Over the years, my wife and I have lived in a lot of different places.

In fact, we’ve lived in more than 30 different apartments, mobile homes and houses.

And that includes over 10 years in one house in the Frostbite State, and more than 8 years in our current home in the Sunshine State.

A few of our most memorable homes were a [more...]

Back in the early 80s, my favorite professor (and my boss for two summers), sent a coworker and me to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago.

Driving from Toledo, Ohio, we stayed overnight in one of the suburbs, in the trailer home of one of our boss’s clients, who wasn’t home at the time.

By day, we roamed the CES, looking for future trends in technology to report back to our boss.

For me, the most memorable future trend was the introduction of a [more...]

The inventor was getting ready to start his demonstration.

He had bragged to his audience that his new, secure wireless communication system was going to revolutionize the industry.

As they watched intently, his device began to receive messages, just as he had said it would.

Unfortunately for him, he [more...]

One afternoon, many years ago, up in the Frostbite State, our front doorbell rang.

That was kind of an unusual event, since we lived out in the country, where the properties were 1.5 acres apiece and the houses were about 300 feet apart.

When I answered the door, I was greeted by a smiling, dark-haired woman.

She introduced herself as a candidate for the state senate.

In the couple of minutes that we spoke, I learned that [more...]

What would you guess is humanity’s biggest killer every year?

War?

Cancer?

Heart disease?

Nope, the number of deaths caused by those things pales in [more...]

If you and 25 of your closest friends each put a childhood photo of yourselves on a table and mixed them all up, would everyone recognize you from your old photo?

I’m sure that my friends would easily be able to pick me out of such a photo lineup.

That’s because — except for a little wear and tear — I still have the same face that I had when I was a kid — which explains why [more...]

“To err is human — to really mess things up requires a computer.”

That’s a popular old saying.

But it’s usually not a computer’s fault when something gets really messed up.

It’s almost always the fault of a computer programmer or computer user.

Because, computers are [more...]

“Tick, tick, tick… That’s the sound of your life running out.”

Fans of the TV show, Dexter, probably recognize that line from several Season Five episodes.

Back when I was working on my undergraduate and Masters degrees, my mentor was a man whose father had died of questionable circumstances at a young age.

So my friend had no idea how long his [more...]