Books

I read…a lot. Here’s where I ramble about books and printed media.

Spooky…

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

— H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

Upcoming reading material

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I’ve been between books for a while now, and have been casting about for what to read next. My next book I’m now good for — I can’t think of the title right now, but Candice loaned me a book last night that explores many of the different religions and/or cults (depending on your point of view) in the world today, from Mormonism to Scientology, should be interesting reading.

Today I was reading this thread on the Home Theater Forum where they’re discussing some of the reviews that have been coming out for Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. On [page two of the thread conversation turned to whether or not the film would capture that near-undefinable “magic” or “epic” feel of really good fantasy or science fiction. In the course of the discussion quite a few books and series were mentioned, and I thought I’d jot some of them down so I can pull from this list next time I need to find a book to dive into. Here’s what they’ve mentioned so far:

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Just a quick word or two

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Just tossing a quick entry in before I send out the e-mail update to those few people who get it. It’s Monday morning and I’m at work, so don’t want to spend too long here, but I thought it would be good to get a little bit in here so I’m not completely out of date.

Spent most of the weekend just kicking back and relaxing at home. Saturday I was thinking about wandering around the First Hill district, and had actually made it out the door when I stopped to chat with Damon (my next-door neighbor). While he and I were talking, who should walk up the hill but Holly and Ryan — they knew I lived around that area somewhere, but were just randomly wandering through while apartment hunting for Holly when they saw me standing there talking. I ended up spending the rest of the day wandering around with the two of them, apartment hunting for Holly, some mixing with Ryan in the evening, then a stop by the Baltic Room that night for some drinks and 60’s funk/soul before we all headed home.

Sunday was entirely a day of rest — sat at home, played with my mixing equipment, read Sandman comic books, and did laundry. Whew — tough stuff! :)

And that’s the basics for the weekend. Fun fun fun….

Nano-nano!

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Just something that I find all sorts of nifty. According to an article in today’s Seattle P-I, Washington is going to house the hub of one of the centers for nanotechnology research. Nanotech has been one of the recent sci-fi concepts to really spark my imagination, especially after reading Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.

Stephenson burst upon the sci-fi scene with his second book, Snow Crash, which I babbled about a couple weeks ago when I was re-reading it. In The Diamond Age, Stephenson does for nanotechnology what he did for the internet and virtual reality in Snow Crash — takes today’s best existing ideas and theories and extrapolates them forward into the future to explore where the technologies can take us. It’s a fascinating read, and with the current apparent stagnation of the space program and George Bush’s restrictions on genetic research, nanotech seems to be one of the few sci-fi concepts with near-future possibilities. Going to be a lot of fun to see where all this could lead in the next 10 to 20 years.

Books and movies

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Not much of an update today…things have been pretty slow this weekend. Spent just about all day Saturday at home, doing a lot of reading. Finished Snow Crash, burned right through Mindplayers, by Pat Cadigan, and just got started today on Sophie’s World, by Jostein Gaarder.

I did hit Blockbuster video and picked up three movies I hadn’t seen before. I went with Scary Movie (figured I might as well finally watch the thing — I think I was better off beforehand, though), Cherry Falls (about as entertaining as a silly little modern cheeseball teen-horror flick can get), and The Contender (by far the best of the three, a nice political drama). Of the three, the only one really worth watching was The Contender.

At the moment, I’m just pretty bored…looking forward to the day when I can get my ‘puters to my apartment. Ah, well. Tomorrow morning’s the second interview for the job I’m working on getting…hopefully all will go well.

Job details, more books, and monkeys

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First off — as far as I can tell, I think the interview this morning went great! :) Here’s the details I’ve got on the job I may be getting hired for.

Turns out that the place I interviewed at today was a temp staffing agency called Todays. I’d actually applied for a data entry position through Monster.com, but when they saw my resume, they felt I was better qualified for a posting that wasn’t quite official yet. Should I get this spot, I’ll be working (pay attention now, this gets slightly tricky) at a local firm who’s name I can’t remember for Xerox as an employee of Todays. Got that?

See, Xerox has a service where they send trained operators out to various firms to run their equipment — Xerox knows that people who know what they’re doing are touching their equipment, and the firm doesn’t have to spend its own personnel resources on keeping the copiers going — works well for all parties involved. I’d end up getting dropped in the middle of this — officially a Today’s employee, temping with Xerox, but working at this firm.

But, there’s even a little more to it than this. As it turns out, this firm had a special request with this posting. They have an employee working in this area with ‘special needs’ — exactly what that means hasn’t been specified — and they wanted to see if they could get someone with at least some management/leadership experience. They don’t need a manager, but they did want someone who would be more able to and comfortable with working with this employee; able to give help when needed, act as something of a liason between this employee and others, and the like. Given the supervisorial (is that a word?) experience I have on my resume, Today’s felt that I would be a good pick, and apparently that impression held true during the interview today, as they seemed highly confident that I’d be called in on this job posting. So…now I just cross my fingers, but at least from where I’m standing, things look really good. Woohoo!

