Friday I took a day of vacation to go skiing. Saturday night and Sunday night, I ended up catching up with work I would have done on Friday if I had been in the office. Maybe this is why I don't always feel refreshed after coming back from vacation.

I routinely ignore the difference between something costing $1.99 and $1.95, but I refuse to use a 3 cent stamp when a 2 cent stamp is enough, even if it requires run to the post office.

The restaurant I had dinner in yesterday had a bottle of Four Monks California Malt Vinegar, English Style. The label on the back tells a story of how their vinegars are made in the old world tradition of Guiseppe Bagini (or some similiar Italian sounding last name, I don't recall exactly). There's a URL for the company's website, which is a ( Read more... )

About a dozen years ago a friend of mine and I were discussing the impact of the Internet and the fledgling World-Wide Web on modern society. Having used computer networks for e-mail and real-time messaging for a number of years (remember, BITnet, PHONE on DECnet, and talk?), I already realized that the Internet had the potential to revolutionize ( Read more... )

Off the top of my head, a list of my favorite board games from childhood. I think at some point I will look to reacquire the ones I don't still have.

• Risk
  The classic kind ... never mind that the board is too biased towards down under. No funky playing pieces. Either the old wooden pieces or the early plastic pieces before those awful roman ( Read more... )

Sometimes I wonder why I find happiness in things that seem insignificant in the grand scheme of life. Winning a match in a recreational sports league. Rooting for my favorite professional sports team and seeing them win. Finding an product I wanted to buy on sale for 10% off.
I'm often amazed by how much enjoyment children can find out of the ( Read more... )

I was near LA during the riots following the Rodney King verdict ( Read more... )

Privacy and the protection of personal information is a frequently ( Read more... )

I haven't written anything in this space for a while now. Every ( Read more... )

Last week I encountered a strange telephone problem in my house. For some unknown reason, the telephone line wouldn't recognize touch tones generated from most of the telephones in my house.
I first noticed this on the Panasonic cordless phone I use in the ( Read more... )