Fallen Warriors ⁽³³⁹⁾

Brian Bilbrey November 6, 2017

6 November 2017

Yup, this should have been yesterday, but I was busy, then I was tired. I had a good week last week. Productive at work, got most of the important chores done at home, and we went to a wedding on Friday. It was lovely. But there's not much else to report, and I have more to do this evening. Enjoy yourselves. * * * Our condolences to the family and friends of Sgt. First Class Stephen B. Cribben, 33, of Simi Valley, California, who died on Nov. 4 in Logar Province, Afghanistan as a result of wounds sustained while engaged…

Brian Bilbrey October 29, 2017

29 October 2017

Boo! Ha Ha Ha! There. That's the extent of my seasonal participation in the upcoming Day of the Dead celebration. * * * This last week, we went to see POE... And All The Others, put on by the Annapolis Shakespeare Company. As with last year's production, Poe was played with power and sensitivity by Brian Keith MacDonald. This year's Muse (and all the others) was played by Olivia Ercolano. Olivia's performance seemed to be informed, nay, infused, with the imperious strength of her Red Queen role from Alice, earlier this year. What a joy! There are still two chances…

Brian Bilbrey October 9, 2017

9 October 2017

Good morning. It's a holiday for $FIRM, in the midst of a five day weekend (for me), so I've only been doing email and tickets for an hour or so, and work is done for the day. A busy weekend. First up, Capclave. Capclave is a small-ish literary SFF convention put on by the Washington Science Fiction Association. It's been held at the Hilton Gaithersburg for at least the last several years, and I've attended several now. It's simply lovely. Loads of writers, editors, publishers. I've been attending intermittently since 2012. It's good to catch up with some prior acquaintances…

Brian Bilbrey September 17, 2017

17 September 2017

A busy week and weekend. We made it down to Melford Pond for a couple of hours of fishing on Saturday morning. Well, Marcia was fishing (and caught a decent-sized catfish that she put back, might I add!), while I walked the dog around the pond. It was a nice start to the weekend. Chores: Mowing the lawns, changing old, worn-out locksets out for new ones that work properly, etc, etc. * * * Tech-side, I've been playing around with Flask (a Python web framework). Yeah, should I find something more bleeding edge? Probably. Maybe I'll revisit Node shortly. Or…

Brian Bilbrey September 10, 2017

10 September 2017

Sad. There's a Jerry Pournelle-shaped hole in my personal Universe. Jerry passed away on September 8, 2017. I was a fan of Jerry's fiction from early on, and additionally a huge fan of his Chaos Manor user technology columns in Byte Magazine. We met in person for the first time at a West Coast Computer Faire (1982, I think, at the San Francisco Civic Center). I'd previously corresponded with him via BIX (the Byte Information Exchange service) on a variety of technical and fictional topics. He was gracious enough to take the time to have lunch with me at that…