The ultimate goal is life, or, if you have life, to stay living, that is, achieve immortality. That's how to win the game. No one has ever won it, right? But there are several aspects of this game, like, is...
Continue reading "The Game of Life" »
Had two meetings arranged today. The first was with Jeff Grover, of Ebasco. I met with Jeff and Russ Treat, told them about my education and experience, then listened as Russ told me about the Ebasco expansion, some new contracts...
Continue reading "Two job interviews" »
It seems that I'm doomed to read less for the next few months. No, it's not that I'm reading less--I'm finishing less. School reading tends to be sections and pieces of larger work, rather than entire volumes. I'm working through...
Continue reading "On books" »
Dear Family and Friends, It is with great pleasure that I enclose this (please excuse the necessity) form letter with my graduation annoucement. As you know, I first started college way back in the dark days of 1984, and had...
Continue reading "Graduation Annoucement" »
Introduction I moved to Fort Collins with my fiancee, Jill Engel, who had enrolled in a Master's program in Engineering at Colorado State University. I had no intention then of enrolling in the university myself, and instead I looked for...
Continue reading "An Indian Dinner with Friends" »
While driving from Redding, California to Hilt, the gold Honda Accord that I've owned for the last three years lost power on an upgrade, then refused to start after I had limped it into a service station. I was forced...
Continue reading "Vacation" »
Less than two weeks after last week's installment, I return to your mailbox with something a little less dated, at least in the composing of it. Two books in this installment (O'Leary and Joyce) were purchased at LoneStarCon, this year's...
Continue reading "Fresh from the World SF Convention" »
I'm really late with this installment, and no real reason for it. I just never seemed to get around to transferring it from my Newton to the PC to format and send out. Actually, I guess that's part of the...
Continue reading "Late with the latest installment" »
Writing is a lonely business. Who can blame Harlan Ellison for trying to make himself a book star in the 60s/70s by traveling with Three Dog Night and writing short stories in the windows of big city bookstores? Writers are...
Continue reading "Feedback Requested" »
Since I let it slip during my impression of Understanding Europeans in this installment, I feel it best to air it here as well: yes, I am going back to school, something I thought I would never want to do...
Continue reading "Good News, Bad News" »
The die has been cast, and we will be off to Washington, D.C. in August. Jill will be accepting a fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and will be working in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,...
Continue reading "Casting the Dice" »
It happens to all of us--some of us have backups and the others are left crying. Consider my eyes somewhat damp. Yes, I suffered a crash recently. Wayne, my trusty Apple MessagePad, lost his mind about a month and a...
Continue reading "Crash!" »
For the last couple of weeks, my time has been spent scouring the cardboard recycling centers for cardboard boxes of a size conducive to mailing books. The response to the Virtual Garage Sale quickly depleted my supply that I had...
Continue reading "Cardboard Boxes" »
To mark the transition from West Coast to East Coast occasioned by my recent move, included below is a short summary of who I am at this time and place with regard to literacy. I admit it: I'm indulging myself...
Continue reading "How I Got Here" »
What am I thankful for this year? First and foremost, the ability to re-enroll in school, to pursue my dream of connecting my life to writing, books, and teaching. Jill keeps asking me if graduate school is what I wanted,...
Continue reading "Thanksgiving 1998" »
I'm on the proverbial cloud nine. You'll have to forgive me, but after my poor original stint at the university level back in 1984, I'm quite happy to have another chance to redeem myself. So it is with great pleasure...
Continue reading "First Semester Down, Four to Go" »
As someone who spends way too much time on-line, I obviously have some favorite web sites. Sometimes these get mentioned in the text of First Impressions, but not all of them lend themselves to casual mention in this way. So...
Continue reading "Looking at Bookmarks" »
Whew! The last two months have been insane. I took on a new job as instructor of "Intermediate Composition and Creative Writing" at Emerson Prepatory School, a private college preparatory high school in downtown DC. Although it is only one...
Continue reading "Catching Up" »
The past couple of days has been hectic as I put the final touches on my curriculum proposal for a freshman composition class at American University and then constructed my teaching portfolio to apply for an adjunct teaching position to...
