Category: Uncategorized

When I did uploaded all my road trip photos recently, I felt like there were several missing images, particularly from Cuervo and Tucumcari, New Mexico.
Last night, I found them! They were conveniently hidden on my iBook in the ~/roadtip/images directory. Clever, tricksey, wicked, filthy, stinking little jpegs! We hates them!
Anyway, I just added a them to the Eastbound — New Mexico album, precious.

I just finished adding captions to all the Eastbound – Texas pictures in the Road Trip gallery.
I love working on those pictures, because it reminds me how happy Anne and I were on that trip.

Several people have e-mailed me this, which was in Neil Gaiman’s journal this morning:

I’m going to be a guest at Penguincon next year, mostly because it struck me as something fun I could drag my son Mike to that he’d enjoy as much as, or more than, I would, and because Terry Pratchett had a great time last year. It won’t be a usual SF convention, and the guests include lots of people I’m looking forward to meeting in the flesh, like the Slashdot people, and Wil Wheaton, who long before he was an uberblogger I knew of as The Guy Who Started the Sandman Discussion On Genie…

It blows my mind that he’s looking forward to meeting me. Neil Gaiman’s been transformed from A Guy Whose Work I Really Love into A Guy Who Has Inspired Me And Made Me Want To Be A Better Writer, so I’ll be working extra hard to not be a complete geek when I’m there.
I love that he mentioned GEnie! That was my first ever Internet experience, in the old SF Roundtable.
The first time I logged on, I was sitting at a menu prompt, and I kept getting messages from people welcoming me to GEnie. I had no idea how the system worked, so I just typed (In all caps, of course) at the menu prompt. It looked something like this:

menu.prompt>HI THERE. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING HERE. WHERE CAN I GO?
menu.prompt> Error! You didn’t use a command!
menu.prompt>IT TOLD ME I DIDN’T USE A COMMAND. WHAT SHOULD I DO?
menu.prompt> Error! You didn’t use a command!

It went on and on like that until I ended up in the GEnie version of irc, where I learned that typing in all caps wasn’t cool like War Games, but was totally lame, like Short Circuit.
When I was using GEnie, I was the biggest Sandman fanboy on earth. I even created a character in GEnie’s MUD-like thing called “Morpheus,” who I described as “a tall thin man with black hair, pale skin, and piercing black eyes. You think you’ve seen him in a Dream.”
Man, just the mention of GEnie brings back a flood of memories. I spent hundreds of hours on GEnie over the years, at speeds up to 2400 baud. I bet an archive of my sf roundtable discussions would be really horrifying to me, because I was at the hight of my teenage lameness then. I don’t think I ever spoke in AOL kiddie-speak, but my idiocy and ignorance about everything in the world really shone through.

Well, one good night’s sleep later, I really regret totally losing my cool last night. See, this guy struck a very exposed nerve, and that part of my brain that says, “Dude, are you sure you want to do this?” was completely shorted out. But I think I’ll leave that post up, because it will serve as a reminder to me, (a scarlet letter, if you will) that it’s fine to love my family, and it’s fine to defend them when they are attacked . . . but sometimes it’s better to just go take a long walk and cool off. I think it’s fine to vent in one’s blog, but sometimes it’s just better to STFU and be a bigger person.
*Cue music for “The More You Know.”*

Some mothefucker calling himself “Bruce Cook” thinks that it’s okay to misrepresent me and my wife:

I had opportunity to go to a Star Trek Convention recently and Wil Wheaton was there. He has always been one of my favorite actors and I so looked forward to meeting him. Anyway, I did not know he sold his autograph. I bought a picture for $5 and,when it came time for me to meet him, he told me he needed $10 for the autograph. I was brought ,by my brother,in a wheelchair and it was explained we did not have $10. But,instead of showing compassion, his wife,who was there,said, “then wheel your crippled ass out of the way,we’re here to make money,not give out charity!” I looked at Wil and he said “You heard her,now fork over the 10 or get the hell out of here!”

It’s bad enough that this bastard made up some stupid lie about me. That I can ignore. But he crossed a line when he lied about my wife, who is the most loving, compassionate, caring and thoughtuful woman on this planet.
Bruce Cook, if you’re reading this, you have one chance to set the record straight. Nobody tells lies about my wife and gets away with it, you son of a bitch.
UPDATE 11:46 PM PST: Now that I’ve managed to calm down, and my rage has cooled to just 500 degrees, rather than 500,000, I’ve removed this pigfucker’s Yahoo profile info. As furious as I am, I think it would be pretty uncool to flood this idiot with e-mails and junk. For all I know, this could be some troll looking for lots of attention, in which case I’ve played right into his / her / its hands.
The thing is, when I perceive a threat against people I love, I tend to blast off and nuke the site for orbit. I just want this guy / gal / robot to set the record straight, then we can all get back to hanging out at the stick, looking at a thing in a bag.