Testing the TV typewriter

Typing slowly because I am using the onscreen keyboard with XP. Rocks only because Adam hijacked the keyboard that is supposed to belong here on IQman.

My father is funny.

An excerpt from an e-mail...

I believe that Joanie's only day to catch up is Sunday, and that we are supposed to catch [Darkside] unawares by being at a DeVry Cafeteria table early on a Monday morning. We will be perusing the IEEE Spectrum magazine, QST, or blending in by some other dodge at a table nearby the one Joanie will be sitting at. Our teeth will not be showing. We will wait until [Darkside] begins to eat before blowing our cover.

I love my father. My parents are perceptive enough to realize that if I had to pick one guy, I would pick up Darkside and toss him over my shoulder and bring him home. I like Adam, but Darkside is a keeper.

Whee! I get to see my parents!

This is cute.

You are Civilian Calvin! You don't get to travel much outside your neighborhood, but you still manage to get in plenty of trouble. When you're not acting up, you like to wax philosophical. Take the What Calvin are You? Quiz by contessina_2000@yahoo.com!

I always had a thing for Calvin. I've got a really good Calvin & Hobbes collection at home... next to my Dilbert collection & my Dykes to Watch Out For collection.

This is just too good.

In the midst of reading The Kybalion, I jumped up to let marxdarx borrow my copy of The Wounded Sky. He looked dubiously at it, for it was Star Trek. He loves the TV series, but had a hard time getting into the books. He did read a few in the past, and I queried. I could be his guide to the books, as I'd read nearly all of them, and knew where were the good ones (Diane Duane, John M. Ford, etc.) and where were the bad ones.

One, I mentioned, was a real stinker, and would never, ever, ever make it into my collection; the place for it on my shelf would remain forever empty. When my high school best friend Shawn and I had first started talking to each other, we'd started discussion with my novel of the moment, Q-in-Law, which we agreed to be very good, and went on to other Star Trek novels of our mutual acquaintance. Shawn agreed with me that this particular book was indeed exceptionally horrid, and not worth re-reading. Upon request, I divulged a brief summary to Marx: doorways, on the blink, and Kirk wound up in an alien body...

...It turned out that this had been the very Star Trek book that had turned Marx off from reading them...

Windows on a Lost World, it was. Don't read it. Ever.

Anne Cordelia (echoes)

This is perhaps only of interest to those who read both Lois McMaster Bujold and L.M. Montgomery.

Does anyone else see echoes of Anne Shirley Blythe in Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan?

Two tall, slender, self-possessed, redheaded women, who, when mature, are possessed of a cool and loving nature. Maternal as hell, of course. Brave, but Anne was required to take a far less active form of bravery. Both able to sail through scenes of domestic terror calmly.

Anne had desired the name Cordelia as a child. Gods alone know what Cordelia had wanted her name to be.

...I just find the similarities delightful, and it's no wonder I'd immediately latch on to the series by Bujold, having grown up reading L.M. Montgomery.

Note to selves:

The Adventures of Alyx by Joanna Russ comes highly recommended, at least the first bits, by iroshi.