📚 Firewall by David Mack

20/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

While Picard is (imho) overall the weakest of the modern Trek series, its literary side is doing quite well. This does a great job of filling in some of the time between when Seven returns to Earth with Voyager and when she appears as a Fenris Ranger, and exploring how the character changed in those years. It’s unfortunate that some are upset that this book discusses Seven discovering her identity as a queer woman; it’s neither propagandistic nor heavy-handed, but simply experiences that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if they were heterosexual. Also a lot of very pointed commentary about what happens when a major power that had been providing very necessary support for a region just up and disappears when something else catches its attention. Definitely worth reading if you’re a fan of the Picard series or (and especially) of Seven as a character.

Me holding Firewall

Year 50 Day 306

A portrait style selfie, with my head freshly shaved and face fuzz trimmed back to being very short.

Day 306: Been in something of a foul mood all day, but I got myself trimmed up again, and had a good practice DJ session with some really smooth transitions. So I guess it balances out to a solid “meh”?

Year 50 Day 305

Me standing in front of a neon sign that says 'ice ice baby' while holding a waffle cone full of soft-serve ice cream.

Day 305: We had a hankering for soft-serve today (because what else do you do on a 40° F day?), and we finally managed to find some on our third try. The first try from a Menchi’s was weirdly gritty and got tossed, second try from Dairy Queen was oddly tasteless and so melty we just shoved ’em in the freezer when we got home to see if they eventually improve, but then we remembered a new place down the road from us, give it a shot, and had success!

Year 50 Day 304

Me wearing a light blue t-shirt with a Star Tek delta shield with an asterisk. I'm making the Vulcan salute, only with my hand held sideways and with the back of my hand to the camera, and I'm kind of smirking.

Day 304: Somehow, Mariner’s sarcastic back-handed Vulcan salute just seems appropriate when wearing my Swear Trek t-shirt.

Side note: I actually had to think about the least-icky way to link to Swear Trek, since my choices seem to be either the X/Twitter account (which, well, obvious) or the Tumblr account (who just announced they’re selling all their user data for AI training, on an opt-out basis, of course). I went with Tumblr, but I wish there was a non-ethically-horrifying place to link to.

Year 50 Day 302

Me standing next to a bookcase. One shelf has books, the other has a Lego Jurassic Park T-rex skeleton and other small toys.

Day 302: Proof that I was back in my office today! Every office should have a T-rex somewhere in it. Size, construction, and level of risk up to the owner of the office.