I showed this picture to a coworker once and he replied, “That looks like your kind of store!” Then I had to tell him that this was not a store, but rather inside my house. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed by this or simply thought I was insane. Probably a little of both.
In the mid-90s, after having… read entire post
Life’s Too Short to Wear Underwear You Don’t Love
I recently read that most adult males keep pairs of underwear for, on average, seven years.
When I look at the underwear in my drawers it’s hard to remember how long I’ve owned them. Unlike larger purchases like houses and cars, I don’t think most people — or at least I don’t — have a good frame of reference as… read entire post
A Guide to (Many) NES Alternatives
Big Lots is already consolidating their Halloween shelves to make room for incoming Christmas-themed items. (Yes, in September.) One hot item for retrogamers this holiday season will be Nintendo’s official NES Classic Edition, a miniature version of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that comes with 30 games built-in and goes on sale on November 11, 2016.. If the last… read entire post
I AM THE SOLDERING KING
In high school, Jeff was my only classmate who knew how to solder. What little I know today about soldering I learned from looking over his shoulder, and talking to my dad, who used to do electronic repair in the Air Force.
I cut my soldering teeth while attaching modchips to PlayStations back in the late 90s. The earliest modchips… read entire post
Awkward Questions from the Geneticist
“Let me ask you an odd question. Is there any chance your parents are blood relatives?”
Last week, I visited the Dean McGee Eye Institute again, this time to meet with a geneticist. I don’t claim to know anything about genetic testing or genetics in general (other than the fact that teachers would always get upset with me when we… read entire post
Star Wednesday: Star Wars Chess
The first electronic version of Chess I ever saw was Video Chess, released for the Atari 2600 in 1979. It still amazes me that the code to Video Chess program was 4 kilobytes in size — that’s less characters than this post contains, and that includes all the graphics and eight difficulty levels contained within the cartridge. On the easiest… read entire post
A New Day
After my annual eye checkup at the Dean McGee Eye Institute last week (nothing’s changed), my doctor recommended I see a geneticist for further testing. Because Stargardt’s Disease is just one of many similar vision conditions, they can’t definitively diagnose it without performing genetic testing. Part of me thinks that because there’s no cure or treatment there’s not much point… read entire post
Back to School
Last Thursday, Mason and Morgan went back to school. Today, it was my turn.
This semester I’ll be taking three graduate classes: Commercial Nonfiction, Graduate Tutorial in Writing, and Epublishing, for a total of eight credit hours. I suppose it’s not very cool to admit that I am looking forward to each of these classes. (I’m okay with that.)
In… read entire post
21 and 43
Last Friday, my wife and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary. Yesterday, I turned 43-years-old.
For our anniversary, Susan and I took a few hours off from work and drove out to Norman to run a couple of last minute errands before the spring semester begins. While in Norman I picked up my parking pass, and gave Susan a tour… read entire post
Goodbye, Rio Olympics!
Yesterday over dinner my mother asked me how much of the 2016 Rio Olympics I had watched over the past two weeks. My response? “Every minute of them.”
Obviously, that wasn’t entirely possible. Over the past two weeks there have been times when Olympic events were being broadcast on up to four different cable channels. With events on two channels… read entire post