Author: splicer

I’m quick­ly becom­ing a Ver­nor Vinge fan. One author has sin­gle­hand­ed­ly brought me back to read­ing sci­ence fic­tion. This is great stuff.

This col­lec­tion of short sto­ries is a mixed bag. Some of Vinge’s ear­ly work is a bit forced and awk­ward, but on the whole the sto­ries here were thought-pro­vok­ing, smart, and entertaining.

In par­tic­u­lar, two sto­ries each would have made it worth the pur­chase price: The Blab­ber, and Fast Times at Fair­mont High. The Blab­ber takes place … Read the rest

Joel Spol­sky is the Joel of joelonsoftware.com, who writes that his com­pa­ny has a pol­i­cy that any pro­gram­mer work­ing for him must be able to write Eng­lish well. How­ev­er, he notes that there are pre­cious few good writ­ers writ­ing about soft­ware and a good many ter­ri­ble ones. So he decid­ed to col­lect the best soft­ware writ­ing he could find to show­case it and encour­age the writ­ing of bet­ter arti­cles and books about soft­ware in general.

I’m inter­est­ed, of course, because … Read the rest

One would think that the car­ful of injured rid­ers who went to Big Sur with us would have served as a sober reminder to slow it down and take it easy. Our chase vehi­cle for the trip con­tained two bro­ken ankles, one bro­ken wrist, was dri­ven by a rid­er whose bike is in the shop after a crash that for­tu­nate­ly left her uninjured.

Sat­ur­day’s ride was sur­pris­ing­ly short: 150 miles from San Fran­cis­co to a camp­ground with cab­ins in the … Read the rest

It was a great morn­ing to take the detour off of 280 and take Sky­line to Page Mill to work. Nor­mal­ly I hate stop­ping to take pic­tures, but I just felt the need to make every­one jeal­ous, so here:

	Bay from Page Mill View from Page Mill Road		South Bay from Page Mill Anoth­er view from Page Mill Road
	Page Mill Page Mill Road		Page Mill Guzzi Moto Guzzi parked at the side of Page Mill

In oth­er news, I picked up my jack­et and new wind­screen yes­ter­day. … Read the rest

The U.S. Half Marathon is com­ing up soon, and I’m reg­is­tered for it even though I have not by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion trained enough for it. I have spent a lot of this year let­ting my focus drift away from run­ning, and to date I have run only 82 miles in 2005. At this time in 2004 I had just run the U.S. half and had logged over 240 miles.

How did I get here? By look­ing … Read the rest

http://www.claremoreprogress.com/archive/article22505

Thank God for small towns in Amer­i­ca where motor­cy­clists can shut up pro­test­ers who are try­ing to dis­rupt a sol­dier’s funer­al because they think that sol­diers are dying because God hates fags.

You got­ta get a score­card to keep track of this stuff, but any­one who heck­les the fam­i­ly of a dead sol­dier deserves to be drowned out by vet­er­ans’ Harleys.

If you think that Amer­i­cans are dying in Iraq because God is pun­ish­ing Amer­i­ca for being lenient with … Read the rest

I took the train to work today, and stayed home this evening.

This makes it the first full day since I got my motor­cy­cle endorse­ment that I have not rid­den. The day after I got my license I bought the Vira­go. Since then, even if it was to go sev­en blocks to the cof­feeshop, I’ve start­ed up one of the bikes and rid­den it some dis­tance every day.

I’m tempt­ed to go out and take one of the bikes for a … Read the rest

Today at my office it’s PIE DAY.

I’m hav­ing blackberry.… Read the rest

Final­ly a day where there was­n’t a ton of fog at the high­er ele­va­tions. Even though it’s a lit­tle bit longer and the last few times I’ve tried I’ve got­ten socked in with fog, I rode Sky­line Boule­vard in to the office today.

I’ve rid­den Sky­line enough that it does­n’t have any real sur­pris­es for me. It does­n’t real­ly qual­i­fy as twisty, but it has some curves that if tak­en at a high enough rate of speed will force a … Read the rest

Thanks to the mir­a­cle of eBay, I now have

• Moto Guzzi base­ball cap
• Moto Guzzi key lanyard
• Moto Guzzi embroi­dered patch
• Moto Guzzi cufflinks

I’m such a geek.… Read the rest