Spider Robinson, author of the wickedly warped Callahan series, shares his thoughts on the Columbia disaster and the future of space exploration.
His wife, Jeanne, was on the list for the Civilian in Space program before the Challenger explosion.
Well, duh! And here I thought “fair use of copyrighted works” was codified into law. I should have known better.
Argh! Hoist upon me own petard!
Mr. Peace was honored or confuzzled (maybe both) at my naming him The Busby Berkely of the Internet. But I didn’t think he’d retailiate with the Random Ravings: The Find a Name for Solonor Contest.
Please, somebody, go vote for “The Wealthiest Blogger on Earth”. I’ve heard that repetitive affirmation can turn dreams into reality. (Hey, it worked for The Thorn in My Side of the Blogosphere.)
Last night I found out something disturbing. Dania and I might be related.
No, I am not joking. She’s checking her Nova Scotian Brace family tree now.
Or maybe she’s just trying to get a birthday present out of me. You know how them Canadians are.
Bush, spy, bomb, Iraq, terrorist, freedom-of-speech, censorship, CIA, FBI, BBC, MTV, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Sorry, I was lonely and wanted someone to suck down all my web pages for analysis. I haven’t forgotten about our little visitors from the IAEA. They seem to strike every time one of those topics get mentioned, so I thought I’d test that theory.
My next blog entry may be from a secret underground bunker. How cool is that?
Well, I might be Plum Crazy (uh-haaa), but I think it’s time for Carnival of the Vanities #20!
So, while you’re wasting your company’s bandwidth sneaking around the Web with your Ghostzilla and spying on people’s search queries at Metaspy, you just have to have some games to play, right? I mean, what’s slacking off, if you’re not devoting your brain power to putting the black queen on the red king?
“But isn’t playing zee Minesweeper and zee Solitaire a bit obvious, Meester Solinore? I do not wish to be excommunicated from my job, sir.”
Fear not, yon slackweed! For, by the miracle of modern computer programming, you can even play Pacman beneath the noses of your cubemate!
“But who? wha? how?”
Stay your bewildered yammering, my friend, and go to Tiny Windows Games. For there, you will find teensy weensy versions of classic games. Pool, chess, tennis, breakout, Donkey Kong, Frogger. They even have Asteroids! mmmm…. Asteroids…
“This is eencredible! I can now rot my brain on company time without even going to a department meeting. How may we ever repay you, Meester Solinore?”
You can’t.
Continuing the sneaky theme, here is a dastardly little link for you evil slackers.
Ever wonder what people are searching for on Metacrawler? Well, Metaspy offers you two different knotholes in the fence to peek through: a filtered version that eliminates all the naughty stuff and an unfiltered version that doesn’t. The view changes every 15 seconds (or when you manually refresh your browser).
Random sample in 30 seconds of the filtered view:
[ via the nefarious (and blogless) Sgt. Grump ]
Without cool toys, my life is a meaningless void. With them, at least it’s a fun meaningless void.
I dare not reveal my source for the following software toy, as I am sure that the James Bond-like rush it gives me has to be immoral, if not illegal. But, picture if you will, having the ability to surf the web from inside Excel or Word or even Notepad. Suddenly, when you think a party-of-the-first-part sees your lazy party-of-the-second-part butt lusting after a new iPod on the Web, you just move your mouse off the window and voila! No more browser.
Then, once the danger has passed, you wave your magic wand and presto! Your monthly budget analysis morphs back into the Amazon.com catalog.
All of this magic can be found at Ghostzilla.com.
Knock twice.
Wait for the phrase, “Oscar the Grouch has gone to bed.”
Reply, “Yes, have some cheese.”
And tell ’em Louie sent ya.
In cruising my friends’ blogs this evening, I came across a particularly venomous exchange in the comments section of one of them. I started to jump into the middle of it and wound up writing this long op-ed piece that I knew I was going to have to re-post to a half a dozen other blogs, so I decided to just state it here and be done with it. (Also, I feel there are too damned many people reading this blog, so I thought I’d scare a few off.)
