journal

This is as nearly as close to empty as I have ever gotten. Note that the tank holds 21 gallons meaning I had a little over a half gallon left. (I showed this picture to my daughter and she fixated on the price until I directed her to the gallon line and explained why I […]

I woke up and checked my watch. It was 4:15 which was 15 minutes before my alarm was set to sound. Sighing I rolled over and shut my eyes hoping to squeeze as much sleep as I could out of the available time before facing either a full day of travel or one of sight-seeing.

I am on a long-running mission to get more artwork in the house; there are so many large blank walls around begging for adornments. However, it is also important to me that the work have some meaning. Granted, that is not always necessary as sometimes I will just run across something and am like, “hey,

Friday night in Birmingham, Britain. The hotel was full, but I managed to get an “accessible” room with a really weird bathroom. I left my luggage there and drove around to find a “petrol station” (gas station) to fill up the tank. Then it was off to return the car and walk about a mile

I’m not sure what to call dinner tonight. Perhaps “Ground Bison with Other Things in the Fridge”. I am usually pretty good at using or freezing perishables before I leave on a work trip. That means when I return home the refrigerator is usually pretty bare. Therefore, as soon as my plane touched down yesterday,

After waking up at 4AM in Italy (10PM Michigan time), then spending the next 15 or so hours driving, walking, waiting flying and so on, I just want to come home and… Then we’re off to Ann Arbor for dinner which was at, of all places, an Italian restaurant. To be honest I picked the

Over the course of an evening and a morning Ann managed to bake enough cookies and lemon bars to fill four of those large Zip-Lock containers. Now, I am not opposed to cookies or sweets, but I really don’t consume them much, (give me savory!), so I was a little concerned about the quantity of

A long time ago my profession was network security. One tool we used to watch techniques “black-hats” used to break into networks was what was called a “honeypot”. You basically put a tempting target on the internet with various types of monitoring on it and waited for someone to try and attack it. The idea

After a week of work abroad, (mixed of course with a little fun), I was looking forward to heading back home. There are two hotels right across from the airport from where I was departing and I like to book a room in one of them on my last night in town so neither traffic

In my home office I have a window with a warm, wooden roman shade installed on it. As I like to let as much natural light in as possible the shade is usually up during daylight hours. With the days getting shorter now the shade is open less which makes me appreciate the opportunity to