Anecdotal Evidence

2026-06-01T14:43:12.269-05:00

DreamForge Magazine has published a reprint of my story "The Van Helsing Women's Shelter", which is about a different approach to fighting vampires. The issue is online is at: https://go.dfstory.com/anvil24 and a direct link to the story is at: https://go.dfstory.com/van-helsing.

2025-07-25T11:31:00.002-05:00

Through hijinx, I ended up with a lot of old Astounding and Analog magazines. I'm going to post some of the more interesting covers here.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/647c1d8903b2193defe65a34aec85ef2/aea182e4cec4df8a-4a/s640x960/ce745bc325cad2b983e2f4e7e16eacf4be710d66.jpg

"Vacation Gnomes" reprinted in _Sages of Metaphorosis_

2024-08-22T20:42:00.000-05:00

The Metaphorosis Magazine people did some collections of their work and my story "Vacation Gnomes" now appears in the _Sages of Metaphorosis_ collection. It's available as a Kindle ebook or as a hardcopy from Galaxy Bookshop.

"Vacation Gnomes" published in Metaphorosis Magazine

2021-02-08T08:08:00.004-06:00

My fantasy short story "Vacation Gnomes" appeared in Metaphorosis Magazine on Friday, February 5, 2021.

How to pronounce my name

2021-01-28T16:02:00.004-06:00

The easiest way to remember how to pronounce "DaMommio" is that it rhymes with "the Romeo."

How lockdown bored am I ? How lockdown bored are YOU?

2020-09-13T15:26:00.001-05:00

I just spent 15 minutes making these lovely paper airplanes in the shape of hands. So that I could throw hands with my daughter.

Armadillocon 42 is live now: 2020 convention is online and completely free

2020-08-29T10:29:00.006-05:00

Check out http://armadillocon.org/d42/ to register for the con and join. Browser-based videoconferencing software is being used, so it's easy to get involved.

"The Great Pause" ... a reminder to keep in mind the differences in our lives we see from the Corona pandemic

2020-04-15T09:03:00.003-05:00

Karen Watkins sent me this link and I thought this article was incredible food for thought. https://forge.medium.com/prepare-for-the-ultimate-gaslighting-6a8ce3f0a0e0

Goodreads page for me

2018-08-24T18:22:00.002-05:00

Now I have a Goodreads page listing things found there that I have stories featured in.

Reprint of "Daughter of Mettle"

2018-07-15T10:39:00.001-05:00

A reprint of "Daughter of Mettle" appeared in the July 2018 issue of Bards and Sages Quarterly.

"Things I Realized on Finding an Alien in the Passenger Seat of My Car" appears in Flash Fiction Online

2018-04-13T18:21:00.002-05:00

My short story Things I Realized on Finding an Alien in the Passenger Seat of My Car has been published in the April 2018 issue of Flash Fiction Online. I've been waiting for this for about six months. This is my second sale at a professional rate, and my first SFWA-qualifying sale.

I've been having a great time with this one. It's pretty great to have a story in an online magazine where you can share it with everyone and they don't have the barrier of having to locate and purchase a copy before they can read it. Tons of people at my office have told me they read and enjoyed it, and then they cite details proving they really did read it.

Some reviews of my story "Daughter of Mettle"

2018-03-06T20:59:00.002-06:00

I did some vanity googling and found these brief mentions of the story. The story itself (which came out way back in 2013) can be read at http://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/superhero/aaron-damommio/daughter-of-mettle

It's rewarding to find people posting about it. In several cases below, you'll want to search for the word 'mettle' as the story gets only a paragraph in an article.

My story "Road Trip" to appear in anthology

2018-03-03T09:15:00.001-06:00

My story "Road Trip" will appear in the Fell Beasts and Fair anthology from Spring Song Press. The anthology collects stories about magical creatures. This'll be my longest published piece so far, at about 3500 words, and my first one to feature a werewolf, and a sandwich.

It's available for preorder now, shipping March 20, 2018. The link above takes you the Amazon page; it's available as a Kindle ebook and a paperback, though the paperback may trail the ebook in availability.

As a result, I now have an Amazon author page, and you can search Amazon for 'damommio' and find the book, which somehow thrills me a lot.

Generating menu ideas with a simple Excel spreadsheet

2016-09-12T14:45:00.000-05:00

I have often found it difficult to plan menus for our house. So I thought I'd try randomly generating menus, and I'm excited about the results. We've been using this system for about 3 weeks, and here's what I've learned:

The most important thing here was to make a list of entrees that we actually cook at our house. That alone is a great resource for planning new menus.

"Aaron likes lists, and solving a problem with a new list makes him happy" isn't really anything new. But this is the first time I've tried to make a relatively comprehensive list of meals.

We're trying to plan our weeks more tightly. It's ok if we change the plan mid-week. But I'm finding it more useful than ever to have a plan for the whole week.
This is of some use in avoiding letting food we buy go bad before we cook it, but only if I stay on top of that issue.

I'm only talking about dinners here. I tried to find the lowest-tech way I could do this fast, and also something that would keep whatever data I generated in a common format. So, here's what I did:

Made a list of meal options in one column of an Excel spreadsheet
Inserted random numbers in the next column, using "=RAND()" in each cell.
SORT the list using the column of random numbers as the sort key.

The sort trick isn't my idea, I got it from searching on ideas for how to randomly sort rows in Excel.

