For the past ten years I have worked from home. Although I interacted regularly with students and other faculty, those interactions generally took place by email (my preferred method) or, when interactivity was required, by phone, Teams, or Zoom. Actual face-to-face interaction was very limited. I liked it that way for, as odd as it may seem, I don’t actually like dealing with people directly. I say that’s odd because I have spent my entire career in a field that required not only face-to-face interaction but, as a nurse, often that interaction required intimate contact with others.

Using the Right Tool for the Job Back in the late 1980’s, when I first began working with computers, there were a fairly wide variety of devices and OSes from which to choose. TRS-80, Commodore (I had the C-128), MS-Dos based PCs, Apple, Amiga, and so on. The challenge was to determine which device worked best for your intended use. DOS based PCs were best for office type work, Apple was the choice if you were doing multimedia, Amiga for gaming, etc.

Confusing Fiction with Fact I swear some people can’t keep track of reality. While browsing Amazon for something to read in the vein of philosophy I ran across a book entitled The da Vinci Fraud: Why the Truth is Stranger than Fiction by Robert M. Price. The book purports to debunk the “many misleading claims found in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code” according to one reviewer. That statement and several others made by various reviewers suggest that somehow Brown was intending to provide accurate historical information regarding the Christian Church.

My Wife Always Wanted to Marry a Pilot A Bit of Background I became interested in drones in the spring of 2021. My wife was preparing to retire from her teaching gig and considering a new career in real estate. After 15 years in our relatively small town in the mountains of North Georgia, we were planning a move to a little larger town with fewer challenging hills and more conveniences.

Why I Think Crypto is Stupid I recently read an article on Wired about Faruk Ozer, The CEO of Turkey’s biggest Cryptocurrency business. That article outlines how tens of thousands of Turkish people were victims of Ozer’s theft of their crypto wallets and all of their assets. The thing that stood out to me is how easy it was for him to simply download their accounts onto a thumb drive and be off with their money.

I Don’t Trust Gmail. Here’s Why. I have had an email address with Gmail for probably 20 years. I mean my email address is my name @ Gmail. No numbers, no weird abbreviations, no strange punctuations, just my firstnamelastname @gmail.com How long has it been since that was possible? Three or four years ago I began receiving emails to my address that were clearly intended for another person with my same name.

Doing the Same Thing And … You’ve heard the saying “the definition insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” And I think you’ll agree that this ‘definition’ is commonly true. But, what about those times when you do the same thing each and every time and get a different result? That, my friends, is the definition of randomness. And, it’s far more common than you think.

The ONE THING I love to read and love to learn, so it is no suprise that one of my favorite pastimes is to wander through bookstores. I love perusing the titles, skimming a few pages of those that interest me and maybe marking a few to add to my reading list. It’s a habit I developed probably thirty years ago. One of the subject areas I generally skim is the business management section.

What’s Wrong with Asking for a “Highly Satisified” Rating? Virtually all businesses today are concerned about how the public perceives them. They recognize – and rightfully so, in my opinion – that customers who have a positive experience, who receive great service, or receive quality, tasty foods are more likely to be repeat customers. They also know that customers who have a poor experience are just as unlikely to return. Thus, measuring the customer experience by asking the customer to complete a survey of their experience is an important means for getting information on how well the company is doing in meeting the customers’ needs and expectations.

Science Fiction and the Polymath Throughout my junior high years I was a huge science fiction fan. One of my favorite authors of the time was Isaac Asimov. I was quite surprised to learn that Asimov not only wrote science fiction but had also penned books, short stories, and essays that ranged from religion (Guide to the Bible), chemistry (he was educated as a biochemist), engineering, and the list goes on.