History of this Blog

A long time ago I found my wife. It was a typical marriage up to the point I found the saddle in a foot locker. Little did I know that saddles and horses are rarely separated for long. My choice was simple. I was either going to fight it or my life was going to go in some unusual directions. This self-described computer nerd from the city opted to get along with horses and farm life.

It is now thirty years later and I live on a farm. My wife and I literally live in a small apartment above the barn. Our son is grown up and spends most of his time at Virginia Tech. It is a different life than most people we know. We have seven cats, three dogs, four horses, and personal relationships with every one of them. With this number of animals it is kind of important that you are an animal person. It can get pretty crazy if you do not get along with the animals. Don’t worry, animals are patient teachers to people who listen.  We made a stab at running the farm as a horse breeding farm. We had thirteen horses at our peak. It did not work so I am working as a computer nerd again.

The name of this blog, A Lazy Cowboy, came to me back when we were running the horse breeding operation. It was a cynical comment about my life. We had a barn full of horses and I could never find the time to ride. Over the years I got a little smarter about life. Complaining is not the answer. Now I ride about once a week.

Political Leanings

My political leanings can be described as more of a constitutional libertarian like Randy Barnett explained in the Reason.tv video rather than a traditional conservative. I remain skeptical about quality of the federal government decision making. I do not have a problem with government occasionally making a bad decision but it seems that big government decision makers are making too many big, bad decisions. It has become increasingly difficult to find good decisions made at the federal level so I wonder why do we persist in trying to make the federal government work this way. My MBA training leads me  to the conclusion that if we want better government decisions, we will need a smaller, more strategic decision making at the federal government level combined with tactical decision at the state level.

My Biography

I was born in Missouri at Fort Leonard Wood while my father was in the Army. I went to elementary schools in three different states and a foreign country, Venezuela. I grew up in Northern Virginia and graduated from Virginia Tech with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. Shortly after graduating from school I moved to Houston. It was a boom time. For next eighteen years I lived in and around Houston. During that time I developed a fascination with business. This led me to going to school at night to study business and earn a MBA from the University of Houston. I met my wife in Houston in 1983 and in 1991 our son was born. After all of these years both are still doing well. In 1998 we moved to the Cincinnati area and started our new life living on a farm.