Regular readers may remember that, way back in kindergarten, I couldn’t follow what my teacher was demonstrating when she taught my class how to tie our shoes the classic way: “Tie a knot, then the bunny runs around the bush and jumps down into the hole.”

I clearly remember thinking “What are you talking about? I don’t see any bunny!”

So my kindergarten teacher came to my house after school — I lived across the street — and showed me [more...]

Have you ever had to be the bearer of bad news?

I have had to perform that unenviable task several different times.

Like when my younger brother committed suicide, neither of my parents could bear to do it, so I had to go through their personal phone book and break the news to all of of their friends and relatives.

After the first few phone calls, I developed a delivery style that [more...]

For the past many years, I used Google’s Webmaster Tools to help me optimize my various Web sites for Google’s search engine, and help me administer Google’s spidering of my sites.

In that same time frame, I’ve also sent automated nightly sitemaps of my sites to Google, to ensure that it would be aware of each day’s updates.

Over the years, I’ve also used four different Google GMail accounts as anonymous proxies, to protect my online privacy when corresponding with possibly dubious strangers — being careful not to [more...]

Everyone knows that regular exercise is good for you.

But how many of us take the time to exercise our brains?

Regular readers know that I suffered a stroke almost five years ago.

But you may not know that, ever since then, I have intentionally done several things to challenge my brain and keep it sharp.

When I first got out of the hospital, my [more...]

Over the years, I’ve used several methods to do my yearly income taxes.

When I was young, my tax returns were so simple that I could easily do them on paper.

But, by the time I had a home computer, I was happy to be able to pay $30 or $40 each year for TurboTax software, to help me do my increasingly complicated Federal income taxes. And I think I had to pay an additional fee to electronically file (e-file) my completed tax return.

Then, nearly six years ago, [more...]

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 late 70s and early 80s, when my wife and I made our living as musical performers, we saw most of the U.S.

The Smoky Mountains in the East.

The painted desert in Arizona.

Washington state’s apple country.

The Jersey shore. [more...]

Almost 26 years ago, in a research paper that I wrote about the future of education, I predicted that, in the future, people would connect computers to their brains.

One result would be quantum leaps in many fields, including education, entertainment, medicine, philosophy, arts, psychology and interpersonal communictions.

Regular readers know that, a couple of years ago, researchers finally [more...]