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Long overdue ebook roundup post

Geez, this post has been sitting in my Drafts folder for quite some time! I have no particular excuse for this, other than just being very, very lax on getting this post written up! But since I’ve started doing all the Skyrim posts, seeing my Drafts folder on my WordPress site kept reminding me this post was there, and ever so patiently waiting for me to deal with it.

Let’s deal with it now, shall we?

Acquired from Kobo:

  • Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterly. This is the book on which the movie of the same name was based, and I bought it on the strength of the buzz about the movie.
  • Unconquerable Sun, by Kate Elliott. SF/Space Opera. Also, a lesbian version of the saga of Alexander the Great IN SPACE, as I understand it. SIGN ME UP.
  • Death of a New American, by Mariah Fredericks. Book 2 of a mystery series I’d already bought Book 1 for.
  • Stealing Thunder and Gifting Fire, by Alina Boyden. Books 1 and 2 of a fantasy series featuring a transgendered heroine.
  • A Peculiar Combination, by Ashley Weaver. Book 1 of a historical mystery series featuring a heroine whose lockpicking talents get her drafted into supporting Britain during WWII.
  • Mirage and Spectrum, by Julie E. Czerneda. SF. Books 2 and 3 of the Web-Shifter’s Library series.
  • The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers. SF. Book 4 of Chambers’ Wayfarers series. And, I’m given to understand, the last one!

Acquired from Amazon:

  • Wings of Fury, by Emily R. King. Fantasy set in the time of Greek myth.
  • The Dispatcher, by John Scalzi. SF/mystery. Ebook version of the audiobook of the same name, which I’ve already listened to and enjoyed. Nabbed this just because I’m a completist, and because the audiobook for Book 2 came out.
  • Spacer’s Cinderella, by Adria Rose. SF/Romance, Space Opera. As you might guess from the title, a version of the Cinderella story set in space.

Acquired from Audible (which also essentially means, acquired from Amazon, but I’m counting this differently):

  • Murder By Other Means, by John Scalzi. The aforementioned Book 2 audiobook for John Scalzi’s Dispatcher series. Like Book 1, this is narrated by Zachary Quinto.

Kobo pre-orders that showed up:

  • The Conductors, by Nicole Glover. Historical fantasy set during the 1800’s, with heavy Underground Railroad themes in the plot.
  • Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells. The next Murderbot book. Yes please, I’ll have some!
  • While Justice Sleeps, by Stacey Abrams. A Supreme Court thriller written by Stacey Abrams. Yes, that Stacey Abrams. She’s got an established career as an author but with this book, she’s writing under her actual name rather than the pen name she uses for her romances, Selena Montgomery.

Amazon pre-orders that showed up:

  • Heartbreak Bay, by Rachel Caine. Book 5 (and final, due to Caine’s passing away) of the Stillhouse Lake series of thrillers.

Kobo pre-orders I’ve placed:

  • You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson. Prequel novel to the Within the Wires podcast, which I’ve enjoyed quite a bit.

Acquired for free from Tor.com:

  • When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, by Nghi Vo. Fantasy. Book 2 of the Singing Hills Cycle series, and I really ought to nab Book 1 before I read this, I think!

Acquired as a Kickstarter reward:

  • Daughter of the Lilies. Fantasy, graphic novel release of the excellent webcomic of the same name that I’ve been following at daughterofthelilies.com. The author and colorist teamed up to put out a print edition of the first storyline they’ve done, and I was a backer for their Kickstarter.

Total for the year: 51.

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Computer status update: SSD transplant successful!

Meanwhile, aside from the significant relief of finally getting the first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine in my arm, I can also report the significant relief of getting my computer problems resolved.

When last we left our heroine, Time Machine had been having a lot of mysterious copy errors, and the only way I got it to work was to do a full backup in Safe Mode. Even that threw an error about problems setting ownership of files, and the copy errors returned as soon as I tried to do another backup in standard mode.

Continue reading “Computer status update: SSD transplant successful!”

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First Pfizer COVID-19 shot achieved! \0/

A few days ago our housemate Paul, acting on the sage advice of our friend Kathryn, scored his first shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at the Rite Aid right down the hill from our house.

Dara and I basically went !!! at this, and as soon as my work hours that day were over, we zipped down to the Rite Aid to tell them “hey we would like to be on your list of vaccine doses, please!”

They were happy to accommodate us. And yesterday they called me to say “would you like to come in tomorrow for your shots?”

YES, I said, YES WE WOULD.

So tonight we went down for our first shot of the Pfizer vaccine. They were doing brisk vaccination business down there–there was a pair of older gentlemen waiting ahead of us, and a woman maybe our age or a little older as well. And another woman got into the queue for her shot after we’d turned in our filled-out forms and were waiting.

It went a lot like getting a flu shot, really. And since I’ve gotten my flu shots the last couple years at this exact Rite Aid, I applied the same advice I’ve gotten for those before–which is to say, move the arm around for a little while after getting the shot. So Dara and I did that, while we were hanging out for the 15-minute window for checking whether we’d have any adverse reactions at all.

No adverse reactions happened, so we rode our bikes back up the hill to the house!

Rite Aid told us we could come back for the second shot to get it with them in three weeks if we want, and we’ll plan to do that. It is super convenient to be able to get the shots right down the hill from our house.

Paul says he didn’t notice any effects until the next morning after his shot, at which point his arm felt like somebody had punched it. As of this writing my arm feels fine. We’ll see how I feel in the morning!

