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May 23, 2019

Early ReTesterment

bout a year or so ago, I took a week off and hung out at the beach with the wife. Mookie the cat loved it – she’d watch the ocean for hours. And I planned to work on whatever it was I was writing then. Just six days of yawning mornings and productive days. Didn’t happen. No, I played computer games. I read. I walked on the beach. I ate too much. And I took a lot of naps. Hardly wrote a thing. Recently at work we were offered buy outs (actually, I thought they said buy outs, but they […]
May 23, 2019

OpsLog – LM&O – 5/22/2019

ooooooooom! Crash! “Oh no, we’re burning!” “We have injured here!” “Oh, the humanity!” Okay, so that’s done. Yes, while dispatching the LM&O tonight I did manage to run two first class passenger trains (crack sister express trains, Silver Bullet 1 and 2) into each other. Forgot to give SB2 a checkbox 8, “hold until arrival of Silver Bullet 1”. So off he went and they crashed at Red Rock. To make matters worse, there was a loaded coal train sitting on the siding there so we can only expect that in the fiery wreck, the open-top hoppers caught fire and […]
May 19, 2019

Hello Universe (Review)

kay, I’m going to sound like a hipster, but since this is a kids’ read I’ll tell you the magical way I came upon this book. My wife and I were having a leisurely ride on our tandem in a tree-covered neighborhood and found a little book box curbside. You know, where are the places where you can add or take books, just a place to swap. Most of them were kid books and this was no exception. Sight unseen, I pulled it. The universe must have been directing my hand. So this story runs between three main characters (and […]
May 15, 2019

Inventory (DOG EAR)

’m reading Don Quixote right now (which is  long, slow novel, which means any guest reviews in the interim are welcome). It’s a great book, and for those who don’t know it, it’s about a threadbare Spanish nobleman (more of a country nobleman) who, having read far too many books on knights and chivalry, saddles up his bony horse, slaps on his corroding, mismatched armor, and with the help of Sancho, his squire, rides about looking for adventure and excitement. Of course, he gets the crap beat out of him by everything from indignant peasants to ignorant windmills. It’s quite […]
May 12, 2019

Pines (Guest Review)

ecret Service agent Ethan Burke is on a mission. No, not, protecting the president – Secret Service agents do more than that. He’s looking for agents who went missing in a small town called Wayward Pines.  The story begins shortly after Ethan arrived in Wayward Pines.  He wakes up with a splitting headache after a car crash.  He’s missing his wallet, keys, badge, gun and even much of his memory.  As he limps into town, he meets the locals who seem friendly, but strangely not very helpful. While investigating the missing agents, he also wonders what is going on in […]
May 8, 2019

For myself (DOG EAR)

won’t say who said this (they, alone, will know the bitter salty tears I wept) but a friend told me that he’d played my interactive fiction StoreyMinus a few times and went “Meh”. That’s a tough nut to swallow, if you are into swallowing nuts. I mean, how many hundred hours have a spent coding this monster? For those who don’t know about it (which, outside of my friend, is pretty much everone on Earth), StoreyMinus is my interactive fiction written with the Squiffy game driver. It involves a fictional character in some sort of situation in the tunnels and […]
May 5, 2019

The Case for Christ (Review)

kay, so here’s the thing. Faith is faith. If you believe in some version of the Christian Christ, in Allah, or even a blue elephant-headed god, that’s yours. Nobody tells you to do it and your personal conviction will determine the strength of your faith. You can’t will it to be. You can convince yourself to make it stronger. It just is. So the “story” behind this novel is that real world Lee Strobel is having a stirring of faith. When his wife announces that she’s turning to Christ, this supposed neutral author gains a new hobby, that being traveling […]
May 1, 2019

Two reasons (CAT EAR)

had a great insight on Don Quixote today, a little curiosity I read. On the ride home, I considered it. I lay on the couch to sip wine, pop peanuts and let the idea stew while watching dumb anime. And then the two little creatures found me. As you might have seen on my general blog, we’ve adapted two kitties, Chinki and Ritz. They are adorable family members, each as big as your hand, who came up to see what Daddy was up to and to get their cold little noses into everything. Picked up a couple of ribbon toys […]
April 28, 2019

Affair in Araby (Review)

’ll admit that I was in the middle of a religious book that was as tedious as a sermon on a rainy afternoon. Had a bus, train and cycle ride home and I wanted to read something fun. So up goes good ol’ Project Gutenberg, where I found this wonderful tale of truth and virtue and pluck and right, written way back in the twenties, a little thing that plays counter to the actual dreariness of history. So three gentlemen of adventure, Ramsden, Grim and Jeremy (the burly Australian) (oh, and Narayan Singh, their loyal Sikh) bounce back from the […]
April 27, 2019

On and on (DOG EAR)

was supposed to get $100,000 after taxes. Yes, my company was offering an early buyout and I put in for it. I’m near retirement (or ReTyrement) and I was ready to bolt. Activated the offer, waited for five weeks, then found out that my company was not genuine on this. Hardly anyone at all got it. Bait and switch. Well, shit. So today I was in a scrum call, listening to everyone grab the conversation string in a heated argument, making their points with long-winded reasoning, just double-lung blowouts of dialog. I started doing what I usually do, figuring out […]