On the night my son was born, I was a couple hundred miles away, hurtling north on the New Jersey turnpike trying to get home in time. I had my mother next to me, but my wife was alone in Morristown, NJ, where we lived. She wasn’t due for another three weeks, and I had been in my hometown of Columbia, Md, for a dental appointment.
Aren’t there dentists in New Jersey? I’m sure there are, and probably even good ones. But for most of my life, since I was a very young child, I’ve had the same dentist: my father. He’s actually a very good dentist, and besides our familial relationship, if I were any normal patient I’d probably want to keep him even after I moved away.
The first time I worked for a Dot-Com (back when websites were called such things), there were certain freebies always available. Not on Google levels of freebies, but there were always bottles of water and Mountain Dew in the fridge. There was pizza every other Wednesday, Krispy Kreme donuts every Friday. But we didn’t have a water cooler. The office space was mostly wide open, with a pit for the editors and writers, and offices for the higher-ups. I was segregated with a few graphic designers, but my friends all sat in the pit. In that year, I probably smoked more cigarettes than at any other point since I picked up the habit in college. That was also the year I quit smoking.
I dropped my best friend from my 
Over dinner my father looks at me and says, with a straight face: “I hear Google might start building its own phone.” I’m trying to figure out which direction to take the conversation. Condescension would be too aggressive, no matter how much my inner troll wants to bait him. Do I explain that Google is not only making a phone OS, but that they will soon rival Microsoft in the netbook space with a new desktop OS? Too technical.
![JH Audio JH16 Pro with Freqphase Custom In-Ear Monitor Review [2013]](http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/P2111170-sg-320x80.jpg)
