I’m a lifetime learner. I spent my adult years in Austin, Texas, the home of Half Price Books, where I became a hapless bibliophile.
In a world of limitless podcasts, Amazon’s Audible, and the rapid conversion of the university academy to online learning, there’s no end to what might satisfy one’s quest for knowledge and engagement with their surroundings.
Writing
The written word has a special place in the Jungian understanding of creativity. It begins deep in the subconscious where our minds are a mess of ideas and insight waiting to be revealed to the world. We often experience this world via strange dreams the elicit our fears and sense of orientation in the world.
If we’re lucky, some of these ideas surface through memory and conversation. The rawest of spoken ideas are usually ill-formed and require some degree of nurturing, be it through a good friend or fellow students or trusted colleagues with the patience to listen and playback what they hear so the speaker may refine and expand.
By the time one accepts the mission of actually writing down what they say, and the courage to publish it, they commit to a degree of permanence and make themselves vulnerable to harsh criticism of the world. The writer is best advised to share an idea for others to iterate, as if their subconscious is tapping a deeper well of understanding.
Writing is like open source for the very act of creation. It affords the individual person the power to literally change the world.
During and after college, I enrolled in writing and art classes to help form my creative voice. The fellowship of a writer’s group fosters motivation, accountability, discipline and critical thinking about my work. I’m exposed to a large body of work from diverse writers who have inspired me to publish my poetry and short stories.
In a collegiate screenwriting class, I learned the structure of film, a medium I’ve grown to respect because it melds art and science to tell a story that speaks to the common interests in all of us. I wrote a feature-length script, The Levelers, a buddy comedy about a group of valets who associate the wealth of the people they serve as their own. The experience of writing a script helped me see dimensions of a great story and appreciate the subtle nuances among people and situations.
I’ve jotted mental notes into journals all of my life. I’ve amassed a personal collection of poetry, short stories, prose and novels as well as non-fiction business and theological reflections that I hope to dust off for public consumption.
Digital Communications
I’m most fortunate to have explored the field of digital as a child through play, the best way for a person to explore their world. Like most kids in the 80s and 90s, that began with simple video games on systems from Atari and Commodore. I dabbled with programming on an Atari 400 and learned BASIC programming in high school.
At the University of Texas at Austin, while earning my B.A. in Psychology, I learned how to learn, that is to discern knowledge from intelligence beginning with biological processing to researching experts and exploring new horizons in human understanding.
After college, I learned how to assemble knowledge and publish it via web technologies. I hand-coded HTML and then SHTML with server-side includes that opened up the possibility for systems to manage repeatable block page elements and revisions. My company built one of the first ecommerce systems in high-tech.
In 1997, I started one of the first web agencies in Austin, Texas to apply “new” media in a commercial context. Interactive experiences forced traditional business units of IT and Marketing to come together to create “Digital” to solve bigger problems in a connected, accelerating world. And out of digital spawned countless sub disciplines in social media, automation, data management and migration and assembly, and business operations to the degree digital as a species probably needs its own phylogenetic system of organization (I’ll leave that to the analysts and the ever expanding lumascape universe).
My career took fortunate turn into digitizing physical products in the field of IoT internet of things. I helped start an embedded systems design firm that blended hardware, software, sensors and networks to create useful products that make life easier for people. From there, I did a deep dive into enterprise SaaS, specifically infrastructure and dev ops for WordPress to help global brands connect what they say to what they do for their customers.
Looking forward, I’m fascinated by the world of artificial intelligence. It’s a perfect blend of philosophy (where all great disciplines emerge), technology, psychology and ethics. AI and AGI offers inspiration to artists and geeks, philanthropists and capitalists. I think it’s currently undergoing a romantic era of fascination in the fields of language, robotics, mobility and neural connectivity with possibilities that are literally not yet imaginable.
Gaming
As a BMX kid from the 80s, I spent a small fortune dropping quarters in every conceivable arcade cabinet and pinball machine all the way through college.
The only time I can say it ever paid off happened in 1998 at Dave & Busters in the Ontario Mills mall. I won concert tickets from a local radio station to see Ringo Starr after beating every competitor in Daytona Racing, a glorious coup de grâce.
Today it’s my son Simon who’s pulled me into modern gaming. It began with a fun mobile game we still play call Clash Royale by Supercell. If you’re a player, join our clan “Texas Empire!”
