Author: Steven

I like reading manga; I like coding; I like watching sports; I like sleeping; I like blogging.
08/15/08

Book Review: Sandworms of Dune

I purchased Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s Sandworms of Dune on impulse while waiting for my delayed flight two weeks ago. I’ve heard of Dune and may have played the video game of the same name when I was young, but at the time I did not connect the two together.

The read was a bit difficult due to my lack of knowledge of the prequels in which there are many. The story was dropping prominent names left and right and I had no idea who they were.
Continue reading →

08/13/08

America needs a new curse word

Having read an article on the airlines nickel-and-diming passengers, I realized Americans need a new curse word that is not an expletive. The British have a perfect example of a curse word that is not a bad word by itself. Their word is “bloody”. You see and hear it all the time in interviews and it never gets censored. Bloody this, bloody that, I am quite jealous.

A friend suggested “fricking” as a possibility since its use is prevalent now. But, “fricking” isn’t even a word itself. The word evolved from “fucking” when posters needed to evade form censors. The closest America has to a word to rival “bloody” is “damn”. But, “damn” does not hold the same impact as “bloody”. The word also does not roll off the tongue as easily.

I am drawing a blank. Maybe we should just steal the British word and modify it slightly for our own use. Booby? Body? Bodey? Booey?

08/5/08

Sports Clichés

There are literally hundreds of sports clichés spoken before, during, and after a game. This site lists hundreds of them grouped in dozens of categories. We’ve all heard them before; enough, so that you can finish the sentence for the player.

The winner ususally say, “We brought our A game.” While the losers would go with, “We gave the game away.” And of course, pretty much every sports figure playing in a team sport has said this at least one point in their career, “We’re not worried about the game against [random rival]. We’re going to take it one game at a time.”

Clichés do not end on the field or in the lockerroom. They span to all walks of life.
Continue reading →

08/4/08

Book Review: Night Train to Rigel

If James Bonds were to find himself out of a job and out of luck with the ladies, Timothy Zahn’s Night Train to Rigel would be his story.

The story follows a former Earth intelligence officer, Frank Compton, as he receives a train ticket from a dying man. Compton was booted from his government position when he criticized the Earth’s colonization of a dirt ball to meet the requirements to become an interstellar race. Utilizing his skill and experience, he becomes a freelancer for anyone with the right credit amount.
Continue reading →

08/3/08

Hiking up to Avalanche Lake

Saturday having past reminded me of the adventure from last Saturday; I decided to go hiking with a group of people. The guy who invited me along on this trip occasionally writes for this blog, namely lilb612. He is a big buff on these outdoor activities with aspirations to climb the Half Dome in Yosemite, which I think is a crazy goal.

We started the day early around 8am. Yes. 8am. On a weekend. That’s crazy talk!

I rode with another buddy up to the starting point. His AC was on the fritz which was not so bad early in the morning, but something I would suffer through on the way back. Our destination was the southern part of Lake Tahoe off the I50. The difficulty of the hiking trip was supposedly easy to moderate. I had no idea what that meant. I expected to be walking trails that bicycles would have an easy time to travel over.
Continue reading →

07/22/08

Po Chai Pills to the Rescue

Sushi is awesome.

Day-old sushi is still awesome.

Multiple day-old sushi is not so awesome.

Having returned from a weekend trip, I noticed a plate of sushi sitting in the food dispenser. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I gobbled the sushi down lickety-split.

I should have seen the warning signs. The browning avocado on top, the hardened rice, the chewy texture of the shrimp–all signs of spoiled food. Five hours later, I learned to regret my hasty actions.
Continue reading →

07/9/08

Limited or no connectivity

A week or two ago, I lost internet access. I checked the router and the settings were not changed. The other computer had internet access. I checked my ethernet cable, my ethernet card, and fiddled around with the Windows network settings with equally negative results.

Turned out my problem was following the Windows Automatic Updates’ recommendation to update to XP SP3. A whole bunch of people had the same problem as me after installing SP3. They would receive the “limited or no connectivity” message on their network icon and pull their hair out trying to find the cause.

A simple uninstall of SP3 through the Add or Remove Programs tool under the Control Panel fixed the connectivity issue.

Forward three weeks later, the automatic update from Windows struck again, installing a security fix which seemed to fix my internet connection to not allow me to connect. Again, the only workaround was to uninstall the fix. And turn off the automatic update so this does not occur again.

This may have been a ploy by Windows to push everyone towards Vista!

06/25/08

Book Review: Dragondoom

Lately, fantasy stories showcase dragons as wise beings befriending a human or as the mounts for dragonriders. The various races would all travel and greet one another in a matrimony of happiness and invariably, the dwarf in each tale would take up his role as the protagonist’s loyal sidekick and comedy shtick.

That is not the case in Dennis L. McKiernan’s Dragondoom.
Continue reading →

Pages:  1 2 ... 6 7 8 9 10 ... 17 18