“The city of murderers is safe for travelers and strangers.”
Category: Pulverbatch
I liked it this much despite the fact that it takes place in Kentucky
Recommended: Underground, by Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber. Those of us who are always demanding clever, tough ladies in lead roles will enjoy meeting cave geek Wesley Fischer, and those of you who want exciting comics without superheroes and lasersharking will be equally happy. (I could have stood a little more lasersharking, but my weaknesses are common knowledge.) There’s a hint of a sequel in the afterword, which is an idea I heartily endorse!
I realized later I should have made them say “BAD” and “ASSSSSS”
This is my current setup at work–since starting there last October, I’ve gradually advanced from working solely on my battered white Macbook to a laptop-and-monitor setup, then to a Mac Mini-and-monitor when my laptop got stolen, and now at last to the glorious panopticon you see above. I’m trying the portrait screen for my email client, SQL client, terminal and (mostly) IDE, and so far I really like it. I got the idea from some interview about a high-ranking Google engineer’s setup that I can’t be bothered to find now. Ben (the boss) said he thinks it originated with Flight Simulator junkies.
You can just barely see my tiny, mighty computer and a box of rejected business cards peeking out from under the right monitor stand; on the left are various plastic utensils, half a bag of snack chips, and a ceramic dish Kara gave me for reheating leftovers in the work microwave. The latter contains the Magical Neverending Napkin Supply. I never request or grab napkins from lunch places anymore, I just take whatever they throw in the carryout bag and put the unused ones in there. At this rate, I will never exhaust it.
The headphones are the stupidly expensive ones I bought from a DJ supply shop down the street, where the DJ supplier looked at me askance when I explained that I would be using them for web development. Like all headphones, they still annoy me with trapped ear-heat and weight, but they provide good isolation and I can stand them a lot longer than anything I’d tried before. I would have paid the whole price just to have the padded cups that go around (as opposed to pressing directly on) my ears.
Uh, what else can you see in there? Venerable iPod sitting on the Mini waiting to be plugged in, sexy aluminum keyboard that likes to shock me if I scuff my feet too much, expensive Logitech mouse with the click-and-lock free-scrolling mouse wheel that is fun but not actually that much of a productivity enhancer. Don’t tell Ben, he paid for that too. The little gray wrist cushion doubles as a stress ball / fidget toy. The books in the right corner are copies of the Ruby Cookbook and Mastering Regular Expressions, both of which I will go to great lengths to avoid cracking open. The shadow on the left is my hat.
Raising the level of discourse
The other day Erika got a request to do up a Penny Arcade guest comic and made the mistake of saying so on LJ–and, worse, confessing that she was a little nervous about it–at which opportunity I leapt like a jaguar in a trebuchet. I believe my exact words were “ERIKA ERIKA LEMME HELP I WANNA HELP ERIKA LEMME HEEEELP.” Out of some unknown and misplaced emotion, she acquiesced.
Anyway, it’s up now, so that’s pretty neat! That gag was Erika’s (and Matt’s?), I just helped tweak the dialogue (and, shamefully, truncated Professor Snugglesworth’s name). I did write the little bonus strip mentioned in the post.
This marks the second time in two years that my work has made some kind of appearance on PA. Based on linear progression, the plan is working, and by 2240 my takeover will be complete.
Still playing catchup on my 2009 material
On the plane to Kentucky for Christmas last year, I read Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang. For the first half of this reading, I was under the vague impression that it had been published in 2008. I found it tremendously enjoyable, and contemporary–a gay protagonist of color and strong female characters, China as the sole world superpower, a mundane and difficult life on a lunar colony–but with some irksome anachronisms, like the way the characters used their wrist-implant cyberjacks to make calls from pay phones.
Eventually I flipped back to check the copyright page. It came out in 1992.
Jesus Christ, Maureen McHugh, you were on top of this shit while the rest of the field was just starting to get boners for steampunk? I will be reading more of your books.
This is an easy test for determining premillennial science fiction from the postmillennial, by the way: the ubiquity of cell phones (and how big a deal the author makes about them).
One of my favorite things of the many, many I’ve stolen from Sumana is the notion that blogs get a “house style.” This, for the record, is the reason long works (novels, movies, etc) get capitalized but not italicized on NFD.
