traveling cross country solo with 7mo baby AMA

“How do you keep your phone/ID/boarding pass handy?” Great question!! The phone case strap with the card holder also doubles as a teething toy

On the signature matching thing in CA. I worked on a computer vision project for a large bank to help them identify mismatched signatures on fraudulent checks. The project’s biggest takeaway was that it’s REALLY hard to determine whether a signature is a match or not even with dozens or hundreds of sample “valid” signatures. The state of California has ONE valid signature to match from. And they aren’t using any sort of systematic test to do the comparison. Just a human’s subjective judgement.

also, the state of CA had my maiden name as a signature on file. I changed my name and updated my ID, but when I went to provide my signature at the DMV, i accidentally signed my maiden name. So for years my maiden name’s signature was printed on my ID but I had my married name on my voter registration. I tried to ask the person at the polling place what I should sign so that the signatures would match and they didn’t even KNOW what the signatures on file looked like. My ballot has never been rejected despite providing different signatures every time. With totally different names signed.