Odds & Events

Travel

July 27, 2026

Dress to Impress (Who, Exactly? The Fine People of Portugal Obviously.)

We just got back from Portugal and it was fantastic. Lisbon, Porto, the hills, the pastéis de nata, the Super Bock — loved all of it. I dress for the weather. I dress for the walking.…

Reviews

July 16, 2026

Updated My Travel Fit, Watch Out Portugal

If you read my Portugal post, you know how this started. Jennifer had opinions about my travel wardrobe. The citizens of Lisbon had opinions about my travel wardrobe. I came home suitably chastened and with a…

Political

September 24, 2026

The Vaccine Hesitancy Distraction?

There’s been a lot on the news lately about the MAHA crowd riding along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his anti-vax stance — even as everyone tries to dance around calling it that. And I…

House & Home

July 7, 2026

Backup Generator Buzz

Ten years ago, right around our older son’s third birthday, a microburst tore through our road. We saw it coming — our nanny at the time, who was from the Midwest, took one look at a…

Rants

October 5, 2026

Failing Porch Floors

For years there was one thing I always noticed on old houses, and I never once thought it was on purpose. I just figured the homes were old. It was the porch floors. Just about every…

Auto

July 4, 2026

Vehicle Headlight Protective Film (PPF). A must have I never knew was a must have.

It took me embarrassingly long to figure this one out. For years, I’ve been annoyed by the same thing on every car I’ve owned: headlights that go cloudy and yellow long before the rest of the…

All Posts

February 7, 2026

When the boiler died the Sunday before Thanksgiving

November 2024 Our Triangle Tube Prestige Solo 110 boiler had been breaking down occasionally, and each service call was costing a minimum of $1,200. I got so frustrated with service companies that I learned to fix minor issues myself. But…
January 30, 2026

Do Unto Others: The Complete 5-Part Series

A 5-part series on transactional empathy, asymmetric hypocrisy, and what democracy requires that we’re no longer providing. Start here.
January 30, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 1: When Empathy Becomes Transactional

Part 1 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → The way I’d planned to start this was with a list of names. Then I tried it and it read like an indictment, which isn’t what…
January 30, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 2: “My Own Morality”

Part 2 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → In the New York Times interview published January 8, 2026, Trump was asked whether anything constrained his power on the global stage. He answered: “Yeah, there…
January 30, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 3: Both Sides Are Hypocrites

Part 3 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → Last installment I said I’d take up the question you hear at every Little League snack bar and every Thanksgiving table the second you start documenting…
January 30, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 4: Flooding the Zone

Part 4 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → In 2018, Steve Bannon gave an interview to Michael Lewis. It was during Trump’s first State of the Union, and Lewis was writing for Bloomberg. Asked…
January 30, 2026

Do Unto Others Part 5: What This Means for Democracy

Part 5 of Do Unto Others, a 5-part series. Read the complete series → This is the last installment of the series, and I want to do something I have been putting off for the previous four pieces — actually…
January 29, 2026

Term Limits: I Was For Them Until I Wasn’t

Honest opener: I used to think term limits were obviously a good idea. Get rid of the lifers, drain the swamp, fresh blood, problem solved. It polls at 87% support for a reason — pretty much everybody across the political…
January 29, 2026

Vote FOR Something: An Honest Look at Voting Reform

The last time I felt good about a vote I cast for president, I was probably in college and the candidate was probably losing. Every election since has been damage control. I’m not voting for somebody, I’m voting against the…
January 28, 2026

The Argument Over Alex Pretti Is Bait. Don’t Take It.

By the time I started writing this, the videos of Alex Pretti’s last few minutes had been on my phone for three days and the argument about what they showed had hardened along the exact lines you’d predict. Half my…
January 27, 2026

When GPS Dog Fencing is Not Accurate: A $600 Lesson in Canine Trauma

I bought a PetSafe Guardian GPS fence for our bernedoodle Hobbes in September 2023. Six hundred dollars. I used it for two or three months before I quit. I should have quit sooner. We live on a rural property the…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House, Part 23: Mistakes Were Made. Lessons Were Learned.

