Ron > Recent Status Updates

Okay, the lamps didn’t work out, but we have trees now. Problem solved, once and for all.

This one comes with a a receipt. I bought this at 6:11 in the morning on April 7th, 2013 at the Powell’s Books in the Portland, Oregon airport. (I was en route to Las Vegas for a behavioral health conference. Loved the conference, only saw the Strip, didn’t like it.) It’s the UK edition for some reason and it was marked down to $9.98. So I bought the book and apparently went to McDonalds for coffee right after.

I’ve been simultaneously reading listening to this, but it’s starting to drag so I’ve switched to just the ebook.

Updated just before reading this line: “Sabrina Sidney is the subject of one of the strangest experiments in pedagogical history. Wax is dripped onto her bare skin, guns are pointed at her, and she’s made to throw perfectly good clothes on the fire, all to see if it is possible to mould someone into the perfect wife. And it’s done without anyone telling her what it’s for or even that she’s being tested.”

This is fun in a Hitchhiker’s Guide sort of way. Not a terribly strong plot, more of an excuse for a boring guy to be put in weird situations with goofball aliens.

Is there anything that says “blossoming love” more than delivering ultimatums, refusing to hear their side of things, and insisting they push past their objections and risk their life for your convenience?

After a long day of traveling they finally found a hotel with an available room. But wouldn’t you know it, there’s only one bed.

Two quirks of this book:
1) They do the thing where someone explains a plan that won’t be revealed until later, which is fine, but without anything to mark the time. Several minutes of exposition are shrunk to “she explained her plan,” which goes by so quickly it feels like I missed a plot point.
2) Either the book or the narrator butchers military time. 9:55 am is not “oh nine fifty-five hundred hours.”

The leads have met and… exchanged pleasantries. Now it’s on to business as they negotiate working together to retrieve a mythical artifact that’ll allow them to go to the past and fix their lives. Again it feels like the exposition to get there was more than necessary, but since this is Book 1 of a series maybe we’re setting up a cosmology for later.

Got the component stories in a Humble Bundle. They’re quick I’ll count the three as one book. Anyway, Gabby seems like a fun companion, especially at this point in Ten’s life (shortly after losing Donna). She’s kind and smart but also young and sheltered enough that he gets to play Professor. And she hit him with a baseball bat when they first met, which is usually a good sign.

It feels like we’re spending more time than necessary on side characters. If the leads are a vampire and a vampire hunter, how much do we really need to know about the hunter’s commanding officer? She’s fun, but is she important to the story? I guess we’ll find out.

Picked this one up in a humble Bundle of Forgotten Realms (D&D) ebooks. I never got into “extended universe” stuff asa kid so I’m not sure what to expect. Seems pretty standalone though, not much preexisting knowledge required.

This is a fun little book, something I bought (twice) because I liked the author’s YouTube content. It’s brief stories about (usually) under-recognized historic figures. Today was James Chuma and Abdullah David Susi who ensured David Livingstone’s discoveries in Africa weren’t lost, and Black Agnes who successfully and stylishly defended her Scottish castle from English invaders.

Mostly scene-setting so far. We appear to have introduced the major characters with some background and motivations, and here at the end of Chapter 3 we have the incident that’ll bring them together.

The prior jump and this latest one pose an interesting question: is Oona’s future fixed? If she’s already been 50 years old can she be as reckless as she wants at 21 with the assurance she’ll survive?

Andrew Jackson, Daniel Boone, and how we reframe conquest and colonialism as bringing liberty to the people.

Exodus 24 - Mosaic law, building the Tabernacle

US independence and the Sixty Years War. Settlers continue inland, looting, burning, and pillaging. Federal government responds with “Oh no! Anyway…”

Oh, and there’s also the time George Washington said “we can’t constantly defend a frontier against all these dudes, so we just need to eradicate them.”

Gen 34 - New name for Jacob