Author Archives: Josh

Aside

Claiming to understand why the freeways around here are built the way they are is surely a sign of madness.

Nobody *seems* to be in a panic…

Posted on by

I just got my first “Tornado Alert – Take Shelter” alert. That brings today’s total to Severe Thunderstorm, Flash Flood, AND Tornado! Did I collect the full set in my first week?

It is, in fact, raining QUITE hard now, and that thunder sounds cool. Really big thunder. And visibility just dropped from infinite to about 400 meters, in no time at all.

Nobody in this Starbucks seems worried, so I’m gonna just stick with the herd. Some guys on the covered porch outside actually came in, but I think it was because they couldn’t hear each other over the rain. I guess this is normal now. 🙂

As the classic meme says:

Update: Just got a Tornado “warning”, which is apparently a step above Alert. I appreciate that DarkSky is keeping me up to date pretty rapidly here! The good news is that the region they mentioned is 17-30 miles north, and the weather is currently moving north by northwest. My biggest problem now seems to be that i’ll never be able to get the 60 feet to my car without being absolutely drenched, even WITH my jacket. It is really coming down out there.

Update 2: Well, it seems to be over. Just like that the rain stopped. What fun. Makes 2pm in Florida seem quite tame by comparison. Sending someone out into that rain has to qualify as assault or something, there’s just a LOT of mass falling from above.

Deliciously Fishy Pun

Posted on by

Best Sushi Restaurant server T-Shirt ever: “Come Sashimi Again”. Also best pineapple cream cheese wantons.

Didn’t get a picture of the rolls, got distracted by how delicious they looked and just ate them instead. It was worth it.

Ra Sushi was delicious. They shall definitely sashimi again.

Win/lose

Aside

This rental car (Nissan Altima, 200miles on it) has a USB-C port in the dash. I am excited!

It’s a low-power port. I am disappointed.

A tiny slice of (Bevin) heaven

Posted on by

We arrived at DFW about 2pm yesterday and decided to explore a bit since we didn’t have anything planned for the rest of the day. We drove through Fort Worth, then worked our way up to Denton. 

We found this great spot for dinner, Barley & Board. 

Bevin was extremely pleased by shoestring fries, which she’s doesn’t really ever find in Portland. We also had a really tasty “sweet & salty & spicy” nuts appetizer.

My burger was pretty darn tasty, but I did find it interesting how much more on the “cheese sauce” side the cheese was, vs the nice Tillamook Cheddar I’m used to. Fun how even the simple things get changed up.

Across the street from Barley&Board is a used bookstore. Somewhere between Half Price Books & Powells. It’s in what seems to be an old house that has a some cool little rooms and cubbyholes and very squeaky floors. Definitely tickled my bookstore bone, plus I found a first-edition hardcover of The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower, which very much excited me. 

To finish up our evening we checked out John Wick 3: Parabellum at the Alamo Drafthouse theater. Both the movie and the theater were super fun. The now much lamented Cinetopia was certainly trying to take some notes from Alamo, but as great as they were they really didn’t quite get there. We have now been spoiled utterly.

One really cool thing, is that rather than showing us shitty ads before the movie they actually had a John Wick series recap, which was really nice! It was really nice to get a reminder of some of the stuff, and it was a lot more enjoyable way to spend 20 minutes pre-movie.

Also, John Wick is as much fun as ever. Still can’t quite regain the feeling of the first movie, but definitely a lot of fun. If you’re into that sort of thing. 

It’s a pleasant morning in the Southlake suburb of Dallas. 78 degrees with a nice breeze. Of course I’m sitting in a Starbucks currently to write this and get some stuff done, but in a little while here I’m back on the road to go exploring and check out some of the neighborhoods in the area. Operation “Decide where might be good and where is definitely not good” is a go! (Although we need a catchier name.)

