I’ve refocused my site for my Campaign for U.S. House of Representatives. I’d only just started putting up personal content, so that’s on hold for now. What there is can be found from this “Personal Home” page. It’s all public in any case.
These are the sections of my personal content, which used to be in the main menu but now that’s for the campaign:
- Content Status and Tracking – DRAFT
- Writing
- Ideas, inventions, and suchlike
- Things collected from others…
- Galleries
- Miscellany, of course
- Contact
- Private
In short, this is a place for me to get things out of my mind — and into yours, if you like. I have a lot of Ideas (as my wife will attest), and they need to go somewhere.
Tons more about me and this site in the sections below.
PLACEHOLDER and DRAFT content
I like to sketch out the structure of things I expect or hope to do, and hiding all the incomplete stuff is not worth the trouble, to me. Personally, I prefer having placeholders and rough material to tell me where some information would be if it existed, rather than hunting around for something that just isn’t there at all. Sorry if it’s just noise to you.
I do understand that it’s annoying to have a lot of pointless links to things that aren’t there “yet”, so as a basic courtesy — to both you and future me — I include DRAFT and PLACEHOLDER in the names of things that aren’t done, so you can know what to expect before you click.
PLACEHOLDER means I’ve identified the scope of something I’d like to create, but the content is probably little more than the title already tells you.
DRAFT means at least the gist of it is there.
I have a whole Content Status scheme, because that’s how I roll.
What’s here, and not here – PLACEHOLDER
… and how it’s all organized, with links…
About Me
I was born in 1961 at Kaiser Oakland, and grew up in Berkeley, CA. My first pet was a cute Sheltie mix named Winky. My mother’s maiden name was – wait, no no no, just a few more quick bits for now:
- I still live in Northern California, with my lovely wife.
- My awesome son lives in Irvine, and/or Sacramento.
- I’ve been working with computers for 50 years or so, the last decade mostly in data encryption.
- I’ve been an armchair philosopher for as long as I can remember, so I have a lot to say about armchairs, and other topics.
Why do this? – DRAFT
Why manage my own site to self-publish various things, and share endless collections of stuff? Interesting question on which I’m sure I’ll expound at length eventually.
Short answer for now: (anti) social “media”, so far as of 2026-01-24, horrifies me. I don’t give people grief for using it as a way to connect and whatnot, but I just can’t. Still, I like to share things, so here we are.
As one relevant example, let me share a brief exchange I had years ago with a good friend who is no longer living. I asked him, “If one feels that one has ideas that could Help Humanity, is one obliged to make an effort to share them?” He said, I think wisely, “It depends on how bad you’ll feel if you don’t.”
Well, I don’t feel terrible failing to share, but it does bother me at least enough to make some effort. Fortunately, now that I’ve finally set up the basics of WordPress, I can focus 98% of the effort on the actual sharing part, and very little on the mechanics, which is great.
What about money?
Not trying to make money here, ever, at all. No ads, subscribers, or even “likes” needed or wanted.
It’s about $20/month to host this, we can handle it. Compared to the amount we spend to receive content, this is pretty cheap.
I have a very particular take on ads, which will show up under Writing one of these days.
What’s New
I’m maintaining a basic history of What’s New on this site, both for me and anyone else interested. I’d call it a “blog” (web log) because it is a log in fact, but blog means something else these days and it’s not that.
Comments – DRAFT
Yeah, no. There’s no forum here, no way to add comments to this site.
Lots to say about this… soon.
I’m generally happy to be Contacted, though.
FAQ
This is just here because it’s a common thing people look for. I might add some things here, but for the time being everything you might want to know about me and the site should be easy to find in sections on this page. If not, then you’re welcome to send me a note.
Site Map
Go to here to peruse all public pages on this site.