My buddy Lazy Man took a break from thrusting his lance into Mona Vie to take aim at another product, Protandim from LifeVantage.  After a spirited (and a bit strange) debate, one of the supporters of the product took the unexpected leap to the “the IRS is a scam” argument.  At which point, any credibility he had was completely gone.  […]

After nearly five years of trusty service, my 1999 Ford Taurus began to experience a problem in the spring of 2004.  The speedometer would be accurate up to about 25 mph, but they would bounce wildly between 25 mph and 85 mph, regardless of the actual speed being driven. At first, this was an infrequent […]

Today marks the 500th article I have written for this blog, over a span of two years (kudos as well to the other writers, who have contributed more than 200 articles).  Have I learned anything over the years?  Yep.  My thoughts, after 500 articles. If you’re thinking about starting, do it NOW.  I neglected my […]

Today’s fiction story focuses on, of course, politics :)  This will likely be the last political thing I write for a while.  This isn’t intended to be anti-GOP propaganda, it’s just that the inspiration was Lisa Murkowski’s Senate bid in Alaska. On the day after her loss in the primary, the incumbent Senator announced that […]

Note: this is a fictionalized account of a meeting that never occurred.  While each of The Political Observers gave some input, any accusations that their words were used out of context are most likely true. Kosmo: Friends, Romans, countrymen … I welcome you  to the opulent Castel Kosmo.  I am gathered here tonight with The […]

As you may have notice, we have a new theme on the site today.  I got about 18 months of life out of Drew Stauffer’s Elements of SEO theme.  I doubt Drew would have recognized the theme when I was finished tweaking it – the finished product looked nothing at all like the original.  It […]

At 35, I’m not old by most measures, but life has moved swiftly at times, and I miss some things from the past. IBM Presents “You Make The Call” – IBM’s 2 part commercials featured a question and answer about a specific baseball rule.  As a budding baseball fan at the time, I loved the […]

Although I’m not much of a rah-rah political person, I do enjoy following things from an analytical viewpoint.  Here are my thoughts on what will happen on election day and beyond. Christine O’Donnell will lose the race for the Senate in Delaware and return to her coven.  (That’s a joke – I don’t really think […]

My alma mater notched their biggest win of the season on Saturday, as Iowa State held off Texas for a 28-21 win in Austin, Texas.  Longhorns quarterback Garrett Gilbert threw three interceptions, and Cyclone defenders had their hands on several other passes.  A guy who really caught my attention was ISU punter Kirby Van Der […]

One of the most important aspects of any story is character development.  There’s a reason why you see may writers develop an entire series for a character – because people come to identify with characters and want to see what comes next. The trick is to build characters that people can identify with and care […]