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Being focused and productive is a great feeling. When you have to drop what you’re doing and switch to something else, there is a delay before you reach maximum focus on the new thing. That delay is the cost of context switching.

Meetings and interruptions are two of the worst things about working in an office. When people work remotely, it becomes a little more difficult to interrupt people and start meetings. That is a good thing.

When you work from home, people are tempted to interrupt you. Here are a few tips on how to deal with that.

Setting up your own work environment is both an opportunity and a challenge. Here are some things that have worked for me.

A “donut tire” is the miniature spare wheel carried in many cars. It’s good enough to use in an emergency, but it looks funny and you would not want to use it for long. The cats at my house generally prefer my wife to me. They tend to gather on and around her. Maybe it’s […]

H. P. Lovecraft was a fiction writer in the early 20th century. He’s known for his weird tales. Many of them were published by a magazine literally titled Weird Tales. I’m fond of his stories for lots of reasons. Tucked into one of his stories — The Shadow Over Innsmouth — is a scene where […]

In mid December, I received this text from a friend. It was addressed to me and another friend: OK guys I need mailing address for each of you please. And don’t give me any of that “Oh God don’t buy me anything” s**t because I already did and it doesn’t matter if you don’t like […]

Once upon a time, a Krispy Kreme opened in our town. At first, there were long lines to get donuts. My wife and I waited a month before going, so that we wouldn’t have to wait. A month was not long enough. When we arrived, there was a line winding through the shop. We got […]

A favorite saying of mine is “experience is what you get right after you needed it.” That’s something I started saying some decades ago, and I still go back to it. It sums up a reality of being human; every time you do something, you’re doing it with more ignorance than you will have later. […]

Erick Schat’s Bakkery in Bishop, California has the largest variety of bread I have ever seen.

While in Dublin, I walked everywhere I needed to go.

This is just a few of the things I enjoyed. There is a lot more than this to see in Dublin. The Book of Kells This illuminated manuscript, more than a millennium old, is at Trinity College. The admission fee gets you into an area full of educational displays about such manuscripts. I learned a […]

Traveling with a phone does not have to involve roaming fees. Here are a few things I learned about saving money while traveling internationally. What Roaming Fees Are If you have a United States phone provider, and you take your phone to another country, you may get extra fees on your bill at the end […]

Notebooks are a treasure for creative people. They invite the owner to write, draw, and plan. Just having one nearby is like hearing a muse whisper, “let’s create.” I purchased four handmade notebooks from Fajr Beirut. This is a business that employs Syrian refugee women, so that they can support their families by producing these […]

A regular expression, also known as “regex”, is a search pattern. Regex is useful when the search is more complicated than just needing to find a specific word.

Do you need a markdown note editor? Bear can show you the markdown, and format it at the same time. What Bear Is Bear is a text editor, designed for note taking. It works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. You can type using markdown notation, and see the formatted text as you type. The real-time […]

I have needed to switch phone providers a few times. Here are some things I learned along the way. The following is just what I have experienced. Your experience may be different. Temporary Changes If you are traveling with an unlocked phone, you can temporarily use a different phone provider. This can be handy if […]

Traveling with a phone does not have to involve roaming fees. Here are a few things I learned about saving money while traveling internationally. What Roaming Fees Are If you have a United States phone provider, and you take your phone to another country, you may get extra fees on your bill at the end […]

Verizon is a premium service, on a premium network, at a premium price. Verizon was the right choice for my family for several years, but we eventually moved on. Our experiences are summed up below. Verizon Advantages Easy Support Verizon’s size allows them to provide more support than smaller providers. If you want to talk […]