This Week’s Double Feature: Children of the Fleet & Artemis

Posted on by

It’s been so long since we’ve done regular reviews that I’d forgotten it was really a thing! Probably because reading has been taking place more digitally than physically recently, and it’s so easy just to move on to the next thing. Doesn’t mean we haven’t been reading, although the pile of “read this so we can decide to permanently find a shelf for it or sell it” hasn’t really been shrinking.

Two books I’ve read recently had enough similarity that it made me want to write about it though, so here we are!

Children of the Fleet by Orson Scott Card

I’ve been reading Ender-verse novels for a loooooong time now. I like the universe, and I like the questions Card asks of the reader. I had some trouble with this one though, in sort of a meta way. In the beginning of the book I really felt like I was re-reading a previous book, perhaps some sort of weird combination of Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow with the names changed. Then that ended and I immediately started having trouble with the characters being believable. I’m okay with the idea of a Mary Sue to a certain extent, but when they seem to have no flaw or weakness at all it really gets hard to identify with. Card uses the character to explore some interesting things, but it’s all addressed in such a matter-of-fact manner that I really can’t believe it.

I really like what he’s setting up here though. The idea of how different and difficult it is to manage an interstellar settlement is really interesting, and I’m hopeful that could be explored more. I also really like the continuation of Hyrum Graff’s story and another look at his child-rearing techniques. I’d really like a lot more explanation of both of these topics. I also really liked the new battle room concept, but it didn’t get explored as fully as I’d like either.

Ultimately the book was a short, enjoyable, fluffy read. I’d have preferred if it was either fluffier and had more fun playing with the characters, or less fluffy and dug in a bit more. This one isn’t going to be taking a permanent spot on the shelf next to Children of the Mind, but if you’re a fan of the ‘verse it’s definitely worth a quick read!

 

Artemis by Andy Weir

I probably made a mistake reading this as the next book after Children of the Fleet. Back-to-back Mary Sue main characters just left me irritated. At least in this case the character had enough flaws and challenges that by the end I wasn’t bothered by it.

Aside from that aspect though I really enjoyed it! It’s a fun read, full of science and technology, without getting either bogged down in it or hand-waving it aside. It’s the first time I’ve read something that felt like reading a new Heinlein adventure since I read Variable Star, which was actually based on Heinlein’s outline.

“Very few people get a chance to quantify how much their father loves them. But I did. The job should have taken forty-five minutes, but Dad spent three and a half hours on it. My father loves me 366 percent more than he loves anything else. Good to know.”

That quote is related to welding. A father is making an air-tight vessel which his daughter’s life will rely on. This is my absolutely favorite kind of Sci-Fi, it’s an adventure, fundamentally about people, politics, economics, and the human experience, but it includes real science and tosses in new science and technology that I hadn’t thought about before which makes me go “huh, neat!”. What will real people do in real situations, and how will our human experience be similar in these far-flung places, and what about us won’t change at all?

“I didn’t want to spend any more time inside the mind of an economist. It was dark and disturbing.”

This is the sort of thing we need more of. Near-term science fiction that makes the reader think about how viable this future actually is. How will this future and technology will impact the rest of our lives is certainly one of the very most interesting things about Sci-Fi to me. Far-future is a fun way to explore big ideas because you can change everything about the world, but at some point that becomes disconnected from what we are now, and makes it hard to put yourself into the situation. Absolutely not true in Artemis, I felt like I was a tourist on the moon the entire time, and now I just want to go there!

“There was something weird about being on the moon and fighting for your life with a stick and some fire.”

I read this book digitally (Thanks Multnomah County Library!), but if I saw a good-condition used copy at Powells sometime I think I’d definitely pick it up!

Home, but still adventuring…

Posted on by

Disney’s website apparently has ruined itself, and we don’t have pictures yet. So instead of posting a bunch of new content for you, we’ve gone on a more local adventure:

Which yes, of course, involves Bevin finding crazy foods.

Also not pictured here is me demolishing a delicious apple strüdel.

The Mt. Angel Oktoberfest is a bit of a madhouse but crazy yummy.