While listening to a Top 40 countdown of songs from 1981, the DJs introduced "America" by Neil Diamond . My ears perked up. I hadn't heard this song in a long time. "America" sent me back to the past but also brought me all the way back to the present. The song is an anthem, a chest-thumping joyous cry celebrating all the of people coming to this land of freedom: the United States. "On the boats…
The New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs to win the NBA Championship this past month. I said to my youngest brother that this was my new favorite non-Boston championship. The Knicks were unstoppable in their incredible run. I was swept up in New York City's immaculate vibes , Sidetalk , and Mayor Zohran Mamdani repealing bedtimes for children . What are those other non-Boston championships…
As I write this, we're about two weeks away from the first game of the 2026 World Cup. I'm slowly getting excited. It's like the Olympics, except they're playing my favorite sport all the time. The other appeal: seeing the world's largest sporting stage in North America. It will be epic, if we can all get to the arenas! My wife Jenn and I saw a World Cup match in 1994, the last time it was held in…
On my long solo drives from NJ to MA, I sometimes get tired and drowsy. This can be very dangerous! Between 2011 and 2015, some 2.5% of driving fatalities are due to drowsy driving . I recognize this and plan accordingly, and mostly that involves coffee and sugar. I'll get a cup of strong coffee and a bag of M & Ms or some bite-sized candy. The drowsiness for me lasts about 20-30 minutes, and at…
I started a new job recently. This is my eighth job since finishing college in 1990. And if I count my computer-related jobs from when I was still in school, that tally goes to eleven. That's probably a reasonable number given my age and the churn that is typical of the computer industry. Sometimes I feel self-conscious about all these job changes. At many points throughout my roundabout career, I…
I consider myself an experienced airline traveler. Years of flying around the country for work back in the early 2000s made air travel routine and commonplace. On my way back from a trip last month, however, I had a new experience which greatly surprised me. The plane was approaching Boston Logan Airport. I was in the middle seat, more concerned about finishing the movie I had started a little…
In 2025, I read 21 books (LibraryThing) and watched 83 movies (Letterboxd) (15 were rewatches). My favorite book: The Human Stain (Philip Roth) . I loved the sinister ending of this book, and the constant deception of the main character hiding his dreaded secret. The book's imagery was potent to me, its characters alluringly abhorrent. I have read Roth's "American Pastoral", so I only need to read…
In the Summer of 1987, I worked in New York City, doing data entry for a printing company (Automatech Graphics Corporation). This was the Summer after my freshman year in college. I took the PATH train from Journal Square into New York City. I then got off at the 9th Street PATH station and walked to the company's office on 770 Broadway. At that PATH stop on 9th street, if you looked South down…
I am a right-handed person. My wife is a left-handed person. Because of this, I have become a little more sensitive to the nature of being left-handed. When you're left-handed, you angle for the left side of the dinner table. There is also the need to have appropriate scissors. You also must think about how to arrange the buttons on your computer mouse. Lots of small things to consider. One of my…
The Bruce Springsteen movie is in theaters and it prompted me to listen to my favorite Bruce Springsteen song: "Thunder Road" , from his majestic 1975 "Born to Run" album. The song is a timeless beauty to me, and I can remember when I first heard it (circa 1982-1986). In high school, I attended retreats led by the priests at my all-boys Catholic school. These retreats were held in a large house in…
Earlier in the year, I experienced a remarkable moment. I was in the library, browsing computer books when to my great delight I saw the book I wrote on the shelf! It was a momentous occasion for me. Ten years ago to the month my book was published and sent out into the world. It's okay if you missed it. It is a technical book, and it's for a technical audience. Still, I'm proud of it, and back…
I played a real round of golf last week, after a long hiatus. It was just nine holes, but it counts! The last time I played any real golf was 2009. Somehow, since then, I drifted away from this sport. People have asked over the past years if I played, and I joked that I had retired from golf. But had I? A few years ago, maybe even pre-COVID, the office landlord installed a golf simulator. This is…