This New Old House, Part 23: Mistakes Were Made. Lessons Were Learned. So here we are. The end of the road. Or at least the end of the story as I’ve been telling it. If you’ve read this series from…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 22: Porch Upgrade (That Happened to Coincide with Lockdown)

Our kit house came with about a dozen front-entry options. Most of them weren’t really porches at all — they were flush to the house, or very slightly recessed with some nice trim work. A couple had actual covered entryways,…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House, Part 21: Post and Beam Kit Barn

From the moment we started planning the house, we knew there would eventually be a barn. Eventually being the operative word — we were already stretching to build the house, so the barn was going on the someday list alongside…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House, Part 20: Interior Doors, Trim, and Hardware

I wasn’t sure this post was needed. I thought we’d covered interior doors and trim somewhere — maybe with the windows, maybe with painting. Turns out we hadn’t. So here we are. This will be short. That’s what I always…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House, Part 19: Bathrooms

When we designed the bathrooms, we made one decision upfront that was purely forward-looking and, honestly, pretty smart: the first-floor powder room got a shower. The room next to it — which we were using as a playroom, game room,…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House — Part 18: The Kitchen

Layout and Flooring The kitchen is where you spend most of your waking life in a house. Jennifer did the layout and it works — the flow is right, the dining area sits just off the kitchen where you can…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House — Part 17: Exterior, Siding, Roofing & Trim

Siding By the time we got to the exterior, the siding decision came down to two options in the Connor package: cedar or HardiePlank. Jennifer would have preferred the cedar — she always gravitates toward natural wood — but once…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House, Part 16: Chim Chimney, Chim Chimney, Chim Chim Cherooh-Noo

Some mistakes cost money. Some cost time. The chimney cost both, repeatedly, for years. If you’ve been following along, you know that this build had its share of “we didn’t know what we didn’t know” moments. The windows. The spray…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 15: Flooring – Wide Plank Heart Pine Dreams vs. Reality

After painting came flooring. And I had a very specific vision: wide plank flooring with exposed face nails, just like colonial homes from the 1700s. Old growth wood with character. Reclaimed if possible. The authentic historical look. The Connor Homes…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 14: Painting – Or: Why I Hope I Never Have to Use a Paint Sprayer Again

After drywall came painting. And by “painting,” I mean painting literally everything in the entire house. Every wall. Every ceiling. Every piece of trim. Every window interior. Every door. All 27-28 of them. Both sides. Jennifer and I decided to…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 13: Drywall – The Most Boring Post (But There Are Lessons)

After spray foam insulation, plumbing disasters, HVAC complications, and window decisions I’d come to regret for the next fifteen years, we finally got to something relatively straightforward: drywall. It went fine. Which, in this build, was its own kind of…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 12: Insulation and Air Sealing – When Tight Isn’t Right (Or Is It?)

When we decided to build our Connor Homes kit house, we had visions of a super-efficient, modern home wrapped in the latest insulation technology. We’d read all about spray foam, tight building envelopes, and energy efficiency. We were going to…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 11: Windows – The Decision Where More Mistakes Were Made.

If you spend a fortune making your house air-tight with spray foam insulation, and then punch 27-29 holes in it and fill them with cheap windows, you’ve basically defeated the entire purpose of the exercise. This is the story of…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 10: HVAC – The Radiant Floor Mistake?

Winter 2009-2010. After the plumbing nightmares, it was time for HVAC. We installed radiant floor heating throughout the house — hot water running through tubes in the floors, heated by our Triangle Tube boiler. It’s actually very nice to have…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 9: Plumbing – PEX, Paying Twice, and Poisoned Septic Tanks

Winter 2009-2010 After electrical was complete, it was time for plumbing and HVAC. My friend, who had been coordinating most of the work, had apprenticed to learn plumbing and HVAC. But because of all the equations for sizing units and…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 8: Electrical – The One Thing We Got Mostly Right

Winter 2009-2010 After framing was complete, it was time for electrical. This is where having a friend with an electrical engineering degree really paid off. Actually, let me rephrase: this is where we got more things right than wrong, which…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 7: Framing a Kit House (and the Ruts We Left Behind)

