Over the past fifteen years I’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of streaming digital content to televisions. While most modern televisions have the ability to stream both locally and externally hosted content, streaming video to a “dumb” TV fifteen years ago took a lot more effort. When I set cobbled together my first streaming network nearly twenty years ago, I crammed a dedicated computer into a small cubby inside my living room’s entertainment center and connected it to my television using a video card with an s-video cable. The living room PC was connected to my upstairs… (read more)

I met Carol back in 1995 on my first day of work at a new job. In that office there were twelve helpdesk analysts and two admins who did all the adulting. Carol was one of those admins; she answered incoming calls and routed them to the technicians, processed warranty and purchase orders, and all sorts of administrative tasks. She also became the office’s unofficial mom. Carol was the one who organized parties and often played peacemaker when tempers flared. More than all of that, Carol became one of our dearest friends. Back in the 90s when Susan and I… (read more)

It’s been two weeks since I went to the emergency room with excruciating back pain. It took a minute to get all the pieces aligned, but last week I ended up with three separate appointments regarding my back. Last week was a bit of a roller coaster with lots of information, both good and bad, coming at me at a rapid pace. Here’s a quick summary of those appointments, where I am now, and what the plan is moving forward. 01. ANOTHER MRI Last weekend, I had a second MRI scan, this time to scan the thoracic portion (middle third)… (read more)

One of my favorite hobbies (which I have previously discussed) is “digital archaeology.” I love finding, digitizing, archiving and sharing audio and video from the past that may not have mage the transition from analog to digital. I get great personal enjoyment from digging through old cassettes, video tapes, and even computer disks in hopes of finding something that got left behind, something that never made it to the internet and putting it there. To be fair, 95% of what I find already exists in some form. Most of the movies and television shows I find on old tapes have… (read more)

Sometime in early December I began having severe back pain. It started in my lower back, worked its way up into my middle back, and finally settled near my kidney. The general consensus was that I might be about to pass a kidney stone, but I didn’t have any of the other traditional symptoms. A couple of handfuls of Advil a day made the pain bearable. And then, right before Christmas, the mostly dull and throbbing but occasionally stabbing pain morphed into intense back spasms. They mostly happen in the morning, when transiting from laying to sitting, and again from… (read more)