Continue reading "Preparing to teach, an interview" »
Final Writing Assignment: The Holiday Letter Deadlines If you want it to be there by Christmas: December 15, 1999 The more reasonable date: December 29, 1999 Goal The goal is to write a one-to-two page letter to be sent out...
Continue reading "Holiday Writing Assignment" »
Another magazine learns about blogging. This time it's trendy "new business" magazine Fast Company. In this article, they talk about how old school journalists are discovering the new school. While it will be rehashing the obvious for most bloggers, at...
Continue reading "Faster Company" »
I think E.J. Dionne's pegged the current administration, and its ideological cronies, in this examination of current Supreme Court decisions. This isn't new. We saw this last December when George W. Bush, titular head figure for the Republican party, the...
Continue reading "State's Rights" »
Cory Doctorow writes about Clarion today in Boing Boing. I applied for both Clarions in 1989 and was accepted into Clarion West but couldn't attend due to monetary troubles at the time. Ever since, I've wondered "what might have been."...
Continue reading "Dreams of Clarion" »
According to Jill, "Democrats have scandals about sex; Republicans have scandals about money." I love it when stereotypes are fulfilled. I'm finding the whole thing most amusing, even as my mutual funds and stocks go further down and down. At...
Continue reading "Scandal Time" »
Join the crowd! Everyone's chalking. Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, Washington, AU Heights/Tenleytown, Glen, Male, 31-35!...
Continue reading "Blogchalking" »
Bush vowed that he was coming to D.C. to change the tone of government. And he sure did--where once we worried about who was "hooking up" in the Oval Office, now we're worried about who was cooking the books at...
Continue reading "The New Washington...just like the Old Washington, only Older" »
The saga begins. A few months ago I finally convinced Jill that we needed broadband access in the home as a consolation for not being able to move into a larger place (we have lived in a one-bedroom condominium for...
Continue reading "Faster, Cheaper, Better � Choose 1 of 3" »
The administration continues to try to get people to believe that the corporate scandals are only the result of a few bad CEOs who have ruined the grand ol' times for everyone. In fact, they figuratively crowed as the cable...
Continue reading "Government Is as Business Does" »
Today the cable guys came by and installed the cable modem as well as switching my phone service over to Starpower from Verizon (definitely no DSL line for me now, until I decide to switch back). The condo we own...
Continue reading "Faster, Cheaper, Better - Faster, Maybe" »
.siht ekil stiusrup yllis rof neve ,leef dna kool rieht gniypoc elpoep ekil t'nseod elgooG esuaceb gnol yrev pu eb t'now ylekil dna gnisuma yrev si sihT....
Continue reading "elgooG" »
First, term definition. Egoboo is a science fiction fan term for the ego boost you get from seeing your name in lights, in publication, or just "in." Fans, like most of us extroverts, like to be branded and recognized. Reading...
Continue reading "Egoboo" »
Driving into work this morning I hear the short news blurb before the hour on NPR about Katherine Harris. You remember Ms. Harris, don't you? The Florida Secretary of State, the state's top election official, who fought tooth-and-manicured-nail to certify...
Continue reading "Oh, the Irony" »
CompUSA thinks more highly of Apple's new OS X (.2, code named Jaguar) than even Apple does! They're listing it for $82,402.02 on their pre-order page (I'd say this will be fixed by the time you click on that link,...
Continue reading "The true price of software?" »
This is a great riff on the intense personality type, a common ailment among bloggers and dedicated Internet geeks. Most of the folks I started college with fit this mode to some degree, and only the fact that we shared...
Continue reading "Are you intense?" »
I handle the updates for Pamela Sargent's Web site (Jill and I became good friends with her and George Zebrowski after Jill interviewed Pam for NOVA Express and we met the two of them at WisCon), and she passed these...
Continue reading "Mountain Cage and other updates" »
Born, Never Asked, Laurie Anderson It was a large room. Full of people. All kinds. And they had all arrived at the same buidling at more or less the same time. And they were all free. And they were all...
Continue reading "Age = Three x Twelve" »
I love Google. Really, I do. It's blown every other general search engine away that I've ever tried. And I'm really not that much of a privacy advocate--I use my real name pretty much everywhere I go on the Internet...
