Like Shooting Hammers at a Bear
- There is evidently a release date (November 14) for Oathbringer, the third installment of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive. The first two were excellent, even if the world is a remarkably weird one, and I am a little sad that I have to wait a couple years between each book. It’s still seven months away, but it’s nice to have an actual date now.
- When I was in Denver for a week, I actually suffered Man Men withdrawal. So now that I have finished watching the series, I am probably going to experience the same thing. I am still somewhat at a loss to explain why it connected with me so well. Though I didn’t actually live like that, perhaps I identified with all the cheating because I did think like that. They started jumping the shark in the last several episodes, so it’s not surprising that the series ended when it did.
- I finished Hyperion, and I can’t decide how I feel about it. It’s not very good as a stand-alone novel. In it, six characters tell their bizarre stories of how they came to this pilgrimage. All of them are fascinating and inventive, and they all served to increase the mystery and suspense about the overall story goal (one or two were perhaps a little long-winded with unnecessary monologue). However, having successfully raised the reader’s interest, nothing was done with it. The story ended at a convenient stopping point, and we’re expected to read the next installment.
- Primarily in an effort to cut down on my soda intake, I have made a conscious decision to develop a taste for tea. To that end, I have spent a bit of money at a local Teavana store, buying a few varieties of tea and tea paraphernalia, and picking up a little free advice. I figure I’m more likely to grow to like tea if I start with a high quality product. I find it easier to tolerate hot tea than iced tea, so I’ll start there, but ultimately I will want to drink iced tea more often than soda.
- I read Convergence, C. J. Cherryh’s eighteenth volume in her Foreigner series. It was really disappointing. It’s right to say that there are two protagonists in the later books, and this is the first one in which Bren and Cajieri have completely separate stories. However, Bren’s story was completely uninteresting, because there was never any conflict introduced. At one point I reflected that I was just reading a depiction of any manager’s routine work. Cajieri’s story introduced a conflict, but it was missing the pressing danger and urgency I’m accustomed to reading in works by Cherryh and especially in the Foreigner series. Furthermore, that conflict was not resolved by the end of the book. The book just ended. The author has frequently left unresolved problems for later novels, but prior to this there has always been some kind of satisfying resolution at the end of each book. Not so this time. It was clear that Cherryh was signalling the end of the series with the fifteenth book, Peacemaker. Yet more books continued to be published, and I thought maybe the publisher was hoping to exploit a cash cow for as long as they could. The previous two books were about the kyo, which was a legitimate loose end, but now I’m thinking we should have listened to the author when she was trying to tell us it’s time to stop.
- I found a .44 Magnum load I’m happy with for brown bear defense. It is a 320 grain hardcast WLNGC bullet from Grizzly Cartridge Company. I bought three boxes and tested with one box at the range. The accuracy is good, with low muzzle flash. The bullets have an extremely wide meplat, and if I have to use them, they will be like shooting hammers at a bear.
- I’m fitting well into my new role at work. The migration project is making good progress. I am keeping my head above water, and the team is getting its arms around management of everything. I haven’t failed at anything serious yet.
- Flooding again. The situation is very similar to the flooding 16 months ago. Water close to the property line. All the bridges were closed for a couple of days and I was cut off. My UPS deliveries are delayed. It doesn’t seem like it took that much rain to make this happen. I suppose this means the city park will be closed all summer for sterilization.
