This is my now page. I’ll check in from time to time to tell folks what I’m doing. Now.

Current Location

Petaluma, California, USA (38.27377102230379, -122.67053388165631)

Profession

I’m semi-retired. I ended the syndicated Tech Guy radio show after 19 years on December 18, 2022. Now I podcast part time on the TWiT podcast network. My shows include This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, Security Now, Windows Weekly, and This Week in Google.

Family

Married to Lisa with two adult children, both performers, and one adult stepson following his grandpa’s footsteps in the grocery biz. Owned by our cat, Samantha.

Motto

186,000 miles per hour. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.

Hobbies

Working on learning Lisp

I got pretty good at Racket (Genus Scheme, Family Lisp) by reading How to Design Programs and taking a related online class from Gregor Kilczales from the University of British Columbia on EDX. Good enough to earn 37 out of 50 stars in the 2021 Advent of Code (although I stopped more because I ran out of interest than I ran out of Scheme).. My solutions are on Github. I’m really proud of them.

I’ve been programming for fun for a long time - more than 40 years. I wrote a daemon dialer for my Mac BBS in 68000 assembler in 1986. I know it was 1986 because I remember watching the Space Shuttle Challenger blow up while I was doing it.

A few years ago I decided to start over and learn how to program right. That’s when I started HtDP and Racket. But everyone agrees the king of languages is Lisp. esr says:

Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.

Raymond is spectacularly wrong about many things, but I think he nailed it with Lisp. So now I’m working on that. I like Lisp because it’s exactly as old as I am and it hasn’t changed in 40 years. Unlike me.

I’ve been using the following books to learn:

I recommend all four in that order.

I did the 2023 Advent of Code coding challenge in Common Lisp and earned 42 stars.

Learning Emacs

Part of learning Lisp is learning Emacs. They go hand-in-hand. I don’t think I can really become adept at it in my remaining 18 years but it’s fun to try. I’m also trying to learn its org-mode for journaling, note-taking, and list making. It’s pretty handy. Forget vi, I’m emacs for life. For what it’s worth, my config files are public on Github.

Travel

Sometimes I think the best part of traveling is planning the trip. The expectation is thrilling. I’m using Notion to plan it out.

Currently booked trips:

Mississippi River cruise, Fall 2025 on Viking - if the river don’t dry up, that is

In between Lisa and I like to take short trips in the US, we’re thinking Las Vegas or Seattle for the holidays this year.

Coming to grips with aging

My mom turns 92 in January my dad next July. They’re both declining mentally and I know I won’t have many more years with them. I’m 68. Retirement age.

According to the Life Expectancy Calculator I should live to 91 – that’s 23 more years. I worry about being a burden to my family in my later years, even though my parents aren’t yet. I’ve read Atul Gawande’s excellent (and sad) Being Mortal and it scares me. I’m an atheist so I don’t have any hopes of an afterlife. Although, as I get nearer to the end I notice that Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis gets more appealing. Even more believable.

I also wonder if I shouldn’t retire soon so I can enjoy my remaining years. (I have about the same amount of time left as I’ve been doing TWiT. That seems like a very short time.) I want to travel and my work schedule makes it hard to go on the longer trips I dream about, especially an around the world cruise. I have enough money saved to retire fairly comfortably, even go on that cruise, but I still am the primary support for several family members and I am afraid of leaving them in the lurch. And then I wonder if not working will drive me nuts. I think it’s likely I’ll begin to work less and less over the next few years and by the time I’m 70 just do one, audio-only, podcast a week until my voice or my brains give out.

Reading

Just finished: The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. I really enjoyed these three volumes.

Now playing: Peter F. Hamilton’s Exodus, Book 1 of the Archimedes Engine.

Gaming

Try as I might I can’t stop playing Valheim, and how that it’s on the Mac I play even more! Every time Iron Gate adds a new biome I start over. I’m currently in the Silver Age on the Ashlands release.

TV

I watch way too much TV, usually a couple of shows each night with Lisa. Our secret shame is Peacock/Bravo’s Below Deck reality series. We started watching it during Covid because we missed traveling so much. But now we’re just hooked on the drama. We loved loved Loved Succession on HBO and Slow Horses on AppleTV+.

Turned out we loved Industry on HBO - it’s very Succession like.

And, of course, there’s the NFL - Sunday, Monday, and Thursday - although if it’s not the 49ers I usually don’t make it through the entire game.