Continue reading "Lasts longer than a Twinkie" »
I'm a pseudo-vegetarian, which means I play one at home but am willing to deviate when outside the home (whether at a friend's party or travelling in foreign countries, for example). For me, it's a health issue (my cholesterol when...
Continue reading "Hmmm, tastes like chicken!" »
Well, really, it's got a bit of a ring to it, doesn't it? If Clinton can be maligned with all the XXXgates, why not Bush Co., Ltd.? It seems that Bush claimed that his sale of the Texas Rangers was...
Continue reading "Texas Rangergate" »
I just discovered that the World Fantasy Convention will be in the District in 2003. Supposedly, you can start registering for it after the first of January of this year, but I didn't see any link or information. Considering the...
Continue reading "World Fantasy in DC" »
Glenn McDonald on the lost days of youth:I miss the paper-strewn hallways on the last day of school, and the ecstatic vertigo of walking out the doors knowing there were no more tests or papers or homework or anything. Summers...
Continue reading "Looking for summer" »
Just when you thought Amazon couldn't find yet another business to stream into, they reveal yet another beta service: Restaurant Menus. Okay, this isn't going to make much a difference for places like Richland, Washington, where I once lived and...
Continue reading "The river gets longer..." »
A good advertising campaign is so recognizable, so simple, that it invites parody. Think of "Where's the Beef?" or "I am stuck on Band-Aids." Apple's new "Switch" campaign is proving to be just as powerful. I found this little Flash...
Continue reading "Switch-hitting-hard" »
Here's an interesting statistic:All the CEOs of companies under investigation by the SEC, Department of Justice and other agencies (all with market value of more than $1 billion) earned an amazing average of $62 million annually compared with an average...
Continue reading "Is there a correlation?" »
A discussion with my father-in-law over this past weekend about tax havens in Bermuda had me doing some reading online. I came across this article in the Mercury News that confirmed what he was trying to get across to me,...
Continue reading "Doublespeak or Not?" »
The Democratic National Committee chairman reveals where Dick Cheney's secret hiding location is! Oh, this administration is so clever to hide him in such plain "sight." (via Tom Tomorrow)...
Continue reading "So *that's* the secret, undisclosed location" »
I graduated high school in 1984 (yowza, that 20-year reunion is coming up, isn't it) and began college in Austin at the University of Texas at Austin. When I arrived in Austin to live with my aunt and uncle, my...
Continue reading "Whatever happened to..." »
This falls into the category of "how did they do that?" and "where can I go to congratulate them on a job well done?" Google search on "go to hell" (via my 2p). It's not that I hate Microsoft. I...
Continue reading "Truth in Searching" »
I knew very little about this movie going into it, other than it was directed by the same fellow as Princess Mononoke (interesting fantasy/ecological movie that lost direction about halfway through) and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (also...
Continue reading "Spirited Away" »
Hundreds of thousands, if not more, animals are killed each year for want of a good home. Do not buy your pet from a breeder, but adopt your companion from the local animal rescue/shelter. Picky about what kind of pet...
Continue reading "Find a pet" »
"Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash." Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Russian-born U.S. novelist, poet. Interview in Writers at Work(Fourth Series, ed. by George Plimpton, 1976)....
Continue reading "Nabokov on the novel" »
Discovered a new service called Blogrolling today, an innovative little method of keeping up with that list of places I go for individual commentary on things that interest me. I love it when someone comes along with a tool that...
Continue reading "Blogrolling" »
My favorite author for the last fifteen (or more) years has been Jonathan Carroll, ever since Mike Sumbera had me read his short story, "Friend's Best Man," and then following up on that story with Jonathan's wonderful novel, Bones of...
Continue reading "Jonathan Carroll" »
It was all over the news this morning, how George W. Bush just wrote a letter to all those federal workers, telling them that he was not going to give them the full amount of the raise that he had...
Continue reading "Who's Going to Pay to Fight Terrorism" »
First, a little background. I started teaching college writing to Freshman a little over three years ago. One of the first essays handed in by one of the first classes I had ever taught on my own was a diatribe...
