I don’t think my parents liked me having the bedroom door closed when Marie was over, but it wasn’t tightly enforced. We closed the door and smiled at each other: there wasn’t anywhere else to sit in my room, just… Read More ›
Technology
Cruel and Unusual Publishing
I’ve been keeping a list of words I need to look up from David Foster Wallace’s 1996 Infinite Jest. Yesterday’s included erumpent, sedulously and egregulous — and sure enough, I got duped. Egregulous was made-up, and landed me on a website… Read More ›
Known outage report for Western Washington
We’re sorry. The website <http://pinklightsabre.com> is temporarily out of service in your area and not accepting new patients. This is a Known Outage. If you believe you’ve received this notice in error, we’re sorry again. There are no paragraph breaks… Read More ›
Which is true of anything (for DFW)
It started with the glassy-eyed couple at the lake. They had a dog too. They sounded like they used drugs or lived in Northern California, you could tell by the way they talked. The guy said you can teach a… Read More ›
Self-reliance in the age of technology
There are no other dads at the elementary school drop-off corral, it’s a maze of mini-vans and stress-masks with encouraging signs near the choke point closest to the school reading “Synergize”: the sign says synergize. In other words, be nice… Read More ›
The unabashed quality of the selfie
It is inherently unabashed, the selfie. It has this I Don’t Care I’m Vain aspect I’ll Even Do It Publicly, then push it to my friends. And it’s true, once you embrace the vanity it can set you free to… Read More ›
Brandenburg in F-ing Flat
My boss and I have an 8 o’clock stand-up meeting every day. The stand-up is meant as a quick, informal check-in on your progress. What you got done yesterday, your priorities for today. The thought is if you’re standing, it shouldn’t… Read More ›
Standing under the shoulders of giants
A week spent with data, inside Excel: VLOOKUPS, pivot tables, four rewrites of a simple proposal drawn up for review by one guy, a 15 minute meeting. A five page deck with about 10 pages in the appendix. The appendix,… Read More ›
The Hypertext Transfer Protocal
Earlier this week, I wrote about the novel White Noise and how some of its themes from 1985 apply today, with the unfolding of the Ebola epidemic. “The flow is constant,” Alfonse said. “Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphs, statistics, specks,… Read More ›
Now anyone can talk to God on the Internet
My wife and I sit in the dark in the morning listening to the radio, listening to a person who’s picking out the songs and talking about them, and she wonders how it’s possible this still exists, now that… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 