Old Man

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread My kid caught a fish.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Indeed it does. Also I approve of your taste in literature.

Re: New article on FTL.

Re: The cranky thread That particular choice of words evokes images of rivers and waterfalls, so when used in reference to diarrhea, it earns a big

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I just lost 90 minutes surfing wikipedia, and I don't mind one bit. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%BA_Chulainn if you want to go down the same rabbit hole.)

Re: The cranky thread I post from my iphone all the time. It is, actually, a pain to post like that. But you know how addicts have to get their fix. This will change, but it'll take a while. After all, there are still sites out there using the tag.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: Musings on Random Musings I think Springsteen was less overrated when he was starting out. Back then his bluesy, blue collar style was novel. Today he's kind of generic.

Re: The cranky thread That, plus we're at the far end of an internet connection and you can't reach us. Thbppt!

Re: The cranky thread I postponed it for a week. It'll look bad to the company that wants me to pass it, but not as bad as immediate failure.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games Wow, you can barely see the slide on that thing cycle.

Re: Musings on Random Musings Come on, most people can barely grasp the real solar and lunar cycles; you want to put in additional suns and moons too? Maybe with highly eccentric or inclined orbits? Because that would rock. I wish I had a nickel for every time I got into an argument with someone over celestial mechanics. "That star up there is really the planet Venus!" "No it isn't, it must be Jupiter." "It's Venus!" "It's directly overhead and it's nighttime, therefore it cannot be Venus." "I still say it's Venus!" Sigh.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings The Marines are practicing breaching drills over the hill again. It sounds like... victory.

Re: The cranky thread I'm not going to pass my exam on Thursday. Not unless it is waaay easier than all the sample tests I'm looking at.

Re: More space news! How long until it hatches?

Re: Well this just sucks. (Commercial rocket aborts on launch.) Okay, I confess I didn't realize the true significance of this launch. I had thought that SpaceX was basically just replicating dumb-rocket orbital launch. But apparently they're doing it nearly an order of magnitude more cheaply--and are going to going to go even cheaper if they ultimately succeed in bringing the first stage back under power. Very, very interesting.

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread Usually when I do that they scream and run away.

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread

Re: "Neat" Pictures And I'm going to need some help operating my new helicarrier, too.

Re: "Neat" Pictures So do I. Full scale, of course. And fully functional.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I encountered this link and it really blew me away. Turns out I know nothing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

Re: The "Nice Happy" Thread I find myself wondering what I can give him to play with that he can take apart and put back together. Because if I don't give him something, he might find something.

Re: "Neat" Pictures The main university library here is closed on weekends and even the weekday hours are pretty abbreviated. The public libraries were on budgetary life support a few years back--they're doing better now, at least in the sense that no one is talking about shuttering them for good, but they're still not getting the support they ought to be. I seriously don't know what I'd do without the public libraries here--there is no way I can afford the number of books my kid goes through in a week.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik, the fourth book in the Temeraire series. Amusingly, it had been so long since I read the last book that I lost track of what book I was on--so I wound up skipping the third book. I powered through anyway and was pleased to see that I was able to do so without missing any major plot developments. That means that, assuming you have read the first book, you can probably pick up any of books 2-4 and read them standalone. As usual Novik's work is easy to read, pretty fast paced, and well thought out. What differentiated this book form the first two was that, up until now, things always seemed to tend to work out for Laurence and Temeraire through serendipity. That's not the case in this one, though it's also hardly grim. In particular I like the addition of Africa to the Temeraire universe, especially its portrayal; I found myself expecting things to turn out a certain way with the Empire of Ivory and they... didn't. I give this book four out of five carabiners. I really can't find any fault with it at all, but for some reason it just didn't blow my socks off like some other books have.

Re: "Neat" Pictures How is it porn if it isn't illustrated?