Ask me anything - Do you consider blogging to be an art form? One thing I absolutely despise is elitism is any form, followed closely by gatekeeping. Sure, people have varying degrees of talent, but I prefer an open society that encourages folks to try their hand at things. It is … | Continue reading
Today's Ask me anything is - Are you a morning person or an evening person? I love to sleep as much as anyone I know. My ability to lapse into unconsciousness is my superpower and one for which I enjoy a certain bit of notoriety among my friends and family. But, when I am done wi … | Continue reading
I don't actually have a cold, but if I'd titled this post "A Sick Man" then everyone would have thought it was about Trump and avoided it because we are all so tired of him and the attention he gets. To further obfuscate things, I don't believe I am actually sick either, just fee … | Continue reading
Today's question comes from hiro It has been answered by gabz, Tyler and Helen. What is the best musical experience of your life? Rather than describe a concert to you—and I have seen some wonderful acts—I'd rather talk about a quest I went on. This is a story about a particular … | Continue reading
This question was asked by Curious Magpie. It has also been answered by Anniegreens. Do you experience Hiraeth (a deep longing for something)? What is it you long for - a time, a place, a feeling? The greatest adventure of my life was my honeymoon, a blissful 156 day long-distanc … | Continue reading
Denis asked - Here is a wand. With it, you can bring back anyone from the dead from any era, at any point of their life and for only one day. Who do you resuscitate for 24h, at what point in their life and to do what? This is the kind of question meant for me. I love history and … | Continue reading
Ask Me Anything - Where (and when) would you go if time travel were real? Should time travel ever be invented, I think those of us living in 2024 are going to be pretty safe from being visited from the future. No one is ever going to look at this era and think, "Man, I'll bet tha … | Continue reading
Today's question comes from the November Indy Web Carnival - "Has someone had a profound impact on you?" My transition from a person who viewed the world as something that just happens around us to a person who sees the world as a place that is ours to change came about under the … | Continue reading
I tried to keep my mind occupied all day with something other than hope versus awful possibilities. Spent a great deal of time trying to turn a 30 second task into a 15 second task by automating what happens when I download pictures on my computer. I looked for a new program to t … | Continue reading
The question is from Brandon - What advice would you give someone graduating from high school? This question is a cross between what it says and what I'd like a chance to do if I were 18 all over again. It would be cool to have nearly 60 years of accumulated knowledge crammed int … | Continue reading
My Internet friend, R. Scott Jones, asked - What's one place you've traveled to (or perhaps an entire trip) that changed you? Tell us how you changed because of it, and why you think it inspired that change. I've lived for all but a very short period of my adult life in the same … | Continue reading
The November Ask Me Anything blogging challenge is going well. Today's question is once again from @annie@social.lol on Mastodon. She wants to know, "What's an important lesson you've learned about relationships?" As a happily married guy, albeit in marriage number four, I feel f … | Continue reading
In the continuation of the Ask Me Anything series, today I am tackling a question from Annie, first answered by Keenan, Estebanxto and Kerri Ann - if you could instantly change one internal pattern/thing about yourself, what would it be? This is an easy one. I would turn myself i … | Continue reading
Question: Why do you have the politics you have today? In real life, outside of my family and a couple of close friends, I rarely talk politics unless someone says something real backwards around me, in which case I speak up. I consider any endorsement of what passes for Republic … | Continue reading
When Wonder Woman decides she doesn't need something anymore it gets tossed into recycling, or it gets donated. When I decide I don't need something right now, I place it aside because you never know, I might need it later. Therein lies a slight problem. She looks at my stuff wit … | Continue reading
One of the central tenets of Buddhism is that everything is decaying. Eventually, everything falls apart. One just has to buy a home to see the truth in this. Trust me. Today, lots of people were disappointed that a well-liked Internet service, Omnivore, which allowed you to save … | Continue reading
A long time ago, a friend of mine told me that in life, you find what you look for. I believe that to be true most of the time. I'm always on the lookout for nice people. Thinking about them is a tool I use in my personal gratitude practice, a daily exercise where I record three … | Continue reading
I'm turning 60 in a few months and though I wouldn't say it's messing with my head in any kind of negative way, it has prompted me to think about aging and mortality more than I have in the past. It's so weird to be getting ready to start my seventh decade on earth while simultan … | Continue reading
(Note: this is a repost from my tech blog from a few months back. I was a wee bit busy this weekend being a supportive husband and was away from my computer) I often make the comment on Reddit or Mastodon that Obsidian, a cross-platform note-taking application, is my favorite pie … | Continue reading
At 8:00 AM Saturday morning, Wonder Woman and about 70 others will begin running a 2.2-mile course over and over for 24 straight hours. Whoever covers the most distance in that time period will be declared the winner. Those completing 50k, 50 miles, 100k, 75 miles, and 100 miles … | Continue reading
Back in the days when people still bought encyclopedias, my parents were confronted by an especially good salesman who sold them not only a full set of the Book of Knowledge but also a collection of classic literature. When I was in elementary school, I tackled many of those book … | Continue reading
For one reason or another, I've taken some kind of medication on a daily basis for almost forty years. I am an expert at swallowing pills. I'd hate to estimate how many I've taken over the years. Despite the attempts by my insurance company to strong-arm me into using a mail-orde … | Continue reading
Although I used a local BBS and AOL chat rooms back in the day, the first online community I ever found a home in was at Epinions, a dotcom company that paid you to write reviews of commercial goods, including books and albums. You could use HTML to dress up what you wrote, so th … | Continue reading
The year Wonder Woman and I hiked the Appalachian Trail, we were away from home for 156 days, from early May to mid-October. At the beginning of our journey, I weighed around 230 pounds. By the end, I had dropped to 180 pounds and was wearing medium-sized clothes for the first ti … | Continue reading
