[A]lmost exactly 36 years ago, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Jupiter. I was 7 years old, and the recent acquisition of a telescope that allowed me to see the moon, and other planets up close thrilled me. I spent what seemed like days clipping photos of Jupiter out of the local newspaper and…
[I] realize it’s been a little while since I last posted. I’ve been on vacation, but we arrived home yesterday, and I’m taking today to take care of odds and ends before heading back into the office tomorrow. Expect things to resume here as normal in the next day or two. In the meantime, here…
[W]hile in the car driving home after picking up the Little Man from school yesterday, the following conversation took place between the Little Man and Kelly: Little Man: What are we having for dinner? Kelly: Chicken and broccoli. LM: No broccoli. K: You need to eat broccoli if you want to have a treat after.…
[T]wenty-six years ago today–May 26, 1989–was a bittersweet day for me and my friends. It was the last day of an extraordinary nine days in May when the teachers union of the Los Angeles Unified School District went on strike. I was in 11th grade at Cleveland Humanities Magnet High School in Reseda, California, and…
[W]e spent the long Memorial Day weekend up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with my sister and her family, and my mom. The kids got to spend most of the time at Dutch Wonderland, and we spent the weekend trying to keep up with them. We also took a horse and buggy ride through an Amish farm,…
[I] came home from work tonight feeling the way I used to feel 36 hours into an all-nighter back in college. Except that I slept for 8 hours or so last night. My brain is completely drained. I am not normally a project manager, my title at the day job being a senior application developer.…
[O]n Saturday, I took the Little Man to an exhibition game between the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals. We took the Metro over to Nationals Park, and found our way to our seats, where my friend, and fellow writer Michael J. Sullivan was waiting for us. I think that Michael told me this…
[W]hen it comes to quantified self, one question I frequently hear is “how can this data really help me”? It is a good question, especially since there are huge volumes of data about ourselves available, and it may not be obvious how to put it to use. I have used quantified self data to improve…
[L]ast week, I sat down with Patrick Hester and John Anealio, hosts of the Functional Nerds podcast. It was a blast. We talked books, baseball, writing, productivity, and music. If you are interested, have a listen over at the Functional Nerds. And a big thank you to John and Patrick for having me on the…
[M]y grandfather lived to be 84-years old. If we take 84 to be the new three score years and ten, then later this month, when I hit 43, I’ll be past the literal midway point. I haven’t gone out and bought any fancy cars, or tried to eliminate the gray from my hair (it’s been there…
[O]nce upon a time, I couldn’t read. I practiced sounding out the words, and each day seemed like I was making no progress. Then one day, I could read–haltingly, but I could read. Once upon a time, I couldn’t write a line of code. I’d see these long elaborate programs listed in the early computer…
[I] just punted on my Feedly list. 2,469 posts had accumulated, and I had to face the fact that there was no way I was going to catch up. So I punted. I skimmed the list, sent a few items that caught my eye to Pocket, and marked the rest as read and moved on.…