Odds & Events

Travel

May 23, 2026

Spider Eyes

We went to Belize a couple springs back — Spring Break 2024, jungle half of the trip at Sleeping Giant Rainforest Lodge — and I learned something there that I cannot unlearn. It doesn’t bother me,…

Reviews

April 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

June 2, 2026

What Happens When We Make it Almost Impossible to Follow the Law

I was listening to BBC Newshour the other day. A Democratic senator was trying to talk about immigration, and the reporter kept pushing the same question: these people broke the law to get here, so why…

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

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…

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

January 30, 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 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 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 29, 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 29, 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 29, 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 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 28, 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 28, 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 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 27, 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 27, 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 26, 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 26, 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 25, 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 24, 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 24, 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 24, 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 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 22, 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 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 22, 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 21, 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 21, 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 20, 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 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 18, 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 17, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 25: The Bottom 90% Agenda – How We Fix This

On September 3, 2025, a bunch of people who do not agree with each other about anything stood on a stage in the Capitol and unveiled a bill. The lineup was the tell. A Texas Republican from the hard right.…
January 17, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 24B: Rebuilding Worker Power – Why Unions Are the Key to Everything

At seven in the morning on August 3, 1981, the air traffic controllers walked off the job. Almost thirteen thousand of them, out of a union of roughly seventeen thousand five hundred, went out over pay, hours, and the kind…
January 17, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 24A: The Environmental Extraction – They Profit Today, We All Pay Forever

On August 3, 2015, Alpha Natural Resources filed for bankruptcy. In January 2016, Arch Coal did the same. On April 13, 2016, Peabody Energy — the largest coal company in the country, founded in 1883 selling coal off a cart…
January 17, 2026

BrokeCon by Design Part 23: The Efficiency Lie – How Technology Could Make Public Services Better Than Private (And Why They Don’t Want You To Know)

At one in the morning on Saturday, March 1, 2025, the federal office whose entire job was making the government work better got an email telling it that it was over. The notices had gone out the day before. The…
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 16, 2026

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…
January 15, 2026

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…
January 15, 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 15, 2026

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…
January 14, 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 14, 2026

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…
January 13, 2026

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…
January 13, 2026

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…
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 12, 2026

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…
January 11, 2026

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…
January 10, 2026

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…
January 9, 2026

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…
January 8, 2026

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…
January 8, 2026

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.…
January 8, 2026

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…
January 7, 2026

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…
January 6, 2026

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…
January 5, 2026

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…
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

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…
January 3, 2026

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…
January 3, 2026

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…
January 3, 2026

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…
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…
January 3, 2026

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 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

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 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

Who Actually Is a Patriot?

There’s a flag the size of a tablecloth on the back of a pickup that parks at the field where my kid plays baseball. The truck has a “Patriots Don’t Comply” sticker on it. The guy who owns it is…
December 23, 2025

Are We Headed Toward Fascism? I Went Looking.

This is the first political post I ever wrote, and I want to be honest about where it came from. I’d been hearing the word “fascism” thrown around about the current administration and I had two reactions at the same…
November 12, 2025

Looking for the Perfect Work/Chore/Casual Pants

My pants requirements are simple: 100% cotton, blue or grey, can handle actual work, can also be worn somewhere my wife wants me to look slightly dressed up. This combination is apparently impossible to buy. For everyday wear I default…
November 12, 2025

The Quest for the Perfect Hoodie

My hoodie requirements are simple: heavyweight, 100% cotton. That’s the whole list. In 2026, this turns out to be unreasonable. I run an e-commerce shop with print-on-demand, and the only 100% cotton hoodies in the catalog are cost-prohibitive. For everyday…
October 29, 2025

The Versatile Waterproof Sneaker Every Sports Parent Needs

My footwear requirements are not unreasonable: keep my feet dry when it’s below 60°F, survive muddy youth sports sidelines, and let me do something vaguely athletic if my kid needs a catch partner during warmups. That’s the list. Almost nothing…
October 29, 2025

Concrete Drain Board Repair Part Two: It’s Done. It’s Blotchy. Here’s What I Learned

I finally finished my concrete drain board refurbish. It’s blotchy as hell. The shape is perfect. It looks exactly like a drain board should look. But after all the layers, all the different materials, and all the well-intentioned repair attempts…
October 17, 2025

Tesla Finally Fixed the Auto Headlight Issue, Sort of…

Somewhere around March, the blue high beam indicator on my Tesla stopped switching to green when another car was approaching. I called Tesla. I waited months for an update. Eventually I gave up. This is the same company making the…
October 16, 2025

The Drain Board That Broke Me: A Concrete Countertop Repair Saga

Back in 2010, when YouTube had DIY videos but nothing like today’s endless stream of concrete countertop influencers, my wife and I poured our own concrete countertops. The information I found online was decent but limited. Most of the instructions…
August 28, 2025

Every Job I’ve Ever Had (Or At Least the Ones That Paid Me)

If you laid my resume out chronologically, it would not look like a career. It would look like someone who couldn’t make up his mind. Farm chores starting around age four or five. Lawn mowing. Hay bales. McDonald’s. Roofing. Decks.…
July 22, 2025

What’s Old is New: My Dad Was Basically Elon Musk (Just 40 Years Too Early)

My dad died in 2007, which means he never saw the Tesla in my driveway, the heat pump in the basement, or the solar panels on half the houses on my road. Which is a shame, because everything he did…
July 15, 2025

What’s the Future of EVs/ICE? Why Aren’t We Talking About Onboard Generators?

I own an EV. I am not opposed to EVs. And the more I drive mine, the more I think going fully electric — meaning battery-only, plug-only — is short-sighted. ICE alone is a worse answer. The complexity, the maintenance,…
July 15, 2025

My C and D Pillar Design Rules: Why So Many Cars Have Ugly Backs

I have a long-running obsession, unusual for an American, with station wagons. Why the wagon got such a bad rap here, I’m honestly not sure. They were never considered cool even before National Lampoon’s Vacation permanently chained them to the…
June 14, 2025

A Scandinavian Family Adventure

When we asked Nonna and Grandpa Charles where they wanted to go for their big trip, we secretly hoped they’d say somewhere warm. The kids had been lobbying hard for Italy or Japan. Charles is Swedish though, and Swedish heritage…
June 7, 2025

Does the Perfect Raincoat Exist?

Some of my most miserable moments have been cold and soaked at the same time. Wet alone, fine. Cold alone, fine. Cold and wet together is the worst feeling I know, which is part of why I will never go…