Author: Jon

Two books are currently in my "active" pile right now (that is, that I’m actively reading): Beer in America: The Early Years 1587-1840, by Gregg Smith. Interesting, though I just started. Too soon to tell if it’s grabbing me as much as Ambitious Brew did. Don Quixote. The "Wordsworth Classics" paperback edition, and truth be… Continue reading Tilting at windmills

Seems like I do this every year, after the TV season has (mostly) ended. And year after year I seem to be watching the same damn shows. What’s up with that? Lost was better this year than it has been, but that’s still not saying much as they’ve continued to veer into left field for… Continue reading My annual TV diatribe

The other day in Bend we had a terrific full rainbow fully visible right out our back door. The camera doesn’t have a wide enough angled view to get the whole thing, so I took three pictures and stitched them together: Click on it for a larger version.

Today marks seven years since I started this blog. Seven! Strangely enough, I launched on Earth Day without even knowing it. So when I talk about the significance of "April 22nd" I’m usually not on the same page as everyone else.

Kind of a gray, cool day so far, contrary to what the weatherman was predicting. Hope everyone’s having a nice Easter morning, and remember, the Easter Bunny goes back to his old self tomorrow…

I mentioned awhile back that I received Neal Stephenson’s Anathem for my birthday. This is his latest novel, a monstrous tome that weighs in at nearly 1000 pages, and was released in the latter half of last year. Early reviews seemed really lukewarm to me, in part because of the reveal that Stephenson employs a… Continue reading Anathem

And just like that, winter is officially over and spring has arrived. No one’s told the weather, yet, but it’ll figure it out sooner or later. I think this past month has been my worst non-blogging streak at this blog to date. Sorry about that. I’ve actually jotted down notes here and there of things… Continue reading March 2009’s first post

Depending on how you look at it, my weekend was either eventful or not. It started with me (finally) catching my wife’s cold—this started Friday actually, as I woke up feeling cruddy and was generally run down by the end of the day. "It’ll get worse," my wife said. So I was instructed to stay… Continue reading And I don’t even have Monday off

In case you missed it, today is Friday the 13th. Which, you know, is supposed to be unlucky. But you know what? We know all that. There’s actually a more interesting numerical occurrence today: Unix time will reach 1234567890. That is, it will have been 1,234,567,890 seconds since January 1, 1970—when the Unix "Epoch" starts… Continue reading Numbers