I’m feeling slightly guilty about not having huge amounts to say in this space. Suffice it to say that life and otherwise is keeping me occupied largely in meatspace. Running kids around and stepping up to cover for the spouse as she’s currently mired in some pretty intensive responsibilities lately, vehicle maintenance, headaches of electronic […]

This week I had the opportunity to do something kind of cool: I was part of an Eagle Scout Board of Review. For the uninitiated, the Board of Review is essentially the “final interview” for those who’ve met all the other requirements for Eagle Scout – the candidate sits for a group interview with several […]

Today is the anniversary of my lovely wife’s birth. If you see her around today, physically or virtually, please wish her a happy birthday. She truly deserves a happy day, as she’s a wonderful and beautiful person, and works very hard on very important things to make sure that all sorts of systems work smoothly […]

As is my family’s habit on a particular weekend in mid-January, we packed up and hauled ourselves to Williamsburg VA for Marscon, perhaps the premiere fan convention in the general Mid-Atlantic region, and rapidly becoming my favorite con that I get to each year. It’s a great chance to share an experience with like-minded people, […]

…or maybe it is, I don’t know. Its sort of classed in with minivans according to certain standards, but just as easily gets dropped in with “wagons” or whatever. In Europe, where actual statistically significant numbers of people buy this sort of thing, it’s known as a compact MPV. But, I’m getting ahead of myself: […]

So, we all wandered back to the grind this week after a couple of weeks; off, and in most cases, off the grid. The smartphone spent a lot of time in a drawer, and I largely ignored the telephone and the email and the internet (except to grind a bit on Marvel Heroes and pick […]

If you’ve been following me this year, or talked to me, or lived with me, or saw me at all until perhaps late September, the story of the year has been “Don’t you think he looks tired?”. Odds are it was true – because I was totally knackered. But I survived, and found a more […]

…If you’re so inclined. If you are, I hope you enjoyed your holiday, whether it was celebratory or sacred for you. ‘Round these parts, it was a relatively sedate affair; some gifts exchanged in the morning (though we tried things a bit differently this year, doing a bit of gift exchange on the Solstice -December […]

As of 4:30 yesterday afternoon, I’m done working for the rest of the year. Had a really nice holiday luncheon with my co-workers yesterday where we all ate way too much delicious Italian food, then spent the afternoon putting a bunch of things to bed and setting up my out-of-office autoresponder. So now, it’s two […]

Beyond the usual modest slate of individual gifts, our household traditionally also manages to find a collective gift for the whole family to enjoy; it’s a nice little reward for getting ourselves through the year. This year, rather than grabbing some large entertainment purchase (We’ll wait a while on a next-gen console, for example), we […]