Shelves!
We have put up shelves in the study. It was an adventure.
We were going to do it yesterday, but the tip broke off the drill bit around hole #4 (of 28). It was Saturday afternoon, and Simon’s valiant quest to find an open hardware store was, alas, futile.
My father had a drill bit of the correct size, but my parents were not at home, and weren’t intending to return until late at night. So we went to pick up the drill bit after midnight, after Lucas’s birthday party. We stayed for tea and a brief exhibition of scanned old family photos (which I hope to get on DVD when my mom has also done all our slides; some of them are from almost a hundred years ago; it’s awesome).
So this morning we got up early and actually put up the shelves, discovering that our own masonry drill bits are incredibly crappy in comparison to my dad’s drill bit, and that we should get better ones before we attempt to drill any more holes in our walls.
So now most of our equipment is up on the shelves, and no longer collecting dust on the floor or hogging desk space. There are cables draped artistically all over the place; it looks like a server room; I feel more industrious already.
In other news, I have finished reading the X-Men: Age of Apocalypse collected series. It wasn’t as good as I remembered it — very incoherent, plot all over the place, and millions of characters with seconds of screen time. I shouldn’t really be surprised; I think a lot of alternate universe / special event storylines are like this, since they aim to cram in as many familiar characters as possible. I guess that when I read bits of it in the Clawroom years ago I assumed that the story would flow better if I could read the whole thing.
Other recent comic purchases: Little White Mouse omnibus by Paul Sizer, and the first three volumes of Girl Genius. Haven’t finished reading them yet. I think I’ve plugged Girl Genius before; it’s a very cool steampunk adventure comic, and you can read it online.
Off to watch more House, now that my computer is once again plugged in. My preciousss.
SFF book meme
Memage! Stolen from Extemporanea and others.
Bold = read; italic = started but never finished; asterisk = loved it; strike-through = disliked it.
1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov*
3. Dune, Frank Herbert*
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe*
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin*
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith*
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke*
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven*
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut*
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Trooper, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
Notes:
* 5: I love her SF. I hate her fantasy. I don't know why.
* 36: bolded halfway on purpose; I have the abridged collection with the same name as the complete collection. 
* I can't believe Helliconia isn't more popular.
* Some of these people have written stuff that I loved, but it's not here.
* LOTR – meh. Couldn't finish it in high school; made myself read it before the movies came out.
Stuff…
Long time, no blog.
About L5R
My L5R campaign seems to be running well so far; after the initial deer-in-headlights I think I’ve remembered how to DM. Two sessions so far; the third one will feature all of my players (now that exams are over).
It makes an interesting change to have a party not focused on combat (two soft-hearted shugenja; one courtier moonlighting as a yojimbo; one currently absent monk). So far most of the plot has revolved around ghosts, since we have just passed the night of the dead. The campaign is expected to focus on the investigation of magical crime. Of course, it will probably go off on a total tangent, as campaigns are wont to do.
About gay marriage, zOMG!!!1eleven
There’s a lot of running in circles, screaming and shouting in response to the new Civil Union Bill. I can’t say that I’m happy with the form that this legislation has taken — an unnecessarily complex, convoluted and redundant one — but it’s better than nothing.
I wish all the people who are convinced that The World Is Going To End would donate all their stuff to charity. I mean, if we’re going to be wiped out by a flood for our brazen wickedness tomorrow, they’re not going to need any of it.
I also wish that SA had not taken the route of making most religious marriages almost automatically recognised as legal marriages (with all the paperwork quietly and conveniently done in the background). I think if people had to go to home affairs to apply for legal marriage status explicitly, as was done in communist-era Poland, fewer people would have trouble separating the concepts of religious and legal marriage. And then maybe there would be less wailing and gnashing of teeth, and more chilling out and leaving other people to their alternative social customs. Or maybe I’m being overly optimistic.
Buy someone a cow
Recent Tweets
- @firstfallen I like option 4 too. Option two is also nice, but kind of busy.
- Twitter, you are making me sad in my pants. Fix your damn RSS feeds or stop linking to them. http://tinyurl.com/2apmyjv
- @AnnaMalczyk It wasn't hard -- wasn't actually using it for anything. Stupid LJ crossposting feature was final straw. Do not want! D:
- Or not so much. Now exploring these possibilities: http://tinyurl.com/382w9kg
- http://topsy.com FTW; actually seems to have access to full Twitter history.
- @TheRiver I'm following these instructions; don't know how "complete" this is: http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account
- I just nuked my Facebook account. When the boat anchor starts biting your ankles, it's time to let go.
- @firstfallen I don't think you're being oversensitive. Waiting would have cost little and been worth a lot. They chose to be dicks about it.
- @firstfallen They all deserve to be summoned to a compulsory team-building workshop on Christmas Eve. :P
- I think encasing the whole block in this tree would make the street look much better. Cut window and door holes. http://tinyurl.com/2vjhg3m