Continue reading "W W J P" »
My father-in-law mailed me a little bit of homespun wisdom from his local newspaper, the (as he calls it) Houston Comical, saying that he thought this was written in an excellent manner. I guess this is the first salvo of...
Continue reading "What I Believe" »
Some advertising campaigns just lend themselves for parody. Some movies deserve to be parodied. He switched, but it is taking forever in the original. This is a much quicker and funnier version....
Continue reading "Switch" »
Due to the snowstorm that came through the Washington area yesterday, I got a day off work. I met with a student, caught up on a number of web sites and blogs, and finally finished creating the trip report on...
Continue reading "Ireland travelogue" »
For the record, these "fill out the multiple-choice survey and find out who you resemble" have become an epidemic on the Internet, but damn if I can resist their irresitable draw. What famous science fiction writer are you? Strangely enough,...
Continue reading "Soul mates" »
While I still agree with Mark Pilgrim that no one on the Internet should really be using Netscape 4.7 anymore (if you are, you really should look at upgrading to Mozilla), I realize that some people still haven't gotten that...
Continue reading "Now Available for Netscape 4.7" »
I've been going through my old Daytimers and putting in past history for this blog (which is like an open diary, but also a means of reminding myself of things readily available on the web). Some of these entries I...
Continue reading "From the archives" »
I've been blessed recently by the number of comments on various things written here in the past (Movable Type makes this function so easy) that I incorporated a little code here to show the most recent comments here on the...
Continue reading "Recent comments" »
I'm finally in the top 3,000 reviewers at Amazon, and I have to admit that it took longer to do than I expected. In the last month, I've been hovering right around the 3,000 mark (at 3,014...than 3,027...then 3,126) and...
Continue reading "Under 3,000" »
Yes, I did watch the State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. Or, to be more exact, the TV in my home was tuned to the speech and I occasionally looked at the screen, but mostly listened to the...
Continue reading "State of the Speech" »
I can't add much more to this than give you the beginning and urge you to read the entire story: Before Vice President Dick Cheney gave the opening address at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a three-day gathering of the...
Continue reading "Shock and Awe" »
Lot of people are blogging this graphic, and well they should, because sometimes numbers need to be illustrated just so you understand how dramatic a change has happened in the two years since Bush the Younger was placed in office....
Continue reading "Some pictures are worth more than words" »
While walking to the University this morning, I noticed a police car driving north on Massachusetts with its lights on but not with any sirens sounding. I didn't think twice about it--living in the District, one begins to become immune...
Continue reading "Putting on a good show" »
The Washington area is blanketed with snow, and even more was falling from the air as I walked over to American University from my condo. It was strange last night and today to be walking in the middle of Massachusetts...
Continue reading "The Ten Year Snow Job" »
There's a recent (within the last couple of months) proposal to make the District of Columbia's primary the first in the nation. For a while, New Hampshire (whose primary currently has that designation) was saying that it would leapfrog its...
Continue reading "First in the Nation" »
Oh, the interactive tests you can take on the Web just continue to multiply. I can't resist them, either. This one (via Perverse Access Memory, which I had to add to my blogroll not only because it's often about games,...
Continue reading "I should be a BARD!" »
It's been a stressful couple of weeks at Engel-Cox Central, as Jill first prepared for by gathering as many books from as many libraries as she could, reading from some of them and rereading her class notes, then spending five...
Continue reading "Jill passes her written comprehensives" »
I tried to do a search on Google to find other area bloggers, but Washington, DC is such a topic in so many blogs (no duh, huh) that what I was finding were lots of entries but no area bloggers...until...
Continue reading "DC Blog Map" »
Here's the scene: it is late at night and you are driving down Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., looking for a parking spot near where your friend lives in a high rise building near American University. You've been warned to...
Continue reading "What would you do?" »
From today's column by Molly Ivins on the beauty of Treasury Secretary Snow's golden parachute and what's being done to other people's pensions:The Bush administration has a plan (those are rapidly becoming the six most chilling words in the English...
Continue reading "Molly Ivins says it so well" »
Michael Gerhardt has a great article in Sunday's Washington Post about the pending nomination of Miguel Estrada for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, widely seen as the second most powerful court in the nation, and