After listening to Zerbinator’s new 80-89 Podcast (which sounds like it was recorded on cassette — and I mean that in a good way!) I went out to the garage to dig out my own box of cassette tapes. I already went through this box once a few years ago. The tapes that are left consist of (a) ones I recorded off the radio, or (b) albums released by local bands that never made it to CD. After digging through the tapes for a few minutes, I went back back out to the garage to see if I had kept… (read more)

A few of my video game friends and a lot of my non-gaming friends have sent me links to this news story about Michael Thommason who just auctioned off “the largest video game collection” (per the Guiness Book of World Records) for $750,250. News sites get excited when they hear the words “biggest” or “best” or “fastest”. Nobody wants to read about the thirteenth largest video game collection being sold. Of course thanks to the internet, our boundaries have grown larger. When I was in high school it was enough to have the fastest car in town. Today you have… (read more)

Last night for Father’s Day, Susan, Mason and I were invited to attend dinner at “Morgan’s Restaurant,” which looked suspiciously like our dining room. Susan helped cook some of the food, but once that was done Morgan was the only person allowed in the kitchen. The meal began by Morgan (owner, cook, and only waitress of this restaurant) brought out some chips, queso and salsa for us to snack on. After taking our drink orders, Morgan handed us a menu… …and returned a few minutes later to take our order. I should point out that the menu had multiple pages:… (read more)

While I don’t want to spend too much time on the topic, here’s a quick little post explaining why I would never ever buy a car from the MINI of Peabody dealership. I’ve had a gmail address for a long time — I got it back when gmail was invite-only, in fact. Shortly after signing up for gmail I began getting spam e-mails from a Mini Cooper car dealership located in Peabody, Massachusetts named Mini of Peabody. Just to be clear: I have no interest in Mini Coopers, have never owned one, never plan to, and never signed up for… (read more)

Doctor P took one look at me, looked at his computer screen, and then looked back up at me. “You are amazingly fat,” he said. Susan says those weren’t his exact words, and that sometimes I remember what I think people meant instead of what they said. So maybe that’s not exactly what he said, but in my head, that’s what I heard. It continued. For an eternity, it continued. “So, what do you think about my knee?” I asked. “I think it hurts because you’re fat,” he continued. “Have you ever tried to lose weight?” Asking an overweight person… (read more)

This is the final entry in a series of posts chronicling our California Vacation. You find all the posts by searching my blog for “California Vacation” (or just clicking this link). Chronologically our visit to Disneyland took place earlier in the trip than everything else we did, but we had such a fun and exciting time that it made more sense to post it at the end. This was our first time for all of us to ever visit Disneyland. Our story begins in the Fairfield Inn, and specifically the “Pirates of the Caribbean Suite” which we got upgraded to… (read more)

Somehow I think a more perfect gift would be a spell checker.

While visiting my son’s school I saw this poster hanging in the journalism room. The first word of the poster says “stuents” instead of “students”. That is a bad start for budding journalists.