The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

Hey, look, a blog post!  I’m not really up for making a “2012 in review” post, because a lot of it is really crappy and I’m trying to maintain forward momentum.  One nice thing about no longer being in school despite the lack of employment is the time and ability to read fiction again.  I do like to keep track of what fiction I read, and I’ve not done one of these since before I returned to school, and that was probably only on my LiveJournal.

There are a lot of series on which I’m trying to catch up, and I managed a few.  The list isn’t as long as some in years past, in part because I didn’t start until late May, I am actually trying to find a job and do other productive things, and also because I just don’t read as quickly as I used to do.  Anyway, here they are in reading order…

A Feast for Crows – George R.R. Martin.  I think, with the HBO adaptation, I was itching to catch up on this series the most.  I liked this volume a lot, even though some of the most popular characters were missing because of how he split up the story.  With it and the following volume, I’ve pretty much stopped counting individual volumes as stand-alone books – “A Song of Ice and Fire” is one long story, and I’m just waiting for the next chunk to be published.

A Dance with Dragons – George R.R. Martin.  This was the next chunk after the volume above.  First half or so overlaps the previous one, and then the rest of this one brings back in nearly all the point-of-view threads.  Winter is here, more characters die, and things seem finally to be moving toward some great event or series of them.

Redshirts – John Scalzi.  Never read more than his “Whatever” blog before, but couldn’t pass up this, just from the premise:  A handful of “redshirt” characters (yes, in the “Star Trek” sense) on a spaceship try to figure out just why they are so expendable.  It went a few places I didn’t expect, and was definitely funny.  Helped me confirm putting Scalzi’s Old Man’s War on my to-read pile was probably a good idea.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling.  I’d already seen both films, and knew the story in general, but, having returned to school around the time this came out or soon after, I never got around to reading it.  Toni and I put on the audio book in the car when we had to make a trip to Boston for a funeral early in the year, but we only got through a handful of chapters (even on an 18-hour drive).  I think it was a satisfying conclusion.  Rowling probably still needs an editor, but I could tell she was having fun writing this one.

The Fire – Katherine Neville.  A long-awaited sequel to one of my favorite books, her debut novel The Eight, this was not quite as good, but it was engaging and I think I could tell she set up a probable third volume to be forthcoming.  I complained to the publishers, though, because I have both the hardcover and Nook version, and, comparing the two, the Nook version is rife with typos and setting errors.  They wanted some examples from me, which I sent, but they were far from all of them.  Never heard back from the publisher after that, though.

The Warrior’s Apprentice – Lois McMaster Bujold.  About ten years ago, I picked up a couple of novels in this series (commonly referred to as “The Vorkosigan Saga”), and started to read one of them.  Got distracted, lost interest, and sold all the paperbacks and one hardcover I had before we moved.  The release of the next-most-recent novel in the series came with a disc of nearly the entire series, however, and I decided, after leaving school this year, to give the series another try from a different starting point.  Really liked this one – I think I did the right thing in starting with the first novel in the series that features the most common protagonist.  The series overall (so far, anyway) is original and clever, and has some very well-defined characters.  Miles, in particular, is a study in contrasts, being both a genius and nearly crippled since he was born.

Shards of Honor – Lois McMaster Bujold (reread).  This was the first novel I read in the Vorkosigan Saga ten years ago, featuring Miles’ mother and how she meets his father.  On rereading, it was more engaging than I recalled, and I wish there were more novels in the series from Cordelia’s point of view.

Barrayar – Lois McMaster Bujold.  The second novel in the Vorkosigan saga, in series chronological order, dealing with Miles’ parents, and attempted coup, and the origin of Miles’ physical issues.  Again told from Cordelia’s point of view, it features a hilarious crowning moment of awesome involving her near the end of the coup, referred to by some fans as “the shopping trip.”

