2020-21 is the asterisk academic year

A few weeks ago I wrote a column about helping our children cope with distance learning as we hide from COVID-19. Since then I’ve watched the progress of my own children — Cole (16) and Fallon (14) are still at home — and I’ve spoken to friends and teachers all over the world. It isn’t going well. In fact, the whole distance learning experience has been a disaster that will ultimately result in this academic year being forever assigned an asterisk to separate it from every other academic year, before or after.

I hope your experience is better, but I doubt that is the case. And the fact that people […]

By |October 22nd, 2020|2020, COVID-19, Education, Family, Health|160 Comments
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Cringely’s Rules for Home Schooling in the Age of COVID-19

My first job out of college was teaching biology, chemistry, physics, and vocational agriculture at Triway High School in rural Wooster, Ohio. I lasted for six weeks. The school environment was such a downer, from the smoke-filled teachers’ lounge to my young co-workers who were teaching mainly, it seemed to me, to avoid service in Vietnam. So when a reporting job became available, I jumped on it, leaving Ohio forever. Years later I returned to teaching, this time at Stanford University, where I worked for six years. Now, 37 years after Stanford, I’m teaching my kids at home thanks to COVID-19. You may be teaching your kids, too. This […]

By |April 30th, 2020|2020, COVID-19, Cringely's Rules, Education, Family, How To's, strategy|72 Comments
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Not dead yet! What Bob Cringely has been up to…

A few days ago I tweeted something and a reader reacted, saying about Cringely, “I thought he was dead!” Not dead yet, but I should probably explain my disappearance a few months ago from life in print. I’ve just been too busy working for a living. How does a 67-year-old hack with three minor children recover from going blind, losing his home and business in a horrible fire (like 2,000 others, we are still fighting with insurance companies), while appeasing an angry crowd of Kickstarter supporters armed with pitchforks and shovels? In my case, I went looking for venture money to recapitalize MineServer and I simultaneously started a satellite launch company to fund […]

By |January 23rd, 2020|2020, Breaking News, Family, space, Startups, Venture Capital|133 Comments
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Two thirds done, yet still writing predictions…

I was born 66 years ago today, which makes me old enough to know better, though some might disagree. Sixty-six is retirement age in the U.S. Social Security system and I am all signed-up. Retirement has been beckoning a bit, which might explain my recent absence from this rag. But no, I’m not retired at all and that means I owe you something of an update, plus of course my predictions for 2019.

First the Mineserver jihad. I’ve been quietly trying to find an investor to help revive this great little business started with my three sons but lost to my blindness last year combined with the Tubbs fire that cost us […]

By |January 28th, 2019|2019, Family, Predictions, Startups|184 Comments
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How to cut the cable yet stay within your bandwidth cap

After 31 years of doing this column pretty much without a break, I’m finally back from a family crisis and moving into a new house, which sadly are not the same things. Why don’t I feel rested? I have a big column coming tomorrow but wanted to take this moment to just cover a few things that I’ve noticed during our move.

We have become cable cutters. Before the fire we had satellite TV (Dish) and could have kept it, but I wanted to try finding our video entertainment strictly over the Internet. It’s been an interesting experience so far and has taught us all a few lessons about what I expect […]

By |July 16th, 2018|2018, Family, Internet|79 Comments
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