Chris Hardie's Blog

Presenting: another epic saga of wireless phone company incompetence...bear with me.
I'd had my Sprint cell phone and plan since 2001 - six years of relatively problem free operation (minor billing annoyances aside). And they recognized that I was a loyal customer who always paid my bill on time - in recent years they regularly [...]

In today's Palladium-Item, Brian Bergen with the Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce agribusiness committee has a piece about Ethanol as a solution to the nation's energy problems.
I'm so glad that the Chamber is focusing on the relationship between agribusiness and the energy crisis that we face as a nation and as a planet. I'm also [...]

Before developing any thoughts on the suitability of the candidates currently running for the office of Mayor of Richmond, I thought it would be worth clarifying just what our mayor is supposed to be able to do for us, and what one has to do to run. Starting out at the Palladium-Item website by [...]

A lot of people notice that in many settings, I'm a pretty quiet person. I don't mind telling them that I generally have an withdrawn personality, and that I tend to do better in conversations that are one-on-one or with small groups of people who I know, as opposed to large groups or gatherings [...]

It's interesting to me that the phrase "for national security reasons," offered by the U.S. government and governments around the world to justify various uncomfortable activities (withholding information from or spying on its citizens, demanding cooperation from corporations in legal gray areas, etc.) is so commonly used and so consistently effective. It's effectiveness is [...]

When we encounter new people in our lives and consider what they might have to bring to us and what we might have to bring to them, we have to decide how we're going to evaluate who they really are - do we look at their current statements and actions and opinions, or do we [...]

On Saturday, February 24th, my cat Misty died after the cancer she had been struggling with had become too much for her to handle. It was a loving and peaceful death, and she was buried near one of her favorite spots in the yard.
Misty had a long life - upwards of 16 [...]