The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey September 8, 2015

Mailing list etiquette...

7 zillion years ago (Internet time) - aka 2002 - I attended the Contact Conference at NASA Ames. It was wonderful, made sad only by the fact that a part of it was a memorial for Poul Anderson. Niven, Pournelle, Vinge, and many others were in attendance as well. However, enjoying a conference over 13 years ago does not excuse the email I received today: My reply to the list owners went something like this: I've already unsubscribed myself, thanks, but you should consider sending an apology to the rest of the list, and provide clear, simple-to-understand instructions for unsubscribing…

Brian Bilbrey September 6, 2015

Magic Blue

Or some silly color name like that. Anyway, that's the exterior color of Marcia's new car. She decided that hauling around her quilting friends and her quilting stuff in a low-slung, two door convertible was getting less and less convenient. So after driving a few different vehicles, she ended up with a Volvo V60T5 - one of their little sport wagons. Nice lines, I think, and she's happy, which is a good thing. I've spend a number of hours this weekend working on a project for $OFFICE, and got the front yard brown stuff mowed a bit flatter, too. Mostly…

Brian Bilbrey August 30, 2015

Toilets and Sewing Machines

A toilet, and a sewing machine: these are both things I worked on repairing today. I was successful in repairing the toilet. However, I don't have the specialized knowledge I need to safely work on Marcia's quilting machine. If I could have fixed this, it'd save us 50 or a hundred bucks. But I can do ever so much more damage than that ... so I tried, and then I stopped. I also had a fair amount of outside-of-business-hours work this week; Some yesterday, and more of that starting around 0645 this morning and going on for a couple of…

Brian Bilbrey August 23, 2015

Kerfuffle, Past and Future

The Hugo Awards were last night. First off, congrats to the winners. I'm happy for them. I enjoyed the winning work in each category that had a winner. Well, except Guardians of the Galaxy, through no fault of its own. I don't go to movies, and rarely watch them. Five categories went to No Award. To me, that seems a bit harsh. I read everything that came in the Hugo packet, and dug up everything I could that wasn't in the packet. For me, only four or five works out of dozens rated below No Award. The people who annoy…

Brian Bilbrey August 16, 2015

Returns with a Vengeance

Summer, that is. We're in a pattern of high heat and humidity right now, which makes working outside (and walking the dog) less than utterly pleasant activities. I strive, however, to not let that stop me. Today, after shopping and such, I managed a 3-gallon harvest out of the garden, much of which turned into the contents of these jars: Yep, there's still salsa coming out of the garden. It's been winding down for a week or more, but there may be one more batch before the year's production is done. * * * My dance card was full last…