Posts contained in the “Existence” category:

The Day my Kid Went Punk

So this showed up in my Twitter feed the other day: I find the description especially disturbing: “What do you do when your bright, loveable, talented kid turns into a punker overnight?” The implication is that “punkers” are anything but bright, loveable or talented. Instead, they are just angry balls of bad clothing, bad hair, and …read more…

I am Patient Zero

Exactly  one week ago today, I felt a strange tickle in the back of my throat, a little irritation at the rear end of my nasal passages. The next day, what could possible be either a head cold or a chest cold. I slept okay that night, and then all hell broke loose. I woke …read more…

The Forest of Spam, Part 3

Every once in a while I take a close look at some of the messages in my spam folder, because there are some real bits of humor there. Here’s one that tries real hard—and almost succeeds—at not looking like spam: That’s an admirable effort, but let’s face it, Dan: the reason your message ended up …read more…

Updated my d12 Message Blocks Plugin

Doing so meant learning how to add an options page to a WordPress plugin (simple), creating different styles and stylesheets to match (tedious), and rewriting the plugin’s `readme.text` file and creating a lot of new screenshots (easier, now that I’ve developed a workflow for it). I really should write a press release for this on …read more…

Outrage Monkeys

For some reason, I had bookmarked this page on John Scalzi’s blog, and had completely forgotten about it until the other day, when I reread it and decided to add “outrage monkey” to my glossary page. I have to admit, I completely forgot what he was writing about, until I got to the end where …read more…

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

Published on 20 September 2015 at 12:23 pm

Everybody knows I have a writing utensil fetish. I came across some interesting sites the other day while searching for something else (I was trying to figure out how to create a limit in OpenOffice Math, actually). So I don’t forget them, here they are:

  • I Sell Pens — The name says it all: this guy sells all sorts of different pens, in all sorts of price ranges. The ink page alone is drool-worthy.
  • The Fountain Pen Network — I love fountain pens. This site has forums, a blog, a gallery (!), and a sales area.
  • Anderson Pens — An online pen store. All sorts of pens, all sorts of prices.

Enjoy!

Published on 15 September 2015 at 1:24 pm

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Stephen King

Published on 9 September 2015 at 4:09 pm

this is a thing now…

Last spring, I wrote this. I was hoping that the thing that was going to be a thing would actually become a thing a month or two after I published that post. But it didn’t become a thing. Until now. This is why. I would like to say that I overthought parts of it, and …read more…

Clearing Out the Backlog…

Every once in a while, I redesign my blogs, partly because I get bored with the design, but mostly because I am trying to keep things as simple as possible. Sometimes upgrades with WordPress or some of my plugins mean I have to go in and tweak things, leaving a lot of code artifacts all …read more…

Missing Persons and the Uses of Nostalgia

I don’t like to let my mind wander, but I was doing some research for class and I came across a reference to a book called Viva Chicano, which I had never heard of before. The point was that this was a book about a young Latino written by a person who was not himself Latino, …read more…

An Ewok Riding a DeLorean

I help out in a number of forums online; the two big ones are the WordPress support forums and the Graphene Theme support forum. In general, I enjoy helping people out, partly because I have received a lot of help there myself, and partly because I learn quite a bit that way. But every once …read more…

how to have a good day

I went to the local temple of mass consumption the other day because I needed a few groceries, and I also needed to return some empty soda bottles. I was having an okay day, but was surprised to see that the parking lot was packed. All the big holidays are over, and as far as …read more…