Apr 012015
 
I‘ve mentioned before that I’m working to open up life possibilities.  Career and home location are the two big ones: family obligations limited options for the past two decades but they’re steadily dwindling as a factor.  My house needs a great deal of rehabilitation before I could get rid of it, but let’s assume I get to that point.

Where would I go? Continue reading »

Mar 312015
 
I occasionally catch grief from friends and family not quite on board with my brand of environmentalism.  Now, I’m not out chaining myself to trees marked for lumber, but I do believe a little green goes a long way.  I’m just curious about the resistance. Continue reading »

Mar 282015
 
This isn’t the article I expected to write.

I wasn’t even planning on driving down to Austin for South by Southwest this year.  I’d been to the event in 2011 and 2012, and the second time was largely an exercise in frustration.  One year seemed to make a huge difference in the number of cars and degree of chaos.  So I swore off returning for that particular reason.  But certain things came together recently to compel me anyway, especially the invitation of a friend from Finland, so down I ventured. In some respects, I wish I hadn’t. Continue reading »

Feb 232015
 
In my blissful pre-Internet youth, weather was a local concern and climate was something you only worried about at epochal intersections.  Like the Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event, which really sucked for trilobites but became useful to first-year Geology students millions of years later.

Today’s electronic immediacy though means everything is local and instant.  Geographic boundaries have been replaced by ideological ones that realign our interests and attention.  Thanks to the Internet, I can be a better neighbor to Timo the programmer in Finland than what’s-his-name who lives across my street.

But knowing each other’s news doesn’t necessarily put us on the same page. Continue reading »

Jan 282015
 
I keep running into this term “life hacking” without actually knowing what it’s supposed to mean, but on the surface it sure seems to fit what I’m embarking on this year: a personal reboot.  That includes an overdue divorce.

I haven’t started the actual divorce process yet– been very busy preparing to prepare for it though.  I envy any couples who are able to walk away from each other without any major difficulty.  My adult sons aren’t a factor, but years of accumulated crap has sure become one.  Hopefully the fact that I want free of it all, including our house, will help. Continue reading »

May 232014
 
Yesterday I wrote about tech events in Fort Worth, Texas [“Cowtown and Code“] so it’s only fitting I expound on that theme with another alliterative article.  Today I’ll dare to get politically incorrect and lay bare one aspect of Cowtown culture that is simultaneously brag-worthy and yet fiendishly aggravating as well:

Folks are laid back here.

Stereotypical cowboy talk includes words like “mosey“, a colloquial verb describing walking much like glacial describes progress.  Like their trail-dusting forebears, Fort Worthians are usually in no hurry.  Whatever it is, it’ll wait.

This is at once endearing and maddening.  Sometimes it can’t wait, and that’s especially true with technology. Continue reading »

Dec 062013
 
Greetings all!  It’s time to dive back into Windows Phone developer community land.  In this post I’ll be sharing the good and not-so-good news for WP development in my region, which is physically centered in the Dallas-Fort Worth area but also includes Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska and South Dakota.  I’ll summarize the year and share some ongoing/upcoming stuff too.

Continue reading »

%d bloggers like this: