I really enjoy these 2-week Christmas breaks we get every year. I know the dog likes having me around more. I spent the first few days working on a few projects but since then I’ve been in full enjoyment mode.
I went to Jackson for Christmas, but stayed for only a day. Once again I just wanted to be in my own home and the dog was unhappy being cooped up. I didn’t have a lot of Christmas spirit this year until Christmas Eve. I’ve enjoyed having a low-key year in terms of holidays and not doing much to celebrate. Next year I think I want to start some of my own traditions. Maybe I’ll do that traveling thing I keep telling myself I’m going to do. One of these years I want to spend Christmas in my home even if I have to buy tickets for everyone.
Once again there weren’t a lot of gifts because people didn’t have money to spend. I know Christmas isn’t all about getting presents, but I do miss getting presents. I like being surprised. Maybe things will be better next year. What did I get?
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 1 on blu-ray
A new wallet to replace the one I accidentally washed a while back
Dexter coasters (early present that I got a few months ago)
I did buy myself some CDs, clothes, video games, and blu-rays. Every time I tried shopping for others, I found good deals on stuff that I wanted for myself. I’m going to get good use out of everything.
I had a pretty good Thanksgiving break. I really needed that. For the first time in a while I had a weekend that didn’t fly by way too fast, but that’s probably because it was over twice as long as normal.
This was only the 3rd Thanksgiving that I can remember where I didn’t go back to Jackson. I was kind of glad when I saw how many people on Twitter were stressing out over cooking and relatives and what not. Also, I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of boarding the dog somewhere. I wish we had some real kennels around here. It’s good to spend a break doing only what I wanted to do. I even went an entire day without seeing another human being.
What did I do?
caught up on all the stuff on my DVR
finished the Babylon 5 re-watch that I started last year
did some shopping and bought stuff for me and the dog
played video games
After 3 more weeks of work, I get a 2 week break. I’m ready for another break.
It hit me the other day that we’ll be starting a new decade in a little under 2 months. I would’ve expected a bigger deal to be made about it, but maybe it has and I’ve been out of the loop. We’ll probably be seeing a lot of retrospectives on TV in December.
Time really does fly by. Recently, I thought about a lot of things that happened “a few years ago” and then realize that it happened 7 or 8 or 9 years ago. Anyway, I expect some big things to happen in 2010. You’ll probably hear about them here or on my Twitter page first.
The first one was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I became interested in it because the movie is coming out in December and Peter Jackson made the movie. The story starts in 1973 and it’s about a teenage girl that was raped and murdered by a neighbor. She’s up in her own personalized heaven, which she calls “my heaven”, and watches over her family and her killer over the next several years. She can’t directly affect anything on Earth, but there are times when people see her or feel that she’s near. The book is mostly about her family and friends as they deal with their grief over losing her. It’s very melancholy at times. It’s a pretty good book, but I’ll probably like watching as a movie more than liked reading the book.
The second one was Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer. Sawyer is the guy that wrote Flashforward. For some reason I thought this was a sequel to Flashforward, but it’s not. It takes place about 40 years in the future. In 2009 (their past), we received a transmission from aliens and we sent a response. This book is centered on the response they sent to our response. An extremely rich guy, who is a major benefactor to SETI, wants the woman who translated the original message to work on the new message. She and her husband are in their 80s now and don’t think they have much time left. The benefactor pays for her and her husband to have a rejuvenation procedure, which is called a “rollback”. They decide to reverse their bodies back to age 25. The procedure works for her husband and not for her. The book focuses on her struggling to decrypt the code and him trying to adjust to being young again while having a much older wife. You do see a lot of flashbacks to back when she was working on the original 2009 message. I didn’t like those parts as much. It’s a pretty good book overall. Short and sweet.
Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself
Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged
Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
I recently read the latest Sword and Laser pick: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. The main character, William Mandella is part of an elite group of an elite group of soldiers that are sent into war again an alien race called the Taurans. The story starts when he’s about to go into training and ends after the end of the war.
This book was written back in 1974. There are parallels between the war in the book and the Vietnam War. I can see the statement that he’s trying, but I think all of that would’ve had a bigger impact on me if I read it when I was a little more politically frustrated.
