Thane said I should post this...

Reading books in this modern world...

I'll admit it.  I'm a technophile.  The more gadgety goodness I have in my life, the more exciting gadgets I want, and the more I think about the ways in which we can improve the functionality of the gadgets that are out there, setting arbitrary thresholds at which point I plan to dive into the technology, dreaming of the cool stuff we could do if only gadgets would do what I want them to.

Book Review: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

I like to think of myself as an avid reader, and sometimes I even follow up on that.  Over the last couple of weeks, I've finally been reading a series of books that I've heard quite a bit about, but never actually started until this attempt.  "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" by Spider Robinson.

This isn't serious sci fi by any stretch of the imagination, and in the author notes it's clear that he wasn't even really trying for sci fi when he started, and some people even wrote him nasty notes about wanting to cancel their subscriptions to the magazine they were published in since they weren't publishing science fiction anymore.  But it's still good.

Over the course of the 9 books that are loosely a part of this series (many of them taking place at Lady Sally's brothel, or in the bars that took over for Callahan's after it was destroyed in the nuclear blast), we meet a few time travelers, witness them all "getting telepathic," get an inside view of things at the weirdest sounding brothel ever, move to Key West, stow a toddler aboard the space shuttle, take on the mob, and generally deal with a lot of weirdness.

About a year of riding

I picked up cycling as a hobby and a habit in 2010.  I started out riding a beat up 10 speed that was so much too small for me that my 12 year old son rides it now, just back and forth to work.  After a month of that I was certain I needed to buy a new bike, and after another month I actually did.  My beautiful Trek 3700 and I did quite a bit of riding, but I wasn't really keeping track of it, and that annoyed me.

30 seconds with the Mac App Store

I realize that everybody and his brother is probably out there writing about the Mac App Store even as I type these words, but what's the point of blogging if it has to be unique? :)

Apple released their Mac OS App Store today, in an effort to annoy IT workers everywhere, and so I restarted my trusty iMac after running the update and gave it a spin.  The first thing I noticed is that it looks an awful lot like the iTunes Store inside iTunes.  Keeping the interface familiar is likely a good idea for this sort of launch, but I'll be curious to see if it evolves away from that model.

First Weird Dream of the New Year

I was living in an apartment building, but it was set up more like a hotel.  I was out to dinner, but we couldn't pick a theme restaurant, so we were driving around with the radio on. The news broke in...  some tyrant had just managed to take over the world, largely due to concessions granted their company by the major nations of the world.

They were going to thin out the unwanted, those who had no place in the new world they were fashioning.  The power was shut off, people were relying on fires, talking about leaving to go to Japan where it was imagined to be different.  Kevin seemed to be close to this tyrant, or at least nearby to this tyrant, and various other people appeared briefly... Phil was a zeppelin pilot, mostly covered in soot and speaking with a sort of cockney accent, Thane popped his head out of a ventilation thing on the side of a building, said "damn, still not the right one," and popped back down.  Sherri called me on the phone, and we made plans to meet the next day...

Spotted a rider...

I saw this guy out riding on New Year's Eve, as I was heading towards the sporting goods store to return a gift.  I'll admit to being jealous that he was on a bike and I wasn't :)

Pic from the parking lot...

Despite my marked preference for riding my bike to work, I've been driving the last week or so, in order that my son not have to lose his love for cycling due to the weather.  I snapped these pics (which I combined into a panorama) from where my car was parked.  Even though it was just the crummy camera in my phone, I still think this is kind of cool... click on it for a 3000px wide version, leave a comment if you want an 8000+ px version

Rays Indoor Mountain Bike Park -- AWESOME.

This place is a lot of fun.  I mean, wow. :)

We got there a little after noon and, except for the break to go grab a really late lunch, were there until almost 9!  My sweetie stayed until lunch time when she decided that the park wasn't for her...  

I want to write more, but...  i'm really sore and tired of being at the computer. :)

Holiday Spirit

So my son was just kidnapped by Christmas Carolers... I hope they bring him back in one piece :)

Things I learned concept not working out for me...

So I really want to blog, even though I know I don't have much of an audience right now.  And I know that I probably talk to each of my readers on IM or the phone at least once a week, if not once a day, making this a particularly inefficient way of communicating.  But I have hopes that I'll find my voice and that this will be something that I want to do, even when I'm busy with other things.

I liked the idea of the "what I learned today" type of post, and in an environment of 3-4+ posts a day I might try it again... or maybe invite other people to post that sort of thing...  but it's not working for right now.  It feels forced, and the whole idea of posting at a specific time feels contrived.  Maybe once I have readers and things to say, I could make sure that something is posted then, but not the things I learned one.  And my link recap failed too -- just too much going on there.  I read too many feeds and there are other ways for you to be reading that, including the new sidebar feed for my shared items and the shared item RSS feed and, of course, by subscribing to my shared items in Google Reader.

I don't really have any hope of comments at this point, so I'm going to just share a list of things that I plan to try:

Things I learned over the weekend... 2010-12-20

Again with the learning...

Okay, I'll admit it...

I like Christmas music.  I don't like it all year, of course.  There's something wrong about hearing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" while shopping for Halloween candy, but once we get into that groove between Thanksgiving and New Years, I like to hear a bit of the Christmas cheer.  When my friend posted something about this a couple of days ago, I thought it might be nice for me to talk about it too.

Things I've learned in the last 24 hours 2010-12-17

I'm pretty sure Tom didn't learn anything today... and then he comes up with all of this:

Things I've learned in the last 24 hours 2010-12-16

Did Tom actually learn something?

Things I've learned in the last 24 hours 2010-12-15

What has Tom learned?

Things I've learned over the weekend 2010-12-14

What did Tom learn since he last posted?

Father/Son Bonding activity...

So Sparks is getting a new laptop for Christmas, and because a great deal of the cost of this laptop was paid by his saving up, he knows about it already.  His mother (my ex) and I chipped in with him so that he could get a real laptop w/ accidental damage coverage and a warranty that lasted beyond 90 days.  It's a great little system and it should last him at least through high school, which was the overall goal.

Daily link catchup 2010-12-10

I thought I'd experiment a little bit with this "link catchup" idea, and maybe elaborate a little bit on the posts that I was most interested in.  Do a bit of research and see more about it or maybe just explain why it caught my attention.

Things I've learned in the last 24 hours 2010-12-10

What did Tom learn today?