For whatever reason, people I have lost touch with 10+ years ago have decided after all these years to get back in contact with me.  Truth be told, I created my website as a means of staying in contact with people I know and as a means to deliver updates as to what I’m undertaking at the moment. These few people I once called friends at one time in my life; fast forward 10 years and they’re all working high-profile, high-paying jobs and married to extremely wealthy and successful spouses.  They’ll tell you that they’re happy but if you look at a few recent photos, you can see just...

As a child, did I wear a helmet when I took rides on my bicycle, went downhill skiing, went rock climbing, or when I played baseball?  Of course not.  Helmets were around during those times, but nobody ever used them because we weren’t afraid to get hurt or hit in the head.  We were able to take risks and if something did hit us, we were able to deal with the pain. Accordingly, when I did fall off my bicycle while doing tricks in the local parking lot behind the bank, landing on my head and bending my bicycle frame, did anyone call an ambulance?  Of course not.  I was a kid; a young person...

The terms Renaissance man and, less commonly, homo universalis (Latin for "universal man" or "man of the world") are related and used to describe a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields. A polymath (Greek polymathēs, πολυμαθής, "having learned much") is a person whose expertise fills a significant number of subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath (or polymathic person) may simply refer to someone who is very knowledgeable. -Wikipedia Recently, someone asked me if I considered myself to be a modern-day renaissance man.  It took...

take it or take it not?! by by @->->-{rosaceae}- <-<-@ on Flickr The notion of people changing the world is one that has been written down, tossed around, and passed down through many generations.  It is said that everybody has the potential within themselves to one day rise up and change the world.  While this may be true, it has in recent years been evidenced only through pop culture, politics, and the media, who, for whatever reason, only report the bad things that are taking place. In past years people have been able to change the world due to the fact that for whatever...

Take a step back and look at what America has become… A throwaway society built upon the ideals of big corporations who’s only goal is to sell as much product as they can, as quickly as possible. It all started with capitalism, the concept upon which the American dream is built. Everything you ever want is out there, and it’s waiting to become yours. Everything is there for the purchasing. Capitalism is built upon money, and to get it, you either work a job or better yet, start your own business. In the early days of the Industrial revolution, products started to become mass-produced....

A Murder of One by Counting Crows has become my latest musical obsession.  The last time I had a musical obsession, it was Stolen Car by Beth Orton. What draws me to an obsession about this song is when they sing don’t waste your life, the way I waste my life. It gets me thinking, did I waste my life?  And if so, am I still wasting my life?  Not sure if I was getting the right meaning out of the song, I headed on over to songfacts.com.  Some guy from Chicago claimed that the song is about a girl who’s trapped in an abusive relationship. I noticed rather quickly after browsing the site...

When I think about what life was like before the Internet, and long before the concept of blogging was introduced, I seem to recall thoughts and images from my childhood, now lost to the ravages of time, and without many photos or notes.  Sadly, most of my younger years, I was more concerned about having fun than recording my life experiences. I am also reminded of my fathers best friend Arturo.  A man who my father had been friends with for an excess of 30 or more years, and a man who meticulously recorded every last detail about his daily life in a notebook he carried everywhere in his pocket. ...

As a freelance writer, I tell a lot of stories.  Many of the stories I tell are about my life, because as far as writing goes, they are the ones that require the least amount of research.  Also, the accuracy can’t be beat as I was the one who had the experiences, and I’m not writing the story through someone else’s eyes. I was talking to someone at a bookstore the other day.  Angie and I went in to look at the books that were marked down to clearance prices.  We decided upon two books, both of which retailed for about $40 US, but were marked down to the unbelievable price of $5.99! ...

I was thinking recently that I wish could have held onto the memories of my college years spent at Marshall University. It’s sad to think of how I let the good times pass me by without any way of accurately recollecting daily events. 1998 was a year when digital photography was in its early stages of development, when HTML was the latest trend, and video was recorded to magnetic tape and equipment was costly. What I Did Then At that time, I carried with me a cheap notebook and a pen everywhere I went. No time and no words did I waste, either. Somehow even my notebook faded into obscurity...

If you have been following this blog for any amount of time, you would have learned about my upgrade to a 1 terrabyte hard drive.  A terabyte is a massive amount of data; so massive that one may never need to delete any old email messages for an entire lifetime.  My father is notorious for this kind of behavior.  If you ever go into his computer room, he has a massive archive of disks and CD's filled with old email messages, old photographs, and most of all, Microsoft Word documents dating back to the first day Microsoft Word became a reality.  My mom does this as well, but she stores all of her content...

In my younger years, I thought my father had the best job out there; he did scientific research, specializing in advanced electroplating processes. Much to my fathers’ disapproval, I sought a job and a lifestyle much like his. Accordingly, I did everything I perceived him to be doing, which included mixing chemicals with really long names I didn’t understand. At one point, my father gave me my own lab, complete with beakers, test tubes, and a microscope. I was also provided with baking soda, vinegar, distilled water, and anything else that was harmless that my mom was willing to give me out of her cupboard....