• If I Had a Billion Dollars…

    13 Jan 2016 » 2 min read

    read that the Powerball jackpot now stands at $1.3 billion. Lots of people are buying tickets in the hope of winning. Today, I thought I’d talk about the lottery. 1. If I won the lottery, Take One What I would do: Take the lump sum. Set up a trust fund for the kids. Buy the…

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  • Going Paperless 2.0: Quickly Access Frequently-Used Information in Evernote

    12 Jan 2016 » 4 min read about Evernote, Technology & Gadgets

    ne of the things that attracted me to Evernote back in 2010 was its slogan, “Remember Everything.” Although I am not a canonical GTDer, I’ve read David Allen’s book, and one important take away was getting stuff out of my head so that I didn’t have to remember it. When I started to use Evernote, I…

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  • How I Read the Newspaper

    11 Jan 2016 » 2 min read

    n fifth grade, at Cedar Hill Elementary school, I was taught how to read a newspaper. We were taught how to identify the lead story, what it meant when a story was “above the fold.” I even recall learning how to read the stock market pages in our math class. I don’t know if they…

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  • Dentist Jokes at the Doctor’s Office

    10 Jan 2016 » 3 min read

    have taken it upon myself to entertain the medical world. Whenever I have a dentist or doctor appointment, I do my best to make jokes. When asked how much I weight, I give my weight in kilograms. When asked how tall I am, I give my height in centimeters1. When a nurse draws blood, I’ll…

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  • Blogging Advice for Beginners

    09 Jan 2016 » 4 min read about Blog & Site Meta, Writing & Publishing

    omehow, the 10th anniversary of my blog passed without notice. I wrote my very first blog post back on October 25, 2005. Back then I was on LiveJournal, but all of those posts found their way here when I converted to WordPress a few years later. Ten years, and 6,032 public posts later, I’m still…

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  • Computers Have Terrible Names

    08 Jan 2016 » 3 min read

    omputers have terrible names. Back in the early days, some thought was put to giving a computer a decent name. In 1944 there was Colossus, two versions of which helped break German codes at the end of the Second World War. Colossus packs a punch. There was a wooden roller coaster at Six Flags Magic…

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  • 2 Annotated Pages in My Field Notes Notebook

    07 Jan 2016 » 3 min read

    few weeks ago, I wrote about how I’ve been using notebooks more and more. I especially like using my Field Notes notebook. I carry one around with me everywhere. I use the notebook for jotting down things I need to remember, but ultimate can discard. This differs from how I use my Evernote Moleskine notebook.…

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  • A Fondness for Old Things

    06 Jan 2016 » 3 min read

    n my day job, I work with technology. My desk has two large flat screen monitors, plus my laptop screen. I have a fancy Cisco IP phone that can do all sorts of neat tricks. While writing code, I sometimes listen to music streamed from satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Instead of phone calls, I have…

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  • Going Paperless 2.0: Tracking Accomplishments in Evernote

    05 Jan 2016 » 4 min read about Evernote, Technology & Gadgets

    t the beginning of each year, one of the things that I find useful is to create a new “accomplishments” file. This a place that I can track my achievements and successes for the forthcoming year. A few years back I wrote about how I tracked my achievements in Evernote, but things evolve, and how…

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  • My Standard Cover Letter for Fiction

    04 Jan 2016 » 3 min read about Writing & Publishing

    ccasionally, I come across a discussion of what one should put into one’s cover letter when submitting a story to a magazine. I don’t ever recall sweating over my cover letters after an early rejection I received from A. J. Budrys, then editing Tomorrow Science Fiction. He told me that, for him, cover letters were…

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