On Thursday, I adopted a 45 pound pit bull mix from The Oregon Humane Society. He was a stray in California that was brought up to Portland and was listed without much history. Jackson, I named him due to a flecking of white spots across his black face, like loose…

Last time I ran around Loowit, last July, I got lost at Windy Pass, meandered off trail through the blast zone, lost a water bottle, got super dehydrated through a long afternoon of 95 degrees in full sun, and eventually finished back at June Lake humbled by the trail. The…

A friend died last week at the age of 38. He had his first and last heart attack. Death is something that tempts us to make sense of. It tempts us to say things about how someone could have lived longer if they were not who they were. Or if…

The Radical Mycology Convergence is a biannual gathering of mycophiles that moves around the country, but this year happened to be a short drive from my house in Portland, Oregon. I registered without much of an agenda because it looked fun, affordable, and likely to be a like-minded community. …

During the process of deciding to move I’ve had a lot of people ask why, and in almost every case, because I’m a bad or impatient storyteller, I summarize that I want to live somewhere with more access to the outdoors. …

Four months ago I made it my new years resolution to make empathy a core trait in my engineering. Here are some things that I’ve done since: Formally made WCAG (web content accessibility guidelines) a requirement for all Vokal web projects and worked with design and QA to make sure…

In art, it is hard to know when you are done. After all, what does it mean to be done creating something when you can just keep on creating more of it? …

Back in the day, I was really into art. I’d spend lunches in high school painting in the art room while I ate. Then, I went to Savannah College of Art and Design to study computer art, which was mostly 3D animation. …

Let’s admit that if you don’t have a new email in your inbox right now, you will in 30 minutes. If it is a work day, maybe that is more like 5 minutes. You get a lot of email, and you have to look at all of it to figure…