I live right next to an H-Mart, an Asian food supermarket . I could walk there, I live so close. I have ordered boba tea from this place with co-workers, but for the longest time I have not set foot inside, until this past weekend. H-Mart is wild inside. Maybe it was all the labels with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters. Maybe it was the distinctive odor of live seafood inside of display…
A year ago I started doing planks . This is a back exercise in which you position yourself face-forward on the floor, lifting your entire body by your toes and elbows. When done right your back and legs are as straight as a plank. After a minute or two your abdomen and back will feel the strain from holding this pose. Various people have talked to me about this exercise when I mention my…
Ho una moglie e una figlia. Li amo molto ❤️ Sono americano ma sono nato nelle Filippine 🇵🇭 Caffè macchiato, per favore ☕️ Mi piace leggere 📚 e scrivere ✍🏼 È un Michelangelo 👨🏼🎨 o un Raffaello? 🎨 photo by tigerorchid
I saw the Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People in a used bookstore, and it made me smile. I read this book in the mid-90s and it certainly influenced how I thought about life and work. As time progressed, I have forgotten the seven habits but the one that stuck with me: "Put first things first." In the chapter on this habit, he buckets all the things we have to do into four…
I digitized a box of old photographs a few years ago. There is one set of photos of me attending my wife Jenn's graduation from a masters program. She was my girlfriend in those 1993 pictures. I have a shock of dark hair and we look so young. We'd be engaged a year later. I showed these digitized photos to Jenn. Her mother was in a few of the pictures, and Jenn said "She's probably the same age we…
The cold weather and heavy snow made a slippery obstacle course in our parking lot earlier this month. On my way to the car in the morning, I saw a patch of snow that looked walkable. I stepped on it and my foot instantly slipped and I began falling backwards. It felt like slow motion. I wore a book bag, but it started moving off my shoulders as I fell backwards. "That was really ice," I remember…
In 2024, I read 24 books (LibraryThing) and watched 48 movies (Letterboxd) (11 were rewatches). My favorite book: The Age of Innocence . I still have not rewatched the movie, which my memory holds in high esteem, but the book is so evocative of the time (the gilded age of the 1870s) and the feelings. The Countess Elena Olenska and gentleman lawyer Newland Archer are such memorable characters. The…
The apartment complex we live in has large dumpster bins that are emptied out by garbage trucks every three or four days. The garbage trucks are the front-loading kind, with large hydraulic hooks in the front that extend and attach to the dumpster. The hydraulics then lift the dumpster over the front cab and deposits the garbage into the large refuse container. The workers rarely get out of their…
One evening after work this month I came home and immediately took two Tylenol. I had a sharp headache, the kind that made me wince every time I moved my head. Jenn asked if I had my coffee in the afternoon, and incredibly, I had not! I got distracted from having my usual coffee after lunch. As an antidote, on top of the Tylenol, she suggested I have a soda. To my surprise, I learned that Diet…
Like so much of the Internet, I reacted with some glee at the pictures from Dwayne Wade's statue ceremony in front of the Kaseya Center in Miami, FL this past week. Dwayne Wade is a well-decorated former basketball superstar, a three-time NBA champion. He played thirteen seasons for the Miami Heat, and the organization decided to make a bronze statue in his likeness to honor him. Unfortunately,…
One of my favorite albums is "Julio" (1983) by Julio Iglesias. On a long family vacation, this was one of the albums we played, and we played it constantly. It was filled with non-English songs. He sung in German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and a bit of English. The songs became ingrained into my musical memory, and made me open to hearing non-English music. Here are five foreign songs…
I now use a pill box (aka pill organizer). You may have seen these devices in drugstores: a long thin plastic box with seven small compartments. Each compartment has a lid with a label for each day of the week. If you're taking maintenance medication on a daily basis, the pill box keeps you organized. You always know if you've taken your pills just by looking at the box! I started my regimen of…
I run my iPhone with nearly all sound and lock screen notifications turned off. That's right. For every app I go into the appropriate settings and turn off anything that produces a notification. I have enabled a handful of apps to display items in my lock screen. I even go so far as to disable the "badges", the little red number that appears at the corner of an icon indicating there's stuff to…