Saturday I got a late start driving to the mountains for some ruin hunting. I almost chose not to go, but decided that a little traffic with hiking was better than no traffic with no hiking, so I took off on I70. And traffic there was! I prefer to get started early to avoid the […]
Rethinking the Future: Work, Missions, Housing, Life
Thus far, my late 20s and early 30s have been marred by quite a bit of instability. Getting established in a profession took awhile, building friendships and community took awhile, and developing a sense of self and purpose has taken awhile, too, all in the midst of mass scatterings of friends, comings and goings of […]
Rebuild vs. Replace: More Automotive Economics
Most car parts behave as a unit but consist of smaller parts inside. When these internal parts fail, the unit often requires replacement. If you do this yourself, you can save a lot of money, but you can save even more money if you diagnose which internal parts failed and change those rather than the […]
Predicting the Future
Life is full of predictions about the future. In fact, whole industries exist to make these predictions and sell them to people. Being able to predict things accurately carries with it a tremendous amount of prestige and influence, so it’s no wonder so many people pursue this. But predicting the future largely isn’t possible: nobody […]
The Shop Press is Gone!
The big news of this week is that my shop press sold at my parents’ garage sale! I apparently feel the need to tell the world. The shop press was one of those purchases of overreach. I have a few other purchases like that, too, but they are at least cool. The shop press was […]
Brief Reflections on Collecting
Collecting is weird. It’s fun at the same time that it’s usually meaningless. About a month or two ago, I hit a healthy wall with my antique catalog collecting. Of all things, I stumbled upon two taxidermy catalogs from the same company, published in the 1930s. One was priced super low, like $6, and the […]
The Forbidden Cathedral
The ownership of history is contentious: while private collections of artifacts are sometimes scorned, and the taking of them from public lands is outlawed, much of history is kept behind glass cases, accessible only to a handful of credentialed elite, or otherwise left rotting in sterile cardboard boxes in storage facilities. Even more difficult is […]
Letting Other People Benefit
This is a short post but one I’ve wanted to write for awhile. I’ve noticed that there is a very strong desire in most people to not be taken advantage of, and while this can be a good thing, it tends to spill over into not wanting others to benefit from one’s actions at all. […]
The Tyranny of Scheduling
I hate scheduling. I don’t wish to be overly negative about this, but it’s one of the most psychologically draining activities for me. With friends it can be difficult and involves much texting back and forth, and with businesses and organizations, it can just be terribly annoying and inconvenient. I prefer to structure my life […]
Steering Intermediate Shaft: Adventures in Laziness
When I first bought my current car many years ago, it proved to be much more reliable than my first car. I felt comfortable driving it a whole state away. Oh yeah, moving up in the world. But it had one key flaw: the steering was always making this annoying thumping sound, especially at low […]