Last weekend I joined my friend Tom Z on his annual pilgrimage to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I'd never been before, despite it being no more than 15 miles from my brothers' farm. Tom goes every year for a F2F with his online fantasy baseball buddies. Now I know how civilians feel at b.org gatherings ( Read more... )

Catching up on a the first three of a long list...

Passage at Arms - Glen Cook

( The vastness of space can neither be described nor overstated. )

I just went the entire month of January without ever seeing even a bit of my lawn. I can't ever recall having snow on the ground for an entire month. Coastal Rhody gets snow storms in winter, sure, and even an occasional blizzard, but the snow cover never lasts more than a couple of weeks. The temperature creeps up over freezing for a few days, ( Read more... )

It's snowing again. At least the temperature is back up in the twenties.

Sunk costs: costs that cannot be recovered once they have been incurred.

( Note to self: Never pre-register for a con until you get a look at the program, no matter what the discount is. )

I ran across a pretty nifty puzzle game today at Jay Is Games called Duck: Think Outside the Flock. Each level is a different puzzle involving adorable rubber duckies. The idea here is that you not only have to solve each puzzle, but you have to figure out what the puzzle is in the first place. Each one is different, although later puzzles pick up ( Read more... )

So, that was a thoroughly frustrating weekend. Almost all of the loot I bought from Amazon last weekend arrived by Saturday (and all using the supposedly slow super saver shipping), including both the Saitek Flight Yoke and the replacement battery for my Palm. After a quick inspection of the books I'd ordered, I started playing with stuff.

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( A Wing and a Prayer... )

Some men drink to forget; I play games on the computer. Spent most of the weekend directing an armored battalion from Normandy to the suburbs of Paris in Steel Panthers. Didn't ride my bike at all, although the only day the weather actually allowed me a choice in the matter was today, and I couldn't be arsed. The weather people have been recycling ( Read more... )

Spent way too much time at work yesterday, but the evening was good. Went to a Twelfth Eleventh Night party, ate way too much food, and then got my first look at the Wii. Boy, did I ever want one for about five minutes there. Mostly it was fun just watching the kids play it, but some of us adults got to play a quick game of golf on it later on, and ( Read more... )

It took me a couple of chapters to get comfortable in Halting State, by Charles Stross. The book is told using second person narrative, and it took awhile to get used to it. (Well, that and because the first character the reader takes on both speaks and thinks in Scottish.) The device makes perfect sense, since the book is about the investigation ( Read more... )

I continue to bounce back and forth amongst Pratchett's books about the Watch. This time it was Men at Arms, in which Vimes gets married, Carrot becomes a Captain instead of a king, and Angua makes her first appearance. Great fun and a compelling mystery. What more could one want?

Well, one could want to become immersed in that world, which ( Read more... )