10 Things I'll do if I can get my hands on a Time Machine.

I'm really surprised it took me this long to get to this subject.  So before diving into this obviously titled 10 list.  Here are the ground rules.  There IS NO butterfly effect.  That is to say, nothing I do in the past will have any unintended consequences towards my own future all future effects are anticipated and intentional.  In fact, everything I would do would work out perfectly like all of the other plans I have made in life.  Also, when I travel time, I will return to exactly a moment after I had left in my time without having aged.  I will chalk that up to relativity, or quantum goo, or carbon nano-tubes or something.  Anyway...

Go see the future - All this talk about time machines has most people zooming to the past to right some wrong or to make sure something happens that you didn't really think you could change but now you might have the chance.  That's crap.  I want to go to the future and see how certain things turn out.  Will I be able to rely on social security?  Does nuclear war start?  Is soylent green made of people?  I will know the answer to ALL of those questions.  It would be so cool.  Of course the tragic thing is that I can come back after going to the future and all I would do is sit around depressed that I don't really live in the future because all of the cool stuff is there.  Don't think so?  Think about being a King in medieval times.  The KINGS life back then sucked by today's standards. If he had come to our time for 1 hour to taste a McDonalds Hamburger and a shake, he would have gladly traded his kingdom to be temporary seasonal help at Costco.

Put a little away each month... - This one seems obvious, but it's not.  Put some money in a bank account for me to pick up later after it's grown to elephantine proportions.  But which bank?  I need a bank that would survive several decades in order for me to be able to collect my savings.  I would also need to figure out a way to withdraw that money without seeming like a greedy time traveler.  The further in the future you go, the more curious a bank would be about the nature of a large, up till then undisturbed, chunk of money suddenly going out to some stranger claiming to be it's owner.

Find my stuff - All through my life I've lost things or suspected them stolen.  If I could travel time, I would go back in time and spy on myself.  See what happens to the ton of stuff that I've lost over time.  While I'm there, I'll get a more objective view of what was happening to me and if I remembered family events correctly.

Stop someone other than Hitler -  Sheesh, EVERYONE is going to go back to kill Hitler.  Germany in the 1940's is going to be so crowded it will look like a time travelers Disneyland on Christmas Day.  Best not to go there.  Besides, there are LOTS of despotic dictators that seem to do horrible things that I could kill or at least dissuade from doing their evil deeds.  Probably be better to not kill them because they would just be replaced by some other crazed power hungry megalomaniac.  There are lots of people that probably should be stopped.

Give myself advice about skiing -  I really tore up my ACL skiing when I was young.  It's affected my ability to exercise and play tennis ever since.  I would tell myself that skiing isn't worth it.   I would probably take my own advice as long as I could...then I would wonder why I would bother coming back in time to talk to myself unless there was something in it for future me.  Why do I wanna help that bum?  Who knows if I would take that advice.

Prove to myself that it's working - I'm not going to just take any advice.  In fact, even if it LOOKS like I can time travel to the past, it's no free ticket to sculpting the perfect Marty McFly life outside the constraints of fate and destiny.  I would really need to know that I am safe and really benefiting from my future me's advice.  I don't trust me, I might be lying to myself.  I'd go back further in time and leave a note in a book on a shelf of a public library and direct me to check out the book and find the note to be very specific and factual about where something I had lost was.  This would prove a lot to younger me because I lost all kinds of stuff.

Rewrite History -  This isn't what you think.  I'm not going back to change history, but rather to get a better view of it.  I'll go back to the historical times that I know about and see if they really transpired in the same way that I was told.  I have often heard that history is written by the winners.  I want to see if that is correct or not and if not, what loser has been writing history.

Get really smart - If you can travel time, you have a LOT of time on your hands.  You could go back in time and go to school and learn pretty much everything that life has to offer.  Jump back in time, learn stuff and things.  Jump back to current time to just a moment after.  Yes, I would still have to do the work, so it might just be easier to jump far enough into the future to have all the experience of a really smart guy downloaded into my brain.  Yeah, that would be the ticket.  Nothing but trouble in the past.  Go to the future, that's where it's at.

Pretend to be Dr. Who - Seems like this is obvious unless of course my time machine doesn't look like a tardis.  If it didn't, then there might be a problem in that most of the time you would be spending, you would be trying to right space wrongs and fight non-existent daleks.  Lets be serious, with all the other stuff on this list, I would probably just go to the future and get something that seems like a sonic screwdriver and redecorate my ride to look like an English Bobby's call box.

Cult of the washed hands -  If I'm going in it for the saving lives game.  I'm going back to the dark ages during the plague.  I would establish the cult of soap and washed hands.  Since this is before science, It would be miraculous how my followers would be living on average much longer than non followers.  As my cult's numbers would increase, more would see the benefits of cult rules.  Wash hands with soap 3 times a day and do something nice for your neighbor.  By the end of the dark ages, I will have saved so many people through my cult that Europe would probably not have to worry about Hitler.  Someone that ended up surviving the plague eventually gave birth to an opposition party member that ended up defeating Hitler in early elections.  Later, science would prove the effectiveness of the Cults beliefs and it would be deemed as prophetic.  Win Win.

If you got into a time machine and flew 15 days into the future, you might see the next blog post.  If I in fact have written it.