Posts

The first step is admitting you have a problem. Ever since I wrote about Tom Verlaine’s passing and reflected on his extraordinary legacy, I’ve been on a full-fledged Television kick. But things resurfaced with a vengeance over the weekend when I randomly stumbled across the Rhino High Fidelity release of Marquee Moon and added it to my music collection. Now, keep in mind: I had already put in pre-orders for the upcoming MoFi releases long before I even knew the Rhino High Fidelity edition existed. Finding the Rhino release over the weekend was just gasoline on the fire. ...

Consider this the hangover to the post I put up a couple of days ago. When I sat down to write that piece remembering Dave Kendall, my first instinct was to do what every music fan of our generation does: take an easy victory lap. I tore into the manufactured corporate filler on the late-80s and early-90s Top 40 charts. But if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t actually harbor any real malice toward those charts back then. I couldn’t care less about them; I really just ignored popular music and didn’t think much about it. Like Wire said on “Mannequin” from their classic 1977 debut Pink Flag: ...

This post is a tribute to Dave Kendall. It’s a reflection on what he did for me as an isolated kid in the mid-eighties, and ultimately, what he did to the entire landscape of popular music.

Editorial Note: I started writing the draft for this post from the passenger seat during our massive Memorial Day road trip down to Austin, Texas. It is now past the 4th of July, and I am just now getting around to polishing it up and clicking the publish button… sigh. Better late than never. When I wrote my retrospective, Two Years With the Chevy Bolt: The Best Car I’ve Ever Owned, I praised how the electric drivetrain completely rewired my expectations of daily driving. I had taken a cautious first step with a 2023 model and walked away absolutely hooked. My only real regret back then? Wishing I had gone even bigger. ...

A returning veteran developer takes an honest, outside-looking-in look at the ‘Great Fragmentation’ of modern Windows UI frameworks and the architectural tragedy of losing the universal window handle.

The Problem Wasn’t Knowledge — It Was Entry Cost I’ve always wanted to tackle low-level hardware, but the problem was never motivation—it was the high entry cost. Getting oriented enough to begin would have taken weeks or months of reading and false starts, and at this stage in my career, I don’t have unlimited time. Without AI, the orientation cost for this hobby project would have been too high to attempt. ...

The Falcon Rises in Indy: Re-Falcon 030 and the Quest for Digital Immortality Update (March 25, 2026): After posting this, I heard from Steve Suavek (the creator of the Re-Falcon). He provided some fascinating technical context regarding the 8-layer PCB design and how it addresses the original Falcon’s “clock patch” issues. I’ve updated the Engineering section below with his insights. I actually sat down at my desk this past weekend with every intention of making progress on my own coding projects. I had my environment ready, but as I was settling in, a stray Facebook notification caught my eye. I don’t check it often, but this one stopped me: the Re-Falcon was on display at the Indy Classic expo. ...

Tom Verlaine was the guitarist, singer, and primary songwriter for Television, a late-’70s New York band whose 1977 album Marquee Moon became one of the most influential guitar records of the post-punk era. Television never chased mainstream success, but their interlocking guitars, restraint, and sense of space went on to shape decades of alternative and indie music. Verlaine died in January 2023. Tom Verlaine with Television at El Club in Detroit, MI, on May 4, 2019. I only saw him once, but I’m grateful I had the opportunity. ...

I’ve been a developer long enough to remember when this was the year of the Linux desktop. We heard it every year. The technology was there. The talent was there. The passion was definitely there. What never quite materialized was coordination — agreement on where collaboration should stop and competition should begin. So when I look at what’s happening today around editors and AI tooling, I don’t feel outrage. I don’t feel betrayed. I mostly feel a familiar, slightly exhausted thought forming: ...

In 2013 I bought a $51 Brother HL-2230 laser printer. Twelve years, two marriages, multiple operating systems, and several computing eras later, it still just works. This is the long-term review it deserves.