Since Obama became President, I’ve been hearing that the country is more divided than ever before. This sentiment seemed to grow even more during Trump’s campaign against Hillary and his presidency. There have been endless news reports about this divide between the Right & Left, the Cultural Elites & the Working Class, Urban & Rural,…
The True Cost Of Toys
As if you haven’t noticed, I take frugality to an extreme. When I think of buying something that’s a “nice to have”, I think of an entire series of costs associated with it: Purchase price. Maintenance, storage, insurance, security and usage costs. Interest payments (if God forbid, I am financing the purchase). The investment amount…
Destination Wedding
I always knew that one day I would be married. Even when I was a little kid and my Aunt Essie taught me to cook while saying “You’re going to be a great bachelor someday“, I fully expected I would have a wife and kids. That family prediction came true for me. It was not…
How Government “Fixes” Tech
As a result of the GDPR and privacy protection laws in Europe, most commercial websites in the US now have a popup that says something like “We use cookies to track you. Click OK”. The better websites offer an option to opt out of cookies. Many of them do not. It’s click OK or go…
Driving Through The Hood
My regular pools were closed for the Juneteenth Holiday, which strikes me as somewhat ironic since these pools are located in the suburbs, frequented by mostly white upper middle class patrons and overwhelmingly staffed with white suburban kids. Fortunately for me, the city opened two outdoor pools that day in “disadvantaged neighborhoods”. So on June…
Sketchy Business
I have been taking a “How to draw animals” course these past few weeks. It turns out that I’m not really interested in drawing animals. But – it’s been fantastic learning how to sketch free hand and have them actually resemble real animals. Since this is my first attempt at the course, many of my…
The Ellen Tree
Last year, I buried my wife’s and stepdaughter’s ashes under the tree in my back yard. It felt like the right thing to do at the time and still does. I have no regrets about this. Every time I look at the tree, I think of my wife. I look at it almost everyday. I…
Letting Go By Purging Contacts
As part of my email cleanup, I reviewed my Contacts list once again. Back when I was working, I had thousands of contacts from work, from LinkedIn and from my Inside Sales Dude mailing list. I never deleted any of these contacts “just in case” I wanted to reach out them someday. After all, my…
Clutter Free
Clutter makes me feel antsy. It makes it difficult for me to accomplish things efficiently. It overwhelms my mind. I used to think that clutter was about stuff. But even before I embraced minimalism, I detested clutter. As a child: I kept my bedroom neat I folded my clothes. I organized homework, my locker and…
Bye Bye Google
I have been a Google fan since they released their first search engine around 1999. It blew every other search engine out of the water (AltaVista, Lycos, AskJeeves, etc.). I never jumped on the Gmail bandwagon, but when Google Apps came out in 2006 with support for private domain email, I jumped right in as…