Stories

I have tied a double knot in my shoe laces since I first learned to tie my own shoes. It is something I haven’t thought about a lot over the years. I just do it. Along the way I learned to tie many other types of knots, and I have worn boots, tennis shoes, sandals, and many other types of footwear. I’ve still just always tied a double knot. There has been no change in tne 45+ years of lacing up my shoes. Now, 50 years in, I have just simply started tying just a simple bow. No double knot. ...

Last Sunday I started feeling like crap again, and by this Sunday, I am writing this while feeling thankful to be alive. I can’t say that this experience was worse than my first or previous experiences (3 times now), but I can say it is a humbling experience. Monday through Friday the fever was an extreme roller coaster. Tuesday through Thursday I could barely breathe. After a week I am extremely tired, my chest hurts, and I am slowly coming back into the world.

It has been four years since you checked out Isaiah. Some things have gotten harder and some things have gotten easier. We have made it through your 4th death day, and coming up on your 31st birthday. I am sure it would drive you bonkers and make you roll your eyes that I write a post like this addressed to you, but you are dead and I am left alive taking care of your mother, so too fucking bad. I am pissed at you because I have to be here for all the pain and anger your mother has to expe...

I read the title of this post on the Internet. It resonated with me. Sure there are things in the city like constructions and crowds that can be noisy, but really the noise is primarily cars. But as I was thinking about this it isn’t just that cars are loud, and we separate this and apply to the city, but also everything that is wrapped up in our obsession with cars and how much we love to hate cities because of our largely avoided institutional racism.

I just solid our 2021 Kia Telluride and travel trailer to a wonderful family the other day. It makes me very happy. I basically gave them the trailer if they paid blue book for the car. It was a hell of a deal, but it was so worth it to get rid of it without any friction, and an added bonus that it went to such a great family. It has once again left us without a car, living in a big city, but absolutely loving not having to own an automobile, and I am hoping will be something that will con...

I am a big fan of facing our pasts. It is the only way we will find peace and balance in our world. We have to do this at the individual, community, and national levels. In doing this work, I have learned too much about the history of our country to look the other way. This history I’ve been learning about differs very much from the history we were spoon fed in school across the United States. From how we engaged with the human beings who lived here when we founded this nation, to the huma...

I dream a lot at night. Every night I dream. However, last night was the first time I have not had a dream that was a complete hamster wheel of a hustle, and was just an interesting vision from my home. There is a lot in that sentence that makes sense to me, but I need to unpack for anyone reading this, but also so that I draw a little line in the sand of my journey with a stick. My dreams are always a television channel left on overnight, but when it comes to which channel is left on, it ...

I’ve come to realize that it isn’t me that is mentally ill, it is that I choose to live in this world with my heart and mind open. I have chosen not to live with a wounded and closed heart, and living an intellectual existence is literally the only way I can stay sane. Unfortunately a by-product of these two choices means that each day has its ups and down as you make your way through the world and actively respond to a very extractive, exploitative, and often uncaring world of people who ...

Technology likes to focus on scale, prioritizing quantitative approaches to defining and shaping what digital success looks like. To achieve scale you need to effectively reduce an experience or series of experiences to scalable transactions. This is a game that often begins with an equal balance of qualitative and quantitative approaches to defining, measuring, and ultimately shaping digital success, but over time it becomes easier to focus so heavily on scale and quantitative measurement...

I like my blog because it provides me with dated looks into how I feel in any particular moment–something I need to feel sane in a pretty insane digital landscape that likes to just memory hole things so it can perpetually celebrate what is next. With this in mind I wanted to write a blog post about the current AI wave we are in so that I can read it after we have survived it—-which we will. It is so fascinating how people so badly want to believe in AI, and the oxygen gets sucked out of t...

My eyes get tired. I don’t have the time. It is hard to focus. And the many other excuses I have uttered throughout my adult life when it comes to why I can’t read even 1 book, let alone possess a steady diet of book reading, all seems intentionally crafted to me these days. I’ve managed to carve out two (going on my third) dedicated session where I carve out dedicated time and make book reading a priority. I’d say that in normal times I am to the point where I am always moving forward (al...

I am a big believer in owning your own domain. I do not care what you put there, but you should have at least on online domain which you control. Ideally you have an email address there too, and keep your site(s) somewhat active. I have winters on each domain where I do not update anything, but I always come back to them, otherwise I let a domain go. Today is one of those days where I step back and assess the state of my personal and professional domain(s).