Shada – Gareth Roberts.  A novelization of a “Doctor Who” story that dates from the late 1970s, a story that was never finished because of a strike involving many at the BBC at the time.  The original script was written by Douglas Adams, and involved the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and Romana II (Lalla Ward), and a rather convoluted time-travel story (Adams was the best showrunner, IMHO, during the classic series years, to actually make time travel part of the story rather than just a device for placing the Doctor and companion(s) in a certain place and time).  The novelization is hilarious, and, despite being rather long, a quick read.  Roberts, who has written several episodes for the show since it returned in 2005 and whose episodes are comedic in nature, does an excellent job of filling in missing bits in the story, expanding on others, and nearly mimicking Douglas Adams’ writing style.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (reread).  I think I last reread this as an undergrad, and I was looking for something light and silly.  There are a lot of aspects to the story I didn’t recall, perhaps because the BBC TV adaptation was more in my memory than the book (and there are so many versions of the story, starting with the original radio show, that one cannot be considered canon over any other – they all stand alone).

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe – Douglas Adams (reread).  I want to reread the entire series, and the second volume is as far as I’ve gotten at this point.

Dune – Frank Herbert (reread).  Another favorite science fiction series I want to reread in its entirety (at least the original six volumes by Frank, not the expanded series by his son and Kevin Anderson).

“The Mountains of Mourning” – Lois McMaster Bujold.  A novella in the Vorkosigan saga that gives Miles a real challenge.  Fresh out of the military academy on his home planet of Barrayar, his sights set on the stars and “ship duty,” his father (who happens to be Prime Minister) assigns him to solve a murder case that involves a long-standing practice on the planet, a practice most of the more advanced and forward-looking members of the society there want to stop.

The Vor Game – Lois McMaster Bujold.  Miles’ first real military assignment, this one might be my favorite in the series that I’ve read so far.  Illustrates both his inability to be subordinate and his genius, particularly his ability to think on his feet.  He’s sent away to a remote assignment for a while, and manages to uncover an enemy invasion plot and rescue the emperor.

Cetaganda – Lois McMaster Bujold.  Miles and his cousin attend a state funeral for a neighboring empire that is a society highly dependent on genetic engineering, and again uncovers a plot, this time involving the higher classes of Cetaganda and an attempt to frame his home empire of Barrayar.  Not my favorite, but a good illustration of genetic engineering, class distinction, and the stagnation that might result from the rise of such a society.

Also read a couple of short stories by my friend Sarah (none of which I remember the names, unfortunately), and have been reading some non-fiction atmospheric science texts in relation to my job hunt.  Don’t know exactly what I will read next, but there are plenty of books still on the to-read pile, including more Vorkosigan Saga stories, the reread of the rest of the Dune and Hitchhiker’s Guide series, and I also want to catch up on Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next and other books.  Today, though, I’m sitting on my butt watching “Doctor Who” on BBC America, because I feel like crud – I think I’ve gotten the first real cold I’ve had in several years, and it is really knocking me for a loop.

Originally published at Abnormality Locality. You can comment here or there.

So, it’s 11 September, again.  Eleven years since the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks and the aborted attack that went down in Pennsylvania.  When the world, and particularly, the U.S., changed.  Many have their memorials and commemorations for those who perished that day.  I generally observe the day simply by sharing one of my favorite and most apt quotes attributed to Benjamin Franklin (“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”), and sometimes, something strikes me enough to noodle about it in a blog post.  Like this one.

I use the Franklin quote as a reminder of what and how we changed that day, not for the better in many respects, which I will not go into nor feel like debating here.  What I am thinking about more generally is anniversaries.  When “bad stuff” happens, I have trouble relating to the need to commemorate on the specific date.  Maybe my sense of detachment from the calendar (it’s just an agreed-upon organization of days) is why.  But where did that detachment come from?

