• A Lull

    I know that a lot of people’s favorite posts are the self improvement ones. They’re the most gratifying to write, and also to read the comments on. I’d write more of them, but I hate writing them unless I feel like I’m really exemplifying the topic. Otherwise it’s disingenuous. My worst nightmare would be for…

  • Learn Every Country in Two Hours

    Today Annie told me that she has a new project. What is it? To learn where every single country is, what its capital is, its president, and ten current news items from each. That’s a handful. I’m not willing to keep up on the presidents or news items, but countries and capitals rarely change. That’s…

  • Meeting Annie

    Meeting Annie

    On July 28 I was in my RV heading back to Austin to surprise my friends.and family. As I drove, an e-mail buzzed in. A new comment on a Life Nomadic post, by a girl named Annie. When I stopped in Dallas for the night I read the comment. A chunk of it: I just…

  • Religion is Ridiculous

    I was talking to a religious person the other day. They spoke with 100% confidence. Then I thought about how atheists, myself included, tiptoe around religious people. We don’t want to offend them. It’s the same feeling you get when talking about Santa Claus around kids. I’m done with that. Religion is ridiculous. There is…

  • Poker and Pickup: Thinking Levels

    As I’ve been immersing myself in poker, I’ve been overwhelmed by the parallels with pickup, in theory, practice, and in my experience as a student. I’m not sure if this is pure coincidence, my mind trying to find a pattern where there’s not one, or a genuine underlying pattern that probably extends to other areas…

  • A Two Second Favor

    EDIT: Thanks guys! He won! A real post is coming tonight, but in the meantime I have a small favor to ask. My dad’s best friend, Bobby, is a huge Texas Longhorns fan, and he built a giant bus to tailgate. The bus was originally inspired by the bus my friends and I owned, but…

  • Acrophobia

    Acrophobia

    “It’s too humid for lightning,” Todd said with considerable authority. He walked back in from his balcony. “Is that really part of the equation?” I asked. “I don’t really know.” “Look, there’s more lightning,” said Anderson. “We can’t even hear the thunder. It’s way off,” I pointed out. “Are you really doing this?” Anderson asked…

  • RSS Works!

    People always complain about my RSS because it usually works terribly. To be honest, it worked so poorly that all of my attempts to subscribe to my own feed to troubleshoot it have been failures. Finally I decided that I was going to sit down and figure out what the problem was. After a bunch…

  • Matilda the Squirrel

    Matilda the Squirrel

    About a year and a half ago I started making friends with a squirrel. I would always keep some almonds in my pocket and would throw them for the squirrel to eat. At first she wouldn’t eat them anywhere near me, but by throwing them less and less far, I finally bridged the gap and…

  • Poker Progress

    I wrote about becoming a pro poker player a couple weeks ago. I was going to write about something else, but two things sap my motivation: 1. I have wicked bad allergies to something, probably the Cedar-Elm, and can hardly focus on anything for more than 15 to 20 minutes before I start rubbing my…