For over a year now I’ve been using a neat plug-in for my web browser which hides advertisements on websites, cutting out the clutter and increasing my surfing speed. However, several weeks ago I realized that this marvelous plug-in was causing weird behavior whenever I tried making comments on Facebook so I disabled it and was astonished to discover what I’ve been missing out on all this time: women!!! But not just any type of women; these are women who are looking specifically for guys who are Continue Reading

I was recently surprised to find myself blurting out the name “Oscar Goldman” to the television. As this is not something I typically do I feel it important to explain that I was (finally) watching the film “The 40 Year Old Virgin“. In the movie there is a scene in which the main character explains the importance of one of the hundreds of collectible toys lining the walls of his apartment. In this case it was a bland looking doll wearing a Continue Reading

I understand that my pals The Cardboard Troopers had a wild time this past weekend. They arrived in Atlanta for the 2009 edition of Dragon*Con, but they couldn’t actually seem to find a trace of the convention and the hotel people kept looking at them funny. I sure hope that they come back for the 10:00am parade on Saturday, they always seem to enjoy that.

Which reminds me that last month the Fall issue of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine hit the stands and I was simultaneously delighted (97%) and mortified (3%) to read the article about me that staff writer Van Jensen composed after we met prior to my surgery this summer. Entitled “How Did That NERD on the Left Become That PIRATE on the Right?“, the article does a really nice job of catching people up with the kid who won the Batman contest back in the 80s… and the second page features a certain cardboard trooper standing in front of a line of “real” troopers at Dragon*Con.

Last week our friend Bob announced that he was going to sell a few old Star Wars toys he had laying around his house. This of course piqued my interest, as I’m one of those millions of children who were imprinted with the plans for the Death Star back in the summer of 1977. Like many of those kids, my formative years were spent poring over pre-production illustrations by Ralph McQuarrie and building my own models of the ships out of balsa wood and styrene. Looking back, I thought that I had a pretty great collection of lovingly-used Continue Reading

I made the accompanying USA Today style illustration to show the location of my scars without grossing anyone out, and to tell the story of how I decided to let a surgeon and his robot use tiny little surgical tools inside of my body.

In the fall of 2008 I went to my new primary care doctor for a physical. My PSA levels were high so we ran a round of antibiotics to see if it was an infection of some sort. After two weeks we re-tested and the levels were just as high so I went to see a urologist, who suggested that everything pointed toward the need for a biopsy. I opted to wait until after the holidays.

On January 27th of 2009 I went into the hospital for a surgical biopsy. Three days later the doctor was on the phone telling me that I had prostate cancer. Somehow I knew that I was going to get that call, but it still shocked me to my core. On the way home that night I called an old friend to tell him the news, still trying to make sense of it myself. Later, I wrote a letter to a friend living out of state as I didn’t want to Continue Reading

One night earlier this week I woke up embracing one of my big J.C. Penny brand pillows, with my hand slid up inside the pillowcase… I’m not especially proud of this, but I’m pretty sure that I got to second base. The problem is, I didn’t know “her” name. So I’ve asked my friends to help me name this new pillow girlfriend and am posting a poll with all of their suggestions in the hopes that Continue Reading

She’s always fierce, ever so fierce – far too primal to hang anything as pedestrian as a name on. She’s simply “Kitty”, a title she pointedly ignores. Continue Reading

I recently treated myself to something I’d been wanting to do for nearly 2 years… I had my family’s DNA genotyped by the company 23andMe. Here are 10 things about me and my folks that we didn’t even know (and this is just scratching the surface of data about ourselves that we can explore):

10 — My Mom’s mother’s mother’s mothers sprang from the same haplogroup as THE Marie Antoinette (though that does not mean that I am necessarily a direct descendant).

9 — My Dad’s mother’s mother’s mothers came from a region stretching between Spain to North Africa, all the way around to Lebanon. No wonder I like drinking Port and eating Baba Ganouj.

8 — My DNA says that I have a 24% lifetime incidence of experiencing Prostate Cancer, as compared to other people in my same genotype. This is fairly ironic, as I am currently Continue Reading