• A new re-fueling record

    10 Feb 2006 » 1 min read

    I have passed my previous record of number of days without having to put gas in my car. Since moving out to the DC area 3-1/2 years ago, I went from driving 16,000 miles/year in L.A. to under 4,000 miles a year in the metro DC area. That number is also slowly shrinking. Today is…

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  • Pushups and podcasts

    10 Feb 2006 » 1 min read about Science Fiction

    35 pushups? I blew past that and kept on going. I did 39-1/2 pushups tonight. That last one I couldn’t lock my arms completely and so I call it 39-1/2 instead of 40. But if I can hit 40 tomorrow night then I’ll start on the second set which will eventually go up to 30.…

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  • Something in the water

    10 Feb 2006 » 3 min read about Writing & Publishing

    I don’t know what it was, but I was in a mood today. I can’t quite describe it. I was on some kind of roll that I just can’t explain. I was, in fact, hilarious. I had myself in stitches. Some of it was work-related. On the other hand, I felt rather productive today as…

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  • Elipses…

    09 Feb 2006 » 1 min read about Writing & Publishing

    Minor rant follows: How do people decide how many elipses to use, in particular when composing an email or instant message? Is there a different set of rules of which I am unaware? I often see people write things like: You’ll never guess what happened……….. Now, what made that person decide it was okay to…

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  • Reading and writing

    09 Feb 2006 » 1 min read about Reading & Books

    Switching to The Passage of the Light was a good move because I haven’t stopped laughing since I’ve started reading it. During my late lunch today, I was chuckling so loud I thought I might be disturbing my neighbors. Barry Malzberg is just about the most brilliant writer I have ever read, in or out…

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  • Vanity Fair

    09 Feb 2006 » 1 min read

    I’ve never really been gaga over beautiful actresses; often because I am too self-absorbed and dense to notice. However, two stand out in my mind: Grace Kelly, in “High Society”, circa 1956. And Scarlett Johansson. Something about her in “Lost in Translation”, but I don’t know exactly what it was. In any event, all of…

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  • American Idol

    08 Feb 2006 » 2 min read about Reading & Books

    Add another “new” thing to my list of things never before tried: I caught the last half of American Idol tonight. I was waiting for House to start up, really, and had nothing else to do. I can see why people find it addicting, although I don’t think I’ll be volunteering to watch it again…

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  • First class on Acela

    07 Feb 2006 » 1 min read about Travel

    I’m heading up to NYC in two weeks and I was going to use some of my accumulated Amtrak miles to get a free Acela trip. I have enough miles for that. I saw that a First Class trip on Acela is 10,500 miles. I thought, hey maybe I’ll do that. So I checked my…

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  • Hearing things…

    07 Feb 2006 » 1 min read

    Tail end of lunch and I keep hearing things. Sounds like the kind of low volume, tinny sound that an iPod makes when it accidentally turns on in your backpack. Except my iPod is sitting right next to me. And yet, I keep hearing this. Ah–I’ve found out what it is: it’s the hard disk…

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  • Why lyrics?

    07 Feb 2006 » 1 min read

    Was browsing the latest posts again and I’ve noticed another trend: a lot of people post nothing more than song lyrics. Why is that? Don’t people have anything original to say? Posting song lyrics, to me, is like buying a Hallmark card; a canned way of saying something you can’t think of stating originally yourself.…

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