Fall – Winter 2009 With foundation complete and the Connor Homes kit ready to ship, it was time for framing. This is where our decision to act as our own general contractor would really be tested. We had a choice:…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 6: Foundation, Basement, and Future Regrets

Fall 2009 With septic and well in place, it was time to dig a hole and pour concrete. The foundation is literally the base of everything, so naturally this was where we’d make some decisions that would haunt us for…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 5: Water Wars – The Filter Saga

2010-2026 So we had a well. It produced water. The lab said the water was safe. We were good to go, right? We were not good to go. The lab test for your certificate of occupancy checks for bacteria and…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 4: Septic Systems and Well Disasters

Beginning Summer 2009 With our land purchased and our house design finalized, it was time to deal with the unglamorous but absolutely critical underground infrastructure. When you’re building off the municipal grid, you need two things before you can even…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 3: Land, Surveys, and Driveway Drama

Spring-Summer 2008 With our house design settled, we needed the actual, you know, land to put it on. The Land Hunt Finding land was actually easier than finding an existing house, probably because land doesn’t have a leaky roof that…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 2: Kit House Dreams – Discovering Connor Homes

Spring 2008 After deciding to build, I went down the research rabbit hole. This was 2008, so the internet existed but wasn’t quite the resource it is today. There was no YouTube showing you every possible mistake you could make.…
January 23, 2026

This New Old House Part 1: The Impossible House Hunt

Late 2007 – Early 2008 My wife Jennifer and I had been living in NYC apartments for years—the kind where you develop an intimate relationship with your neighbors’ arguments and learn to sleep through sirens like they’re lullabies. We were…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall: The Complete 10-Part Series

A 10-part series on the culture war as a business model — and what the data actually shows on the issues it sells you. Start here.
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 1: The Culture War

This is going to be a ten-part series. Part 1 is the framing post — the thing about the culture war machine that explains the rest. Let me start where I live. I write this blog from a town in…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 2: What Happens After the Laws Change

I’ll be honest about where I’m coming from on this one. I thought about abortion the way a lot of people think about it — abstractly — until I didn’t. I had pregnancy scares as a young person, the kind…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 3: What the Data Actually Shows About Guns

I have two boys in school. I coach travel baseball through Crooked Number, which means I spend a lot of weekends at fields full of other people’s kids. Both of those facts mean I have done, more than once, the…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 4: CRT, DEI, and Trans Rights

I spent most of my career inside the cable TV business, including a stretch at LOGO — Viacom’s LGBTQ-focused network, which launched in 2005 — and then at Bravo, whose audience and programming have skewed heavily LGBTQ for a long…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 5: Public Media

I’m an NPR listener. Have been for years. Morning Edition while I make coffee. All Things Considered if I’m in the truck at five. WNYC out of New York carries it most days for me up here in the Hudson…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 6: Immigration

I live in Gardiner, New York — population under six thousand, surrounded on every side by Hudson Valley farms. If you’ve spent any time up here in late summer or early fall, you’ve eaten an apple, drunk a wine, or…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 7: Climate Change

I put a heat pump in my house last year. Bosch 5-ton, replaced an oil-fired system that came with the place. I’m not telling you that to flex green credentials — I’m telling you that because the math finally penciled…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 8: Voter Fraud

I’ve voted in every election I’ve been eligible to vote in since I turned 18. That’s a stretch of decades that covers multiple states — I spent most of my adult life voting in New York City before moving up…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 9: Cancel Culture

I spent twenty-five years inside cable television. Bravo, Oxygen, Universal Kids, LOGO, VH1, Sci-Fi, Viacom Brand, R/GA’s broadcast division. I sat through a lot of internal conversations about what we could put on the air, what advertisers would tolerate, what…
January 23, 2026

Divided We Fall Part 10: When Freedom Means Control

I was raised on a fairly standard American small-government instinct. Don’t tread on me. The government that governs least governs best. Local control. Keep Washington out of your business. I grew up with that as background music, and a lot…
January 22, 2026

Oh My Goodness, I really like some of these G-Rated Burns

For those of you that like to argue on social media Ankles.(I had to dig to find what this one means) Thanks for helping. It was like doing it by myself, but harder. Cootie queen, lint licker As per my…
January 20, 2026

I Hate Our Pella Architect Series Windows. They Look Good and that’s where It Stops.

