Had a nice weekend.
Went to see “Henry Rollins”:http://henryrollins.com Thursday night — got my white car driving again Friday night.
Finally did an oil change on the Bug Saturday night — finally played WoW again Sunday night.
!http://i19.ebayimg.com/03/c/06/ee/f0/21_7.JPG!:http://product.half.ebay.com/Double-Star_W0QQtgZinfoQQprZ886790
_by Robert Heinlein_
Another great Heinlein book. I’ve only read three of his (_Starship Troopers_, _Stranger in a Strange Land_, and _Double Star_), but all have been great. _Double Star_ is about a down-and-out actor who’s clandestinely hired to fill in for a high-ranking political leader who’s been kidnapped — just temporarily, at first, but then various events keep putting off his leave date, and it begins to look like he might not have a chance to ever leave the role!
While I love Arthur C. Clarke’s books for the technical specificity, I love Heinlein’s for the _writing_. His writing style is very “lively,” to say the least — hell, his dialog could even be described as “hokey” sometimes, but that’s just part of what makes it so fun to read!
If you _ever_ get to read one of his books, though, please—please, please, please—please make sure it’s _Stranger in a Strange Land_. There’s a good damn reason why that book’s called by many to be the greatest science fiction novel ever written.
The United Auto Workers union “went on strike today”:http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/24/news/companies/gm_uaw_strikedeadline/index.htm?cnn=yes..
The price of a barrel of oil has reached all new records (even if you aren’t seeing it at the pump yet — you will)…
“Relations with Iran are quite sour”:http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/24/us.iran/index.html…
The “new Dodge Challenger”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Challenger is coming out next year…
Jesus, all we need is to elect some sort of inept southern Democrat to be President and it’s the 70′s all over again!
I think Dennis Kucinich will do nicely. (Ohio’s almost the south — at least right over the Ohio river it is.)
!http://i2.ebayimg.com/03/c/000/77/37/3d39_7.JPG!:http://product.half.ebay.com/Debt-of-Bones_W0QQprZ30871432QQtgZinfo
_by Terry Goodkind_
An enjoyable read, even if I finished it in one day. More like the _old_ Terry Goodkind, and not the haughty, _full-of-himself-after-just-having-read-Atlas-Shrugged_ Terry Goodkind.
One issue, though — for one thing, the book is richly illustrated with very nice drawings every so often dealing with the events happening on those pages. Now, if you know anything about the “Midlands” in Terry Goodkind’s world of the _Sword of Truth_, you know that it was a land where a woman’s status in society (her class) was apparent by how long she could grow her hair — the higher in class society you were, the longer you could grow your hair.
The protagonist of the story, Abby, remarks in the first few pages (after seeing the Mother Confessor with her waist-length golden hair) about how _her_ hair “covered her ears but no more.”
Then a few pages later, you see an illustration showing Abby walking into the Wizard’s Keep on her errand… *with her long hair reaching past her shoulders*.
…is it that bloody hard to coordinate some sort of communication between a writer and an artist? Did anyone even look at these pictures (however nicely drawn they were) before they went to print?
“Robert Jordan died today”:http://www.dragonmount.com/RobertJordan/. Word is that the final book in the Wheel of Time series will still be released, since there’s quite a bit of unpublished material that he had lying around.
Apparently, he was writing (or at least dictating) up until the very end.
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_by David Brin_
Damn good book — not at all like the movie. Very well written. Starts off as a neat post-apocalypse movie and turns into an examination of the reasons behind man’s inherent need to destroy (and how it can be stopped).
Definitely worth a read.
Well, there’s a new addition to my family of computers — it’s my wife’s new portable laptop, Henry. (You just _always_ have to name computers — if you don’t, it’s bad luck! Kinda like with ships.)
!http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1157/1342842965_7bb70e7705_m.jpg!
Nina needed a slightly smaller laptop so that she could sometimes bring it to school — eh, who am I kidding? _Slightly_ smaller? No insult meant to the laptops we already had, but I’m firmly convinced that they were never meant to be portable — just _smaller_ than desktops. My personal laptop and hers are 15-in *8 lbs.* _monsters_, from about four or five years ago.
Now, this nice model (the Compaq Evo N410c), is from that era too, but for its time it was made with a completely different paradigm — it’s only 0.9 inches thick, weighs slightly less than 3.5 lbs, and is only 12 inches, diagonally.
…and I got it all, used, on “Ebay”:http://ebay.com, for less than what people pay for iPods.
…_used_ iPods.
We’re running “Ubuntu 7.04″:http://ubuntu.com on there right now, with all the bells, whistles, and fancy effects, and it’s more than capable of running it (3D-emulation worked right away). Not only that, but the installation was slick as shit, too — I’ve never had one run more smoothly than it did with Henry. Even the bonus wireless card that the seller included (one with a Prism GT chipset) worked right away, with absolutely no tweaking needed whatsoever…
The battery seems to be quite old, though (laptop batteries _never_ last very long), so I’ve ordered a new one that should be here soon.
I’ve been fiddling with my cars lately, too, in various efforts to fix them and tune them up.
The Beetle was brought to Montgomery in the guise of performing a break-light switch recall, and whilst it was there, I told them about a “funny vibration” we had been hearing for a while — I cringed the entire time I did this, knowing that, if it turned out to be something under warranty, the examination cost (about $70) would be covered, but if it wasn’t covered under the warranty, I had to fork over the dough.
Well, turned out the noise, which I had been thinking was an exhaust leak and malfunction, turned out to be a rear wheel bearing that was slowly wearing out — oops (it was my second guess, to tell you the truth). However, it’s covered under the warranty! Yeah!
My other cars have not faired so well. Ever since doing an oil change on my white Mustang (and disconnecting the battery so that I could clean off the terminals), it’s been shutting off at weird times and sometimes refusing to start up at all. I actually got a chance to check around the engine compartment today, and during the course of my examination, I decided to pull one of the spark plug boots off (just to take a random look)… and the spark plug boot fell apart in my hand, with most of it still remaining on the spark plug.
Yeah… I don’t know if that’s what had been originally causing my problem, but I’m sure it doesn’t help.
My purple Mustang has been having problems of its own, as well. It’s been “pinging” (a sound caused by ill-timed detonation of the fuel inside the cylinder) for a while now, but it’s gotten worse. I bought a “timing gun”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_light about a year ago with the intention of fixing the timing on my purple Mustang (if it needed it), but I couldn’t figure out how to use it with my car (the front engine compartment is very, _very_ cramped).
Well, today, a year’s gone past, and I’ve since figured out how — by moving my upper radiator hose two inches to the left.
That’s it. Why the hell couldn’t I have figured that out sooner?!? Now, to figure out what the hell I’m looking at and how to fix it!
It was this one and the one from Consumer Reports (Mean Failure Time — 100 Watt Challenge!) that had me laughing out loud.
