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 three days a week on the TWiT podcast network. My shows include This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, Security Now, Windows Weekly, and Intelligent Machines (née This Week in Google).

Family

Married to Lisa with two adult children, both are performers, and one adult stepson following his grandpa’s footsteps in the grocery biz. Owned by our new (May 2025) rescue cat, Rosie. You’ll probably see lots of picture of her on Lisa’s socials.

Motto

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

Hobbies

Learning how to play the piano

I have always loved music, but I never learned how to play an instrument. Back in the day I remember that my old KNBR radio colleague, Mike Cleary, said he was going to start learning piano. I thought it was a good idea then. And I finally have decided to follow his example. For Christmas I bought myself an electronic keyboard with 88 weighted keys - the Korg Grandstage X. I found a teacher and I’ve been practicing every day, and I love it! It’s very calming, something I need these days. I have no idea if I’ll ever get good enough to play in public, but who cares?

Working on learning Common 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.

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 Common 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 five 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. Forget vi, I’m emacs for life. For what it’s worth, my config files are public on Github.

PKMS

I’ve tried every single Personal Knowledge Management System I can find, starting with Evernote, Onenote, Roam, Notion, emacs org-mode, Joplin, Bear, Apple Notes, Scrivener, Zotero, Day One, and on and on, but lately I’ve returned to Obsidian - it’s not open source, unfortunately, but all its data is stored locally as plain text markdown files, and with a broad and active ecosystem of plug-ins (more than 2000) I can make it do most anything. I was able to move all my notes from Notion and org-mode into it without any fuss. I’m using it like a local Notion, paying for Obsidian’s native sync, running it on all my devices, and I’ve been very happy. There’s a learning curve, but it’s one of the best tools out there at least for me.

Travel

Sometimes I think the best part of traveling is planning the trip. The expectation is thrilling. I plan it all inside Obsidian.

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 holding off on international travel until January 20, 2029.

Coming to grips with aging

My mom and dad are 92. 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.

Health

I am a Type II diabetic so I wear the Dexcom Stelo continuous glucose monitor. It’s a great tool for keeping my glucose levels in check. I recently started Ozempic under my doctor’s care and it’s been helping significantly in lowering my A1C levels and dieting. I also wear an Oura Ring 4 which has become more and more useful in tracking my fitness, sleep, and heart health. I weigh-in on the crazy expensive Withings Body Scan scale. And, of course, I track my workouts on my Apple Watch Ultra.

I exercise every day alternating betwen stationary rowing, Peloton bike, Pilates (we have a reformer at home and a trainer comes in once a week), and bouncing on a Bellicon rebounder. Yes it’s as silly looking as you imagine.

I’m a devoted T’ai Chi practitioner (Yang 108) too. I really enjoy the slow flowing movements. Working on the second section now. Lisa and I have a local teacher and take weekly classes. We practice every day.

Reading

Just finished: Neal Stephenson’s Polostan Excellent as usual. Reading Patrick McGee’s Apple in China, listening to Thomas Cromwell, A Revolutionary Life by Diarmaid Macculloch. I loved the Wolf Hall TV show on PBS and I’ve read the first volume of Hillary Mantel’s trilogy. The second and third books are next.

Gaming

I can’t stop playing Valheim, and now 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.

I’m also paused for the moment because 1. Mistlands is murder and 2. I want to spend that time learning piano instead.

TV

I watch way too much TV, usually an hour of news and a show each night with Lisa. Tuesday’s are devoted to our secret shame, 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+. We also loved Industry on HBO - it’s very Succession like. The Agency on Netflix was great, too. And Black Bag. Can you tell we like spy shows?

Right now enjoying Murderbot on AppleTV+ - the books are really good, too.

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. I’m rooting for Team Ferrari in Formula 1.

And me? I'm Leo Laporte

Now