For as long as I can remember, I’ve been uncomfortable about my birthday. I’m not really sure why. I have a memory of an early birthday party (I was five or six) and had all my friends over at the house celebrating. I remember feeling sad about growing older. It’s the only clear memory that…
“Do you read all these newspapers?” the clerk at the 7-Eleven asked me this past Sunday. I stop in at the 7-Eleven daily for the Washington Post, and on Sundays, both the Post and the New York Times. “Not every word,” I said, “but a lot of it.” I could have the papers delivered, but…
It seems that almost every package I get these days is resealable. We bought a bag of tortilla chips that comes in a resealable package. Cheese slices and shredded cheese come in resealable packages. The M&Ms I keep in my desk drawer comes in a resealable package. Resealable packages are all the rage. And I…
For the last several days, I have been playing around with Obsidian in Vim mode. Vim, for those who don’t know, is a powerful text editor that can take some getting used to. It uses different “modes”: for editing, for navigating and issuing commands. It’s keyboard commands are designed for touch typists so that you…
The powers that be are tinkering with baseball again. In the minor leagues, new rules are being testing including: Increasing the size of the infield bases. Limiting the number of pick-off attempts a pitcher can make. Requiring infielders to stay in the infield and always have two on each side. Introducing robotic umpires for calling…
I bought myself an early birthday present: a fountain pen. I’ve been wanting a fountain pen for some time, but I didn’t know much about them. I wanted it mainly for my journal writing. I’ve been using a Pilot G-2 0.7 pen for my journal since late 2017. I mentioned to someone a while back…
I have just finished James Gleick’s fascinating book The Information on the history of information theory. It is a rare milestone book for me in that it is one of three books that have really pushed my ability to comprehend complex subjects to the limits. I say one of three books. I went through through…
While reading Walter Isaacson’s new book, The Code Breaker, I was particularly struck by some seemingly minor details. The book is a fascinating look into the modern process of scientific discovery, and there was some discussion of how a discovery written in a lab book and then signed by witnesses in order to document the…
One of the early stories, written while I was still in college, about a year after I began submitting stories, was titled “The Guardian Angel Project.” It was a fantasy about a grown up (me?) going back to middle school and helping out the younger version of myself during those tough times. I never sold…