Where was this when my kids were little?

Where was this when my kids were little?

OverDrive. It’s a free app that lets you borrow ebooks and audiobooks from your local library. You can even read the ebooks on your Kindle. It’s basically magic.

In the summer of 1966 between my Junior and Senior at the University of Maryland College Park as a Physics major, I worked at a data processing center for a large retail store chain. They were in the process of converting their credit card operation from manual to computerized, and had prepared a mark-sense card for…

Our present house was built new (in 1983!). After they did all the plumbing and wiring, but before they put up the drywall, I photographed every wall. I basically have x-ray photos of every wall in my house; I know exactly where each stud, duct, wire and pipe is.

DeoxIT spray works a treat.

Visiting Amsterdam I asked someone how deep the canals are. He answered: “One meter of water, three meters of bicycles.”

Sad fact: kids really did die in old refrigerators. Back in the day they had mechanical latches that couldn’t be opened from the inside. Kids would play with them, get themselves locked inside and suffocate. It was such a big problem that the Lions Club (a civic organization) conducted a nation-wide public education…

This puts me in mind of astronomer Cliff Stole. He was famous for about 15 minutes in the ‘90s for tracking down a German hacker working for the Russian KGB, and writing a book about it*. In the book, just because he’s Cliff, he included his recipe for chocolate chip cookies. He explained that he made them with…

“Before knocking his fist against the galactic freighter like some sort of Corellian Fonzie...”

Hot Shots! Part Deux still holds the body count record.

I had one back in the day, and loved it. Not a sports car, but certainly a sporty car. The real advantage was that most ‘70s girls couldn’t distinguish it from a Corvette. Good times.

Why? Well, unless it comes in some better colors it’s a non-starter. Mid-’60s orange and goat-vomit green are not great choices.

OMG! It’s my daughter Kim!!!

So how old are you Nick? Thirty-ish? You know nothing. I just turned 70, and am face-to-face with my own mortality. The men in my family die at 80; you could set your watch by it. So sometime in the next five years or so I’ll get sick, and then I’ll die. Thinking about it is like watching a train wreck; it’s awful,…

Great Falls Park is just a few miles from my home in northern Virginia. It features a beautiful, if not very tall, waterfall, and wonderful hiking trails along the Potomac River. It also has the usual park stuff, picnic tables and grill pits, a small nature center, and helpful National Park Service guides who are…

I teach at the Northern Virginia Community College, and did at the time of the The Hot Zone events. The “Monkey House” was right across the street from classroom building where I taught two nights a week. I was within a block of the ebola outbreak and never knew it.

It looks like the set of a Wes Anderson movie.

Anna knew she had to have some new shoes today, and Carlo had helped her try on every pair in the store. Carlo spoke wearily, “Well, that’s every pair of shoes in the place.”

“...the car of the future...”