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Jackye Berger’s Passing

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Jackye Berger

Easterday Construction lost another of its third generation last week. Jacquelin (Jackye) Berger passed away Monday evening, February 9th, after the long good-bye of Alzheimer’s disease. You can read her obituary here: https://mountainviewfuneralhomeandcemetery.com/obituary/jacquelin-jackye-berger/

While never an actual employee, Jackye was an integral part of the ECC supporting cast. She would run errands, pick up supplies, help with entertaining clients and hosting company gatherings. While Larry Berger ran the company, Jackye was a stay-at-home mom. Larry was fortunate to be able to walk home for lunch most days, so he was able to spend lunch hour breaks with her. She served as a reassuring break from what was often a stressful job.

As outlined in her obituary, Jackye was also very involved in her community, volunteering and and serving on multiple boards and service entities. Her willingness to give of her time, knowledge and talents had an outsized effect on the Culver community.

Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease and the ECC family was saddened to watch her decline.

There will be a Celebration of Life this Summer when Larry returns to Culver, date yet to be determined. For those so inclined, her family requests in memoriam donations to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Website Update

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Face Palm

The previous version of our website was at least 17 years old, since that’s when the first blog post went up. Hard to believe. The website and the blog are as much my way of tracking time as they are a marketing tool.

In any case, Andrew Baker of Baker Technology Services LLC got our site updated before the host pulled the plug on the unsupported items. We’re still on WordPress, but we have a new theme and some new plugins. If you’ve experienced any connection issues, they may be due to Andrew taking the site up and down as he works the bugs out. If you run across broken links, missing pages, etc., let me know and I’ll try and clean those up. As usual with these things, they turn out to be harder than initially anticipated, so this has been a lengthy process.

The site has a slightly different feel and addresses somethings a little differently, which I’ll need to learn. Andrew was able to add a few tweaks, like the Easterday “E” in your browser tab when you are on the site. (I a m sure that has a name that I don’t know…) Some things are gone for now, like some of the slide shows, but I’ll get those figured out eventually.

I’ll try and get back to a more regular schedule of posts as we slide into 2026. Hate to let my lurkers down! Here’s hoping you all have a Happy, Healthy & Prosperous New Year!

Lost without GPS

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The paper map industry has suffered the same fate as the fabled buggy whip industry. Technology has moved on and we no longer have a glove compartment full of maps in our cars as a record of our travels. Hmmmm… I don’t think I’ve ever in my life time seen a pair of gloves in a car’s “glove compartment”, so how does that continue to be the common reference? (I may have AADD. I should never have found out that was a thing.)

I’ve noticed that in the past few years since the advent of GPS mapping, I can’t give directions to anyone anymore. Even places I’ve been to several times, I’m unsure of myself without plugging it into a mapping app. Now that most of them factor in traffic and accidents, I’m often “punished” by trying to head out on my own on a route I know. As I sit in stuck traffic, the alternate route it suggested mocks me.

Article from The Pilot News

While I did think GPS was making me stupid, I wouldn’t have thought it was affecting me physically as the Dr. Oz article to the right suggests. I don’t need any brain shrinkage!

I seriously can’t imagine people blindly following it off the road as suggested here. It’s not that accurate with the “Turn here” advice, though it is improving.. (It better get perfected quickly though if those self-driving cars are going to rely on it.)

We had two cars with GPS Navigation built-in. On the plus side, it’s a bigger screen, turns down the radio when it speaks and includes heads-up display. On the downside, it is generally less than 6 months before it’s outdated and the last I checked, the subscription update cost more than a Garmon. But why even buy a Garmon when Google Maps is constantly updated and comes as free app for your phone? The last car we bought, we skipped that option. A $15 phone holder took the place of the $1,000 GPS option.

We still have a few maps and sometimes I find it interesting to pull them out and see where I am on a larger scale. The zoom out feature on the mapping software just doesn’t give you the same effect. On the other hand, my wife would be fine if she never had to look at a paper road map again! She’s directionally challenged and if the map is right-side up in front of her, then we’re always going north…