I have to admit something before any of the rest of this will land. Our Pella Architect Series windows look beautiful. The proportions are right. The wood interiors took paint cleanly. The aluminum-clad exteriors have held up for sixteen winters.…
January 20, 2026

Let’s Stop Screaming at Each Other

Libtard. Right-wing nut. Snowflake. MAGA moron. Commie. Fascist. We’ve all heard it. Most of us have said some version of it. I know I have. And every time it happens, somebody wins — but it’s not you, and it’s not…
January 19, 2026

Mamdani Madness

So Zohran Mamdani was sworn in on January 1st as New York City’s first Muslim mayor and first democratic socialist mayor, and the outrage machine on both sides has been in full swing. Michael Rapaport, less than a week into…
January 18, 2026

450′ Gravel Driveway: A 15-Year Journey of Expensive Mistakes

Plus an Ariens Sno-Thro 926053 Hydro Pro 28 Review The last few days of snow and clearing the driveway stirred up this memory… We built our new old house back in 2009 and, in what seemed like a great idea…
January 16, 2026

In Defense of Smart People (And Against Shopping Cart Abandoners)

I’m not the smartest person. Not even close. But I’m also not the dumbest person. I think. Maybe. The jury’s still out, and frankly, I’m not smart enough to serve on that jury. I do, however, really like smart people.…
January 12, 2026

Big Tech Is Making Everything Harder on Purpose

It has always amazed me how complex Big Tech has become and how poor their UI and UX are, given how much money they make. A simple task can take hours to slog through if you aren’t an IT person…
January 5, 2026

The Gable Epidemic: A Plea to Modern Home Designers

What is going on with all the gables being added to homes over the last 10 years? Seriously, are there tax breaks for the more gables you have that I don’t know about? Or have architects and builders just gotten…
January 3, 2026

Tub Resurfacing: Many Mistakes Were Made.

Mistakes were made. Back in 2009, when we were building our house, we decided we were going to do The Right Thing™: reclaimed bathroom fixtures for two of our three bathrooms. Reuse. Character. History. Surely the planet would send us a…
January 3, 2026

Make America Great Again — Compared To When?

I want to put this one in my own words because I had it backwards for a while. The first time I really thought about the slogan, I assumed the argument was about the again part — what year are…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon By Design: The Complete 25-Part Series

A 25-part series on how American life got rigged against the bottom 90% — system by system, with receipts.
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 1: USA! USA! USA!

The first time I really clocked the USA chant in the wild was at a NASCAR race. Flags everywhere — not just flying, but as bandanas, t-shirts, full Stars-and-Stripes jeans, patches sewn onto things that did not previously have patches.…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking: How Language is Weaponized to Keep Us Fighting Each Other Instead of Those in Power

The Words That Switch Off Your Brain BrokeCon by Design, Part 2. Part 1 showed where America actually ranks. This one is the inoculation before we follow the money. How this post came about I was working on the next…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 3: Follow the Money: How the System is Rigged Against 90% of Us.

This is Part 3 in a series. Part 1 ran the numbers — America comes out near the bottom of every developed-world ranking that matters and near the top of every one that doesn’t. Part 2 walked through how language…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 4: The Healthcare Trap: What Congress Gets vs. What You Get (And Why That Matters)

This is Part 4 of BrokeCon by Design. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money Back in Part 3 we ran the receipts: Americans pay around…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 5: Employer-Based Health Insurance: Modern Serfdom

This is Part 5 in BrokeCon by Design, a series on how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 6A: Healthcare Solutions That Actually Work (And Why We’re Told They Won’t)

This is Part 6A in BrokeCon by Design, a series on how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 6B: How Universal Healthcare Would Save American Business (And Why Some Fight It Anyway)

Part 6A laid out the three honest paths to fixing this — Medicare for All, a public option, or a Swiss-style regulated multi-payer — and closed by pointing out who else is paying for the current setup besides you and…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 7: The Housing Trap: How Zoning Laws and Investment Firms Stole the American Dream

