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| Friday, February 18th, 2011 | | 5:16 pm |
I'm visiting this account today ...
It' has been almost three years since I posted in this journal. Oh the times they have changed. I'm now three years into the job I posted about -- and at one whole week of work I figured it was a keeper. I went back to the Kim Harrison books, got over the hump, and read at least seven of them. They were ok. I never did finish the second Diane Duane book about the cats. Never mind -- I like cats, but I'm not an extremist. In my other journal (kalimeg) I spent all of 2009 talking about John Taylor, and the little things we did as he battled cancer. I am glad I married him, and still sorrowed that I lost him so soon. I have read lots and lots of books in these three years -- I read all but 2 of the PC Cast vampire books, read and loathed Twilight, read the Cate Tiernan witchcraft books, many Ringo books, Connie Willis, David Weber's Honor Harrington offerings. The Heinlein biography part 1 by Bill Patterson was up in non-fiction. I read and absolutely loathed Bujold's Cryoburn. Her Sharing Knife books were much better, fortunately. Yes, I am alive. If I have comments about books, I'll put them here. | | Friday, February 29th, 2008 | | 11:17 pm |
Life and Books
The good news is that I have finished my first week of work. Yes, a whole week. It's an interesting job, and it should be just the right thing to do for the rest of my work life. Good books in the last month or two include Jo Walton's Ha'penny and Cherie Priest's Not Flesh Nor Feathers. I've done a bit of re-reading -- the first three Stirling books that start with Dies the Fire and an old Jack Finney called Time and Time Again. Finney is massively obsessed with the 19th century, and this books is another variation on that theme. I've also read a Diane Duane, The Book of Moon With Stars. I have the volume that follows that, which will likely be next. I guess that I will be able to continue with my book habit. That is one of the main things a job is good for! | | Sunday, February 10th, 2008 | | 2:06 pm |
Best Related Book
We have about three more weeks to nominate our favorites for the 2007 Hugos. The Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Souvenir Book has articles by Spider and Jeanne Robinson, Allen Steele, David Brin, John Scalzi, Jordin Kare -- and even more tributes to the master of fiction. It also had a poem Heinlein wrote in high school, his first story, written for a contest when he was stationed on the Lexington, an article he did for Playboy but never submilled, a letter he wrote to Congress -- and lots of great bits, including his Annapolis yearbook writeup, family pictures, and other memorbilia. This is availaible at the Centennial web site [ http://www.heinleincentennial.com/kc/marketplace.html ]. You could surely still get it and read it! | | Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 | | 3:17 pm |
Books
I finished Not Flesh Nor Feathers by Cherie Priest. She is a very good writer -- and while I may have found Wings to the Kingdom to be slightly more satisfying, this was still an excellent read. One of the things she does is make her monsters real and alien. She also makes her human characters a lot more real -- mixed virtue and fault -- so that her work creeps out of the cardboard dimension toward life. I am also on the fourth of Novik's Temeraire books. I have a feeling she should stop before she comes down with McCaffreyitis -- she is already pushing it. I will finish this one, but it's my last. I have also put aside the Kim Harrison Witch books. Jenks was my favorite character, and it was not enough to carry me through the second book. Starting the third was just not gonna happen. I have a friend who thinks he can tell Weber's writing from Ringo's in a collaboration. So let me put his speculation out here, and if anyone know the facts, please comment. He says that Weber wrote We Few from the start until they are "planning the attack", and from there on the work is Ringo's. Anyone agree? Disagree? Know for sure? | | Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 | | 7:57 pm |
Year End is Coming
Of all those mouse pads I made for the Heinlein Centennial, I'm down to 5 of Pixel and 6 of Free Luna! And when they are gone, I will take them off my web site. Oh ugh, my nice HTML editor died with my other PC. I will probably have to get it a new motherboard or put the software on my laptop. I suppose I could just pull down the HTML and edit it -- I should be able to manage that even without software. The XL shirts are going fastest. Once this run of shirts is gone, they will also go away. Same with the mugs. Same with *all* the Heinlein related goodies. PayPal is running slow. An order hit my mail today that was dated 12/16 -- and I have been checking every day. I hope no one makes a late order that PayPal sits on, but right now it looks like they are bogged down too far to get orders out on time to people with PayPal carts on their web sites. | | Thursday, November 29th, 2007 | | 10:40 pm |
More Reading
