my likely-undesired stuff goes now.

A couple of things about these emails will give away their spam status. First, many of them include a line near the beginning of the content that reads This message was sent from a trusted sender. As though just adding that at the top of the message proves that it’s just fine. The second obvious clue is the decorations:

Note how the “trusted sender” message is included in almost every message preview on this list. More important, however, are the decorations – the little icons, symbols and fonts used to decorate the sender and the subject. These are used to attempt to get these past spam detectors and into your inbox directly (not working on me, since GMail sent all these to my spam folder). But look at all the stuff I’m getting!

The return email addresses on these are also a dead giveaway. Here are a couple of examples from some of these:

What’s happening here is what happens after your email address is sold by whatever source has collected them. The offers and links in these emails are likely not connected with the referenced companies in any way, and there is a good chance that some of those links lead to malicious sites pushing malware or some other targeted attack.

So keep pushing these to spam, don’t open them, delete them regularly, and make sure to get that “alternative” email address to use when you just don’t want to be bothered.

Unless you want to try to get all that free stuff. Good luck.

Skycast Football

The ESPN-managed SEC Network broadcast the Kentucky-Georgia football game today (October 4) using the Skycast feature of ESPN’s Megacast technologies. I really believe this is a great way to watch any football game.

I recall watching it during last year’s college football playoffs. The experience is very different from a normal game presentation. No announcers blather along with play-by-play or inject excruciating analysis. The only chatter you hear is stadium announcements and the referee’s calls over the stadium PA systems.

The view is from over the field and the camera often lowers its view directly into or behind plays. This allows a totally different perspective as the game is played. In one play today, Georgia QB Gunner Stockton’s pass was picked off by a Kentucky defensive back so cleanly, it made you wonder why threw it at all, based on your view of the throw from behind.

Today’s game included commercials, as expected. But I recall that game last season actually didn’t go to commercials. Instead, the camera remained live and just panned around the field and the stadium during the breaks. The experience was more cinema veritè than Saturday afternoon college football.

I know this is a dream, but it sure would be an awesome thing if the NFL adopted something like this and actually made it available (for free, preferably) as an alternate feed that viewers could choose. Knowing the currency-printing machine that is the NFL, if they did offer this, it would be monetized and sold in some package. If they can make money off it, that’s what will happen. But I suppose I can continue to hope.

Fun with Text Scammers

A common pig butchering scam often begins when the target gets an “accidental” text message from the scammer – often purporting to be a woman – and the target innocently responds. The scammer then apologizes and begins a bit of back and forth with the mark, hoping to rope them in, with the eventual goal of suckering them into some crypto investment scam. During the initial hook attempt, the scammer will often send a photo of an attractive woman (almost always an Asian woman) and ask for one in return.

If you ever get one of these, don’t engage. Block the number and delete the text. Despite the photo, the scammer is most likely a man working on a string of victims at one time.

I received one of these a few weeks ago. My immediate normal reaction is to chuckle at the attempt as I hit the “block and report” option on the text app. But I had not received one of these in some time, so I decided to have some fun. This is how it started:

I’ve seen the message say “are you playing golf with us?” or “How about the beach tomorrow?” or something similar. Recognizing this come-on, I thought carefully about a reply. So I turned to some lyrics from one of my favorite bands, Was (Not Was):

Apparently a bit baffled, they responded:

I felt bad for a microsecond that this made them “sad.” In hope of cheering them up, I replied:

I guess they thought I was being cute or silly or something:

Yes, I am – crazy as a fox, that is. I decided to provide a bit of variety in my “crazy” display and I turned to another great artist and poet, Don Van Vliet, better known as Capt. Beefheart:

This apparently sent my muse off the deep end:

Truly a pity. No sense of humor at all. I closed our brief encounter with this send-off:

Well, that last bit was just the Florida State fan in me cheering for a victory in their next game (which they won). I assume that my friend actually read the last reply – note the RCS blue checks.

As an active anti-scammer, I should conclude this by saying you shouldn’t engage with these clowns, ever. I had fun this one time, but if they think they’ve roped you, they’re incessant. Just don’t.

(Credit where it’s due: lyrics from “Tell Me That I’m Dreaming”, “The Sky’s Ablaze With Ladies’ Legs” and “Walk The Dinosaur” by Was (not Was), and “The Past Sure Is Tense” and “Hey, Garland, I dig Your Tweed Coat” by Capt. Beefheart and the Magic Band).