When I was a child, holidays were never huge deals.  We didn’t do Christmas on the date, and birthdays were pretty much ignored.  Thanksgiving was the only holiday we did regularly and on the traditional day.  Also had an ex who used to shut down every February because of “bad stuff” that had happened to her in Februarys past, and I refused to be like that.  Sure, December 2008/January 2009 and October/November 2010 were probably two of the worst periods in my life, and the latter broke much of my functionality for a long time, but I don’t think about it every autumn and refuse to do things because of it.  Also, Toni and I, for various reasons, have moved celebrations of our anniversary and birthdays to more convenient times for as long as I can remember.  And we’ve long agreed we like to show how much we love each other every day and not save things for an anniversary.

N.B., I am not saying anyone who ties things to dates is wrong, merely noodling to try to understand why in general that I do not.

I’m not sure if I lack an attachment to the calendar because I haven’t generally used it for commemoration, or vice versa, though I suspect it’s the former.  And as far as 11 September is concerned, how can the effects of the events of that day not be remembered every single day of the year?

Originally published at Abnormality Locality. You can comment here or there.

…I married my best friend.  Happy Anniversary, Toni!  I am very lucky.  You are the best thing ever to be part of my life, and marrying you was the best decision I’ve ever made.  I love you!!!

Originally published at Abnormality Locality. You can comment here or there.

So… I last posted right before the end of my days as a grad student at Purdue, leaving without a Ph.D.  I had a few projects on which I wanted to work.  Let’s see how those are going, shall we?

• Find a job.  Still working on that.
• Finish the modeling paper that is still in progress.  Still working on that.  Slowly.
• Clean house, including sorting through media and other stuff. Have done a bit of media culling.  Still need to do much more.  Have started major cleaning, but it’s rather slow, thanks to allergies and general physical condition.
• Work out.  Decided to see the orthopedist about my right knee, since it had been getting a lot worse over time since I injured it in St. Croix last July.  Got a prescription for a few weeks of physical therapy and ended up with possibly the best physical therapist I’ve ever had.  I’m done with PT appointments, but still diligently doing the exercises and stretches twice a day.  I’ve also started using our new rower every few days, and I hope soon to get back on the bike, either the stationary recumbent or our hybrid bicycle, since I did manage to change the quick-release seat post to a regular bolted one so I can ride it around outside once my knee is in better shape (and if we ever get out of this heat wave).  The knee does seem to be doing better, but I need to be patient.  I didn’t get out of shape overnight (six years of grad school was harder on me physically than I realized), and I injured my knee 10 months before I decided to go to PT, so improvement isn’t going to happen overnight, either.
• Catch up on reading a lot of the fiction that has been piling up on my metaphorical “to-read” pile.  I’ve managed to catch up on a few of the books at the top of my list.

Speaking of reading, back when I last had time to read fiction, I used to keep track of what I’ve recently read on my LiveJournal, so (as this also posts there) I might as well start that back up here.  I try not to be spoilery.  Since late May, I’ve read:

