From Grumpy's Garage

The leading candidates for president aren't that old. Image generated at app.leonardo.ai When the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1790, it specified that no man under the age of 35 could be president. But the average life expectancy in 1790 was somewhere between 36 and 45 years. (The few studies of family histories back then varied widely.) Men older than 35 must have been truly ancient! Granted, the average life expectancy in 1790 was skewed by child mortality. If you made it to 35, you were likely to live well past 60. When George Washington was sworn in, he was 57 years old. He went on to live to 67. Today, the average life expectancy is 77 years. At 81, Joe Biden is already past that. Donald Trump is 77 years old now. Today, according to the life expectancy calculator at sunlife.ca , if you make it past 71, never smoked, and are moderately active, you can expect to live until 86, which is how old Biden would be at the end of his second term. Given the advances in medicine, n...

One of Each In high school, I had a royal blue 1968 Rambler American. Later, in my sophomore year of college, I drive a primer gray 1968 VW bus. But let's focus on the Rambler. This story was prompted by Storyworth . Rebekah enrolled me as my birthday present. Each week, Storyworth sends me a writing prompt, usually in the form of a question. It lets me pause, reflect, and share stories with my family, stories that I probably wouldn't otherwise talk about. But the Storyworth online editor drives me crazy, so I'm writing my stories here instead. The Rambler American My 1968 Rambler American was royal blue American Motors would name their cars with model/make, not make/model. I dunno why.  Standard transmission. Three-in-the-tree shifter. In-line six-cylinder engine. Well-worn vinyl bench seat. And no radio. Grampa drove me to look at the car. It had been forfeited at an auto body shop. The owner didn't pay the bill for the new paint job, so the owner just wanted to...

I'm sometimes afraid to be seen online. "Why," you ask, "would Brian fear being seen?" Because I'm an imposter. I'm not really who I pretend to be. And I want to keep people from finding that out. I've recently begun to ask myself where this fear came from. When did it start? What were the circumstances? It began in late 2006 when I started working at Google. I had been a techno-geek for over a decade. As a consulting engineer in the '90s and '00s, I thought I knew a lot about this new-fangled internet thing. I enjoyed helping small businesses stake their claim to a piece of virtual real estate. I'd help them select and register a domain name, set up their DNS, email, and web servers, and build a functional website (though it would be considered crude by today's design standards). I built firewalls and kludged together programs (sometimes written from scratch) to make computers play nice together. I was hot stuff. In the area of how t...

Sunrise over Lake Union  I enjoy hearing my own thoughts. I know that sounds self-centered. Well, it is. It seems that many people can’t just be with themselves in silence. They must have news or music playing in the background. (Or what passes for news or music these days.) I start most days in contemplation: five minutes of Positive Intelligence (three minutes of the day’s focus, then two minutes of “PQ” reps, which grow the “self-command muscle”), then 20 minutes of silent meditation. It feels like ballast in my sailboat that helps me stay upright even in a blow. I used to practice guided meditation, but I soon found that I like just focusing on my breathing. Sometimes I’ll meditate about something on my mind, but I try not to get sucked into a spiral of angst, frustration, and anger. If I can imagine a solution and implement it myself, great, but there’s no reason to get worked up about something I can’t change. I love early morning walks. They let me get ready for a busy day. ...