Coming Soon
August 30, 2004
Parkdale
We put in a bid for the Parkdale house over the weekend. We offered pretty much everything he was asking/giving with the addition of a contingency on the sale of our current house.
He accepted.
So, sometime in the next couple of months we need to sell our house, pack and move. (Assuming, of course, that the inspection on Thursday doesn’t turn up any major problems.) I never thought I would move from a 1955 ranch into 1927 colonial.
I’ll try and get some pictures posted.
San Diego
August 28, 2004
Last weekend we were in San Diego for a wedding and bit of family reunion. It was the first time mom and dad; my brother, his wife and kids; and Sarah and I have all been together.
The wedding was Friday (friend of the family’s kid). It was interesting because the bride is Indian. Her and her family are Christian, and the ceremony proper was Christian, they did infuse it with some Indian traditions. The groom was escorted in by musicians playing some Indian music (of course); the bride arrived in a palanquin; she had henna painting done on her hands; and the bridesmaid’s dresses had an Indianesque pattern on them (the dresses themselves being fairly traditional Western dresses).
Anyway, a couple of photos. 1) Rachel at normal speed. 2) Uncle Tim and the kids.
Book Review – Psychoshop
Once again Alfred Bester comes out as one of my all time favorite authors. Psychoshop, which Bester didn’t finish, was completed by Roger Zelazny — another Science Fiction author I respect.
The novel is a weird romp through all of time as a reporter works on a stroy of the Psychoshop — The Black Place were the Soul Changer will exchange any unwanted aspect you have for something else. Suffer from unwanted premonitions? Trade them in for something else, like good luck.
There are elements of Dr. Who, Total Recall, The Minority Report, etc., and I always have to remember that Bester came first. (Though maybe not with this novel. I’m unsure of the timeline for all of these novels. But Bester did have significant impact on all of Science Fiction — he is, after all, one of the founders of the genre.)
There is one flaw in the book. It seems to go along just fine, then about two-thirds of the way through the twist happens and it (sort of) rushes to conclusion. I attribute this to its unfinished state and Zelazny taking over. But who knows what Bester left behind for Zelazny to work with.
Overall, if you like SciFi, you owe it to yourself to pick up any Alfred Bester work. I’ve now read The Stars My Destination, Psychoshop and a couple of short stories. I’ll be picking up The Demolished Man and Virtual Unrealities (a collection of short stories) to fill out my Bester library. (These are all Vintage Press works. They have done very nice reprints with introductions from Greg Bear, Neil Gaiman, Harry Harrison and Robert Silverberg.)
Silver Medal
August 26, 2004
I just held a silver medal from the Athens 2004 Olympics Games.
Kara Lynn Joyce, daughter of one of our VPs, won two silver medals in swimming — one for the 4X100 Freestyle Relay and one for the 4X100 Medly Relay.
I never thought that I’d actually get to hold an Olympic medal. How very cool for me. Congratulations to Kara and her family (dad looked awful proud) and thank you for sharing with everyone here.
Quick Updates
August 25, 2004
- Spent the weekend in San Diego for a wedding and to see family. Played with neice (2) and nephew (4). More later.
- Getting new cell phones and service tomorrow. Goodbye T-Mobile, hello Sprint. If all goes well, land line will be cancelled soon.
- Half dozen people looked at our house over the weekend. This is good.
- Very likely putting in offer on Parkdale tonight. This is very good. This is also slightly nerve-wracking.
- Hopefully getting my own server space this week. Plan on moving blog over (eventually) to new domain and running WordPress. Also entails redesign (or real design).
Dahlias
August 18, 2004
Our Decorative Dahlia Duet has gotten huge. It stands nearly 4′ tall and has a 6′ spread. The flowers, as you can see, get rather large.
Beauty shot of one of the Dahlia Diablos:
Dyslexia
I have a mild form of dyslexia. I know this not through any doctor’s diagnosis, but through the seer simple fact that I transpose letters and numbers on a fairly regular basis.
