In Defense of Skepticism

If you only knew me from my blog, you might think I’m a fairly negative person. At times in my life this has actually been true, but it usually doesn’t take me long to pick up on this, and during those times I’ve had to ask myself exactly where that negativity comes from. But other […]

Gimmicks

In middle school, we had an annual fund-raising event where the school tried to get all of the students to sell magazine subscriptions to friends and family. I guess the school got a cut of the proceeds, while some organization got the rest. They brought in a motivational speaker to get us pumped to win […]

Stay Away from MLMs!

Multi-Level Marketing companies. We’ve all known somebody who has been involved in one. Sometimes they are advertising these products on Facebook, sometimes they are giving you awkward presentations in your living room. These people are not bad people. They are usually just trying to increase their income. But the MLM companies themselves are scams, and […]

Base Pack Weight: 13 lbs

So it finally happened: the ultralight tent I have been wanting went on sale, 25% off to be exact, so I bought it. Whereas my old tent (which I plan to keep) was about 6.5 lbs, this new tent is about 3 lbs. My pack is otherwise empty, so I put my sleeping bag, sleeping […]

Clueless eBay Sellers

I’m not a fan of collecting things for their own sake, but I have to admit that I have started to become a collector of old mining supply books. I have two books, one from the late 1800s which was an absolutely amazing, lucky find, being the first in a popular series, and another from […]

Crumbled Stone

We had reached the lake and were heading back down when one of my friends decided we should follow a different return path, or more precisely, that we should make our own, at least for a distance. We followed the water course for a ways as it led east and we took the time to […]

Life Engineering: Complexity and Stress

Software engineering involves the writing of code, but more than anything, it involves the management of complexity. Almost anybody can learn to write code – if you’ve had any interest in learning, you should try it out. But not as many people enjoy managing complexity, and that’s where the real challenge lies. Life is the […]