A little over 10 years ago, an off duty police officer shot and killed my brother’s best friend, Aaron. The officer was moonlighting as a security guard at the IHOP where Aaron and his friends went for a late night breakfast. The officer fired at…
Five years ago this evening, my mother died unexpectedly. I got one of the phone calls that you never want to get, and joined what my sister now calls “the club that nobody wants to be in.” At the time, I wrote a bunch of…
Back in the day, I had a Livejournal blog where I kept in touch with a few dozen friends and acquaintances. I used it to push out updates that I thought people might find interesting, when they had the time to read. I used to…
I lost a bet recently, thought you might like to know about it. This all started back on March 20, when in a fit of pique I posted on facebook: “Bay leaves are a lie. They do nothing.” My friend Dan jumped in: “I cannot…
I work with computers for a living. Here are some of the tools that I use all the time: Macbook Pro: I’ve used a Macbook Pro as my primary workstation since they were introduced, and I haven’t looked back. I’ve had one significant hardware issue…
This weekend I spent three days at PAX East. PAX stands for the Penny Arcade Expo. PAX is a convention / exhibition of games and gamers. It’s also something of a movable-feast nerd mecca. This year, like last year, it was at the Boston Convention…
I find it difficult to select charitable organizations to support with either my dollars or my time. Everybody has a hand out. Federal “not for profit” status is no indicator of good intent, much less effective action in the world. Neither is appearing in the…
I was reading Matt Taibbis most recent blog post, and I feel moved to build on his points. America is losing its competitive edge. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one if them is almost certainly the fact that we pay our…
Jessica Alqhuist is a student at West Cranston High School in RI. I’ve written about her before. She’s the one who noticed that her school still displayed its “School Prayer” (a relic from the 50’s) on a large banner (a relic from the 60’s) in…
At the end of each year I make a little summary post listing the first (interesting) line from the first post of each month. What I note this year is that I basically stopped writing as of September, and also that I seem to have…