Just Say Something
If someone in your life ever takes the time to send you an email, then you should bother to reply, even if it is only to acknowledge receipt of their message.
St. Louis, Missouri – November 2021
Another November, another Supercomputing show. Over the last 12 years, always in the week prior to Thankgiving, I’d worked at this show rotating between a small number of cities each year: Dallas, New Orleans, Seattle, Denver, and a few other US cities. Last year the show was entirely virtual due to Covid concerns, but this year — for… Read More »
Part 4: The house plan
The Lot Prep journey will take at least four months, most likely many more. While all of that slowly moves forward, Dave and I are working out exactly what house to build.
Part 3: Buying land in Long Beach
We didn’t put our plans on hold, but we switched into a more passive gear: we put ourselves onto several mailing lists, and kept a very critical eye on the results.
The finances of freelancing
Being a work-from-home freelancer has many benefits, but it’s likely that many freelancers haven’t stopped to add up what their flexible mode of working actually costs them.
On being self-employed
There are good things and bad things about working for yourself as a freelancer, but it’s definitely my preferred way to work. In this post I will list some of the pros and cons of being self-employed and working from home.
Splaining
I’ve decided the term mansplaining needs to lose the gender reference. Yes, men do it, but women do it too: So it’s not mansplaining, it’s just splaining.
Responding to a homophobe
Among the good things that I listed in my recent Good News in 2020 post, legislation was passed in some areas here and there that will help protect people who otherwise were at risk to be denied employment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Laws such as this are often touted as a victory for people… Read More »
Comparing Five Note-taking Tools
In the mid 1990s, after years of carrying around a Daytimer, I entered all my notes into my Palm Pilot. A few years later I moved all my notes into OneNote, and in 2012 I moved everything into Evernote. I detailed this journey along with some Evernote pointers in my blog post, Evernote is Awesome. I spent many… Read More »
Darkness, and then sunlight
I unintentionally offended a friend when I told her that in some ways I was dreading the Covid quarantine ever ending. This little story is my way to try to explain why I feel that way.
Part 2: Building in Ilwaco?
Now that we’d narrowed down the location to the Long Beach peninsula, we focused on a lot that was in the same neighborhood as my brother’s home in Ilwaco.
Breaking up with a Client
I’ve been self-employed for much of my career. This was an on-again off-again arrangement earlier on, but has been my permanent situation for about fifteen years now and will be forever more. I’ve written before about the realities of being self-employed, such as the hit to your taxes, health costs, and more. But another important thing to consider… Read More »
Good News in 2020
When you focus too much on the bad you lose sight of the good. And there was actually quite a lot of good stuff that happened in 2020. While these things may not have been as headline-grabbing as bad news, it’s worth taking a few moments to acknowledge that even in 2020 there was plenty of good going on. Here is a list of 42 good things that happened in 2020.
Goodbye, Paper Towels
I’ve gone far to reduce my use of single-use plastics, but why stop there? As I looked for other single-use products to focus on, I turned to paper towels.
Videos of small moments
I can be stopped in my tracks by patterns of growing moss, dew drops on a leaf, unusual clouds, shadows in the wind or, really, almost anything. Beauty is almost everywhere, especially if you look for it.