• “A Feast for Crows” – George R.R. Martin.  Came out too soon before I returned to school for me to have read it then.  I know a lot of people consider this the weakest in the series, as, the way GRRM structured it and the first part of the next volume, several common favorite characters are “missing.”  I liked the different POVs we were given and new places in Westeros and Essos where we had not yet been.  It also helped me stop considering each volume of “A Song of Ice and Fire” as a stand-alone novel.  To me, it’s one long story. Long being the key word.
• “A Dance with Dragons” – George R.R. Martin.  Latest “A Song of Ice and Fire” volume.  More great stuff.  Solidified that ASOIAF is my absolute favorite fantasy book series.  And again I join the teeming millions waiting for GRRM to finish the next installment, especially considering some of the specific cliffhangers at the end of this one.  Almost all the characters are present well before the end of this one, as it follows not only “A Feast for Crows” timeline, but continues a bit farther.
• “Redshirts” – John Scalzi.  After two GRRM doorstops, I needed something light and relatively short.  This was perfect.  A humorous send-up of the trope derived from the original “Star Trek” TV series.  The characterizations are light, intentionally, but not lacking.
• “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” – J.K. Rowling.  Another book that came out too close to when I returned to school.  Having seen both parts of the films which were based on it, and not being greatly concerned with spoilers, it was still nice to read some of the details the films by necessity left out, and to see that some of the clever parts of the films were in the original.
• “The Fire” – Katherine Neville.  The sequel to probably my favorite single book of fiction ever, Neville’s “The Eight,” I started to read this in Massachusetts a couple of years ago over spring break.  Didn’t finish it, and was never able to get back to it.  Read it this time on my Nook Color, and, while it was not as good as “The Eight,” it was nice to see some of the characters again, and to enjoy the author’s trips through history and around the world.  In my opinion, Dan Brown wishes he could write a big puzzle story as well as Katherine Neville.  “The Fire” also sort of made me feel like she may have one more novel in this story still unwritten.  And she’s alluded to just that in interviews.  One thing that did annoy me greatly, though, was the fact that the Nook version is full of typesetting errors.  Duplicated sentences and mangled paragraphs throughout, obviously not author errors.  They’re not in the hardcover edition.  I’ve already brought it up with Barnes & Noble, Random House, and Katherine herself.
• “The Warrior’s Apprentice” – Lois McMaster Bujold.  Almost 10 years ago, I was persuaded to get into LMB’s “Vorkosigan Saga” by a now-ex and several friends.  I picked up an omnibus of the first two novels in internal chronological order (“Shards of Honor,” “Barrayar” bundled in an omnibus called “Cordelia’s Honor”) on a trip Toni and I had made to California, and I read about half of the first one on the plane ride home.  I remember enjoying it, but for some reason I cannot remember, I never picked it back up.  Since I have almost the entire series in e-pub format on my Nook Color, I decided to give it a try, and so I started with the third volume, “The Warrior’s Apprentice,” which introduced Miles Vorkosigan, the protagonist of most of the series.  I enjoyed it a lot.  In particular, aside from Miles’ cleverness on his feet, I like the universe LMB has developed.  It’s several hundred years in the future, yet society is still very much imperfect.  Full of greed, petty squabbles, and very few hard handwaving technological devices (wormhole travel is probably the biggest).  There are still parts of spacecraft in zero-g; communication takes a long time; and there are other limitations.  I liked TWA enough to go ahead and try the rest of the series again, so I’ve gone back to read…
• “Shards of Honor” – Lois McMaster Bujold.  As I mentioned above, this was the first LMB Vorkosigan Saga novel I tried, but didn’t finish, in 2002.  Rereading it now.  I’m only a few chapters in and I can’t remember any of it from my initial read nearly 10 years ago.  I do think I’m enjoying it more this time, though.

After that, I’m not sure what I’ll read.  I often roll lists over in my head, or even in posts online, but I defer to how I’m feeling when it is time to pick up the next book.  I may go with something by Neal Stephenson, as I’ve only so far read his “Cryptonomicon,” which I absolutely loved.  I may re-read Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhikers Guide” series, or Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” or something else new, like Gareth Roberts’ novelization of Douglas Adams “missing” “Doctor Who” story, “Shada.”

In the meantime, I’ll also still be job hunting, cleaning, and working on my knee and general fitness.

Originally published at Abnormality Locality. You can comment here or there.

I suppose I saw this coming.  I’ve known I’ve been making slow progress on my Ph.D. research, and it boils down to a mental energy deficit I have probably already talked about here or elsewhere to an extent – at some point in the day I just can’t think critically any longer, and I think that all really started to get bad when I was taking care of Toni after her knee surgery and everything else (including prepping for and taking my qualifying exams and all the other personal issues that came up in a very short time period) that I dealt with back in the Fall of 2010, because I’ve felt behind ever since.