In North Carolina, where I live, early voted started this week. On the first day, we set a record for voter turnout. Even in the western portions of the state where a recent hurricane destroyed roads and where many people still don't have power, the number of people who turned ou … | Continue reading
I'm not going to pretend that I don't make assumptions about people from time to time because, as much as I try not to, I fall into the trap occasionally. I'm glad that, for the most part, plenty of other people and I seem to be less inclined to do it these days. We are learning … | Continue reading
My absolute favorite time to do something is "not right now." I never put gas in my fuel tank until the warning light comes on. The pharmacy used to put my medicine back on the shelf until they learned my patterns. I told Wonder Woman that I was going to buy a new pair of shoes f … | Continue reading
I'm a digital pack rat who enjoys browsing through decades-old emails and blog posts from the 90s when I was on GeoCities. I recently found a letter I wrote to a homophobic friend in 1997, where I tried to disabuse him of some backward notions and challenge some of his beliefs. I … | Continue reading
One piece of pop psychology that actually seems to be true is the premise that at any given time we are all doing the best we can. Football coaches and motivational speakers may beg to differ, but they have a vested interest in making people think that they can always just try ha … | Continue reading
Somehow, when I first investigated starting a blog, I managed to avoid the many websites devoted to creating a money-making machine USING THESE 10 SIMPLE TRICKS!!! The blogs I was familiar with weren't covered in ads, and I didn't have to pay to read them. There was an occasional … | Continue reading
Being appropriately cautious is a survival skill. We have evolved to do things like sniff food before we eat it to make sure it isn't spoiled and to keep our guard up around strangers. A lot of human behavior is understandable in that context. I wouldn't consider myself reckless … | Continue reading
The Five Love Languages is a book by Gary Chapman in which he puts forth the idea that there are five different ways people prefer to be shown they are loved: Acts of Service Receiving Gifts Quality Time Words of Affirmation Physical Touch If you ask me which one is my favorite, … | Continue reading
Wonder Woman and I are in the middle of a weekend being live in grandparents for three of our grandchildren: Connor, 16; Aiden, 14; and Evie, 5. Our daughter and son-in-law are off visiting their oldest son, Darien, 18, who is in his freshman year at Virginia Tech. Times have cha … | Continue reading
As the decades roll by, some technology habits seem so ingrained as to be indelible. Some of us are now in our fourth decade (or even fifth) of using a personal computer. We've been online since you could ditch AOL and CompuServe and get to the "real" Internet. For me, my day-to- … | Continue reading
Satiety \suh-TYE-uh-tee\ noun. 1 : the quality or state of being fed or gratified to or beyond capacity : surfeit, fullness. The first time I went to rehab in 1987, I was lucky to have selected a place that had some world-class counselors with years of experience working with add … | Continue reading
For years, being grouchy was a hallmark of my personality. A combination of untreated bipolar disorder and active alcoholism gave me a perpetual frown and a repertoire of caustic comments. Thankfully, I finally sought treatment for both issues, got my life in order, and most peop … | Continue reading
Like a lot of people who enjoy blogging and tech, my social media drug of choice is Mastodon. For those who don't know, Mastodon is a platform where you can have (in my case) micro-blog posts of 500 words or less, as well as share photos. People can comment on what you wrote or r … | Continue reading
When you're feeling blue, get some tacos. You may still be sad, but at least you got some tacos [Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇](#upvote-form) | Continue reading
As a son of the south, I've been surrounded by country music all my life. Growing up, there were many, many targeted advertisements selling 8-track collections for a variety of artists, although Conway Twitty stands out in my memory for the volume of commercials dedicated to pedd … | Continue reading
In the modern Internet era, where our interactions with other people can be primarily or exclusively online, I've stopped distinguishing between IRL and online human beings. You are all real people to me. In my professional life, a good portion of my customers are voices on the t … | Continue reading
My grandparents and my daughter in the yard of the house on Wayside Road About 10 miles from my house is a short road in the neighboring county. It connects Highway 401, once a major north-south corridor before the interstate highway system, to Plank Road, which dates back to col … | Continue reading
One of my favorite pastimes when I have a few spare moments is to dive into the world of blogs and drop a quick note to one or two of the many writers I come across in my online adventures. I hunt for an email address, a guestbook, or a social media link (Mastodon, I’m looking at … | Continue reading
I am dropping my first blogging challenge tomorrow. I've designed it to hopefully be a community builder as well as a writing challenge. It's only going to be a week long and you'll be able to do meet the daily requirements in just a few minutes. There is no firm deadline to star … | Continue reading
As I age, I’ve started to notice that some of my parts are wearing out. I already have two artificial knees, and God help me if I try to read for too long without my glasses! Wonder Woman insists I need hearing aids every time I ask her what she’s muttering about. But there’s one … | Continue reading
I might not be a good person. For over thirty years I've retreated from trick or treaters, usually choosing to go out for dinner on Halloween with an extra trip to the bookstore and coffee shop just to kill time. Then I sneak back into the house, refusing to turn on any lights. I … | Continue reading
This post is my contribution to the IndieWeb Carnival for October, 2024. More than 40 years ago, I took two years of Spanish in high school. It was a requirement for college-bound students, and at the time, I fancied myself one of them. My instructor for both years was Señora Ham … | Continue reading
From my first encounter with the online world on my uncle's 286 using Prodigy back in 1993 to this very moment on my tricked-out MacBook Air with all the bells and whistles, I’ve experienced quite a few memorable moments involving the Internet. I can still remember the thrill I f … | Continue reading
When I was a senior in high school in 1983, I reached a point late in the school year where I had burned all my bridges with my family. I had moved away from my mom years earlier after getting suspended from school for being caught with the very first joint I had ever bought. Fro … | Continue reading