When I was a kid, I bought over 50 used, hardcover Tom Swift, Jr. and Hardy Boys books at my church’s annual rummage sale. If I remember correctly, they only cost me five or ten cents apiece.

I spent many hours nestled up in the branches of a crabapple tree — and many more hours sitting under a pyramid of covers in bed, with a flashlight, late at night — reading those enthralling adventures. [more...]

It’s been proven over and over again.

Sports fans can’t do it.

Political pundits can’t do it.

Even television meteorologists with college degrees and [more...]

Everywhere you look, someone has advice on how to live longer.

“Eat more vegetables.”

“Exercise more.”

“Learn to reduce and deal with the stresses in your life.” [more...]

oo-ee oo-ee ooooh — wa-wah-waa.

I’m sure that fans of classic films instantly recognized that as the opening notes of the theme song from the iconic 1967 Clint Eastwood spaghetti western.

Good luck trying to get it out of your head. It’s still in mine as I write this.

Anyway, here’s some good news about [more...]

About ten years ago, I became so disgusted with Windows’ opaque frailty that I started looking for an alternative. In 2002, I learned some of the main differences between Windows and Linux.

But back then — and on until November, 2005 — I was on a slow dial-up Internet connection that made it nearly impossible to [more...]

I saw it coming, back when I taught college computer courses.

I always told my students that it often doesn’t matter how much you know, unless you can communicate your knowledge to other people clearly and concisely.

To emphasize that point, I assigned each semester’s students to research a computer-related topic of their choice and [more...]

Regular readers of this Journal know that I update it every single day of every year — for the past several years.

But only extremely perceptive regular readers — who also have punctuation fetishes — may have noticed that I use a lot of semicolons in my writing; I’d love to be able to use full colons, but they cost almost twice as much. [more...]

You probably know how tall you are.

And how much you weigh.

You might even know your blood pressure.

Or your blood glucose level. [more...]

When I was in seventh grade, I was required to take a year-long typing course. I liked the folksy typing teacher, but I hated the course, which was taught completely on manual typewriters (the kind whose keys would jam at the slightest provocation).

Looking back, however, I’m glad that typing [more...]

Regular readers of this Journal know that I’ve never had much good to say about “cloud computing.”

In fact, I’ve always had serious concerns about its security, access, privacy and control, among other things. [more...]