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Unlike most not-for-profit corporations, the New York Blood Center has a computerized call center, and they know how to use it. I have mixed feelings about this. After giving platelets two weeks ago, I got another call — I was eligible to give again! (Unlike whole blood donation, you can give platelets every 48 hours,…

[My employer] laid off about 20% of its workforce today. In the New York office, roughly 100 out of 350 people were let go. My particular corner of the [A client] account has been very slow for several weeks, so I’ve been operating under the assumption that I was going to be let go. I’ve…

My paternal grandfather and my dad both were fox hunters; in fact, the Whitford hunt is what brought my grandfather out from Philadelphia on the weekends, and is how he met my grandmother. It’s also how he came across Arrandale, the estate that he persuaded his father to buy and renovate, which is the place…

Batten down the hatches…? The rumors are flying thick and fast at [My employer] about another round of layoffs, and it’s hard not to get rattled by it. Which, I guess, is why I’m rattled by it. Even though I’m not in any danger of sleeping on the street, (or even moving back in with…

Dear John: Many thanks. Dave Barry. …the above being the entire text of a hand-written postcard I got from Dave Barry today! Hooray! Dave was writing in response to a postcard I sent him telling him that I thought his novel “Big Trouble” kicked ass (and letting him know what the Ultimate Water Gun has…

Good Guys Wear Black (and they do the “bunny hop”) I studied a lot of Tae Kwon Do in college, and ended up taking a year off to run a local karate school: the “Oriental World Martial Arts Studio” in Richmond, Indiana (“Richmond’s oldest and largest martial arts studio!”) The school was on the first…

Play “Planetfall” right here and now! Planetfall is one of my very favorite games of all time. It’s an Infocom game, published in 1983. Go on, try it — it’s not addictive, I swear. By the way, your browser security settings probably won’t permit you to SAVE or RESTORE games. If you get hooked, I’d…

I’m slowly making progress on my book project, The Time Traveler’s Handbook. For those of you that I haven’t told about it one bazillion times already, the book will be the one reference you need to rule the world at any time in the past. Lists of winning lottery numbers, blueprints for industrial breakthroughs, even…

As you can sometimes see from my webcam, my desktop wallpaper for the past few years has been Pieter Breughel’s Landscape With the Fall of Icarus. In the Metamorphosis, Ovid tells the story of Icarus’ flight and fall in dramatic terms, speculating that “Some fisher, perhaps, plying his quivering rod, some shepherd leaning on his…