The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Picking Up The Signal

Posted on | March 19, 2014 | 11 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


A pox on Verizon for taking nearly a week to repair/replace the stone knives and bearskins that deliver the Intertubes to my humble burrow in the Virginia suburbs, after said high-tech devices were blown down during the windstorms last week. (As an aside, what kind of crappy 21st century infrastructure gets blown out of service by a wind storm that isn’t a tornado?) The normal cure for this problem – lugging my netbook to the nearest McDonald’s and getting my blog on – was unavailable since the netbook is currently hooked up to a Plugable Universal Laptop Docking Station until I can replace the hard drive in my desktop computer, which died the real death a couple of weeks ago. Also, since we’re into the early stages of the Death March to April 15 at the tax mines, I haven’t had the energy to do much when I get home but poke listlessly at Facebook and the e-mail on my phone.


All that kvetching aside, apologies to those of you who sent links last week, and I’m going to have one heck of an In The Mailbox post tomorrow morning to use all of them. The FMJRA will be hitting the ‘tubes tomorrow as well (better late than never, nyet?), but Rule 5 Sunday is going to have to wait for the weekend; to compensate, I’ll be serving up a double-scoop in a variety of B, C, D and double-D cups.


Also worth mentioning is Chris Nuttall’s Ark Royal. Nuttall is an expat Brit living in Malaysia who’s got eighteen novels up on Amazon, and if the rest of them are anything like this, he’s going to be living pretty comfortably for a while down there. Ark Royal is a space opera about an obsolescent carrier used as a dumping ground for the sick, lame, lazy and alcoholic members of the Royal (Space) Navy which suddenly finds itself Earth’s last hope after aliens trash the more modern ships of the several starfaring nations in a series of one-sided battles. Staffed with stock characters last seen in a number of 1950s WW2 movies, Ark Royal leaves on what may be her last cruise, and delivers the goods in terms of action. Nobody would ever confuse this with John Ringo’s Live Free or Die or the classic The Mote in God’s Eye, but it’s decent enough brain candy, especially if you pick it up for free through the Amazon Prime Lending Library. I’ll be forking out the $3 to keep my copy around, I think, and keeping an eye out for the sequel (The Nelson Touch) when it comes out as well.


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Category: Blogging, Books

Comments

11 Responses to “Picking Up The Signal”

  1. K-Bob
    March 19th, 2014 @ 11:30 pm

    Don’t forget the ceremony of installment. You don’t have to do all the steps just right, just shuffle back and forth to the chant and nobody will notice.

    Oh, and make sure the inflatable kiddie pool is placed correctly. Mine was off-center just enough so a lot of blood seeped into the ground and now I have the EPA on my ass. Next time I’ll make sure to refrigerate the goat first so it bleeds slower.

    To welcome you back, here’s a new Pat Condell vid. Pretty decent. Howie put it up over at TheJawaReport.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z38qqSZZEc#t=111

  2. Proof
    March 20th, 2014 @ 12:36 am

    “Stone knives and bearskins”? We thought maybe you were taken with pon farr…

  3. ChandlersGhost
    March 20th, 2014 @ 1:04 am

    Welcome back Wombat.

  4. Matthew W
    March 20th, 2014 @ 6:26 am

    Ooooooooh, a big wind knocked out your internet.

    Mine was knocked out a couple of years ago by a freaking squirrel chewing JUST MY LINE inside of a junction service box.
    How’s that for reality vs 21st century

  5. M. Thompson
    March 20th, 2014 @ 8:38 am

    That’s engineers, not accountants. There’s a fair number of women in accounting.

  6. Wombat_socho
    March 20th, 2014 @ 8:56 am

    And quite a few of them are young and hot.

  7. Wombat_socho
    March 20th, 2014 @ 8:57 am

    Depressing.

  8. Kirby McCain
    March 20th, 2014 @ 9:43 am

    Minutes seem like hours, hours seem like days, windstorm equals Romulan ale. Gotcha.

  9. Proof
    March 20th, 2014 @ 6:44 pm

    I just wanted Wombat to know that the TOS geeks had caught his reference.

  10. Bob Belvedere
    March 20th, 2014 @ 7:29 pm

    What’s the frequency, Wombat?

  11. richard mcenroe
    March 23rd, 2014 @ 7:44 pm

    Ordered and reading Ark Royal. So far it reads a lot like Douglas Reeman’s WWII naval stories, which were formulaic but certainly sold well, and which I read without complaint, so, so far, a good suggestion.