I finished Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds. No surprises in it since I read the second book before the first. I am still reading Dreadful Skin, a book of hers unrelated to the other two. I am finding it hard going, though I don't know why. Meanwhile, I polished off Jo Walton's Ha'penny and Robin McKinley's Dragonhaven. Loved the Walton, a fitting second book after Farthing. The McKinley -- well, maybe I just don't slip into the POV of a 15 year old boy anymore. I wish I actually thought that was the problem with this book. Maybe it was the attempt to use current teen expression that may have done me in. I had a hard time liking the POV character. I've read quite a few books with male teen protagonists. This is the first time I have had a hard time with it. The story was OK, but I think I expect extra from McKinley that I don't from other writers -- and this time it wasn't there in a way that reached me. My next book is sheer junk -- Kim Harrison. | | Friday, November 9th, 2007 | | 8:13 pm |
Good Stuff
John Scalzi had some excellent advice on his blog, the Whatever, awhile back. It was to find and read the fiction of Cherie Priest. I managed to find a copy of her Wings to the Kingdom, and it was excellent. Even within the first chapter, I could tell that I had latched onto a solid job of storytelling. I really want to get hold of all the rest of her work, it was that good. It was probably the first book I ran through in under a day that I've had for quite awhile. Today, for going back through old books, I'm reading a compendium volume that I bought but never read end to end because I'd read the volumes that went into it. Ingathering is a NESFA Press collection of Zenna Henderson's People stories. It will take me a couple of days to finish all of it. Meanwhile I have not yet decided what else to read in between. Possibly a Ringo/Travis Taylor collaboration. Maybe one of the YA books that I have stacked up. | | Monday, October 22nd, 2007 | | 8:58 pm |
It Goes
I had someone from England order a Heinlein Centennial shirt and a mug from my web site, and she wrote to say they arrived today. I was glad to hear it because the Post Office can't do overseas delivery confirms. www.oculustertius.com -- she said they were wonderful. It's nice to make someone happy. Tomorrow will be a sad day -- it's the funeral of Rick Urdiales, late of the KC Science Fiction Society. He was murdered in KCK last week. I said to someone that if this keeps up, our In Memoriam page is going to be longer than a membership listing. The group itself is over 30 years old, Old and new -- I am trying to read a fantasy by Harrison, and re-read Willis's Doomsday Book. I would do a lot better if I did not fall asleep the second I get a book open!. Must be winter coming. | | Monday, September 17th, 2007 | | 1:40 pm |
Green Glass Sea
This week isn't the first time I wished that Pat Taylor were still alive, but when I finished Green Glass Sea the feeling was particularly sharp. She would have loved this book. In the clearest sense, she was "one of our kind of girls" -- the kind who followed her interests instead of the conventions. Green Glass Sea is a YA novel about a young girl whose father is sent to the southwest in the 1940's -- to that place that was on no map, to work on "the gadget" that no one could mention, and that had no name. There are cameo appearances by Dick Feynman and Robert Oppenheimer. The book is full of the feel of that period, packed with background detail -- and very much centered on the way kids act toward those who are different. And always there, shrouded as it would have been, was "the gadget". I wish Pati had been here to share it with. | | Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 | | 4:26 pm |
The Bid
Ah yes, The Bid. It's over. Montreal will host the 2009 WorldCon. At our last executive committee meeting, I said to Margene that the Heinlein Centennial had taught me a couple of things. It taught me that I was likely capable of running a WorldCon, and that doing so would clearly make me suicidal. Offhand, I can't think of a more horrible job. When I filled out my vote for site selection, I sat in front of that piece of paper quite awhile before filling it out. And no, even now I won't say what I thought about, or what I decided. Instead I'm going to do a short con report on the Toronto Worldcon, and what things made it particularly incompetent. Perhaps with a short Toronto critique, Montreal will start working to do a better job. After all, one of the things I thought at that piece of paper was "Toronto in French". Not a good thought. 1) The WorldCon should make sure that the Guest of Honor is actually picked up at the airport. Mr. Gaiman is not going to be amused to sit in Montreal's airport without a ride, even if there is a reasonably-priced shuttle. 2) The con should get several bids on the printing of the program book. They should choose one that does not eat half the convention budget for a mediocre job. Really, folks -- find a professional and let him or her get the job done. 3) Program books should be delivered the Tuesday before the convention at the latest. Delivering them several days after the start of the convention is bad practice. 