Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle. The lead mechanic for one of my clients died from a heart attack last week. My client owns a manufacturing shop selling refurbished but very expensive machinery, and has a dozen orders that need to be finished before any new money will come in. Two months …
A client just asked me if it’s possible to keep their company videos within their own website, running it off their own web servers, instead of posting it on YouTube. He didn’t want to involve YouTube but was open to Vimeo. I told him that anything is possible with enough resources, but I highly recommend …
My mom described it best: “It looks like Tacloban went in a shredder and was spit out.” The Philippines was never a bright, colorful Disney movie, at least not where the people live. Where the people live, it’s often overcast with a haze from pollution or the latest storm, or a combination of both. Humidity …
Somewhere in my parents’ attic is a two-minute movie of my 9th birthday party, shot on 8mm film. Part of that movie was a snippet of the pinata game, where blindfolded kids would take turns swinging a stick to try and break the pinata, a papier mache hollow donkey which was filled with candy and …
There is a running joke in disaster movies lately, about how nobody cares if Los Angeles gets obliterated during an alien attack, or swallowed up because the Earth’s tectonic plates suddenly decide to shift a few thousand feet within a matter of days. After all, what would be lost around here—the culture is in New …
“Sometimes they have to kill us. They have to kill us because they can’t break our spirit.” –Jimmy Looks Twice, Thunderheart Perhaps I dreamt it, perhaps it actually happened, or perhaps a little of both. When I was very young, my mother took me aside during a party and told me something. She pointed …
Time can be a liar, a joker, a magician, a fool, and a navigator. It will try to make you think that where you are is a permanent place, right before it tries to make you think again a second later. And when it has convinced you that nothing lasts, and nothing is worth keeping, …
“It’s not a swamp, because the water moves. It moves slow, but it moves.” The Everglades is one of the places featured in Ken Burns’ documentary The National Parks. It’s a place where people hid, from displaced Indians to runaway slaves, to thieves, deserters, outcasts. A politician named Napoleon Broward wanted to drain the Everglades …
A moment before the alarm clock wakes up the day to play the radio, there is a very quick hum that precedes it, almost imperceptible, and only those who are already awake before the alarm goes off can hear it. Many cable boxes that are equipped to record TV programs hum even when the television …
Olympus is dry beaten, defeated by thousands of plebeian cruise ship sneakers overwide, overlarge overeaten from endless complimentary buffets the poets are gone taken a wage chained themselves to hours linked to step, like the masses the edges of their prose smoothed by rain and recession while the muses weep not from pain but boredom. …
Pictured: 75 year-old Modena Extravecchio Gold Seal Balsamic Vinegar Price: $230 for a 3.5 ounce bottle Why pay so much for so little? Why pay more for getting LESS? Because distillation filters out the unnecessary. It concentrates the flavor. It does, in one pinpoint moment of experience, what would take a lesser talent a whole …
What will you be when life isn’t going up or down or sideways every other day when your heart says “enough” and decides that silence is also ambient music when contentment is preferable to amazement when peace of mind finally wins over emotion. Will you change your clothes to show how you feel inside throw …
storm it pretends in countless ways that it is more than water drenching the ground to weaken it drowning the innocents to dissuade the sun from showing two truths: that everything gives that takes away and none matter but change and our worship of it. (c) Copyright Gerardo San Diego
walk on catch a star if you could catch the little dream that trails it far catch a break, just one will do hesitate it seems by now you’ve given all and well beyond don’t be ashamed to find your truths walk on despite all of the tears behind your hand walk on and …
You are not part of the train. You are not a gear, or the wheels, or the piston. You are not the roof over the engineer’s head, protecting him from the weather. You are not the coal that feeds the engine, or the steam that powers it. You are not the tracks that keep it …
the streetlamps dim to push sleep past the sidewalk up through windows into bedrooms, like an ether with a deep breath that never exhales collapsing with the smog and the traffic until asphalt footsteps are as loud as the ringing in your ears and four o’clock comes from endless birdsongs courting darkness as if it …
Daybreak tells my reading lamp that it is not needed anymore.
Note: I have a more stream-of-consciousness YouTube review of Logan here: https://youtu.be/3aHF3ZgCzfw I’d been trying to figure out why I think Logan is a brilliant movie and for a few days I couldn’t put my finger on it, until I saw it a second time. Answer: it doesn’t have cheese. The movie treats itself not …
Some people say that Facebook isn’t trendy anymore. They say that kids have now switched over to Instagram, or Snapchat, or YouTube. They say that Facebook is only for old people. What I say to that: Good. Because that’s not what I use Facebook for anyway. True story: My business partner and I were waiting …
A geek friend posed these questions to me, here are my answers: What’s your favorite series/franchise? Right now it’s Marvel Studios, because the Netflix shows have put them past Star Wars for me. But the bottom line is it’s all about Disney right now–they’re killing it on all fronts. What’s the most underrated film/comic/book/whatever in …
In August 1974, we were brand new in America. My Dad held 3 jobs–as an engineer by day, cab driver on weekends and working nights in the kitchen at the South Gate Drive-In. The three of us would take our used tan Ford Pinto in through the back entrance at 5pm, and my Mom and …
There is a reason that people who have worked all their lives to become part of the Establishment, when accused of being part of the Establishment, are offended by the accusation. And there is a reason that people who have stumbled all their lives to become part of the Anti-Establishment, when accused of being part …
Some would say that a website exists on the hard drive of the machine that acts as the server that’s connected to the Internet. That may have been true during the Web’s infant years, but not anymore. A website is on backup drives of other machines, maybe in the same building, maybe in the same …
Jose said to me tonight, “But I thought you loved doing all those things!” My confession to him: 90% of what I can do, I HATE doing, that’s the truth. I have an eBay store because I couldn’t find anyone else to sell my stuff on eBay. I absolutely hate the tedium of selling on …
The high road isn’t where they walk; they’re just doing their jobs, and the road appears. From their 7am meetings to their emergency surgeries before the next dawn breaks, to their pro bono work and community service, to their finding precious time to be with their own families in addition to trying to save members …
I am now twice as old as you are, and feel damn lucky that I’m still here. This is what happened since you became me. You stopped being delusional about being a hero and decided that you’re happier simply being a genuine shmuck. You believe in God more, not because you are desperate or needed …
I was already satisfied. It was already fulfilling. I already got what I needed from the x-wing battle and the lightsaber battle, and then the BIGGER lightsaber battle with Rey and Kylo Ren. I was already satisfied. And then you gave me one more place to go, a very different planet with islands surrounded by …