The Slip

February 26, 2026

Spring of '93. Graduation was close enough to taste. The warm and inviting sun poured through the car windows as my buddies and I returned from lunch, the pulse of Metallica blaring from the stereo. It felt nothing short of a sin to return to the grim classroom's confinements after enduring yet another relentless Iowa winter. My next class was American Lit. Sam had the same class earlier that day and told me there was a sub — a rare stroke of luck this close to summer. He also had insider…

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Relaxed but Certain

February 25, 2026

More than a decade ago, when I first read The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel, I was a developer who had not yet fully recognized that I was drifting into software consulting. The book did not teach me technical skills. It sharpened something else — clarity of vision. I stopped seeing myself as the person writing code in the background. I started seeing myself as the person in the room — interpreting systems, diagnosing workflow loopholes, translating complexity into decisions. The…

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Flow

February 24, 2026

1996 Ledges State Park sits a few miles south of Boone, Iowa — the same stretch of countryside where the Kate Shelley Bridge cuts across the Des Moines River Valley. I'd never been there before. The place was new to me, but the reason I went wasn't. Someone had mentioned an adventure. A small group of guys planned a hike that weekend and asked if I wanted to tag along. One of them was Kaiser. I didn't know him well — maybe a few run-ins through a mutual friend. He was from the Loo too, though…

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The Wrong Tree

February 21, 2026

1986 The Woods were our first training ground — a tangle of trees and hills behind Jon's house on Columbia Avenue, just a block from Heath Street where I grew up. Decades of runoff had carved the hills into earthen ramps that could launch a bike, a sled, or a kid with more confidence than coordination. The trees — spindly young maples, saplings, and thin trunks — were our safety nets, angled just enough to let you grab hold mid-jump and ride them downward like a kid-sized rappel down an uneven…

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Book it Danno

February 17, 2026

Something bit me on the neck. I was at my desk in Denver — working, not doing anything interesting — when I felt it. Couldn't tell you what it was. Probably a boxelder bug. Those flat, red-striped freeloaders are everywhere in Colorado, and while they're not exactly known for biting, I wasn't about to rule it out. Whatever it was, I swatted at it, went back to my screen, and forgot about it. Then a lump showed up. Slow at first. Just a firmness under the skin, behind my right ear, tucked along…

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How Far They Bend

February 17, 2026

1988 There's a moment in every kid's life when you realize the world runs on rules — and that some people follow them, and others... test them. I didn't test them to be rebellious. I tested them because I didn't stop to ask whether I was supposed to. And the thing about edges is: once you find one, you start wondering where the next one is. * * * By eighth grade, Sam and I had turned Waterloo into our personal proving ground. We rode bikes everywhere — streets, trails, parking lots, The Woods —…

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A Millimeter from Darkness

February 16, 2026

Here's the content formatted for your blog post: --- On Christmas morning in 1982, my older brother Jason and I excitedly tore through the wrapping paper, uncovering the classic BB gun—the same one Ralphie nearly shot his eye out with in A Christmas Story. We were thrilled, but our excitement died the moment we saw the window. The Iowa winter raged outside, rendering our new toy useless in the biting wind and snow. Dad, always prepared, handed us another box. Inside was the solution: a BB gun…

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Holding the Table

February 11, 2026

The Last Rack In 2002, I played in the U.S. Amateur Pool Tournament in Laurel, Maryland. To get there, I had to be one of the top players in the APA league and one of two winners from a qualifying tournament. Denver was one of only twelve cities in the country to host a qualifier, and ours was held at Shakespeare's pool hall. The same pool hall I played in after getting laid off from Spiremedia. The same one, only a few miles from my house. This tournament would be my last hurrah with pool. I…

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The Train Game

February 9, 2026

1987 Just past The Woods, the neighborhood dissolved into something wilder. A fenced-off quarry opened up first — a small lake at its center, deer wandering the edges like they owned it. The guy who owned the land had built himself a floating house out on the water, like he was hiding from the world. Every time we pushed through the fence, it felt like finding buried treasure. Beyond the quarry was where things got serious: a junkyard full of wrecked cars, and right next to it, the railyard.…

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