Chapter One of Magickal Crescent is up now.

When I was writing the streetcar book back in 2003-2004, I started writing a novel as well. The original idea for the novel came to me a couple of years before that. I tried at the time to find an agent to run with the novel, but no luck. The storm offered a bit of a distraction in terms of getting it published as well. So, I'll be publishing a chapter a week here, starting with the Prologue.

Before heading back to the Georgia Institute of Technology this morning, firstborn asked me if I had Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy" on my bookshelves. I said yes and grabbed it for him.

The cover price on the paperbacks? $1.75.

He asked if I had an edition that was printed after he was born. I said no, so I ordered new ones for him. How can I complain if he wants to read good SF?

I first read the Foundation Trilogy in my senior year at Brother Martin (75-76). The year before, I took a single-semester English class in Science Fiction (taught by the indomitable Mr. Tony Hartigan), and the trilogy was one of the extended-read projects I didn't pick. Everyone raved about it, so I read it that following summer. To see my son pick it up is a wonderful thing.

Wife and I went to see "Up in the Air" last night. Naturally, we left the boys home. We offered to take them, but they declined, and we didn't insist, seeing that they were not being punished for anything. :-) The film was a bit of a departure from your typical holiday-season romantic comedy, which made it quite enjoyable.

"Up in the Air" is the story of Ryan Bingham, who makes a living firing people. He works for a company that is brought in when other companies do layoffs. Bingham tells us it's because the bosses of the people being laid off have no guts, but there's a ton of legal-ese involved when firing someone, and bringing in pros who know what to say and not say can reduce the lawsuit count. The premise of a guy who fires people for a living is worth a number of both laughs and thought-provoking moments throughout the film, and Clooney does the part justice.

The romantic connection of the film does not involve Bingham's job so much as how his job is done. Ryan Bingham is a "road warrior," someone who spends the bulk of his time away from home. The nature of the gig is such that Bingham may end up in three or four differnt cities in a week. That's a lot of air travel, living in hotels, and hanging out in hotel bars.

(review continues with SPOILERS after the jump)

screen shot of Astrid app for Android

I've never been totally happy with integrating task management across laptop, "cloud" and mobile device for years. My latest incarnation is a combination of Remember The Milk as a base for task management, then integrating it with Google Calendar in the cloud and Astrid on my G1 phone (android).

The problem with these conglomerations is when you want to upgrade one component or another. In this case, upgrading Thunderbird 3.0 (which I wrote about on linux-blog.com) messed up Thunderbird's calendar add-on, Lightning. I found a good for-the-moment fix in the Google Calendar Tab add-on for Thunderbird 3.0, however. This displays my Google calendar in a second Thunderbird tab. In a way, that's just fine by me, since it's now moved the laptop into the could a bit more.

I got away from BookCrossing.com for a while.  With all the travel, packing books just to give away was problematic.  My study at home reflects this, as paperbacks and non-fiction books I've purchased to read on airplanes begin to stack up.  So, I've returned to the BookCrossing fold, releasing a book yesterday (Boehlert's Bloggers on the Bus), and another this morning, Stross' The Jenifer Morgue. 

(more after the jump)

oooooooh...

The "Crazy Crusader" goes back to the St. Aloysius days.

Starting to do a few odds-and-ends things to prepare for the book's release. Yes, it's a while off, but if I get the web infrastructure stuff set up now, it'll go smoother in the spring. To that end, I did a few basic things:

(continued after the jump)

drupal editor for Android

While this National Lampoon article is more about New York Giants humor that I don't get, this caught my attention:I’m writing a complaint letter to Wachovia. I will have no more of this“play of the game” decided with two minutes left when the game is stillin the process of being blown. Plus, the play of the game was not theBoss TD that was played on the jumbotron, it was the coin toss thatgave the Giants the ball first in OT.