The Life of Lou Ruppert

Every time I see the name Hartford, I’m reminded of one of my ancestors, Thomas Hooker, who founded the state of Connecticut and the city of Hartford. A friend’s brother-in-law is from Hartford, and another friend used to work at the insurance company of the same name. Today I saw a boat named USS Hartford [...]

One of the things that makes me happy is when I can come up with a good cheap recipe on the spot. It’s like I’ve cheated the system or something. I got a chance to work from home this afternoon, and decided to use it as an opportunity to cook up a chicken leg I [...]

Springtime has always been the season for spacing out and being too drowsy to get anything done. My Wednesday class is normally difficult because, number one, it’s Arabic, and number two, I’m usually in a food coma because it’s right after lunch. Well, today I got to add number three: because it’s springtime. So, what’s [...]

I finished watching Victorian Farm the other night. It’s a great series. I used some of my thoughts on it for my weekly Bible study. That’s a good justification for watching TV, right? Things from the 1800s always bring back memories of growing up in rural upstate New York. We had an old farmhouse that [...]

Between a parade and full-fledged festival, a day of hardware work, and my main machine at home deciding that it doesn’t want to do video and audio at the same time, my time has shrunken down to below nothing. I can either blog daily for the sake of devotion, or I can do what I’m [...]

For health reasons, it’s important to slow down between work and sleep. It’s like the clutch when switching gears. Without it, you get ground down. Last night, I made the mistake of checking my phone messages before bed. I had two texts from people asking for help with things, and I figured I’d follow up [...]

After harvesting all of those kale seeds a week or so ago, I wanted to make sure they were viable. No sense planting them if they aren’t going to grow, right? Here’s the proof that they’re alive, after perhaps a week of growth: I have to admit that there’s a kind of thrill from using [...]

I went out to my first political open house on Tuesday night. A friend of mine has become the campaign manager for Otis Jennings‘ bid for mayor of Syracuse. Another friend of mine made a strong bid for me to come out, so I made the fifteen minute cameo. It was a good decision on [...]

Self improvement is really important. I spent a couple years after college doing nothing but eating food, watching TV, and learning things for my career. I got better geek skills, but I wasn’t a better geek. Nobody wants to go through life in a holding pattern, only to find out at the end that they [...]

Back in simpler days, I used to run a mail server for the student Christian group I went to in college and help a couple of friends with their computers. Over time, that mail server grew into one of the first Christian web sites on the internet. Then, as more time passed, the student group [...]