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I was on my way home from a day kayaking in the Pine Barrens with a few friends when my daughter called on the cel phone. Would I be home soon? I told her I would be there in about an hour, and asked why she wanted to know. She told me she had to [...]

I’m a hole poker, and people don’t much care for hole pokers. I learned this lesson years ago, when I was the boatswain aboard a large sailing vessel. The boatswain is the highest-rated seaman aboard who isn’t an officer; his job is to keep everything on deck and above in working order, and supervise the other [...]

Rising from the ruins once again. About a week ago I opened up the site and learned that it had been crapped on by hackers. Here’s what apparently happened, as far as I can piece together from what has been posted online: Network Solutions, where I host this blog, had their file system permissions set [...]

If you recorded last night’s episode of Lost on ABC and you haven’t watched it yet, unread that headline. Charles Widmore does not show up at the end cruising in a submarine just off the coast of the Mysterious Island (apologies, Jules). Actually, who cares? If you’re watching Lost then by this time you must [...]

Toyota is taking a pounding in the press for some highly visible quality issues that have surfaced over the last few months, requiring one of the largest vehicle recalls in the company’s history. Every company hits rough spots, and I have no doubt Toyota will do the right thing by its customers, and by itself. [...]

I think about the lives my kids and all of their friends lead today, and I realize that I shouldn’t be here. It is only by the grace of God or munificent fortune that I failed to die at a young age. Here is a list of things I can’t believe I survived, and I [...]

Ok, this one has been driving me nuts for a couple of weeks now, ever since I rebuilt my system and installed Windows 7 64-bit. I have been using 7-zip for years, and kept on using it long after Windows gained excellent in-shell support for .ZIP folders, because 7-zip handles RAR, TAR and other formats, and unlike [...]

My kids sometimes wonder what it is about history that fascinates me so much, and I have almost no ability to provide an answer that satisfies. So instead I turn to demonstration. Every now and then I learn something that, once it sinks in, nearly takes my breath away, and my next thought is usually [...]

Now this is some cool stuff. Google images has archived over ten million photographs from Life Magazine, dating back to the 19th century. Many of these have never been published before. As far as I can tell the archive does not contain some of the more iconic images that Life has featured over the years. [...]