Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on October 26th, 2016 in OKC Thunder (NBA) 
As a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kevin Durant made me do a lot of things. Once, after dishing an alley oop to Russell Westbrook, he made me leap out of my chair in the cheap seats so hard I spilled $9 worth of beer. Another time after hitting a buzzer beating shot to win in the finals, he made me high-five a complete stranger. When he referred to his mother as “the real MVP” during his MVP acceptance speech, he made me cry. And last night during his debut as a Golden State Warrior, Kevin Durant made me… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on October 24th, 2016 in Food, Main 
When I was a little kid — this would have been the late 1970s, possibly early 1980s — I owned a cup that looked like an ice cream cone. The bottom part of the cup looked like a cone. The “lid” looked like a scoop of ice cream. The plastic ice cream was covered with a removable brown piece of plastic that looked like melted chocolate. There was a hole to accommodate a straw. We owned two of these cups. Mine had a scoop of vanilla on top; my sister’s was mint green. I don’t remember where they came from… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on October 21st, 2016 in Main 
Last week I bought some new stickers for my laptop. Thirty seconds after I finished applying them I spilled a large glass of lemonade down into my keyboard. I dried the keyboard off with a towel and things seemed fine for a while,but when I turned on my laptop later that evening, 1/4 of the keys were stuck in capital mode and 1/4 were completely stuck. But, hey — I’m a tech guy! How hard can it be to pop off the keyboard and clean it? Turns out, pretty hard. The instructions started with removing a dozen screws, then the… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on October 15th, 2016 in Main 
The reason most interviews “work” is because, in most cases, both sides need (or at least want) them to work. Usually the person doing the interview has an article to publish and a deadline to meet, and the person being interviewed typically has something to say. An interview is like a dance, and when both partners are of equal skill, the dance may be graceful. Things don’t always work out that way. Sometimes, one partner may be a better dancer than the other. In some cases it is up to the person performing the interview to coax answers out of… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on October 14th, 2016 in Main 
AMC is showing all the Friday the 13th movies today. I don’t think I’ll ever watch a Friday the 13th movie without thinking about Jeff Martin. Jeff and I met in 7th grade, which means we had only been friends for a couple of months when he invited me to his Halloween party. I’m not 100% positive, but I think that was the first time I went to his house. It was a costume party, and I arrived wearing a werewolf mask with a flannel shirt and blue jeans. One good thing about being a werewolf is you can wear… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on October 14th, 2016 in Main 
We’ve spent our past two Creative Nonfiction class periods interviewing fellow classmates. I’ve interviewed a lot of people over the past 25 years. I cut my teeth doing interviews for my college newspaper, before doing intern stints with both the El Reno Light and the El Reno Tribune. Most of those interviews went horrible. Typically I showed up with a set list of questions (that I refused to deviate from), asked them, and left. The first really good interview I did was for the El Reno Tribune. The city was relocating a historical home, and the newspaper asked me to… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on October 5th, 2016 in Main 
My dad recently got rid of the shed in his backyard. It was uncharacteristically non-emotional for me. I have nostalgic connections with many things from my childhood, but apparently they do not extend to thirty-year-old wooden storage buildings. If you ever want to watch human ingenuity at its finest, find something seemingly impossible to move and then advertise it for free on Craigslist. My friend did this once after purchasing a home that “came with” a less-than-new pool table in the basement. After scratching his head for a week, he advertised the pool table for free on Craigslist with that… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on October 3rd, 2016 in Work 
Facebook has a feature called “On This Day” that shows you posts you made this date in previous years. Over the weekend, Facebook reminded me that I got a new job on this day back in 2009… and 2010, 2014, and 2015. And now, 2016. October 1st is the first day of the government’s fiscal year. That’s when our budget is approved (except in 2013 when Susan and I were on furlough). Because of this, that’s when a lot of federal jobs open up. In 2009, I left Lockheed Martin and became a federal employee, taking a job with security.… (read more)
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