Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

Every now and then, you lose one of the truly influential people in your life. Earlier this year, it was my grandfather. Last week, I got word that another one had passed on: Myrtle Talbott, who taught my once-a-week TAG class when I was in fourth and fifth grade, who was a longtime member of [...]

Couldn’t resist pointing to this article about Sharper Image’s bankruptcy filing. I remember back in the 1980s when they were the coolest thing around, at least to a 12 year old boy. Tons of gadgets and insanely expensive lifestyle gizmos. What changed? Well, for one thing, fewer yuppies. For another, their target audience got older. [...]

I was driving my 2003 Passat home from the office on Tuesday when something weird happened: the car started idling very rough at a stoplight. I haven’t had a car run that rough since the days when I was driving my 1977 MGB. I thought that perhaps I needed to get a tuneup. I did [...]

I give you “Danny Boy,” as performed by the three finest vocalists in the Muppets: the Swedish Chef, Animal, and Beaker. I hope to God I can stop laughing at this soon. It’s eerily reminiscent of Tarzan, Tonto, and Frankenstein singing “The Little Drummer Boy,” some ten years later, which is sadly not on Youtube.

I have a bellyful of lentils and zampone, and I’m watching Virginia in the Gator Bowl. So far, a pretty good start to 2008. It’s snowing again, of course, but you can’t have everything. I downloaded Dave Winer’s new FlickrFan yesterday, which is worth a look if you are a Mac user—a quick and easy [...]

Sickening: Bhutto Assassinated in Attack on Rally. If you want an illustration of how badly the Bush administration and its allies around the world have failed in their stated goals of preventing terrorism and “exporting democracy”, look no further. While Bush and Musharraf both decry the violence, it is clear that they themselves cannot take [...]

When you think your coolest Christmas gift is an 11″ AllClad skillet, it can safely be said that you are a culinary geek. Especially when you then make up an excuse to use it in the preparation of the Christmas dinner. Since I got the iPhone around the time of my birthday, my Christmas gifts [...]

No, not the actual candidates; more the realization that today I am of the age where nothing could stop me if I were to decide to run for the highest office in the land. No, not American Idol judge. A nice day—got a fair amount of house cleaning done. Amazing how being a little domestic [...]

I’d love to be able to blame a caloric coma on my posting drought, but of course that would only explain yesterday and today, and not Tuesday or Wednesday. What can I say: work, like sand, piles up against the breakwater of a vacation as though it is determined to fit the same volume of [...]

…because the Black Dog starts sniffing around the door. So far, it’s not much more than a sniff. But here I am in New York, ready to go on stage at Carnegie Hall for the first time in my life, and I’m feeling a little blah about it. Well, terrified would be more accurate—not about [...]

I had one of those dreams last night, the kind I almost never have: I dreamed about an ex-girlfriend. No, not that kind of dream. I don’t, as a rule, dream of ex-girlfriends; as Lou Reed once sang, “when things/end for me, they end.” But last night I did. In this dream, I was at [...]

Let me count the ways: Trying to track down the authors of a Microsoft code sample which essentially disappeared when Microsoft pulled down the GotDotNet community site. Being gobsmacked by this article about “Conception Day” in Russia—a state holiday set aside to reverse the population decline, for exactly the purpose that you might imagine. Gotta [...]

I posted a whole bunch of photos to Flickr last night from this weekend’s trip to Richmond to see Esta graduate. Many many things at which to marvel, including a sea of academic regalia, some pretty great party faces, Richmond’s very own Art Deco movie theatre and SR-71 reconnaissance plane, and others. I also posted [...]

As I have written many times before, the reports of my blog death have been mildly exaggerated. My travel schedule is, in the immortal words of Snap!, gettin’ kinda hectic. But England prevails.

Yep. When there’s no room in the brain for anything else, try a meme. As seen on Isis: 1. Egg nog or hot chocolate? The nog, but only if I make it. True story: we used to do team Christmas parties in my first job, and we were all supposed to bring refreshments. I brought [...]