In the meantime

Not much blogging lately. Work has been work and other things have been going on. Also, adjusting to the dog has required a couple of extra hours out of my day. Since at least one of those hours has been exercise, I'm well ahead.

In any event, I'm off on a fifth annual trip to AK here in a few days and hope to have some photos from that. Re: chessie in the desert- playing with the hose is all in good fun and exercise. Attacking the sprinklers buried in the lawn when they start spouting water and killing them is not so cute. Actually, short of a trip to the hardware store and the frustration of not being able to call him off, it was kind of funny.

A thought on books- has anyone out there read Neal Stephenson's "Zodiac- an eco-thriller"? Highly, highly recommended. Derring-do from an engaging protagonist who is not necessarily a nice guy, described by the author as a hard boiled crime novel in a different setting. I'd put it up against "The Monkey Wrench Gang" (in terms of eco-thrillers) any time, though I can't speak to the accuracy of the geography portrayed for the East Coast in the first as I can for the second, as I have been fortunate enought to knock around the Four Corners a very little bit. In any case, it is a strong early work from the guy who later brought us "Cryptonomicon", which is better than early Clancy or most of W.E.B. Griffin for a techno-thriller along with "Snow Crash" and "The Daimond Age", which are by far two of the best examples of cyberpunk. I'll note that the link for "Snow Crash" does not lead to anything directly about the novel, but rather to an interview of the author which is notable for the very funny answer to question#4 and the rather mysterious handle borne by questioner #7. "Snowcrash" also starts off in a very hard boiled fashion, by the way. To wit:
"The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachno-fiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books."

Can you see it?