4) Convention staff should have the entire program for the convention planned, staffed and proofed at least two weeks before the start of the convention. It would be nice if you would put it on your web site, as well. Using crossed out cardboard signs standing in hallways to announce programming items was tacky and inefficient. Toronto's programming was one of the lowlights of the convention. 5) I know you can't keep your government from skinning dealers and artists at the border, which is too bad because it really undermines the dealer's room. Try to lure in additional Canadian dealers. Someone get a table full of Canadian snacks or something. Like those great Christie's Maple Leaf cookies you used to hand out at your bid table, or that fine maple fudge. OK. I spent way too much time at the Toronto WorldCon working on the bid we were doing then, and even I could see where it needed people who could do a job. Watch out for volunteers with a dubious history, folks. | | Saturday, August 25th, 2007 | | 1:00 am |
Books
I have finally re-started plowing through books at a decent rate. Before I could read _Harry Potter_ I had several library books to finish. The second and third of the Naomi Novik Temeraire books were first, then Jo Walton's _Farthing_. _Farthing was excellent, and I'm looking forward to _Ha'penny_ when the library gets it. Then as soon as I was done with those, my roommate brought Laurell Hamilton's _Harlequin_ home from the library. At last -- a Hamilton that actually had some plot. Not an enormous amount, but miles better than the last three of her books. So then I read _Harry Potter_, Janet Evanovich's _Twelve Sharp_, a Meg Cabot book, and finally I'm reading David Palmer's _Emergence_. I still have a lot piled up because I hardly read anything during the runup to the Centennial. Got through the Hugo nominees and not much else. I went to the Emma Bull/Will Shetterly book signing at the Oread Shop. Emma offered to put the curse against people who fail to return books into my copy of _War for the Oaks_. I told her that was OK, I would just continue keeping my copy away from others and buy loaner copies when I thought someone needed one. | | Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 | | 11:50 pm |
| | Saturday, August 11th, 2007 | | 3:17 pm |
Ah, technology!!
I'm being thwarted at every turn. I may have to make the new machine dual Windows and Linux just to be able to run Second Life. Seems the windows emulator hates my version of Linux. The Second Life Linux versions need to be *run* somehow and I haven't figured out how to do that. I have multiple versions of all sorts of things downloaded onto my desktop, waiting for lightning to strike or me to figure out how to deal with the things. To get into LiveJournal I had to put a password into Notepad and then paste it into the LJ password box because I could not type there. How obnoxious! | | Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 | | 12:03 pm |
PC Blues
My PC has just hit the wall. I did not have enough free space on my C drive to do a defrag. So I backed up the entire drive and then deleted lots and lots of stuff. Still no joy, so I moved all my documents and all my games off onto another drive. Finally -- enough space to defrag. But I know when it's time to migrate. Now. So I am looking into having a new PC built. This time I'll have a Linux operating system, and a big enough graphics card to support Second Life. Did I mention that Second Life sits still and dies on my current PC? That is a sure sign that it's upgrade time. Once I have a new Linux machine I'll have this old one reformatted to have one drive, and then I'll bring back the stuff I've put on a backup drive. Windows 2000 Professional still works for me, so that is what will go on the reformatted machine. No way that Vista will ever get near a machine of mine. Microsoft has gone beyond the bounds with its DRM enforcement. A Pox on them, on the RIAA, and on universities that give out information so their students can be harrassed. | | Friday, August 3rd, 2007 | | 11:45 am |
| | Sunday, July 29th, 2007 | | 11:39 pm |
Finished The Sharing Knife: Legacy
This is a pretty thin book. It occurs to me that with 800 page juveniles that need a sling hitting the market, the excuse for splitting Sharing Knife into two books is as thin as this second volume. "It completes the story" is what Glynnis said. I'm not sure that is even true. This book may be the kind of marginal I expected Cetaganda to be when I received it those many years ago. Sharing Knife does not do a lot for character development. It does not do major plot or adventure advancement. It gives some small look at Lakewalker culture and a hard look at Dag's family. Dag's family is nasty enough to make Fawn's family look almost ok. I'm not sure it was worth a book to do that. I now have two Noviks and Jo Walton's Farthing to finish before I get to Harry Potter. The publishers of Harry Potter cast shame on Avon Eos and other publishers of adult fiction who are reluctant to publish whole works in one volume. | | Saturday, July 28th, 2007 | | 2:36 pm |
It Resembled Work
