The Hickory Hokie

What is a Hickory Hokie?

I am!

I’ve decided I need an outlet to express some creativity around the things that peak my interest. I’ve never had a presence on social media because, as an IT professional, I know how that stuff works. The kids are grown, the parents are well retired, and I feel a mid-life urge to put my own content out on the inter-webs.

Well, that last part, while well intentioned, didn’t wind up happening that way. Shortly after I started this site I was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer (lung metastasis), COVID struck, my father passed away and my mother required full time, memory care in an assisted living facility.

It’s been four years since all that transpired so I figure I’d better get back at it if I want to document the things that I’ve experienced and interest me. So, as we enter the Fall of 2023, I intend to do a bit more with this platform, if for nothing else, to leave a few stories that may interest my family and friends. As an early Gen Xer, most of my life’s story doesn’t have digital content to easily upload so we’ll see how all this goes.

What can I say about golf that hasn’t already been said by people more eloquent and talented than me? Nothing that will advance the field of study. However, I’m passionate about the game and I’m sure I’ll have something to say anyway.

The picture above is the 8th green at the Blacksburg Country Club. I learned the game on that course and had a fantastic day when I snapped this pic a few summers ago … more on that later. What a game!

Read more about my love of golf over here …

mu – sic: noun
1. vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion. Music has been a huge part of my life and always will be. Nothing can transform the soul more than the story told by a great musical composition.

The picture above is of the band I played in during High School. We were quite talented but definitely not mainstream in terms of our song selection. I’m still amazed the school let us play this dance as the sole source of music!

Check out my musical musings and recordings over here …

I guess I’ve always had a passion for technology. My father used to bring home used punch cards from the office for my brother and I to draw on. I vividly remember taking a programming class, as a kid, at VT on the Apple II. I’ll never forget the day my father drove us to Rose’s in Christainsburg to buy a TI-99 or when he acquired the first Mac in 1984 as part of the contract to write a book.

It was said that Blacksburg had more video games per capita than anywhere in the world – Silver Odyssey, Aladdin’s Castle, Squires, Mr. Fooz and on and on. We rode our bikes all over with sacks of quarters to play the latest hits like Asteroids, Zaxon, Galaga, PacMan, DigDug, Donkey Kong etc, etc, etc.

Basic, Visual Basic, SQL, C#, PHP, Python, R, Octave, JavaScript, CSS and HTML are all languages I know well or have dabbled in. The picture above is the majority of my Raspberry Pi collection, eight of which I’ve networked together to create the OCTO-PI. You can read more about my interactions with technology over here …

I love to eat good food and I love to create in the kitchen!

My mother was a fantastic gourmet cook and she insisted my brother and I learn our way around the kitchen. I have so many fond memories of her calling us up into the kitchen so she could instruct us on some recipe, technique or just to taste the batter! Her strawberry pies were legendary – yes plural – strawberry chiffon and strawberry gelatin.

It didn’t end there though. She and her friends would put on gourmet dinners. My brother and I were fortunate beneficiaries of these grand events. It was a late century salon of creativity, conversation and cuisine! We would be allowed to sit in the room and listen and taste and experience an amazing array of foods and ideas that would flow through these dinner parties. And … there were no technological distractions – just good old fashioned, human interaction!

Well, this is going to be the section where I add all of the other things that are interesting to me but don’t fit neatly into one of my core areas of interest. Come on in to see more of the experiment as it evolves.