Category: Weblog

The Phoenix Exultant – John C. Wright
The Phoenix Exultant is the second book in the Golden Age trilogy. The beginning of the book finds our hero, Phaethon, about as low in his utopian society as he can get. There is appears to be little hope but for a single phrase whispered to him before his fall into exile.
The book spends less time examining society and more time on action with Phaethon trying to figure out exactly who his enemy is and what it wants. The author, John C. Wright, takes page from Heinlein and we see Phaethon pull himself by him bootstraps by his skill and cunning.
The characters of Atkins and Daphne are more fully rounded out and you begin to see that the Utopia is not so idyllic as it seemed at first glance. Without giving much away, the time spent on Atkins and the role of warfare in the future will be crucial to the final book in the trilogy.
My only disappointment in the book was realizing that I have to wait until the third book is released next year. The book is fantastic and right within the classic space opera genre.
I was surprised to see a comment in my previous review of The Golden Age by the author himself.  John C. Wright somehow stumbled across my brief comment and took the time to taunt me with word of the galley proofs of the third novel. I was quite suprised to read John’s comments.
I would pay good money for a copy of the third book, even in galley proof form. The final novel is due out in March 2004, eight long months away.
I look forward to more novels by John in the future and hope these efforts are recognized by the various Sci-Fi awards groups.

I’ve playing around with a few things on the geek side of things lately.
DVD Player
Michele asked me to swap a different DVD player into the bedroom. Our first DVD player, the Apex-600A has trouble with several of the more recent DVDs. I brought in the Apex-1500 fromt he garage.
I sat down to fold some laundry and put on a DVD. The picture looked horrible. The brightness was off and it wasn’t adjustable. The picture kept getting brighter, then darker. I knew what it was, it was Macrovision. Macrovision is a technique used on VHS tapes and DVDs to prevent people from copying movies. Basically, Macrovision makes the sync signal of the picture vary enough that it’s almost unwatchable. A good TV can pull the signal out of the mess, but VCRs typically can’t.
The TV in bedroom is Michele’s 13″ from her college days in the 80s. It can’t handle Macrovision. I turned to the net to solve the problem. I hoped there was a keycode sequence or something I could do to turn off the Macrovision.
What I found was a way to flash the firmware in the DVD player and make the Macrovision go away forever. It took about 10 minutes to burn a CD with the needed file and flash the player. I put the movie back in the DVD player and amazingly, the picture looks great.
w.bloggar
I stumbled on to yet another MovableType client application called w.bloggar. w.bloggar let’s me edit my posts an dpost them to the weblog without having to be connected to the net.
I found the tool is quite good and simple to use. I could see using it on the laptop and even at my desktop since saves some of the time I usually spend writing HTML code.
More reports on w.bloggar as I use it more.

As promised, here are the pictures of the weekend.

I picked up some Pop Rocks and mentioned to Zoe about the danger of mixing Pop Rocks & 7-Up

Zoe wanted to see what really happened. I did it first, and then she tried.

She mastered the blast of Pop Rocks and soda and continued to tempt fate with the rest of the package

James with his new laptop

The girls at the Circus

The clowns had a pie fight. My brother is jealous.

You don’t see elephants doing tricks every day. Amazing stuff.

I’m writing this with w.bloggar, another tool that let’s me write posts offline with a few more features. As you can see above, it will grab the song I’m listening to and even let me post color text. Hopefully this will work well. It’d be nice to have an offline blog tool.
This weekend has been busy and fun. I took a number of pictures and will post them later.
Friday night, James showed up with a brand new Apple 12″ Powerbook. He had just bought it at the Apple Store in Pasadena. The laptop is supersweet. He booted it up and it connected to my WiFi automatically. I am jealous of the sleek new machine. The MAc OS still seems a little weird to me, but I see while people buy them in droves.
Saturday we took the kids to the Circus. They had a great time. I remembered to bring earplugs to cut down on the noise. At the circus, they keep the volume at 11. Later that evening I picked up Martin at the airport for his brief trip back to LA. James, Martin, and I stayed up surfing the web on laptops and watchign Sportscenter till the wee hours.
Sunday was Michele’s day off. I took the kids out to IHOP with James and Martin. Unfortunately, there was no wifi at the IHOP this time. The kids ate good and we went to wander around the local shoppig center. The kids love Zainy Brainy. Michele had driven down to see Jenny to take a break. The stress has been high recently and she needed a break. They went to see Pirates of the Caribbean. Meanwhile, the girls and I went for a swim in the backyard.
OK. So much for the test, let’s see how it works. More later.