I like that these old school scifi books take time dilation into account. Since people are out in space traveling at or near the speed of light, they experience time differently than the people on Earth. It has something to do with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Over the course of the book, the main character ages only a few years, but over 1100 years pass by on Earth. You get glimpses into society on future Earth. Crime gets worse. There’s big time inflation and calories become the only currency on the planet. I think that changes later, but I’m not sure. At one point, almost everyone is gay and straight people are seen as deviants. The government encourages this to keep the population in control. Only when someone dies is another person created in a test tube. Most of the soldiers that survive the military campaigns don’t want to go back home because everything has changed so much. Very interesting.
Anyway, it’s a great book and I recommend giving it a read. Is there any point in keeping a list anymore since I haven’t really been following?
Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself
Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged
Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
The Darker Mask, George Phillips
Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson
Pearl Jam is releasing their new album called Backspacer on September 20 (a Sunday), which is less than 2 weeks away. Of course I’m excited!!! The video for the first single, “The Fixer”, has been on iTunes and Youtube for a couple of weeks now and I can’t stop listening to it.
Earlier this year they were saying this album could end up sounding a lot different than their other ones. Judging by the few songs I’ve heard so far, that could be true. Eddie’s experience with making the Into the Wild soundtrack may have had a little influence on the way it sounds. They made it sound like the lyrics on this album were more straightforward, without all the multiple meanings. I like that. Simplicity can be good.
Take a look at the video. They’re getting so old now :).
What’s been going on? August flew by. Work has been hectic lately and I haven’t done much outside of work.
I did go to Atlanta this past weekend. My sister was having a birthday party to celebrate her 40th birthday. Lots of friends and family came, you and old. They came from California, Michigan, Mississippi, and Georgia. It was a lot fun to see the family again. I need the go out there to visit more often. Atlanta is a cool place.
Football season starts this coming weekend. We play Jackson State here in Starkville. It’s our first game with our new coach and it’ll be the first game I’ve gone to in 4-5 years. I can’t wait to see JSU’s band play. I hope we have a good season, but I’m not getting my expectations up.
I like that the weather is starting to get cooler. Fall is coming.
I first became interested in Flashfoward by Robert J. Sawyer when I heard that it was going to be made into a TV series on ABC this fall. I heard that it was a good book and wanted to read it before the series came on.
Real life for a minute: Have you heard about the Large Hadron Collider over in Europe? It was supposed to go online last year, but didn’t because of some technical issue. The purpose of the device is to create conditions that existed shortly after the big bang so they can observe some kind of particle. Some people were concerned about this experiment because they feared it could create a black hole that would cause the end of the world. If you haven’t heard about the LHC, you can read about it here.
Back to the book: it was written in 1999, but it’s set in 2009. A group of scientists are firing up the Large Hadron Collider. At the exact second that the experiment starts, everyone blacks out. By everyone I mean the entire planet. The blackout lasts for 2 minutes. During this time everyone gets a 2 minute glimpse into their own future in the year 2030.
There was some chaos caused by the incident. People blacking out behind the wheel, pilots blacking out in the air, etc. Some were upset by the damage caused and the lives lost. For the most part, however, the world was happy to have had the visions. Some saw stuff in the future that they didn’t like and of course wanted to change it. There was a lot of debate about whether everyone saw a possible future or a fixed future. That debate gets resolved later in the book. Eventually, the scientists were able to figure out exactly how it happened.
There were a few times when the book briefly got bogged down in physics, but I just glossed over those sections. I hate physics. Overall, it would a great book and I recommend it to scifi fans. I’m even more excited about the TV series now.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks
Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Stanislaw Lem
The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
Inside Straight, George R.R. Martin
Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
The Darker Mask, George Phillips
Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm, Brandon Sanderson
It looks like that trip to Austin is probably not going to happen. There’s other stuff that’s going to be going on around then. If Austin City Limits was just a couple of weeks later, everything would be fine. It sucks when family and work get in the way of a good time :). It’s okay though. I will go to Texas sooner or later.
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