Month: January 2012

  • Don’t know what you’ve got, ’til it’s gone… and comes back again

    20 Jan 2012 » 2 min read about Personal & Family

    Since about mid-December, the restrooms on my floor in the office building in which I work have been under major renovation. It means hiking up one floor to use the restroom. It often means hiking up two or three floors since the demand doesn’t change when the supply dwindles. Around the first of the year,…

  • My trusty scanner: the Canon ImageFormula P-150M

    19 Jan 2012 » 1 min read about Technology & Gadgets

    In my capacity as Evernote’s paperless lifestyle ambassador, I get enough questions about the scanner that I’ve used to go paperless that it probably warrants its own short post. I use the Canon ImageFormulaP-150M. The “M” designates its compatibility with a Macintosh, which is the machine it is connected to at home. Why did I…

  • My day at home with the Little Man

    19 Jan 2012 » 1 min read about Personal & Family

    The Little Man has been sick the last few days. I can remember when he was a little baby and each sniffle was cause for minor alarm. Now, fevers of 103 don’t cause particular concern. Even his school won’t send him home until his fever nudges above 101. Kelly stayed home with him yesterday and…

  • 15 use cases comparing e-books to traditional books: an illustrated list

    19 Jan 2012 » 7 min read about Reading & Books

    I’ve now been reading e-books for more than 2-1/2 years. For the 37 years prior to that, I read paper books exclusively. For a while now, I’ve been meaning to compare the two forms of book in some reasonable and understandable way, but I was hard pressed to come up with a format for such…

  • Post-blackout

    19 Jan 2012 » 1 min read about Personal & Family

    The Little Man was sick today and so Kelly stayed home with him. I’ll be on sick duty tomorrow should he need to stay home again. That means I went into the office, somewhat groggily. I slept very little last night. I’d planned to be up at 5am to get in some writing on a…

  • Stop SOPA!

    18 Jan 2012 » 1 min read

    Tomorrow, this site will be participating in the Stop SOPA protest. When you come to the site tomorrow between 8am and 8pm EST, you will see a splash screen in protest of SOPA with information on how to take action. You will be able to continue to the site, and if I have configured things correctly,…

  • “If By Reason of Strength…” reviewed in the April 2012 Analog

    17 Jan 2012 » 1 min read about reviews

    My novelette, “If By Reason of Strength…” is reviewed by Don Sakers in the April 2012 Analog, which I just received in the mail today. Sakers describes the story as: A thoughtful, engaging SF story at an attractive price… what more could one ask? The story is published through 40K Books in Italy. 40K publishes…

  • Why read the book?

    17 Jan 2012 » 1 min read about Reading & Books

    Over on her blog, fellow Arlington Writers Group member, Colleen Moore asks, “Why read the book when you can watch the movie?” She has some interesting comparisons between movies that live up to the books. But she concludes by asking, “So, why read the book?” I think it is an important enough question to reproduce…

  • My “to-read” story list

    17 Jan 2012 » 2 min read about Reading & Books, short fiction

    Many people I know have lists (or stacks) of books that they intend to read. I used to have something similar. But since shifting my focus to short fiction, and trying to read a lot more short fiction, I’ve discovered that despite doing a pretty good job at keeping up with 1 story/day, there are…

  • Connie Willis is the next Grand Master of science fiction

    16 Jan 2012 » 1 min read about awards

    I just saw the news via Locus and I am so excited! Connie Willis is the next recipient Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master award for science fiction. I love Connie’s books and stories. Doomsday Book was incredible and for a time, I thought unbeatable. But then she came out with Blackout/All Clear which topped Doomsday Book (in my…

  • The Golden Globes

    16 Jan 2012 » 1 min read

    Apparently, the Golden Globe awards were presented last night. I didn’t watch. Over the last 10 years, television and movies have mostly lost the battle for my time. There are other things I’d rather do like read, write, and spend time with the family. And besides, award shows were more fun when I lived in…

  • Weekend with the family

    16 Jan 2012 » 1 min read about Personal & Family

    I realize that I didn’t post here almost the entire weekend. This was a weekend spent mostly with the family, doing family activities and it was a lot of fun. It was mostly relaxing, too. It was fairly cold here the last several days. We had a fire in the fireplace both Saturday and this…