Birthday gift problem for modern parents? Solved.

Modern parents have critical issues facing them, especially regarding their kids. We live in a brave but tough new world. I wish my parents were still alive so I could ask them just how they navigated the treacherous waters of parenthood. I just turned 70, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. I think I turned out pretty good. Kelly and I have chosen not to have any more children, too, so no worries about the future.

Naturally, when a new crisis in child-rearing appears in the culture, the choice is to either promote a solution or complain about it on the planet’s virtual soap box, TikTok. I found a complaint, provided via this story, about an event many have experienced – a child’s birthday party.

This woman’s child was invited to a friend’s party. Three days before the event, the host parent broadcast a number of “requirements” for gifts to invited parents. Hoping her child would grow as an environmental steward, she stated gifts should have no bright colors, make no sound, not be constructed of plastic and be packaged in recyclable (not disposable) materials.

These requirements, which the host parent referred to as “a strict rhetoric,” may be a bit strident to some of us older, experienced and sane folks who raised small children. However, I believe I know the ideal gift for this situation:

A bag of shit.

This unique gift satisfies the host’s “rhetoric” in every way:

  • Meets the color criteria. Not bright, but brown. Like the UPS truck;
  • The gift is silent, satisfying the no-noise requirement. The recipient, on the other hand, may have something noisy to say when they open it;
  • Certainly not plastic. Though plastic particles from various ingested foods might be there – you just don’t know these days;
  • “Waste-free” packaging? Simple – a brown paper bag. Recyclable and likely already in the pantry.

In addition to the low environmental impact of the gift and the packaging, this gift has an additional feature.

The host parents don’t want bright, noisy toys that their child abandons, leaving them no choice but to donate the toy to some organization. Imagine the horror – you have something you don’t need and the idea of giving it to someone who can use it just seems beyond pale, right? Sounds contrary to the “save the planet” ideas they are teaching their child. Whatever happened to “paying it forward”?

Not a problem with my gift idea. The recipient can extend the fun and share the gift by just waiting for America’s favorite night of sharing, Halloween. The kids can pay it forward by leaving the gift in its recyclable brown bag package on the step of their favorite neighbor – or perhaps some neighbor they don’t care for much, hopefully to improve relations. To make sure the neighbor receives the full fun experience, the giving child should light the bag on fire before ringing the doorbell, just to make absolutely certain their lucky recipient sees it. If observed from a safe distance, the giver will likely see the recipient doing a fun dance of joy when they spot the glowing gift.

This will provide great hilarity to everyone, and it saves Mom and Dad the trouble of making that stop at Goodwill. But most importantly, giving this gift to others builds a foundation of environmental awareness, sharing and charitable thought. What more could the modern parent ask for their precious offspring?

Sharing

Here’s a couple of quick hit things I decided to vent about on a Monday.

  • Kelly and I would like to do more traveling now that we’ve settled in on retirement. But not here.
  • The world continues to be shocked…shocked! at the behavior of Kanye West and his current spouse Bianca Censori. Is the world really going to continue being shocked when they show up at some function, him dressed in all-black and her…well, almost naked? There was also a lot of hand-wringing over the photo of a kid peering around the corner to check her out. What’s all the fuss about? His look is like that one all the neighborhood guys had when someone filched a Playboy magazine from their creepy uncle’s collection. Despite all the cultural upheaval in the world over the past 20 years or so, there is one immutable fact: men, no matter their age, will always look at naked women. Or partially naked women. This is genetic.
  • Regarding Beyoncé’s Grammy win: no, she did not deserve to win Country Album of the Year. I say this not because of a lack of talent, but because there are dozens of women country artists dying to be heard today, most of whom you have never heard. Some will think she won because the Grammy voters didn’t want to appear “racist,” as she was up against all white nominees. But I think they’re all scared shitless of Jay Z, because of his influence and power in the industry. Whatever the reason, the Grammys proved once again that they are among the most meaningless, useless and pathetic awards handed out each year. Right after the Emmys and the Oscars. And the Golden Globes. And the Pulitzer Prizes.

Why?

I read a site this morning that listed 40 or so problems that science is (allegedly) this close to solving.

I read the one in the box above, and my immediate reaction was why would anyone want this?

Not Enough Toilets

I saw this bit of information in Reddit’s Today I Learned subreddit. I have two toilets in my home. Does this make Kel and me privileged and part of the 1%?

I was kind of hoping that my career successes or financial status would be more critical than the number of commodes over which I have domain.