In other news….

Yeah, I’m a voracious reader. I posted yesterday that I’d just started re-reading Cliff Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg. Welp…that’s done with. Next up on the dock is Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, one of (if not the single) seminal works of “cyberpunk” fiction, and an acknowledged source of inspiration for many of today’s top computer/VR developers. Great stuff.

As for the monkeys. My parents were kind enough to drop me a bit of money to help me out until I start getting paychecks and get up and on my feet. So, me being the fine, upstanding, and responsible young man I am — I took the opportunity today after my job interview to go see a movie! Erm…hey, it was a whopping five bucks for the matinee, and I was in a good mood after the interview. So sue me. Anyway…went out to see Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, one of the big films I’d been waiting to see this summer. So how was it? Horrid — the end result was it’s a matinee at best…quite possibly only a rental. Much as it pains me to say that about a Tim Burton film, it’s true.

Cool people and new books

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First off — with as many complete momos as there are running around in the world today, it’s always nice to be reminded that there actually are some truly cool people out there, too. A couple days ago I posted a bit of a whine/moan/rant about how the combination of lack of response on the job front and lack of money was getting to me. Since then I’ve gotten a couple e-mails and a couple conversations over Yahoo! Messenger with some very kind words of support. Much as I try not to let things get to me, and keep a healthy and happy outlook on whatever’s going on in my life, sometimes it’s neccesary to let my frustrations fly — and when I do, it’s wonderful to get the occasional “buck up, kiddo” from people out there. Thanks to all of you — you rock.

Last night I managed to finish two projects I’d been working on. The first was a large puzzle of M. C. Escher’s work ‘High and Low’ — a real bear of a puzzle too, as the entire thing is black, white, and shades of grey. The second was the book I’d been reading, The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by his Fool, Will Somers: A Novel, by Margaret George. Very good historical fiction.

Having finished those, I’ve just started re-reading (as I don’t want to spend the money on something brand-new at the moment) a book that I was reminded of while reading The Jargon File — The Cuckoo’s Egg, by Cliff Stoll. This is a great little techno-spy thriller detailing the chase of a West-German hacker (this was written in the late 80’s) who was tunnelling through the then-new Internet, breaking into U.S. Military computers, and selling secrets to the Russians. The entire trail started from a 75-cent billing error in a Universities computer system, and the real kicker to the story — is that it’s all true. It’s been years since I’ve read it, though — I’ll babble more about it once I’m done.

Family, blondes, and jargon

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First off — hi dad! :) Got a call from dad yesterday — he and mom were off on a trip to England and Scotland (anywhere else?) with the Alaska Childrens Choir for the past few weeks, and just got home. Seems everything went well for them, and I’m now told that Edinburgh is a wonderful place to visit, should I ever get the opportunity. Hmmm…well, I’ll certainly be keeping that in mind….

I’ve been seeing ads for Legally Blonde for a while now, and I finally decided to break down and go see if it was as cute as it looked in the ads. It definitely was (something that’s always nice).

Lastly for today, as I was going through my boxes of stuff last night, I stumbled across a book I hadn’t read through in a while. The Jargon File is a compendium of slang and jargon from the hacker community that has been an ongoing project since roughly 1981 — a full 20 years now! While it would at first appear to be aimed solely at the hacker community (which, to be honest, I can’t exactly dispute), it also has a broad appeal to people outside of the community, especially those with a decently sharp sense of humor and a love of wordplay. I started re-reading it last night, and had forgotten just how entertaining it can be to read something that is, in some respects, a dictionary of technical terms and slang. In particular, I think my dad would really get a kick out of it, given what I know of his sense of humor and interest in words, wordplay, and etymology. The file can either be found online, or can be purchased in bookstores as The New Hacker’s Dictionary (though the online version is more current).

It is way too early

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On the one hand, I really hate the fact that my alarm is going off at 6 am every day so I can get myself moving in time to be at work at 8 am this week for training on the new job. On the other hand…hey, I’m doing it! Making it to work on time every day, and putting in a full 8 hours each day…would probably blow the doors off some of the people back at TimeFrame, where I was so burnt out on the place that I was averaging closer to 30 hours a week rather than the 40 I should have been.

Amazing the differences that can appear when you’ve got a job that you actually enjoy, huh?

And, as a major benefit — between the pay raise and getting my full 40 hours a week, I figure I should start taking home about an extra $600 a month or so!

Picked up what looks to be a fascinating little book yesterday — The Celluloid Closet, by Vito Russo. It’s an examination of the portrayal of homosexuality in movies throughout the history of Hollywood — looks to be fascinating stuff. I had seen the documentary that had been based on this work (the movie is also called The Celluloid Closet), and thought it was a hilarious and fascinating film, so finding the original literary work — on sale for a whopping $2.99, no less — was a nice little treat yesterday. Should be quite the interesting read.

In any case, it’s about time for me to be heading off into the wide wierd world….