The replacement part for the clothes washer arrived yesterday and I installed it. Soon the washer was humming along, continuing the endless loads of laundry.
Recently I’ve fixed several things around the house. It seems that summer tends to be the season for repairs. I always feel good about fixing things.
Unfortunately there are some things I can’t fix. Engineering training does not do much when it comes to helping people through the real problems of life.
Michele and her mother have been fighting lately. I can’t even put my finger on the exact reason why. Issues both old and new, added to the stress of Lisa’s (sister/daughter) wedding are wreaking havoc. The details aren’t important, it’s the effects the worry me. The pain, tears, and anger on both sides are going to leave a mark. And there’s not much I can do to fix it.
The worst thing about it is that the bond between Michele and her mother is so strong, that it makes this kinda thing even worse. When times are good, they are like to two peas in a pod, happy and giddy to be together. That closeness is making this dispute even more damaging and hurtful.
All I can hope is that the love wins out over the anger soon rather than later. I know it will be resolved eventually, but for my own sanity, I hope it’s soon.

Back when I was spending time in Asia, it was explained to me that there were heaty foods and cool foods. If you eat too much heaty food, you will have trouble.
Well, I decided to try the Atkins thing. Eating meat is no problem, or so I thought. I appears that all the Atkins acceptable food is basically heaty food. Most of the day, I feel like I’m gunna break out into a sweat. I’m gunna keep at this diet, but I may some Chinese herbs to get me through.
I’m playing with the Zempt tool for MT entries. IT seems pretty cool. I can do things like this:

It took a look at what Winamp was playing and inserted it here. It also make it easy to spellcheck posts and do other simple formatting without having to get the HTML right.
In other news, Michele posted her take on the broken washer. Martin must be really bored because he posted a long ass entry.
I began reading The Phoenix Exultant, the sequel to The Golden Age, that I finished a few days ago. It is quite delectable. Some times I wish I had one of those jobs where you can bring a book and read during the day.
OK, time to head to bed. I was at work today around 6AM and I need to catch up on some rest.
Until then, go get the new Google Toolbar. It’s all that and a bag of chips!

The washing machine is broken.
Last night Michele casually says, “I know you just wanted to read your new book up front, but I think the washing machine isn’t washing.”
I go check and sure enough, the agitator is not agitating.
I assume that it’s due to the normal condition of Michele shoving 3 loads of clothes into the washer at the same time. She explains the reasoning for overloading the washer as “We have a lot of laundry!”
The wet laundry is pulled out of the washer and into the sink to reveal a washer that still won’t agitate. I try the usual cycling of the washer, all to no avail. Something is actually broken.
After a bit of disassembly, I find that a plastic adapter for the agitator that connects to the drive motor is stripped. Now, I don’t mean stripped as in it still works and slips occasionally. I mean stripped as in completely smooth with no traction at all. The part will have to be replaced.
It took many, MANY oversized loads to do this kinda damage.
I go explain this to Michele and her only question is, “Can I have a new front-loading washer now?”. I roll my eyes and go check the internet for the part.
The part is $4.90 and $20+ for overnight shipping. For grins, I check to see the price of a new front-loading washer. The cheapest one is around $700 at Sears.
$25 vs. $700? Hmmm… What to do, what to do?
Of course, I ordered the spare part and explained to Michele that it will take a much more expensive break to get me to buy a new washer. She just smiled.
Later, I had a vision of Michele taking a hammer to the insides of the washer, hoping to bring about the early arrival of the new front-loading washer. I need to keep a eye on her. She’s sneaky.

The heat is going to be arriving soon here in Sunny Southern California, and I am getting a quick post in before the day really begins.

Mira blowing out candles with Zoe in support.

Yesterday, the hosting provider for this site did a software upgrade.
As a result, the interface between perl and mysql was broken for part of the day. Basically it meant that MovableType didn’t work and you couldn’t read comments.
It appears that everything is fixed. Please resume your normal commenting.

A few pictures before I wrap up the day.

Mira on her new bicycle and in her new dress. Happy 5th!

Here I am lurking in the shadows on my new bike.