Author: John Meola
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Another Summer Gone By
Another summer is now in the books. Today autumn begins and, according to my calendar, we have only 100 days left in the year. I like fall, but this time of year is bittersweet for me. As a kid, it meant that I was back in school, seeing some people I liked and many that…
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Cakebread Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon 2021
As summer winds down in the northeast and we begin our last full week of the season before autumn is upon us, I like to squeeze in as much outdoor grilling on the Weber charcoal grill that I can. And what goes better on the grill than a delicious steak? On my Costco run last…
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RIP Charlie Kirk
I have a standing policy with this site to refrain from political topics. They are just too divisive and off-putting. My goal here is to bring people together with topics on photography, information technology, food, and wine. Also, let’s face it, politics in the United State has become a dangerous topic today. If you need…
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2021 Clos Castelot
Purchase Date: August 23, 2025 Location: Manny’s Bistro, New York City Price: $68.00 Region: Saint-Émilion I took my wife out for a special meal for her birthday last night in New York. The restaurant is Manny’s Bistro. The owner, Manny Colon, is the boyfriend of an old friend of my wife’s. He is one of…
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The Joys of Summer
August is always a bittersweet time for me. The locusts start buzzing, the birds have mostly gone silent, the bees are frantically gathering as much as they can before the flowers die and the crops are harvested, and the hungry wasps search for new sources of food, such as unwitting people working in their garden…
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IT, HIPAA, and the Medical Sole Practitioner
It is rare today to encounter a physician working as a sole practitioner. Between dealing with insurance companies, reimbursement rates, hospital privileges, and myriad regulatory requirements, the sole practitioner, we could say, is a critically endangered species. And yet last week I had a conversation with such a doctor working as a sole practitoner. He…
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Memento Mori
This past Saturday (July 26, 2025), I took a trip with a friend to Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, to see the sites of the Battles of Lexington and Concord that took place in late April 1775. My friend lives in eastern Connecticut. I live near Bridgeport, so the drive for me to his place was…
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Life Lesson From a Tomato Pie
On Saturday I attempted to make pizza on the charcoal grill using a pizza stone. It was made from scratch, using 00 flour and a recipe I found online. The goal was to make a fresh tomato pie. The pizza on the left was my first attempt. It was doughy and undercooked. In other words,…
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I Hate Email!
Background The other day I posted about 1980s technology. Today I am going to expand a bit on that to give you an idea where things were and where things stand now. The technology in question is email (or, as we used to write it, “e-mail”). Email had been around since the 1970s, but really…