When I first started this little project in 2006, my initial intent was only to get a second M.S. (my first one, in another field, was in 1991).  Shortly after I started, we talked about reclassifying my status and going straight for a Ph.D., but then decided against it because I came from outside the field.  So, after I got the M.S. in Spring 2009, I continued in the group to pursue a Ph.D.  I passed my quals in December, 2010, and have wrapped up all of my course requirements.

Life gets in the way, sometimes, though, and it can’t always be ignored.  It isn’t an intelligence, motivation, or resolve issue.  After some discussions with my advisor, she and I have agreed it is time for a new course of action.  I am going to finish the current semester, primarily since I am enrolled in what is probably the best course I’ve taken since I’ve been here, and really want it complete on my transcript, but then I am leaving the program.  I will also finish as much as I can on my current research project, that my advisor will present in my stead at the conference later this summer (though I will still get co-author credit), and I will also try to wrap up a paper she and I would like to have submitted by then as well.  Of course, this also means I’m re-entering the job market almost immediately.

Originally published at Abnormality Locality. You can comment here or there.

( Warning:  Possible Medical TMI and/or Squick Herein. )

(Note:  Discussion of the most recent season of “Doctor Who” – spoilers possible.)

This blog post suggests that, as current showrunner of “Doctor Who”, Steven Moffat may be intending to resurrect Andrew Cartmel’s plan from the last days of the classic run of the show.  Cartmel intended to reintroduce mystery about the Doctor’s identity and origins after some 25 seasons of bits of information coming out in various episodes.  Unfortunately, with the cancellation of the classic run, that plan was shelved.  Some came out in the last couple of seasons and in the New Adventures novels during the show’s interregnum, but otherwise much of the plan was dropped.

Upon resurrection of the show in 2005 by Russell T. Davies, he and then-contributing writer Moffat relied a lot on the Doctor’s reputation.  After 900+ years of time and space hopping in the TARDIS, surely he had a reputation now.  He’d been noticed.  For example, in Moffat’s “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead,” Doc Ten addresses the Vashta Nerada, “We’re in the biggest library in the universe.  Look me up.”  After which, the Vashta Nerada back off and give him room to solve the episode’s conundrum in his way.  Fan wank abounded about such use of the Doctor’s reputation.  I was never bothered, personally, because I agreed with Davies and Moffat regarding our favorite Time Lord having a reputation.

Around the time of Davies handing the showrunning duties over to Moffat I saw in online interviews and stories that the two of them had engaged in several conversations about how long relying on the Doctor’s reputation could be sustained before it becomes a worn out plot device, so it was also comforting to know they were aware of the danger and of a certain amount of fan dissatisfaction.

Before Moffat’s second series as showrunner, the one which just completed airing at the beginning of this month, I saw again in online interviews (unfortunately I don’t have citations available, but they shouldn’t be too hard to find) that Moffat was using this most recent series to get the Doctor back underground.  He was going to take the reputation on which he had relied and use it to give the Doctor his anonymity back.  I loved the whole idea because I think having the Doctor show up in various places and being clever to solve the mystery or defeat the monsters can be much more fun when he literally is “just a madman with a box.”

Having now seen the series and seeing how Moffat pulled off the feat, I am very pleased.  Especially since he also used the series to explain the mystery behind the character of River Song – the two arcs were intricately intertwined, and it was fun seeing how it all worked, and now the Doctor can again be anonymous.

The above-referenced blog, looking at what Moffat also introduced when he wrapped up the season arcs, also wonders if part of Moffat’s plan will also involve part of Cartmel’s original plan.  The “oldest question in the universe, ‘Doctor Who?’” is indeed more complicated than just asking his name.  I agree with the other blog that it has more to do with his entire identity.  Only Steven Moffat can say for certain, and he’s not talking, but where I don’t agree is that addressing this is part of Moffat’s plan.  If so, I’m sure he’ll do a decent job, but in my opinion, I don’t think we need to know any more about the Doctor than we already know, and even hinting at some major role in his personal past might actually diminish his impact as a character.

Originally published at Abnormality Locality. You can comment here or there.