Personal

I don’t normally write about recipes, but I made this one and a few friends asked me how I made it, so enjoy. I grew up on cholent and other Eastern European gruel-like stews. My mother would simmer a pot of beans, potatoes and meat for at least 24 hours, until they’re one soft, uniform mass. I loved it. My wife does not, and she’s never warmed to curry either, which meant my goal of eating more plant-based meals kept stalling out. Every high-protein bean dish I tried was either a delicious nutritious paste, or an Indian-style curry, and nothing I found brought joy to our table, until this! ...

I love taking the train to New York. It’s one of the few places left where you can strike up a genuine conversation with a complete stranger—or so I thought. The other day, waiting on the platform for the NYC train, I fell into conversation with a friendly, grey-haired man who turned out to be a biology professor. We swapped stories about our kids: his son was diving into Python for machine learning, my daughter was studying virology. One of those lovely, serendipitous encounters that makes me appreciate Philadelphia. ...

It’s a month past due so here is my obligatory “I changed my job” post. Over the last nearly 8 years at Comcast as part of the ‘Online’ group and later as founding member of mighty Comcast Interactive Media I’ve made many business connections, met a number of excellent peers and forged a few relationships that will last a lifetime. As a happily married 40+ dad with mortgage and college payments I often feel over the hill with regards to blogging and living out loud. As a Manager with a sometimes disproportional ego I also felt an obligation to ‘disappear’ for some time in order to give @tomjbarker room to make the team his own. I’ve no doubt that he will take what we started to the next level. ...

This weekend I attended a gallery opening of an exhibition called ‘50 Americans’ featuring the work of Robert Mapplethorpe. Usually I have to spend the first few minutes or an Art exhibition reading the background to understand the story that the gallery is telling through the art. This one was different. Rather then view the Mapplethorpe images through the lens of an expert Sean Kelly’s people found 50 Americans, one per state, to curate the selection. They were nervous about what selections the wisdom of the crowd would choose to surface. Some people involved with the Mapplethorpe foundation were initially skeptical of the project. ...

I went researching to Chevy Volt to find some facts to offset my calculator below. I did get lots of feedback about people thinking that price is not the only factor here. So when I went to chevy to look at ‘affordability’ I found this. Check the URL [caption id=“attachment_229” align=“aligncenter” width=“441” caption=“GM Working on affordability”][/caption]