And it seems to be getting worse. Or at least changing.
See, I use to pretty much just swap numbers around, which made things like balancing a checkbook interesting. Instead of entering $14.95, I’ll enter $14.59. Thank the gods for Quicken, it makes finding those little errors so much easier.
Lately my dyslexia is attacking words. Sure, it would crop up now and again — I have trouble words such as ‘trial’ which I almost always type as ‘trail’. Now, I’m not a great speller so some of my spelling errors are simply bad spelling and not dyslexia.
However, I have recently developed a trend of typing words backwards. Not just transposing letters mind you, but spelling words correctly and entirely backwards. Mostly it seems to be when I type ‘the’ it will come out ‘eht’. ‘That’ has been typed ‘taht’. Just the other day I was working on a Web page and adding some code. Instead of typing ‘<div>’ I typed ‘<vid>’.
I think what is most odd it watching myself do it. My brain composes a sentence, sending the words to my fingers. Brain says “the”, fingers move, and I see “eht” appear on screen. Brain stops. Brain looks at screen and says “won s’taht ddo…”
House Hunting
August 13, 2004
In the past couple of weeks we’ve looked at a fair number of houses and it has been rather depressing. We just haven’t seen anything that sparks our interests — except the very first house we went in before we had even called our realtor.
Last night we looked at another four houses, including a third walkthrough of aforementioned house (hence known as Parkdale). At least last night wasn’t as depressing as most of our other outings. Previously we have seen houses that were ugly, downright nasty, or simply “not us.”
Last night we saw some cute bungalows that were very well maintained and updated. They all have some features that we liked. But none of them feel as nice as Parkdale. I can see myself on the deck or in the living room of the Green House; I can see myself in the dining room and garage of the Gray House; the porch and garage with stone fireplace (yes, you read that correctly) at the Yellow House are interesting.
But at Parkdale I can see myself in the living room, in the office, kitchen, dining room, bedroom, basement, yard, front porch (with swing!)…. It seems to be the most complete package.
Now there are a couple of problems with it: it looks like it may need a new roof; the front porch will need some future work; the garage is in need of repair/replacement (but is a cool post-and-beam style construction). We are OK with these things. It does have the “worst” location of all of the houses. The others are tucked into neat little neighborhoods, while Parkdale is a more main street leading away from the downtown. We have been there at rush hour on a couple of occasions and it isn’t that bad. I also don’t see it getting worse in the future since the area is pretty much developed. I also noticed a no truck sign yesterday, which makes me happier.
So, what does all of this mean? Simply that Sarah and I are confused. And that we will probably put in an offer on Parkdale. And that’s a bit scary because no one has looked at our house yet.
Somehow we knew it would happen this way.
Firefly
August 10, 2004
Here is a great example of network executives screwing up a good show. When Firefly premiered, I tuned in to watch and was less than thrilled. I tried watching the second episode, but only made it part way through.
Now, through the power of DVD (on loan from Jack and Kristen) I have seen the entire series the way it was meant to be.
It seems that the suits decided they wanted something with “more action” to kick off the series, so they had Mr. Whedon write a new episode at the last minute for the pilot. And it shows. I disliked “The Train Job” from the get-go for a couple of reasons:
- It was a bit confusing since I didn’t know who these people were or why they were together. Something that the pilot episode (“Serenity” parts 1 & 2), by the way, sets up very nicely.
- It felt sloppily written. The captain’s dialog in particular irratated me to no end — mainly his terse instructions with no explanation. I just didn’t beleive that he would have a plan and not share it with his crew (I mostly refer to the hiding of the doctor and his sister). Wathcing other episodes, the crew, for the most part, knew what the plan was, or at the very least Mal would tell them “I’m still working on that.”
If you like SciFi and if you like Westerns, I suggest giving the DVD collection of Firefly a try. When you watch the show in the order it was written it makes much more sense, and is certainly more entertaining.
