Month: March 2012

  • Short fiction I read in March 2012

    31 Mar 2012 » 2 min read about 2012, Reading & Books, short fiction

    Here is what I read in March: Living in the Eighties by David Ira Cleary (Asimov’s 4/12). [3/2/2012] Some Curious Effects of Time Travel by L. Sprague de Camp (Astounding, April 1942). [3/2/2012] Pig Trap by Malcolm Jameson (Astounding, April 1942). [3/2/2012] Time Pussy by Isaac Asimov (as by George E. Dale) (Astounding, April 1942).…

  • The mega-millions lottery

    30 Mar 2012 » 1 min read

    Nope, I haven’t bought a ticket and I have no plans on doing so. Other than as a novelty gift for others, I’ve never purchased a lottery ticket. Not for myself, nor for part of a group venture. I can have as just much fun imaging what I’d do with $540 million without the ticket…

  • Personal analytics: a year of online activity

    30 Mar 2012 » 1 min read about Personal & Family

    Here is another look at some personal analytics data. In this chart, you can see my online activity plotted for 2011: The activity is color-coded and broken into six categories: Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Instagram, Mobile Photos and Check-ins. Note that this is not a complete set of online activity, but it is everything that gets…

  • Goodbye, paper edition of Scientific American, hello digital

    29 Mar 2012 » 1 min read about magazines, Reading & Books

    I think I’ve had an unbroken subscription to Scientific American for the last 15 years or so. This week, I gave up my paper subscription. I usually purchased my subscription for 3 years at a time, but the latest round was due to expire in June or July, I think. I’d started getting the reminder notices,…

  • Gas prices

    29 Mar 2012 » 3 min read about Personal & Family

    We are pretty lucky. We live in an area where we can do a lot of walking. Our house resides in a little community right next to a Target and Safeway shopping center. Unless we are getting something big or doing lots of shopping at once, we almost always walk. It takes five minutes to…

  • An interview with me over at 40K Books

    27 Mar 2012 » 1 min read about Writing & Publishing

    I was recently interviewed by the good folks at 40K Books. You can head over there to check out the interview. I talk about the future of books, about the origins and themes in my two stories with 40K Books, about science fiction and writing. It was fun to do.

  • Forty

    27 Mar 2012 » 1 min read about Personal & Family

    Well, it’s here. Although technically, I wasn’t born until the middle of the afternoon on March 27, 1972, legally, I turned forty as of midnight and have thus been so for nearly eight hours. How were those eight hours? Well… About two of them were spent sleeping. When I wasn’t sleeping, I was being kicked…

  • The very last day of the good thirties

    26 Mar 2012 » 2 min read about approaching-40, Personal & Family

    I’ve got about 16 hours of my thirties left and that seems rather momentous to me. I can clearly remember my friends and coworkers in the Santa Monica office throwing me a little party ten years ago as I forever left my twenties behind.  And here I am on the cusp of doing the same…

  • Coming in April: Weekly “Going Paperless” tips

    25 Mar 2012 » 1 min read about Evernote, Technology & Gadgets

    As Evernote’s Paperless Lifestyle ambassador, I am frequently asked about going paperless. What tips can I give? How have I done it? What problems have I run into? I’ve decided that a weekly “tips” post is in order to help to stem the tide and also to (hopefully) provide some advice and ideas for those…

  • A morning of home improvements

    24 Mar 2012 » 1 min read about Personal & Family

    Last weekend, the faucet in our kitchen sink came loose. I tried to repair it using plumbers putty, followed by Gorilla Glue. Either solution worked. At the same time, we’d had a slow leak from the faucet in our master bathroom. I decided to take care of both problems this weekend. We live within walking…

  • Approaching 40: I was brought to my senses

    24 Mar 2012 » 3 min read about approaching-40, Personal & Family

    After graduation, I moved back to my parent’s house. They lived in Northridge, California, but the earthquake earlier that year had forced them out of their house and into a rental nearby while their house was repaired.  I worked most of that summer of that summer doing computer work for the dorm cafeteria at UC…

  • Approaching 40: I’ll remember

    23 Mar 2012 » 3 min read about approaching-40, Personal & Family

    Sometime in the spring of 1994, the last semester of senior year at college, me and a bunch of friends headed over to the local theater one evening to catch the film With Honors. I knew nothing about the movie going in, but it ultimately dealt with college kids (at Harvard, I believe) and at…