And Now for Something Completely Different

22 August 202623 August 2026

Déjà Vu All Over Again

When I was finishing college in the early 90s, one of the trends that was starting to go viral back then was the concept of fractals. Although the term had been invented in the 70s by the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, it didn’t really take off in the public consciousness until about twenty years later, due in no small part to computer-generated graphics of the Mandelbrot set. Something about psychedelic imagery of Mandelbrot sets really clicked with the zeitgeist back then (largely thanks to boomers coming into their ascendancy and reliving some of their highlights from the 60s).

22 October 20225 September 2026

Ghosts in the Machine

*We are Spirits in the Material World (Source: “Betty Boop in Snow White”, 1933)*

Back in the 90s, while I was still on active duty, I joined a Compuserve online forum for active and veteran military members. I remember a post by an Air Force captain retelling an incident that happened in the skies over Iraq during Operation: Desert Storm.

This occurred during the initial combat missions while the Coalition Forces were establishing air supremacy. On one mission, the captain was flight commander for about half a dozen fighters. They were flying above the clouds when his wingman reported a radar contact underneath the clouds. The IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) transponders did not indicate that these were friendly planes, so his wingman recommended attacking (which, under the rules of engagement at that phase, was the correct response).

Something about the whole thing felt off to the captain. He instructed the flight to wait for visual confirmation.

26 August 20225 September 2026

Schrodinger’s Cat

I haven’t owned a television for the last fifteen years.

Call it an odd twist of fate, but I was gradually weaned off of television since college. A lot of people, especially in the younger generation, find the concept of life devoid of TV as inconceivable.

However, instead of television, I do watch a lot of YouTube, especially by independent content creators covering diverse fields such as pop culture, Slavic hardbass music, law, and cooking. And since the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp trial, I’ve been watching a lot of livestreams about the entertainment industry.

And one metaphor that’s been popping up lately is the analogy of Schrödinger’s Cat.

2 August 20225 September 2026

Running on Empty

At the lowest point in my life, I had less than twenty dollars to my name.

It was 2004, and I had been unemployed for nearly a year. Due to the circumstances under which I was terminated, I was denied unemployment insurance, forcing me to live on meager savings that ran out within a couple of months. I ended up selling almost all of my gaming and science fiction books and toys on eBay just to have money to pay the mortgage. As for food and gas, I did the dumbest thing you could ever do: max out my credit cards and play the balance juggling game to stay solvent.

It was so bad, I almost got arrested for bouncing a check on a speeding ticket.

31 December 20215 September 2026

Take the Long Way Home

For most people, 2021 will be remembered as 1 PC (post-COVID). Some people have spent this year resigning themselves to the New Normal. Others have been struggling to return to the Old Normal, life before social distancing, masks, and vaccines.

For me, however, 2021 was the watershed for the New Old Normal.

In this year that’s just ending, I left Kentucky, the place I had been living for half my lifetime, and moved back to New Hampshire, my childhood home. Since announcing my departure back in August, many people have asked what made me decide to leave. The answer I gave was simply, “After COVID, I decided it was time to come home.”

This works fine for small talk over cocktails. But much like the rest of 2021, the truth is much more complicated.

21 March 20202 August 2022

Why Losing Your Job Is Actually GOOD For Your Career

Right now the world is practically at a standstill in self-quarantine against the Coronavirus. While some people may be working remotely, a lot of businesses are actually closed for operation. A lot of people are out of work right now, and there’s no guarantee they’ll have a job when the pandemic eventually passes.

This can actually be a good thing.

4 February 20192 August 2022

Epic Fail

New England Patriots in the Super Bowl: then and now

I was in high school when the Patriots made their first Super Bowl appearance in 1986. The Pats finished 11-5 in the regular season under second-year coach Raymond Berry and veteran quarterback Steve Grogan. It was the best regular season finish by New England to that point. They then made an improbable wild-card run through the playoffs and beat Miami in the AFC championship to advance to Super Bowl XX and face the Chicago Bears. Having just “squished the Fish,” confidence was running high in New England that the Patriots would “Berry the Bears.”

Things didn’t go quite as planned.

11 November 201813 May 2021

Get Up and Walk

Saturday was a shitty day.

Friday was supposed to be a day off, the first day of a three-day weekend. Instead, I ended up not only coming into the office, but working well past midnight. Saturday, I paid for it.

I woke up well after the sun had risen and spent most of the day mindlessly doing useless crap. I’m at that age where if I have a particularly late night, it takes me about 3-4 days for things to settle back to normal. So, a three-day weekend where I was hoping to work on my side hustle, has become one day back at the office, followed by two days of recovery.

Continue reading “Get Up and Walk”

30 September 20187 October 2018

The Map is Not the Territory

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Watson Park – Merrimack, NH. This used to be an abandoned factory when I lived here.

Earlier in September, I flew back to New Hampshire for my high school reunion. It had been a full decade since I was back in my home town, and altogether I have only returned back to New Hampshire only six times since graduating college, with the gap in time between each successive visit growing longer than the previous one.

Continue reading “The Map is Not the Territory”