That’s no battle station
A few weeks ago, Kara and I went out to dinner at a fancy restaurant for her stepdad’s birthday, and I got to meet several members of her extended family for the first time. It was a really nice dinner and we all enjoyed ourselves. Then we walked out to the car, got in, started the engine, glanced backwards and realized that someone had smashed in the rear passenger window and stolen my bag, containing books and my laptop, and a couple hundred dollars’ worth of new clothes Kara had just had delivered by UPS. Have I mentioned that it was raining?
The waitstaff at the restaurant informed us that this was the fourth such smash-and-grab from their parking lot in three weeks. There is no camera or floodlight there. I still need to call up the building owners for a polite discussion about that.
The whole situation sucked a lot, but we got the window replaced and Kara got some of the clothes replaced by a kind friend for her birthday. My car insurance covered the window but not the contents; Kara’s home insurance would have covered them, but in neither instance did the damage meet the deductible. (I had to buy a new windshield after a rock chip incident last summer, too, so I have now replaced about 40% of the glass on my car out of pocket.) The fact is that we are very fortunate to have afforded such luxuries to begin with, and remain both fortunate and luxurious.
I replaced the laptop with a much newer, shinier, more expensive version, but then my boss took the opportunity to buy a nice new Mac Mini for my desk at work (I had been using the aforementioned four-year-old Macbook) and I returned it. The laptopless life is one plagued with tiny inconveniences, so I’ll probably buy it again in a few months when they update the hardware.
The point of this post is to eulogize my old dingy white Macbook, which, for a refurbished computer at the very low end of Apple’s lineup, did me proud for three and a half years. I used it as my only work machine for much of that time; it accompanied me to London, Innsbruck, Winston-Salem, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, London again, Paris, and Taastrup, where I dumped a glass of water into it and actually managed to grow mold on its hard drive. And then I replaced said drive and used it at the new job for another six months! No one could have asked more.
Thanks, Macbook. You were a good computer.
Geek Note: For reasons I can’t remember now, I named the laptop DEATHSTAR on our home network when I first bought it; after the hard drive resurrection (and, for the first time, the switch out of Boot Camp to native OS X), I rechristened it Fully Operational. Apparently every Death Star gets destroyed, though, so I have moved on to a new naming convention. Kara’s and my iMac is now the Batcave, the Mac Mini is the Batpod, and whenever I get the laptop again, it will be the Tumbler.
Update 2255 hrs: Kara has informed me that the iMac is named Hodge, after John Hodgman, and always will be, and HOW COULD I THINK THAT, and WHAT AM I GOING TO DO TO OUR CHILDREN, RENAME THEM EVERY TIME I READ A BOOK. (I say he’s only Hodge as long as Windows is running. He is a PC.)
Attention requisition notice
Here are things that are great!
Work Made For Hire is a smart, clear, unbelievably valuable blog about negotiation and freelancing. If you have ever argued a point or signed a contract, you need to be reading it.
MANual of Style debuted at a perfect time for me, as I’m finally figuring out how to dress myself like a grownup–which is exactly what the blog is about. It’s written in a series of lessons, but it’s also interesting just as a window into trend versus classic in men’s clothing.
An author named Tony Buchsbaum proposed a ratings system for books because he was startled to think his thirteen-year-old son might read the words “cock” or (yes) “manpole.” I am curious as to how Tony Buchsbaum grew up without ever being thirteen himself (perhaps his parents considered it unlucky?), but it gets better: a thirteen-year-old named Emily takes his argument and, in two comments, completely dismantles it. It’s an Ebert-on-Schneider-level takedown.
Is the writer actually thirteen? Who knows (I don’t see any reason to doubt it), but she’s certainly much more familiar with the experience of being a teenager than the people who think they need to be sheltered from scary words. Ratings systems are harmful, and teenagers aren’t the only ones restricted by them.
This isn’t really a political post
Wait, wait, wait. The national Tea Party thing in Nashville only had an attendance of six hundred? Six hundred white people, many of whom wore costumes?
Guys, that isn’t national news. That is a mid-sized role-playing game convention.
Want a sneak peek at Grimm, the comic Erika and I are working on? She’s been posting pencils, and they look balls-out amazing.