This past winter I accomplished a life goal that I didn’t even know could be a life goal. I can start fires in the woodstove without small pieces of wood for kindling. This pinnacle of personal achievement, which I enjoyed performing every day, dropped accidentally into my lap through a combination of hard work and laziness.
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Author Archives: kwinker
The Ninja from Beringia (Internet security)
The U.S. government has given the green light to your internet service providers to sell your data. Yep. Your privacy is for sale, and you have nothing to say about it until your next chance to vote for new representatives in Congress. But there is a series of fairly simple things you can do in the meantime to improve your life and make your data crap for those wishing to sell it.
I am not an expert, but I can figure things out and see that they work, and most people just naively do nothing and hope everything will be alright. It won’t be. So protect yourself. Feeling brave, the “I’ve got nothing to hide!” bravado? Get past this, or you and your secure accounts (like your bank) are more likely to get hacked. Plus it just feels good to improve your internet experience and give a big ol’ one-fingered salute to the greedy bastards who want to sell your data and the assholes who decided to let them.
Images of March
March is my favorite month up here. The light, snow, and temperatures combine to make it a time you wish could last well through April.
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Healthy Trails, Roads, Footpaths, and other Euphemisms
Our esteemed employer recognizes that investing in preventive medicine is a good thing, saving bigger money down the road. So they contract with an esteemed health-care provider to bombard us with emails about our shitty health habits. They don’t actually know (or aren’t supposed to, anyway) that we have shitty health habits. But, hey, going by statistics of the average American population and adding up the healthcare expenditures for this insured pool, they can make some pretty good guesses. And, shoot, emails are cheap.
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No Country for Short-Legged Moose
A moose walked through the yard yesterday and left a nice natural history tale in the snow.
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