August 25, 2017 Okay: you can say I told you so. Since July 5th this year I’ve been “on call” with the US District Court, Northern District of Oklahoma. Every Friday after 5:00 pm (all Summer) my ritual has been…
A Code of their Own
Last week, my daughter participated in the Tulsa STEM Alliance’s “Code of their Own” camp, at the Tulsa City-County Library downtown. Sidebar: if you’ve not ventured down to the new remodeled library yet, you owe it to yourself to visit.…
RUM: Managing Funds for Fun and Nonprofit
We all have competing demands for our time and resources. After the basics of food, shelter and education for our families we’re involved in things to better our world — volunteering and giving to nonprofits and/or to our church. In…
OurPact Premium: Now with 50% more blocking!
April 3, 2017 Back in December I wrote a post about our experiences with OurPact, a lovely program to control screen time on iPads, iPhones, and Android devices. You can read about it here. Now I’m back to tell you…
The “Rashomon Effect” and my Dad
January 27, 2017 Many of you know that my Dad, Gergely “Greg” Szabo, came to the US in 1957 via the Hungarian Revolution. He died in 1994. When I was kid, my Dad told me a “sanitized” version of his…
Our Pet’s Christmas
January 3, 2017 For those of you who know me/us well, you know that we’re generally homebodies…particularly in 2016, when (1) our home was for sale, (2) we had to find a rental in the Jenks district, and (3) we…
Moderation in all things. Especially screentime…
I’ve asked this question back over Thanksgiving weekend on Facebook: Parents: Over the long holiday we’ve fully implemented the OurPact app to control/curtail screen time for Pi. Anyone else using it? Any advice on achieving a happy middle ground between total…
The United Colors of…Muskogee, 1967–78
Back in the Summer I sat with a visitor at my church, the adult chaperone of 15 Iraqi high school students who were touring parts of the U.S., learning about the various career choices that might be available to them. After…
Killer Clowns, Black Lives Matter and the Herd Mentality
Living in Tulsa recently has brought me face-to-face with how quickly we revert to the herd mentality, particularly when we find ourselves in an information-poor environment. With amazing speed we will tacitly accept “truth” from very tenuous sources, and spread…
First Thoughts on the Lyric Thermostat
08/30/2016: Since I’m all about lowering one’s energy consumption (within reason), our rent home came with a lovely mercury-filled “slider” thermostat, circa 1995. For our first month it seems the thing was a blunt instrument — running way too much…