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When Isaac Asimov first conceived the idea for his Foundation stories it was 1941, and World War II had just erupted. The first three stories in the series appeared in John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction magazine between 1941 and 1944. The whole breadth of the tale was not finalized and collected into book form until [...]

I have a family. We live in a frame house in the suburbs. What we do here on our acre is process Chinese appliances. I’m not sure how we got the job, or when, but it’s not that big of a deal because it isn’t that big of a job. In fact all we have [...]

I don’t write often about things I own. I don’t, for that matter, own all that many things. Well, that’s a lie, sort of. I “own” a lot of stuff, but most of it is household crap, or actually belongs to my kids, or my wife. I’m talking about things that are mine, and that [...]

Over the last week my family and I had the pleasure of joining the rest of our far-flung and extended clan in Nag’s Head for the wedding of my brother and his delightful fiancee. Which is to say that by the end of the week the clan was even more extended and far-flung than it [...]

Something occurred the other day that got me thinking about complexity and the huge costs of covering your bases. It was just a little thing, but it caused a fair bit of trouble. We have an Eclipse project that builds remotely on an AIX box. The make target refers to a build variable that contains [...]

On the 16th of last month I posted about my attempts to locate the Van Campen burial ground near the former site of Calno, New Jersey, and about the overgrown mess I found once I was successful. At the time I expressed disappointment with the National Park Service for not keeping the property cleared. I [...]