Today I was shocked to read that Fry's Electronics has gone out of business, as of midnight last night (February 24th). Their web page has the announcement:
After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource ( Read more... )

My father died 22 years ago today, about a year after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. That was only three weeks after my mother-in-law's death from a stroke on January 20th. Not a good way to start the year.
Dad introduced me to folk music, computers, and science fiction; I started ( Read more... )

My brother called me this morning to say that Mom had died. She would have been 100 years old on December 28th. I last spoke with her Saturday; I'm glad we had a chance to say our goodbyes.
I'm... I'll be okay. Hugs would be welcome.

[Crossposted from mdlbear.dreamwidth.org, where it has
( Read more... )

Today I am grateful, mostly in retrospect, for what is past,...

• William Butler Yeats, who wrote the poem that provides the framework for this post.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
• Bob Laurent, Chris Holosi, Naomi Pardue, and all the other filkers and friends who passed this year. I'm sure I'm leaving some out.
• Abraham Savitzky, my father ( Read more... )

Last week we lost Ruth Bader Ginsburg. My immediate reaction was "we're screwed."
As Siderea says, "We may have just lost the country." See also, Opinion | The GOP traded democracy for a Supreme Court seat and tax cuts. It wasn’t worth it. - The Washington Post.
I am trying very hard not to despair. It's not going that well.

[ ( Read more... )

It has not been a good week. Between a synagogue mass murder in Pittsburgh yesterday, filk fan Harold Stein (
( Read more... )

It's been 19 years since my father died. He introduced me to science fiction, computers, digital filtering, electronics, and folk music, among other things. His paper on digital filtering of spectra is one of the most-cited papers in in the journal Analytical Chemistry.
Dad was as much a packrat as I am, so there was always a good ( Read more... )

Wednesday Clea, our guinea pig, died. She was a simple soul -- piggies ( Read more... )

Jordin Kare died yesterday, from complications of aortic valve replacement surgery. I am still somewhat in shock. He was younger than Colleen.
There is not much to be grateful for on this Thursday, but I am profoundly ( Read more... )

It was a long year last week. 2016 is dead and buried; it wouldn't be hard to do better, but I don't expect 2017 to make the effort.
I was going to put a summary of the year here. I'm not up for it. See my previous post for a wrap-up of what I mostly didn't do. I can't ( Read more... )