That's it. I made it slightly fancier by writing a macro to do the sort and tying that to a key combo, but really I didn't do that until I had it for a while.

Each week I sort the list and then take the top 10 or so options and pick the actual ones I feel like making, freely throwing out stuff we ate recently or that sounds too involved for this week.

At first I thought I would be generating a list of 5 or 10 items,but sorting the WHOLE list and then just taking the top few items works fine. If I hate most of the top choices, I can just go deeper in the list.

Could you use JavaScript to make links that both rickroll and provide the original link as well?

2016-08-17T11:57:00.001-05:00

I was thinking that it ought to be possible to use JavaScript to create a link that takes you to a rickroll youtube page, but also provides the original desired link in some fashion. That is, you get rickrolled, but then the actual link you thought you were clicking on is available to you.

But, I'm not quite sure how to approach that, and I don't find anything like that in a Google search, so I'm putting it out there lazyweb style to see if anyone else knows how to do this.

My story "The Van Helsing Women's Shelter" now published on Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE

2015-10-27T08:12:00.000-05:00

I'm very pleased to announce that a short story of mine, "The Van Helsing Women's Shelter," is now available on the Stupefying Stories SHOWCASE website, just in time for Halloween. In a world where vampires are real, you could hope we might create a few institutions to deal with the problem.

This story was something of a response to one called "Bitten Women's Shelter" in Daily Science Fiction...a story whose premise I loved but whose take on the situation bugged me. So thanks to author Sean Vivier for blazing that trail.

You can find my complete list of publications here.

Colorado having great success with long-term birth control methods to reduce teen pregnancies

2015-07-12T08:41:00.001-05:00

...but funding is apparently drying up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/science/colorados-push-against-teenage-pregnancies-is-a-startling-success.html?_r=0

Why people choose violence

2015-06-25T09:37:00.001-05:00

I thought this article on Aeon was striking for its evidence-based approach to trying to answer the question of why people commit violent acts.

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/people-do-violence-because-their-moral-codes-demand-it/

It has ramifications for our justice system and for attempts to reduce things like gang violence, and in general for understanding other cultures.

Beating a chess master with a queen sacrifice

2015-05-27T13:23:00.003-05:00

Wow, long time no post. Here's a fun piece about how having good chess AIs available to all can change the way people train for chess. In it, the author describes how he prepared for a queen sacrifice gambit and then executed it against a much more highly rated player.

http://magazine.storycollider.org/2012/features/the-departed-queen/view-all/

A storehouse of pencil and paper games

2014-11-26T12:01:00.000-06:00

Here's a nicely organized collection of games that one can play with only pencil and paper. Really handy to learn a couple of these for entertaining kids on the fly.

http://www.papg.com/

I also found this interesting tic-tac-toe variation, ultimate tic-tac-toe:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-toe/

...which has a smaller board inside each square of a larger one. The kicker is, you must make your move on the small board corresponding to your opponents last move.

"A Kiss with Teeth" by Max Gladstone, short story about a vampire father

2014-11-24T08:05:00.000-06:00

I only read this for the first time yesterday and I kinda think it's going on my all-time favorites list.

http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/10/a-kiss-with-teeth-max-gladstone

It's perhaps the most mature vampire story I've ever seen. But I'm sure I'm biased by the fatherhood aspect. I'm starting to realize that short stories are more situational, seasons-of-life dependent.

So maybe the stories that really grab me now say as much about me or my current situation as anything else. However, that doesn't mean they aren't great. It means that a well-done story that his the right notes for me has more impact.

I think this story hits some deep universals. But maybe if you've never been a parent, those won't hit as hard. Feel free to give your own opinion in the comments.

Tacoma art museum shows Western depictions of Native Americans and allows them to comment on them

2014-11-19T15:46:00.002-06:00

Really interesting approach:

Tacoma Art Museum has just opened an entirely new wing devoted to a single collection of Western American art [depicting Native Americans and created by Europeans and Euro-Americans]. Because the work presented is culturally problematic, the museum has taken the unusual step of commissioning a handful of Native American people to write labels responding to the art. What results in the galleries can be frustrating, but it also breaks open the complexity of what's really going on both in the art and in the institution of the museum in 2014.

How Tacoma Art Museum Criticizes a Collection Without Angering the Donors

Best way to help the poor? Give them money, directly, in small amounts

2014-11-17T08:22:00.002-06:00

Experiments show they do not waste it and make better decisions than aid agencies; the result is improved lives and people off the public dole, with vastly less administrative costs.

https://decorrespondent.nl/541/Why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/20798745-cb9fbb39

Grief and old computing platforms, or why Paul Ford is a genius

2014-11-05T15:47:00.003-06:00

This article on medium.com by Paul Ford mixes the grief of losing a friend with nostalgia for old computing platforms. The way Ford weaves everything together is, to me, the mark of why he's a fantastic writer. I've been reading his stuff for years and years. I can't even express the feelings his writing evokes.

https://medium.com/message/networks-without-networks-7644933a3100

"Black Box" by Jennifer Egan, short story on the New Yorker web site

2014-11-02T07:29:00.002-06:00

I went to read this because I recognized Jennifer Egan's name. The associations in my head for her name were 'award-winning, literary, sci fi'. The story is interesting but I don't feel that I fully understand it.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/04/black-box-2#

When I checked my journal database I found that I'd read her book _The Keep_ in 2011 and been impressed. Similar to this story, though, I was more impressed while reading it than at the end, where there were some things that seemed unfinished.