When he subscribed to newspapers, magazines, or journals - you know, when that was still a thing - my late father-in-law would use a different middle initial with each subscription. Then, for every piece of junk mail that arrived, he would check to see who had sold his name to whom.

Eventually, Donald Trump will not be president. It might be in 2021. Or it might be in 2025. But one way or another, it is inevitable. And when it does happen, there will be an army of angry, humiliated, insulted, depressed, and vengeful former employees, aides, subordinates, bureaucrats, veterans, hangers on, and…

Dear Phoenix: I’ve had a lovely time visiting you several times in August. And I agree: the only way I survived it was [1] shade, [2] those evaporative cooler sprayer things, [3] ice cream. Love: Chip

The one in our neighborhood is on an access road right next to Interstate 70 between Denver and Golden. We like to go there on a summer evening for dinner, and sit on the patio watching the parade of humanity, some locals, some just passing through.

Oh, and our personal favorite fast food in the Denver metro area? Easy: Good Times. It’s Colorado’s equivalent to In-N-Out Burger. Most are drive-through only, but (if we ever get past this effing pandemic) most also have patios with benches, tables, umbrellas, perfect for a nice day or summer evening. Plus: frozen…

I’m not buying the map either. But we have a Mod Pizza (which Mrs. Overclock and I refer to by their tag line “super fast”, spoken like Molly Shannon’s character on SNL) in our neighborhood, and we like it. Get pizza in just a few minutes made anyway you like it for a flat rate regardless of toppings. Get an all…

A lot of things that seem like they must be conspiracies are in fact just individual actors - people, companies, etc. - responding rationally yet independently to a common set of incentives.

I’ve lived in the Denver area for over thirty years and I’ve never even *heard* of the sandwich listed for Colorado.

I had never even heard of “loose meat sandwiches” until many years ago when I attended a funeral for my father-in-law in his home town of Ottumwa Iowa - also Radar O’Reilly’s home town. Me, my spousal unit, and her older brother and sister had lunch at the Canteen Lunch in the Alley, a place famous enough to have it’s…

I just bought one of the 25% off waxed cotton trucker jackets (tan) - just in time, I must admit, for it to get warm in the Denver Colorado area - but I really like it. It’ll be perfect (not to mention stylish) in the fall and spring. I’d been looking at them for a long long time, but couldn’t bring myself to pay full…

I just bought one of the 25% off waxed cotton trucker jackets (tan) - just in time, I must admit, for it to get warm…

And it had one of the greatest scores of all time, written by none other than John Williams.

Same as Mr. P: we used to tip our waitperson 20%, but these days we’re more like 25% for carry-out. We want our favorite neighborhood places to survive. “Keep the change” is my mantra now.

Twenty bucks is twenty bucks.

I’ve found flute breathing also useful when riding a motorcycle with a full face helmet on a cold day. It works.

Your office supply store - which may actually still be open - is likely to have cookie-sheet-sized portable whiteboards to which magnets will stick (for notes and such). The one I bought (to practice talks on) was pretty inexpensive. Plus, it may come with a couple of dry erase markers that you can use to make your…

(Of course, there’s a darker side to this. Maybe some places find out many of their regulars didn’t survive the pandemic.)

You’ve heard the maxim that it’s far far more expensive to acquire a new customer than keep an existing one? (And yet, so so many companies botch this.) Part of this is habit. Humans are for the most part creatures of habit. And to keep an existing customer, you just need to keep feeding their habit (e.g. a latte…

Holy crap. Yet... totally believable.

When I bought my WRX from a nearby Subaru dealer in Golden Colorado in spring of 2016, one of the first things I did was buy a spare set of aftermarket wheels and get Blizzaks mounted on them. Around mid-October, I get the tire shop to swap wheels in about ten minutes of work. April, it’s back again. Money well spent.

Not that different from the drive through, just scaled down for pedestrians.