I am often asked for further info regarding topics that I am very passionate about. Or, maybe the case is more that I pester random folks fairly frequently, launching into endless ramblings around various topics, and for whatever reason, some of those unsuspecting victims appear interested in my unrequested ramblings and ask for more info. With the sincerity of those requests not withstanding, I tirelessly attempt to respond with meaningful, (very, very) long form answers, giving an attempt to treat the request with due respect. Meaning, I wish not to provide “oh, uh… ya know, this stuff” as an acceptable reply. However, oddly, the corollary of “ah, so (insert Encyclopedia Brittanica pages 18-39 here)” is not appropriate either.
So, yeah, I’m one of “those”. My apologies to the purveyors of the TLDR-asphere dogma. But, evidently, I seem unable to provide short, terse, yet meaningful responses that both inform and yet still honor the requester’s time. Sigh. I knew a guy once, Erik of the “Pen not PIN” fame. He was a master of the brilliantly concise communication paradigm. But me… well, I’m not… one of “those”. I wish I was, but … alas, I’m just not. Of course, this truth is no more apparent in my already too long “About” page rambling.
Now, in my defense, I am old-ish… and I am also a self proclaimed research nerd of the highest order. This means I have studied innumerable topics to [death and at] great extremes. The includes both formal and non-formal research efforts over 50+ years. Many of them were more than studies, but were perhaps even applications of various efforts. Usually I have studied these topics until I finally reached the “ok, I’m sick of this thing now” point. But, on the good side, this does mean that I have amassed a broad range of known topics, ones that I (for better or worse) feel an imperative obligation to shared in great details upon occasions, generally when I am [possibly] provoked to do so, whether actually or presumably so.
A common conundrum that I encounter, is that I find myself conflicted upon occasion as to the appropriate mechanism for supplying my mini-encyclopedic responses. No one wants email anymore, assuming you can even send it to them without spam blocking it. And I am fairly sure that paper writing is dimly viewed of late, disregarding post-its, which are sadly too small for my purposes (do I really want someone to cover their office walls in post-it notes? I’ve seen that happen and it’s… scary, in a creepy or shocking kind of way). Likewise, barraging those victims with texting-storms seems unfair for both of us, as it’s commensurate with the pain of trying to write AND decipher such. And then I have also over time thrown together quick HTML docs and hosted them somewhere, like on a personal site, but those are bulky, etc.
Ok, so here we are. To quote E.B. White in a response to a reader’s query, after his own long (and intentional) rambling, “Oh yes, you asked why I wrote the book” [my paraphrase]. Well, given all the afore mentioned drama, and my plight of constitutionally enforced long answers, I have arrived at (yet another) blog-ey kind of effort to amass those thoughts, answers, and journals of (hopefully) insightful info.
Ergo, perhaps after some period of time, you will find a myriad of topics I have posted here. They may likely have no actual correlated sequencing of meaning, or purpose. And any achieved taxonomical ordering is purely accidental. Or may not, we’ll see.
Now, having said “all that, it really only answers the “About”. Not the grander “Why did you do this again?!?!”. For that answer, I shall also provide another quote from White’s very clever reader response letter… “A book is a sneeze”. Or a blog. Perhaps both apply here?
Well, dear readers, enjoy if you must.
Hoby “Of The Long Answers”.
Sent from somewhere in the great ethereal late 2025.