When I was growing up, Easter Sunday was a special day for my family. Beyond the fact that we were good Catholics and it was an important day for the Catholic faith, it was also a celebration of the end of winter. The day would typically start with my sister and me hunting for easter eggs. Most of the time, this would take place inside because spring mornings in New England tend to be cold, but occasionally the eggs would be hidden in the backyard. These weren’t real eggs, of course, but plastic eggs filled with chocolate candy (usually Reese’s). Sometimes we also got easter baskets, again filled with things like chocolate bunnies, little stuffed animals, and tiny chocolate eggs. …
Personal
Every winter, I end up putting on a lot of weight. It’s not intentional, and as winter approaches, I promise myself that I’m not going to let it happen, but inevitably, it does. The weight increase is a result of several factors; first, I’m prone to being heavy. I know it sounds like a cop out, but it’s not. Even though the medical industry tries to make believe it isn’t the case, body type is a major factor in how much someone weighs. When I was growing up, I had a good friend, John, who could and would eat just about anything. We’d go to Burger King for lunch, and John would order multiple Whoppers, with fries, onion rings, and …
I grew up at the beginning of the space age. I remember, as a child, gathering in the school gym, huddled around a small black-and-white TV with rabbit ears and a snowy picture, watching America’s first steps into ‘the final frontier.’ I loved Star Trek, I loved science fiction, and I loved the idea that someday, we would travel to the stars. The librarians at the Thomas Crane Library in North Quincy would try to protect me from all these crazy ideas by preventing me from checking out adult science fiction books; Danny Dunn was OK, Tom Swift was fine, but reading something from radicals like Asimov or Clarke certainly was not. Their attempts did not work; instead of taking …
Today, April 1, 2026, is our thirty-first wedding anniversary. Yup, I know, April Fool’s Day. Who gets married on April Fool’s Day? Well, my wife and I did, and the primary reason we chose the day was that it was practical. Since no sensible people get married on April Fools ‘ Day, it was easy to line up a church and hall for the celebration. That’s one of the reasons I married my wife. She’s practical. None of the bridezilla garbage that some women put their husbands through, where everything’s got to be perfect, and if it isn’t, they freak out and throw a temper tantrum like a spoiled child. My wife’s an adult and acts like one, something that’s …
I worked a lot of different jobs in the software industry over the years. I mostly wrote code to control electro-mechanical devices, such as robots, X-ray machines, airport security scanners, and many other similar devices. At most of the places that I worked I was a direct hire, receiving a flat salary, getting benefits, and, at the end of the year, a W2 form. I also worked a number of jobs as a contractor where I would be paid by the hour, have some control over the hours that I worked, and was able to deduct expenses incurred while working. I liked working as a contractor; I felt a little less owned, and it seemed like a much fairer deal …
A few years back I started to tune my own piano. Before I retired, I had lots of money and little time so it made sense to have someone else do the job. Since retiring, the equation has changed, now I have lots of time and less money so it makes sense to do it myself. I was a little hesitant at first since it seemed pretty complex and there was a lot of potential for things to go wrong. I have a pretty decent quality Italian/Germany Schulze Pollmann piano and it would be a shame to destroy it if things went horribly wrong, but being a typical guy, I jumped in and hoped for the best. Turns out, while …
We had a pretty intense and unexpected wind storm on Monday night. Some wind had been predicted by the weather prognosticators, but unless I missed something, the storm was much more violent than what they were saying it would be. I’m pretty sure that I had read winds at about 15 to 20 miles an hour with gusts hitting 40 miles an hour but I suspect it was a lot worse than that. There was also some heavy rain that came at the beginning of the storm but that quickly dissipated leaving only the winds behind. We both ended up sleeping downstairs because there appeared to be potential for falling trees and at least with the second floor between us …
I’m not a gardener. I have little interest in gardening and frankly, I don’t have the patience to plant something, take care of it and invest time and money into it while hoping that the bugs, birds and animals won’t eat it. That said, a number of years back I was shopping at Target looking for a notebook and while browsing through the aisle, came across a small little plant that had been abandoned by someone and was sitting on the shelf all by itself. Now, I’m not a particularly sensitive guy (ask my wife), but I felt bad for the little thing. It was kind of cute and it was just sad to see it sitting there by itself, …
Throughout the winter my wife’s Subaru Forester, kept having battery problems. One day it would start, a few days later it wouldn’t. I trickle charged it a number of times (a really fun task when the temperature outside is five degrees) to get it up and running again but it didn’t seem to help, a few days would pass and I’d have to go through the whole process again. The battery was pretty new, I had just bought it last year, but I assumed it was just a defective battery so I pulled it out one morning and took it to Advance Auto Parts to get it charged and tested. They called back in the afternoon and told me it …
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was going on a job interview. I did and was actually offered the job but ended up turning it down. The process had started with a recruiter contacting me and telling me about a job that had come up that was a close match to my skillset. Usually, I just ignore these calls because more often that not, they’re not even close to matching what I do. This time though it was a good match so I decided to pursue it. Before going too deep into it, I told the recruiter my salary requirements. I’ve run into situations before where a company wants to hire an experienced engineer but wants to …