This is Part 7 in BrokeCon by Design, a series on how American systems are rigged against regular people. Part 1: USA! USA! USA! | Part 2: The Words That Stop You From Thinking | Part 3: Follow the Money | Part 4–6: Healthcare Series The median…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 8: The Education and Childcare Cliff: $1.8 Trillion in Debt + The Childcare Crisis That Starts It All

The story we still tell about student debt is wrong. It’s not a young person’s problem. The fastest-growing segment of borrowers is over 60, and roughly 452,000 of them are in default and receiving Social Security checks — checks that…
December 29, 2025

Why I Started Writing About Politics

We’ve gotten a little off track from what we normally write about here — travel adventures, home projects where mistakes are inevitably made, the odd obsessions. So I figured I should explain what happened. I’ve been concerned about the direction…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 9: Immobility Nightmare: How Three Failed Systems Killed the American Dream

The Door Is Already Locked Say you’re thirty-two. You have an idea for a business. Maybe a good one, maybe not, but you want to find out. So you sit down and run the numbers. The first thing that kills…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 10: The Incarceration Industry: How We Built a System That Profits From Failure

You Don’t Get Out Say you did eighteen months. Drug offense, low-level, the kind that gets you four years in some states and twenty in others depending on which side of which line you were on when the cops showed…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 11: The Military-Industrial Complex: $968 Billion in Wealth Extraction

There’s a food pantry on a base near you. There’s a food pantry on most of them. Operation Homefront, the Armed Services YMCA, the local Feeding America affiliate, sometimes the chaplain’s office running a closet out of a side room.…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 12: The US Political System: The Republican and Democrat Consensus You’re Not Supposed to Notice

Watch the floor of either chamber on a December afternoon when the National Defense Authorization Act comes up for a vote. The bill is 1,800 pages long and nobody has read all of it. The members who will speak against…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 13: U.S. Politics: Not Functioning As Founders Intended—And How We Can Fix It

Two Yeas A senator from Wyoming and a senator from California vote yes on the same bill. Roll call vote. Two yeas. The clerk records them as equivalent. Nobody on the floor notes the difference. Nobody is supposed to. The…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 14: Rooting For The Wrong Team – How Culture Wars Keep Us Fighting While They Rob Us Blind

Two days after the killing, in the second week of September 2025, an X account with more than half a million followers reposted a screenshot of a private Facebook post written by a woman who had taken a new job…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 15: In Whose God Do We Trust?

Caring Well In October 2019, the man who ran the Southern Baptist Convention’s public-policy arm sat on stage at a conference his agency had organized about how Christian institutions handle credible allegations of sexual abuse. The conference was called Caring…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 16: In Our Greed We Trust

Every June for the better part of two decades, nearly eight hundred people have flown into Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a four-day conference called Acton University. They are not, mostly, the people you would picture. They are seminarians and parish…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 17: The Systemic Theft Of Our Retirement

On December 9, 1963, the Studebaker Corporation announced it was closing its main automobile plant in South Bend, Indiana. The company had been building things to ride in since before there were engines to put in them — wagons, in…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 18: The Rigged Tax Code

On October 22, 1986, Ronald Reagan stood on the South Lawn of the White House and signed a tax bill that did something the United States had not done before and has not done since. The Tax Reform Act of…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 19: The Corporate Tax Dodge

One morning in late January, Tesla released its annual report, and up where the shareholders look was the number the company wanted them to see. Almost $5.7 billion of income earned in the United States in 2025. Roughly double what…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 20: Corporate Socialism

On a Friday in March 2023, the California banking regulator closed Silicon Valley Bank and handed it to the FDIC. By then most of the money was already moving out the door, pulled by the kind of customers the bank…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 21: Coordinated Sabotage—How They Break Public Services Then Blame Government

In December 2006 a postal bill sat on the President’s desk, and most of it was the kind of housekeeping nobody reads. Rate rules. An oversight commission with a new name. Ninety pages of it. Buried in there was one…
December 29, 2025

BrokeCon by Design Part 22: Media Consolidation and Capitulation – Why You Don’t Know Any Of This

On a Sunday night in April 2025, 60 Minutes ended the way it always does, and then it didn’t. The stories had run. The stopwatch had ticked. And instead of the credits, Scott Pelley was still on camera, talking to…