A cinderblock molded entirely from bright, squishy Play-Doh, sitting where a real structural block should be.

The Agent That Never Says No

In the mid-'90s, I tracked my snowboarding season in a Microsoft Access database. Not a spreadsheet — a database, with tables and queries and a little form I'd punch numbers into after a day on the hill. It computed cost per day, cost per run, cost per vertical foot, and vertical feet per day, per week, per season. That year I had a season pass and rode 75 days, which got my cost down to about $17 a day. I was very proud of that $17, and of the database, which I never touched again once the snow melted. ...

June 15, 2026