I spent the better part of the last two days putting together my first web page. http://oculustertius.comAnd I have my first thing on eBay, too: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:31&item=150146287716So now we'll see if I get any hits -- or any arrangements with people who do sales. The amount of postage it takes to send a mug killed me -- it's 9.00 via parcel post (and yes, I have already sent out out there, so I really know). Good old Pay Pal thwarted my desire to use different shipping methods for different things, so to get enough to cover the postage on the mugs I had to hike the price. Some days you can't win -- but let me say that the Pay Pal merchant interface could use some changes, or I could use some education. Unfortunately, the latter is more likely this time. | | Friday, July 20th, 2007 | | 12:32 am |
Story Contest Winners Online
The winners of the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial** story contest are now available for download at: www.heinleincentennial.com There are six stories in the style of Robert Heinlein. These were given cash awards at the Heinlein Centennial Gala in Kansas City on 07/07/07. The judges were Professor Emeritus James Gunn of the University of Kansas; Bill Patterson, author of the new Heinlein biography that will soon be available from Tor Books; and James Gifford, author of Robert A. Heinlein A Reader's Companion. They will be available as a PDF for the next 30 days only. Enjoy! Tina Black Centennial report: http://tinablack.livejournal.com/4184.html?mode=reply**This event was the effort of a group of Heinlein scholars and admirers that was assembled for the sole purpose of enabling the celebration of Robert Heinlein's 100th birthday in grand style. We are a unique entity and not associated, in any form, with any other group or institution. We are not connected with the Heinlein Prize Trust, the Heinlein Estate or the Heinlein Society. | | Sunday, July 15th, 2007 | | 12:47 pm |
The Heinlein Centennial {Long Version}
What was different about the Heinlein Centennial? The panelists took their participation pretty seriously. There were hardly any participants who were late or absent. Those I spoke to were full of praise for their audiences. They were gratified that the panels were packed with eager listeners. I heard that the depth of questions and comments even put many academic conferences to shame. Someone remarked that he thought the Centennial would not be a good place for a one-on-one with the participants. It's too bad he missed the chance to find out otherwise. Dr. Yoji Kondo, astrophysicist and editor of the Heinlein memorial volume Requiem, had a panel that was so lightly attended that when the timekeeper went to check the room, Dr. Kondo and his audience were seated together having a discussion for the length of the panel. ( **********click here!********* )Tim Kyger, Bill Patterson, Jim Gifford, Peter Scott, Alan Koslow -- the original Cell B -- dreamed that we could celebrate. Keith Kato, Barbara Trumpinski-Roberts, and I pretty much made up Cell C. You know it's true -- I signed many communications with my party name, Centennial Catherder. It was very intense, indeed. It was one of the best things we've done. | | Monday, July 9th, 2007 | | 10:21 pm |
Heinlein Centennial
A letter to Roger Tener: Dear Roger, As someone may have already told you, Pat Taylor passed on July 5, 2007 Pati was mine, and she will stay with me in memory, always. And we have come to a sort of conclusion. Pati always called Heinlein "Uncle Robert" -- she was part of the celebration in Butler with him back in 1978 or so. We figure that she knew we were going to celebrate his 100th birthday, and since her body would not let her leave the nursing home, she decided to go party with Uncle Robert in person. This weekend was the Heinlein Centennial. I spent the weekend at a dead run, and hardly got to anything, so you will need reports from others on most things. I believe most people had a wonderful time, and people often stopped me to rave about the programming and say thank you. It was so nice of them to stop and do that -- almost the first time I've seen anything like it. But oh, there were some wonderful spots. The best -- the best of all! -- was when Jeanne Robinson gave her Stardance preview. She thinks that man won't live in space until art goes there with him, and she intends to start creating art there. She spoke of fund-raising, and having to raise about $250,000 to send her and a dancer into space to work on the Stardance. Each trip costs about $100,000*. Just after she said that, Dr. Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize, stood up and said he would make sure she got her trip to zero-G. It was quite a night. It was worth doing. I want to thank each and every person who gave up their entertainment to come help throw the party. You are the ones who made it happen, and you know who you are. Tina Black _______________ * According to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17156385/ about Hawking, the current trips cost about $3,500.00 for each seat. I suppose that if one wanted to film a dance, $100,000 would be a modest estimate. At least, thanks to Dr. Diamandis, Jeanne will get to taste zero-G. TB |
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