Armen Chakmakjian's Blog

Obama is the fourth president of the United States to have won the Nobel Peace Prize (after Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, with Carter’s honor happening after leaving office). So I think I’ve figured it out. Obama has a free residency in Trump’s brain. Right after Obama became president, he was awarded a […]

So it comes time to lay my cards on the table. First let me lay out some context. I’ve voted in every presidential election since 1984. The big question in 1984 was whether, after 4 years of Ronald Reagan, was my situation better than in 1980. The person who posed this question to me asked […]

There was an interesting article which I have not found again about why the toilet paper crisis occurred, beyond simple consumer hoarding, which was a cause of an instantaneous shortage but not the subsequent and ongoing shortage. It has all to to with supply chains, the ability/feasibility/desirability to store tp, and just-in-time manufacturing. I’m not a paper […]

Some of us can remember how Boston and its suburbs locked down after the marathon bombing idiots figured out that they had been identified and then created more mayhem in Cambridge and Watertown. Now the whole world is locked down…nuts. Necessary, but nuts. I got an Orbi yesterday I had ordered on Amazon a week […]

Originally posted on Spoiler warning: An adult retrospective on Santa. If you ignored that warning: Santa is real. If you are satisfied with that statement, the rest of this blog post is immaterial to you. Go onto the next Santa thing in your google or bing search. Now that we have dispensed…

So I’m going to channel my inner Hannity (pick your poison…it could be any right or left conspiracy theorist).  I think we are witnessing a military coup or at least a 25th amendment cabinet coup. Here are some of the odd things that have gone on in the last 2 weeks: President’s son and son-in-law […]

I had started typing this on long bus rides through the hills and chasms of Armenia during our trip from June 26 through July 7 2017. It took me the some time the week after I got back to clean it up. I hope you enjoy it. Armenia is a place that is on the […]

I had started typing this on long bus rides through the hills and chasms of Armenia during our trip from June 26 through July 7 2017. It took me the some time the week after I got back to clean it up. I hope you enjoy it. Armenia is a place that is on the […]

Tonight I went to see “The Promise” at the Capitol Theater in Arlington. This was actually my second viewing, as I had the privilege to be a part of a private showing at Brandeis University a few weeks ago. My review here of the movie spans both of those viewings. The first viewing was actually […]

So we were doing some cleanup last year in our living/dining room after some water damage from the snowpocalypse of 2015 and I had to make some decisions about to do with my sound system and speakers in the room. I had an apple wireless hotspot in the room plugged into the video input of […]