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Turn into the torpedo: life lessons from Tom Clancy

One of the topics for which I’m willing to have a fistfight to the death is that “The Hunt for Red October” is one of the best movies ever made. I’ve seen it a whole bunch of times — it’s a mainstay on basic cable and can generally be found playing at least once in…
I love gaming, but I’m not sure I like games

I’ve had times in my life where I was not only a gamer, I was a hardcore gamer. I considered gaming not only a hobby but an identity. Not a particularly cool identity, or one that I was especially proud of, but gaming is where I spent my time, money and attention. Today, the gaming…
Ouroboros of Garbage: When AI Feeds on Itself

There’s reasonable concern in the world that AI is going to fill the internet with such a torrent of search-engine optimized crap that there’s not going to be much left of interest for actual human readers. The problem is compounded by the reality that AI models are trained on public content on the internet which…
Considering “Julia” and the George Orwell extended universe

“1984” is one of my favorite novels. I’ve easily read it six times, and I’ll surely read it several more before I pass on. For such an intense read, it’s a surprisingly quick one; no more than a couple of hours long. The story is told with such clarity and economy that there’s virtually no…
Feeling peachy after the Publix Atlanta Marathon

I ran the Publix Atlanta Marathon on Sunday for 11th straight time since 2014. It’s a surprisingly gnarly race, with more than 1,000 feet of elevation change, which often surprises folks from other places. Atlanta isn’t known as a hilly city, but it definitely is, and this course usually backloads some of the toughest hills…
Replacing the battery in a Kindle Keyboard

If you can fix something, it’s always better to fix it than to buy a new one. I had an old Kindle Keyboard that had a mostly dead battery and decided to pop it apart and put in a new one. Super-easy disassembly and successful replacement, so come along for the ride:
Chapter 1: Hold on

I’m starting to think self-published books are a mistake.
“Start slow, then taper off”

Senior year of high school, you’ve got that weird moment where you have to choose a senior quote. If you’re from Summerville, South Carolina, a lot of folks choose country music lyrics (“A country boy can survive!”) or Maya Angelou or, if you’re a big lit nerd you might choose a depressing Robert Frost couplet…
The Universal Monsters house playset was… weird.

I was absolutely obsessed with action figures as a kid. In the 80s, the shelves of every toy store and K-mart were lined with action figures from every conceivable franchise, and during my childhood I collected pretty much all of them. One of my favorites was a very small and short lived line from a…
For sale: Whitestrips, barely used

I like to save a buck as much as the next person — maybe more — but some things you just pay full price.