I just finished Gun Country, Gun Capitalism, Culture & Control in Cold War America, by Andrew C. McKevitt. It was exactly the book I needed to continue unpacking my youth — 1972 through 1995. I do not own guns anymore, but I did up until 2012 (and briefly again in 2019), and only just now coming to terms with the crazy mixed up feelings I have about them. I am very thankful for this book because it was the first academi...

I am looking for all of the ways I can push back on the often suffocating world around me. I am looking for daily incremental ways in which I can push back, or at least not entirely be complicit in all the capitalism introduced illnesses that plagues us. One of the cornerstones ways in which I push back is that I read books, but I also work really hard to make sure I buy a book from the author and publisher, rather than Amazon.

I went to see Moulin Rouge on Broadway with Boy George as Harold Zidler yesterday, and then came home and watched the movie Iron Claw. I am having flashbacks to the 1980s and much like the movie Iron Claw, I am wrestling with experiences and programming around masculinity and just how toxic and wild the ride has been. I remember passionately declaring I did not like Boy George, not because I didn’t like Boy George, but because my life would be made a living hell by those around me if I did...

I always make a mental note of folks who wield the term “Luddite” to describe people who in their minds are anti-technology. Luddites weren’t anti-technology. Luddites were anti-exploitative labor practices that coincided with technological shifts that were happening across the industry landscape. If you are invoking Luddism when people push back on AI, saying they are anti-technology, you are joining forces with the team who are in favor of exploitative labor practices.

I’ve been reading about Frank Sprague who contributed to the development of the electric motor, electric railways, and electric elevators, and his impact on cities. While he was perfecting the electric motors usage to power early subway systems, he was simultaneously applying the electric motor to elevator systems in tall buildings. Sprague literally laid the foundation for our modern cities reaching for the skies by allowing peo...

I’ve spent considerable time talking about my mental health publicly and privately. I’ve never been diagnosed with any particular condition, but as the person who is most familiar with what is going on in my head, I can tell you it is a far-out space roller coaster. You’ll have to read my blog, as well as my alternate blog if you want to understand more about how I see things. However, in this moment I am looking to zoom in on a statement from my wife Audrey that echoes in my head whenever...

One thing I find fascinating about myself is that up until about 40 years of age I was steeped in an apocalyptic prepper culture frame of mind. The world was always and perpetually going to end. It was always right around the corner and there was no denying it. It was just a fact. In this reality you are always stocking up, hoarding, and prepping for what is to come. It was just a fact of life. You had guns, a garden, and a pantry full of food you most likely will not eat. I was not alone...

It is easy to see the output of work we do each day as the value. Capitalism has taught us to value the tangible results of capitalism, not the incremental inputs from human beings along the way. I get caught up in this really quite often and think that the resulting blog post from some research is what matters, or the talk I give using a presentation. I am regularly reminded, and humbled when the real value reveals itself to me in the research, process, and hard work that goes into the re...

The more I study the early years of the automobile between 1890 and 1960s, the more parallels I see between the automobile and the Internet. While the car has brought an immense amount of change in the world, once can easily argue not all of it was good. I am already seeing the similar signs of strain of human beings when it comes to the Internet that were there in the early days of the automobile if we had been paying attention. Despite these signs, I am afraid we seem determined to strik...

I consider my bullshit skills to be pretty refined through performing as the API Evangelist over the years. I like telling stories. I like spinning yarns. I do embellish and bullshit quite often as part of this storytelling and yarn spinning. I am not a liar or con artist. So there is always a line. I don’t like feeling like I have taken advantage of someone or tricked them into believing one thing, only to be meaning something else entirely. This is why I struggle in the world of business...

I had the best Ramen I have ever had last night at a place appropriately called “Kin Ramen”. Like so many things for me in this moment the meal was a sort of milestone reached in a much longer journey that began as it does for many youth in this country with Maruchan Ramen, but it was also the accumulation of meaning, purpose, and flavor in other richer ways over the last 40+ years.

The week ended on a thick note. Audrey was sitting in her office and she caught what she said looked like a large bird flying by. It wasn’t a bird. It was a person. She texted me what just happened, and thank god, because of her poor eyesight, she couldn’t see details of this beautiful human being lying on the garden rooftop 30 floors below. I hesitated in writing this post and sharing this story, as it is a very dark one. However, this is my domain. My space. I won’t be sharing outside on...

I was programmed from an early age that New York City is bad. I fully understand that in the 1970s and 1980s New York was a very different place, but as I see the same programming flowing from my elders on social media in 2024, I’ve learned this has very little to do with New York City. I lived in New York City in 2017 and 2018 for the first time, which I enjoyed, but this time living here, I am falling deeply in love with the city I’ve spent a lot of time fearing. As I rode the 1 from Col...