Simon and I play Fortnite together pretty frequently, much to the chagrin to my wife and daughter who’ll never understand why we yell and rage at a silly game. In a funny way, it’s bonded us as father and son on a mission to accomplish challenges, communicate under pressure and enjoy the highly entertaining taste of Victory Royale.
The Big Lebowski, Relaxed Fit Jonesy packs a lethal punch in a dad bod.
Fortnite is quite social, there are meaningful friendships built among his friends who’ve all endured my mediocre game play. I don’t care. I’ve come to know all of these boys like a Digital Scout Master. I know they’re families and how they’re doing in school and sports. I’ve got the opportunity to offer words of advice and and encouragement to each of them.
Did you know you can watch entire movies in Fortnite? That ESPN partnered with game maker Epic Games to stream their quirky game channel The Ocho in Fortnight? Or that some of the most popular artists host live in-game concerts that draw millions of viewers?
The modern gaming experience is an incredible interactive social experience with billions of dollars spent to target our children. Parents need to get involved with what interests their kids! Take the time. It’s fun and you stay relevant to what interests them.
Numismatics
I collect coins for fun and profit. Coins are a natural blend of fine art, culture, history and technology. Building a collection is relaxing and a great way to learn about America’s past. I enjoy being the curator for pieces that will certainly be admired by future generations. Coin collecting offers social commeraderie and generous mentoring among enthusiasts, many of whom are classes of professionals I respect – investors, business leaders, doctors and servicemen. I’m also drawn by my desire to complete a difficult task.
My current activity concentrates on silver, gold and platinum bullion ingots and coins including American Eagles, Chinese Pandas, Canadian Maple Leafs and the enormous 1 kilo Australian Kookaburras. I’m also interested in unique mint errors, cool tokens and casino chips, hobo nickels, early and modern American commemoratives and unusual coins from Sri Lanka and Israel. Strangely, I also can’t seem to pass up a nice wooden nickel or a smashed penny machine.
How do I determine which coins to buy? My collecton is composed of coins that bring me pride of ownership. Numismatics is a personal pursuit – if your collection is appealing to you, chances are it will appeal to others.
Numismatists are temporary owners of pieces of history. I offer my gratitude to the prior conservators of the coins in my collection for preserving their condition. And I promise to be conscientious to future owners in preservation during the relatively brief time I hold them.
GeoCaching
In addition, I’ve been tracking National Geodetic Survey “benchmarks” or control points located in Austin. Geodetic control points are permanently affixed objects at various locations all over the United States to enable land surveying, civil engineering and mapping to be done efficiently. Learn more at GeoCaching.com.
Chick Tracts
Remember these little religious comic books laying around public places? They’re discretely left near pay phones, bathrooms, bus stops, garbage containers, fountains, everywhere. I enjoyed reading them as a little kid, although most tracts literally scared the hell out of me with promises of eternal damnation for us sinners.
As a Roman Catholic apologist, I recognize how patently misinformed the authors are about Catholicism with polarizing arguments counter to Christ’s example. There is something fascinating about the severe warnings of End Times, the illustrations which are quite skillful, and the compact package.
Jack T. Chick, the publisher, ran his business from a small business park on Archibald Avenue in Ontario, California. I passed his building daily when I lived up the mountain in Alta Loma when I cut through Rancho Cucamonga on the way to my client, Technicolor. For years I collected the tracts and receive regular updates from Jack before he died in 2016.
Fresh Air
My family loves to get outdoors. Central Texas has no shortage of camping, greenbelts, swimming holes, rock climbing, hiking, biking and concerts.
When April and I lived in greater Los Angeles, we’d take short trips to the beach and mountains. She skis, I ride a Burton snowboard, but we still managed to get married. I’m especially fond of our exploratory walks in historic neighborhoods admiring the simple and bold architecture that is uniquely Californian. If you can find a copy, Stairway Walks in Los Angeles by Adah Bakalinski is one of my favorite travel books.
We love to travel. We’ve roadtripped across most of the Lower 48 and visited most of the US National Parks, America’s greatest idea. We’ve spent time throughout Mexico and Canada, and a couple of trips to the Philippines visiting April’s family. Our honeymoon in Tahiti, Moorea and Bora Bora felt like the perfect mix of exotic relaxation and adventure. Through work and weddings, I’ve also been to Sao Paulo, Rio De Janeiro, London, Edinburgh, Dublin and a good chunk of Holland from Amsterdam and Rotterdam.