A Very Long Year Indeed
Today, February 21, marks the first anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. An eventful year, as you might imagine. It’s all better now, but for a while it very much wasn’t. For some folks, a cancer diagnosis is a bombshell, a bolt from the blue. Mine was more like the confirmation of a nagging suspicion, following years of minor but mostly […]
Continue reading→Forward to the Past
Everything has an upside, even the decline that comes with aging. Thanks to slipping testosterone levels, I have developed an appreciation for musical theater. Well in fairness, it’s always been there to some degree, but I no longer bother to hide it. Anyway the girlfriend and I watched the recent remake of West Side Story over the long weekend. It’s […]
Continue reading→Too Close for Comfort
Today marks exactly five months since I faced emergency surgery to address a case of sepsis. Eight days earlier, I had undergone a routine procedure to remove a stage 1 cancerous tumor from my lower GI tract. The excision was successful, and all traces of cancer are gone. But the sutures in my colon failed for reasons not entirely clear, […]
Continue reading→Opportunity Lost
I was on the way home from the girlfriend’s house this morning, a routine trip I have made literally thousands of times. As I was merging from southbound Mopac onto Loop 360, a long sweeping left-hand curve between high roadcuts, a small movement caught my eye. Nearly hidden in the tall grass by the roadside was a young puppy, black […]
Continue reading→Three Little Words
A few weeks ago, someone said to me those three little words. No, no, not those. The words everyone hopes never to hear: “You have cancer.” The person saying them was my doctor, following up on an abnormal finding on an otherwise routine colonoscopy. In all honesty, I was not surprised. I have had issues, minor and low-grade, in that […]
Continue reading→Recollections from a Former Life
Yesterday, May 3, marked 25 years since I left my former employment as an editor at Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Publishers. It was a warm, sunny, humid day, one of those days that finally banishes the last traces of spring. I remember standing in the parking lot for the last time, looking back at the dark green glass cube that […]
Continue reading→The Path of Greater Resistance
Or: A Skeptic’s Journey We all have our favorite topics, and those of you who have read much of this blog undoubtedly know that one of mine is Climate Change, AKA Global Warming, AKA Global Weirding, AKA Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, AKA Climate Alarm. In this subject I have a minority viewpoint, but one that is, I think it fair […]
Continue reading→Dog was My Copilot
My first encounter with the midsized catahoula mix was very nearly the last. I was headed home after work, taking the back way as usual, eyes focused on the middle distance, thinking about nothing in particular, when a sudden movement from the right caught my attention. The movement continued rapidly onward, directly across my path, on a collision course with […]
Continue reading→Cycles and Seasons
With the passing of the December solstice yesterday, the season officially shifts from autumn to winter, which may be news to some folks around these parts who have lately been battered by waves of cold and snow. We call it the “winter” solstice here, but in the Southern Hemisphere, the opposite calendrical condition prevails, and on that date Spring officially […]
Continue reading→A Historic Reversal of Fortune
Big day in American history today. No, not THAT. It was on this date in 1863 that Robert E. Lee mustered the battered remnants of his Army of Northern Virginia and began the long march homeward following a decisive defeat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The fault for this defeat rests entirely with General Lee. Seeking to avenge the stinging, unexpected […]
Continue reading→Passages
A few days ago, at a little after noon on March 25, 2019, my old friend and companion Deacon closed his eyes for the last time and left this physical plane for whatever lies beyond, if anything. In the scheme of things it was alright, because in dog terms, at least, Deacon was immensely old, somewhere between eighteen and twenty […]
Continue reading→In Memoriam
Solemn anniversary today. Is there anyone who doesn’t remember where they were and what they were doing that day, seventeen short years ago, when death descended without warning from a clear blue sky? The day began much like any other. Three hundred million Americans went about their morning routines, oblivious to the drama about to unfold. I was reading the […]
Continue reading→The Power of Conditioning
It was a silly, negligible article on what has lately become a silly, negligible website. A wiser person would have let it slide. But it poked me in a tender place, and I am not the kind of person who can just let such a thing go. So instead of shrugging it off with a sigh I took the bait. […]
Continue reading→A Grandiose Conceit
A few weeks ago, on March 24, we were treated to the spectacle of the First Annual Earth Hour, in which everyone on the planet turned off the lights for exactly sixty minutes, beginning 8:30 p.m. local time, as a gesture of solidarity with this beleaguered planet we call home. OK, so not exactly everyone. Well, truthfully hardly anyone. You […]
Continue reading→Out with the Old
When I started this blog a few years ago, it was my intent to write about matters pertinent to computers and the computer business. I stuck with that plan for at least a couple of years. But computer stuff is really pretty boring; it doesn’t fire me up all that much, nor does it get your motor revving either, I […]
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