Ryan and Debi & Toren

Travel, Tech, Thoughts…

  • software everyone should know about

    I run into people all the time who are fighting technology. Not everyone spends as much time in front of a computer as I do; and not everyone has the time I do to fidget with computers. But I think people could save themselves hours of frustration and thousands of dollars if they just knew…

  • recommended software page

    I added a page on here with some software recommendations.  I talk to a lot of people who don’t know about this software, so I figured I’d put it on my website for anyone interested.  If you have any suggestions I missed or I don’t know about, share!

  • a couple minor political thoughts

    I have two more posts on my trip to Princeton and Hartford, but I have to interrupt the narrative with a couple of political news items. First, whether you’re a fan of John McCain or not, you need to know that he has recently come out in favor of the completely nonsensical position that thimerosal,…

  • stormy, stormy

    This was a pretty boring day, really… Or, at least it seemed so at the time. We took my rental car back to the airport in Newark then flew, without incident to Atlanta. But that’s when things got a little weird. I noticed on a TV in the Atlanta airport huge blackouts in Florida. We…

  • Trinity College

    I spent the day at Trinity College, a non-sectarian private, liberal arts school in Hartford. I presented some of my research than sat in on a brainstorming session with the researchers who did the ARIS study working on new questions to ask in a follow-up survey. It was very cool to spend time with such…

  • Hartford CT vs. another round in NYC

    My work trip started Sunday while Debi and Steve got to spend another day in NYCity. I picked up a rental around around 9:00 and headed to Demarest, NJ where I met with one of the researchers from the institute I was visiting for lunch. From there I headed to Hartford, CT. I checked into…

  • the big, big apple

    We tried to get an early start into NYCity, but sleep won the battle against sightseeing… So we ended up taking a later train from Princeton to Penn Station than we originally planned. From Penn Station we took the Subway down to the Staten Island Ferry, which is the poor man’s way of seeing the…

  • oooohhh, Princeton!

    At the last academic conference I attended I became acquainted with a couple of researchers who are well known in the sociology of religion. Given our shared interest in the non-religious, they invited me up to Trinity College in Hartford, CT to give a presentation on my research and to get to know them better.…

  • I miss all the “fun”…

    I’m here prepping a lecture on racial/ethnic stratification for my class on social stratification when I read about a case of racial profiling in Tampa in my textbook. Apparently Reginald Pitts, a human resources manager for GAF Materials Corporation, was harassed and accused of trying to forge a check at a Wal-Mart. Pitts had phoned…

  • ever lived in a condo? (and other sundries)

    I’ve been wanting to write this for a while but am just now getting around to it. When we moved to Cincinnati we bought a very modest condo in a working class condominium complex. We liked the area and even though we didn’t know most of our neighbors, we were mostly content. At least, that…