Thanksgiving morning, I decided to take a temporary break from Facebook. No big feud or particular drama proceeded this decision. I just woke up one day and decided I had seen enough pictures of other people’s pets for a while. Like Number 5 from Short Circuit, I love input. I’m an information junkie. I regularly find myself meandering through Wikipedia, one click after the next. I can no longer watch a movie without having IMDB open while I’m watching it. I love listening to podcasts on a multitude of subjects and I love watching documentaries on Netflix, pretty much regardless… (read more)

Last month Susan decided to redecorate our front living room. I agreed, as long as the last step involved buying a new television and hanging it on the wall. We shook hands, and shortly after the new sectional, rug, and chaise lounge arrived, so did the new television. This is the first television we’ve ever mounted to a wall. While that was relatively simple, it left us with a small stack of electronics piled on top of a TV tray. I waited a week and the items did not organize themselves, so I decided I was going to have to… (read more)

I grew up with Bill Cosby. Not in Philadelphia of course, but on television. Bill Cosby appeared on both the first two seasons of The Electric Company and on Fat Albert, both of which I watched regularly as a kid. How I really became familiar with Bill Cosby was through his comedy albums. My parents owned several of Cosby’s records, and I spent hour upon hour in my room as a kid listening to I Started Out as a Child, Why Is There Air? and Wonderfulness, among others. I memorized every word to every one of those comedy bits and… (read more)

By the time I began purchasing the seventh generation of video game consoles in the mid-2000s — the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii — I already had a wiring nightmare on my hands. Even before I owned those three consoles I had at least twenty other gaming systems wired up to my television and ready to play. You’re probably familiar with those old manual RCA switch boxes that allowed you to hook four different things up to a single television. To wire up that many televisions, I had eight 4-way switch boxes connected to a big 8-way switch… (read more)

It finally happened. Someone — not on the internet, but in real life — asked my opinion of Gamergate. Gamergate began this past August and I only know the slightest of details, but I will try and summarize this nonsense as quickly and generically as I can. The way I understand it, a young woman wrote and released a new video game that got some attention on a few popular online gaming news sites. It was soon revealed that one of the online journalists (a young man) who had given the game a positive review had previously had a relationship… (read more)

Huey Lewis and the News released their third album Sports in September, 1983. The album’s first two singles, “Heart and Soul” and “I Want a New Drug,” both cracked the top ten. The third single, “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” was a tribute to rock and roll. The song consists of three verses. The first two are each dedicated to specific cities while the third verse mentions ten more (one of which is Oklahoma City). That’s one of the things that caught my attention as a kid. I thought it was really cool that I lived in a city… (read more)

I try my hardest to ignore suggesting advertising. “If you bought that, you might also like this!” Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong and that’s not the point. I would like to think that I am capable of purchasing what I want and only what I want. (Notice that I said “want” and not “need.” I didn’t “need” a life-size skeleton, I just wanted one.) i bought some things online last year and as I checked out I got the prompt. I think it said, “other people who purchased this item also bought these.” Below that was… (read more)