• I feel like a failure – Gardening Edition

    I think I need to turn in my Man card. I confess that I liked living in Tucson, because, we had xeriscaping that took almost no effort to keep up. It wasn’t elaborate, but it was easy. We moved to Chandler (suburb of Phoenix), and we have a small patch of grass in the back…

  • My next computer (?)

    I have long been a Mac fan.  Started back in 1988 when I bought a Mac SE with a 20 megabyte HD built in. I used the heck out of that before getting deeply engrossed in FPS games and building a string of PC clones.  I came back to the Mac fold in 2001, with…

  • Music Streaming – conclusion

    TL;DR version: Spotify wins To round out the saga, I needed to make a decision on whether to keep Google  All-Access or Spotify for my online streaming pleasure. If you recall, I signed up for a trial of the Google all access, and was comparing it to Spotify.  While I am an Apple fan, I…

  • Exercising in the heat

    Living in Arizona, it can sure be tough to get out and pound the pavement when the temps climb into triple digits. Many people recede to the gym, and work out in air conditioned comfort, but I have always hated the gym (variety of reasons). So I lace up my shoes at lunch and go…

  • Touching a nerve

    So, I have a regular blog where I talk about product management and other career-like things.  I get 20 or so visits a day, and I have some followers in the product management / product marketing world. I try to be a little bit of a balance against all the happy-feel-good self promoting blogs from…

  • The curse of being a “Techie” – Making things too complicated

    I have always been adept at technology. I am sure that some of it is natural aptitude, and some is single bloody-minded-ness that I learned from working with many different computers and other “smart” devices for years (decades now). I am the person that all my family calls when they have problems with tech. But…

  • More nostalgia – Technology – the PC Clone

    After my Atari 8 bit and 16 bit days, I tacked hard into PC clone land.  My first build was a Mylex motherboard, with 640K ram, and a 286 CPU.  I remember buying the components from a variety of sources, but since this was pre-internet (probably 1986 or so) I didn’t mail order anything.  Probably…

  • The good ol’ days – Technology edition

    Like everyone who makes it to middle age, I have a rich tapestry of memories. Today, while bicycling, I reminisced about my first computer, an Atari 800. The year was 1979, my freshman year of high school, and I got exposed to the new computer lab at school. It had (I think) 4 Apple ][+’s…

  • Fitness Update (was how I am trying to not be a “People of Walmart”)

    Been a while since I updated. I started this quest about 2 months ago (actually April 9th, I started weighing myself daily), and I was 232#’s. I began counting calories, and tracking everything I ate, as well as trying to be more diligent about exercising. In early May, I got back on the bicycle (first…

  • Hypermiling – Pisses me off

    Today on the drive home, I was behind a Prius who was hypermiling. In case you are unaware, there is a phenomenon in the hybrid car world of people who work to minimize their fuel consumption. The cars’ onboard computer very accurately tracks fuel consumption, and they challenge themselves to keep the MPG as high…