This morning, the first roofing contractor I’d called arrived to draw up a free estimate. He tromped around on the roof for a bit, then basically attempted to explain the whole thing by saying that whoever built our roof did a shit job (immediately shooting his credibility into the toilet, unbeknownst to him). [...]

Yesterday, we finally received our “government stimulus check” in the mail — a cool $1,200. In retrospect, I should have realized then that something bad was about to happen. It always does, you see, whenever we come into some large sum of money.
So today, naturally, we got our dose of karma-balancing payback. [...]

It was a couple weeks ago when I first realized that this June marks the ten-year anniversary of my graduation from high school. My high school days were tumultuous to say the least, with my entire four-year stint representing little more than one miserable experience after another — with the exception of occasional successes [...]

Following our trip to Thailand, we’ve been back in the U.S. now for just over a week. It seems like much longer. Not that I’m surprised; the first full week of work after a wholesale change of environment like that always seems a little drawn-out. But this time…I don’t know. You [...]

I have a ton of stuff to say on so many different topics, there is absolutely no point in trying to name this post after any of them. So I’m going for the “mash-up” theme. This entry will be about anything and everything that’s come to mind over the last week or so, [...]

Okay, so I never saw the movie 300, in which Gerard Butler screams “THIS! IS! SPARTAAAA!” But I’ve witnessed that particular scene about a billion times since it became an Internet meme, so now of course it’s gone where all other Internet memes go to die: this blog. Seriously, any such jokes are [...]

I was going to title this post “I’m Doing Science and I’m Still Alive,” after a line from the end credits song for Portal. But I didn’t, because a cursory Google search revealed that a ton of other like-minded nerds did the same thing — months ago, in fact — so it’s already passé. [...]

We’re back from Orlando, and I’m back to work. It was a great few days off, everything went swimmingly (with a minor exception or two) and I’m feeling envigorated and ready to tackle some new tasks at work. Many thanks to my parents for sparing some extra Vacation Club points to let us [...]

In just over a week, Apple and I will be embarking upon the next episode of what has become an annual ritual: a vacation to Disney World. Since 1988, this miniature city on the outskirts of Orlando has been woven into my life in some form or another, and over the years I’ve regarded [...]

So last week, as I was shaking off the last vestiges of whatever ridiculous illness I was suffering from, I did something I’d been meaning to do for a while now: I bought a 16 GB Apple iPhone.
Love it or hate it, I find that the iPhone is another example of Apple’s exemplary user interface [...]