#870
11:59 pm, Wednesday, July 18th, 2007So I forgot to mention I finished Hyperion a few days ago. The ending is kind of a letdown. Ever read Rendezvous with Rama? It’s like that. Plus the last story, the Consul’s tale (”Remembering Siri”), is easily the weakest of the six. I’ll definitely read the sequel, if only to find out what happened with the Templar (Het Masteen)… But that’ll have to wait until after I finish Charles Stross’s Accelerando.
Lots of thunder here tonight. Must’ve been a nearby lightning strike a little while ago too since the lights all flickered in a weird way.
Brett dared me to mention state Senator Rodney Tom in tonight’s post. So nyah. I guess the coming race between him and Dave Reichert is going to be something special. I like Reichert, mostly because he so thoroughly trounced the incompetent Darcy Burner in a debate on Upfront with Robert Mak last year. Actually, I don’t care for either’s issue positions, but at least Reichert is experienced and well-spoken. I’ll take wrong and eloquent over wrong and clueless any day.
Have you seen this Real Lives sim? It’s kind of popular on 4chan ATM. Basically it lets you live out an entire life as a random person from a random country. You make decisions about investing, education, career, marriage, etc. Along the way it gives you facts about your assumed homeland. It’s very simplistic, but oddly enjoyable the first several plays. I’ve been running simulations in it to see if I can amass a million bucks USD. I got pretty close with one guy ($699K), but died of a freak stroke at 56.
Here are a couple of our dinners from the past few days. The steak and orzo with broccoli was last night’s. Orzo’s pretty neat, BTW. This was the first time I’d used it (excluding experiences with Rice-A-Roni). I prepared it like a risotto; came out pretty good.
Edit: Holy cow, I cut this one close. Apparently my web server’s clock is 3 minutes faster than my computer’s. Yikes.
July 19th, 2007 at 12:26 am
See, now that you’ve mentioned Senator Tom you’ve joined the big leagues.
July 19th, 2007 at 12:38 am
daaaaaaaang 11:59pm! so close!
July 19th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Dan Simmons == teh awesome
July 19th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Seriously, he can write anything — he’s got the big idea sweeping SF (you might like Ilium, too, although I’d say it’s not quite as good as Hyperion), he writes some hard-boiled modern day detective, some alternate/secret history with Hemingway (The Crook Factory), modern day horror (Carrion Comfort was good), and his (I think) latest is The Terror, a book based on a real-life failed Arctic expedition, but with some twists — the book sticks hard to known history and really evokes the period.
(Also, I couldn’t post this in Firefox. Had to use IE. )
July 19th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Re: Chuk: I guess that’s true — the tales in Hyperion were pretty varied. That’s so cool that we read the same author by coincidence… BTW, dunno what’s up with Firefox not posting. I use Opera.
July 19th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Authors: I’m reading Stross’ The Jennifer Morgue right now.
Firefox: it tells me “Error: This file cannot be used on its own.” It used to work.