Author Archive
Four Things Meme
FOUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE:
1. Assistant Editor
2. Bookseller (at Waldenbooks, Books a Million, and B&N)
3. Admin. Assistant at a Law Firm
4. Tech Writer
FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
1. The Princess Bride
2. Fight Club
3. Sling Blade
4. Predator
FOUR CITIES YOU’VE LIVED IN:
1. Perth Amboy, NJ
2. Winter Park, FL
3. Port St. Lucie, FL
4. Cutler Ridge, FL
FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:
1. The West Wing
2. The Wire
3. Lost
4. Survivor
FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION:
1. The Bahamas
2. North Carolina
3. Virginia
4. Disney World
FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:
1. www.bloglines.com
2. mail.google.com
3. F&SF Message Board
4. wwww.a9.com (my homepage, where I keep all my bookmarks)
FOUR OF YOUR ALL-TIME FAVOURITE RESTAURANTS:
1. Great Wall (a Chinese restaurant in Port St. Lucie)
2. Rosario’s (a pizza place in Hoboken–besides great pizza, they make a mean cajun chicken salad)
3. China King (a Chinese place in Winter Park)
4. Can’t think of anything else
FOUR OF YOUR FAVOURITE FOODS:
1. pizza
2. baked ziti
3. mixed berry smoothies
4. dried apricots
FOUR SCHOOLS YOU’VE ATTENDED:
1. University of Central Florida
2. Indian River Community College
3. Lincoln Park Academy (which was recently destroyed by a hurricane, in FL)
4. Ukranian Assumption School (a Catholic K-8 school…*shudder*)
FOUR THINGS YOU FIND YOURSELF SAYING A LOT:
1. So anyway…
2. What?
3. What the fuck?
4. Jesus-fucking-Christ
FOUR PLACES YOU’D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
1. South Florida
2. Arizona*
3. Southern California*
4. New Mexico*
*Basically, I’d rather be somewhere where it’s not freezing-ass cold.
Phony Publisher Pleads Guilty
SCI FI Wire just published a news story I wrote about Writer Beware’s investigation into fraudulent publisher/agent Martha Ivery which recently resulted in Ivery pleading to 15 counts of mail fraud.
STRONG MEDICINE: Dec. 2005
The latest installment of my book review column, STRONG MEDICINE: Books That Cure What Ails You, was just published in Intergalactic Medicine Show. In this installment, I review Jonathan Carroll’s Glass Soup, Chris Roberson’s Adventure, Vol. 1, the graphic novel Sea of Red, Vol. 1: No Grave But the Sea, and Cory Doctorow’s podcast of his story “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth.”
Rabe Wraps Norton’s D&D Sequel
SCI FI Wire just published a news story I wrote about Jean Rabe’s collaboration with Andre Norton on The Return to Quag Keep, the sequel to Quag Keep, the first novel published based on the Dungeons & Dragons gaming franchise.
In Dusk, Fantasy Happens
SCI FI Wire just published a news story I wrote about Tim Lebbon’s new dark heroic fantasy series, which begins with Dusk.
A Lot Of Bear Is Coming Soon
SCI FI Wire just published a news story I wrote about what’s next for Elizabeth Bear.
Blogs W/O RSS Feeds
Okay, new annoyance: What’s up with these people who have blogs with no RSS feeds? Do you want people to read it or not? Most people who read blogs read enough of them that keeping track of them without RSS feeds is a huge pain in the ass. If you still want people to visit your actual site, rather than read your posts in a blog aggregator, you can just have the RSS feed offer excerpts with links to the post.
Some of the Reasons I Hate December
You would think that if any retailer had a sophisticated, user-friendly, bug-free self-check out system, it would be Wal-Mart, the biggest freaking retailer in the world. But you’d be wrong.
Their self-check out system is the buggiest one I’ve ever seen, at least my first experience with it was. I scanned an electric razor, put it in the bag. The razor did scan and showed up on the screen, but when I put it in the bag, the system said “Unauthorized item in bag.” This led to me attempting to void the razor and to try re-ringing it. But, if you void an item, this requires supervisor approval.
This leads to another problem with Wal-Mart. These self-check out things are supposed to have an employee supervising the check out lanes, so that if a customer needs assistance, they can come help. At Wal-Mart, however, there was no employee to be seen, and it took someone like five minutes to come over to help me out.
After she fixed the problem, when I went to scan the razor again, it was fine, but I had to demagnetize the anti-theft device. The problem now was that the demagnetizing strip was *right next* to the scanner, so when I tried to demag the anti-theft, it scanned the razor *two more times* requiring yet more supervisor intervention.
Of course, all this could have been easily avoided if *any* of the multitude of open lanes was an express lane. Hell, not even the self-check out lanes were express–I was waiting in line for quite a while even there, because a woman had a cart full of clothes. (I had three items.)
Conclusion: Wal-Mart evil.
In other retail bitching news: why is it that when the weather turns cold, and the snow starts to fall, every store in the area *always* runs out of rock salt (chemical de-icer). Home Depot didn’t have any; Wal-Mart didn’t have any. But two stores is my limit; I’m not going to hunt around for it any more than that. Come to think of it, no one ever has any snowblowers around this time of year either; a couple years ago, I ordered one online, because I couldn’t find any locally. What, do you have a buy a snow blower in the freaking *summer*? What happened to the laws of supply and demand? When demand is high, shouldn’t your supply be high?
Buckell Creates Writer’s Site
SCI FI Wire just published a news story I wrote about Tobias S. Buckell’s new science fiction and fantasy community Web site, SFNovelists.com (which is still under construction).