All the reports I’ve seen say it’s the second shot that really kicks your ass, anyway. And with that in mind, aside from the general relief of fuck yeah I finally got a shot, I’ll be relieved that my three-week window will be past the release my team at work is supposed to drop this weekend. Because yeaaaaah I don’t really want the second shot of this thing to be kicking my ass close to when I’m supposed to provide SDET support for a release to production…

(But that said? I’d absolutely tell my team “look I just got the second COVID-19, non-zero risk of me feeling like ass, let’s plan accordingly” if there were a risk of it interfering with the release schedule.)

Anyway, that’s sorted! And I’ve set myself a reminder to check back with them in three weeks, and I’ve notified my primary care physician that I’ve gotten the first shot and would they please update my records accordingly?

Whew. Things are still not normal, not by a long shot. But as of tonight I feel like I’ve taken a step in normal’s direction. The journey to normal is beginning.

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The Great Recovery of My Old Webpages Project

So while the whole meltdown of my primary computer is going on, the secondary one, Savah, has actually proven useful for reasons above and beyond “because Aroree is being stupid”.

I’ve been doing this ongoing massive re-org of my files, with an eye to creating a proper archive that Dara can burn to these fancy archival-quality discs we have. As part of this, I’ve been digging into my old web page files and thinking it’d be nice to restore working copies of earlier versions of my sites.

More technogeekery as well as screencaps of my work behind the cut!

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Adventures in Time Machine backups

A few days ago my belovedest Dara got us a shiny new NAS to use as a backup server. I was prepared to get excited about this, as up until now our Time Machine solution has been to use an older Macbook in the house (and by older, I mean, it’s still running Snow Leopard) as a Time Machine server. That box has three hard drives plugged into it, and Dara and I both have been using this for years mostly without problems.

However, as we’ve acquired more machines and that backup server gets older and older, it’s meant that our backups have been… shall we say… less reliable than we’d like.

This is a post about that, in in-depth detail, so I can point at this when I put out calls to ask for help. Technogeekery behind the cut!

Continue reading “Adventures in Time Machine backups”

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Oops I appear to have had an ebook acquisition burst

What can I say? All these books sounded tasty.

Pre-ordered from Kobo:

  • Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells. SF. Specifically, her next Murderbot book, and OF COURSE I want more Murderbot!

Acquired from Kobo:

  • Alice Isn’t Dead, by Joseph Fink. This is the novelization of the story from the podcast of the same name, from one of the two masterminds of Welcome to Night Vale. I liked the podcast version of this story quite a bit and look forward to reading the novel adaptation of same.
  • The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson. SF. Nabbed this because it sounds like an interesting parallel-worlds type thriller, and because it was on sale for $1.99 as of the time of my purchase.
  • Winter’s Orbit, by Everina Maxwell. SF/Space Opera. Nabbed this one because it’s been getting good buzz, and because it’s a queer romance/space opera type scenario, and because I really rather like the tagline on the cover.
  • A History of What Comes Next, by Sylvain Neuvel. SF. Nabbed this one because I’ve enjoyed other work by this author, and because the period-set SF vibe appeals to me after having had great fun reading Mary Robinette Kowal’s recent work in that realm.
  • Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard. Fantasy. Nabbing this because F/F romance and also because my word that cover is gorgeous.
  • Nights of the Living Dead, by various authors. Zombies! As one might guess from the title, this is influenced by Night of the Living Dead, and it is in fact an anthology telling assorted stories set in the 48-hour period of time covered by that very movie. There is an intro by George Romero in it. And, as should surprise exactly no one, there is a story by Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire in it too. This will hopefully be fun!
  • The Book of Earth, The Book of Water, The Book of Fire, and The Book of Air, by Marjorie B. Kellogg. Fantasy. These are the four books of Kellogg’s Dragon Quartet series. I bought Book 1 of this and read it ages ago, and eventually picked up book 2 and an omnibus of books 3 and 4 in print, but I have yet to read any of them. I nabbed all four titles in ebook on the theory that I might actually read them if I have them on the Kindle. Let’s find out!
  • Remnant Population, by Elizabeth Moon. SF. Nabbed this one because it showed up in a roundup by James Nicoll on Tor.com of books featuring isolation as a theme–and because the protagonist is an old woman, a rarity even today in the genre.

Total for the year: 31.

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Post-big-reveal further rampant WandaVision speculation!

Along with a huge portion of the Internet, my household collectively made noises of surprise and pleasure and general delight at the new episode of WandaVision, “Breaking the Fourth Wall”.

Because holy shit that was great.

As with the previous WandaVision post I put up, be advised and warned, there will be ENORMOUS SPOILERS in this post, and very likely also in the comments. Read with caution. And if you’re coming over to read this from my Facebook or Twitter, do please keep spoiler-laden comments on this post rather than answering the link on Facebook or Twitter, just to try to contain the spoilers!

SPOILERS ARE MAROONED IN THE HEX:

Continue reading “Post-big-reveal further rampant WandaVision speculation!”

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Brief ebook roundup

Pre-orders that finally arrived:

  • Soulstar, by C.L. Polk. Fantasy. Book 3 of her Kingston Cycle, which i am very much looking forward to reading.

Pre-orders that I placed:

  • Grave Reservations, by Cherie Priest. This is Priest’s mystery debut, but given that the heroine is a psychic, it’s clearly going to be a mystery with paranormal elements. Sign me the fuck up.

And, acquired from Kobo because I was in a mood to expand this author’s presence in my library:

  • A Madness in Spring, The Dress of the Season, The Game and the Governess, The Lie and the Lady, The Dare and the Doctor, and Miss Goodhue Lives for a Night, all by Kate Noble. All historical romance. A couple of these are standalones, a couple of them are novellas, and all of them are ones I look forward to reading. Noble’s on the short list of authors who historical romances I have actively enjoyed, and I’ll look forward to checking out more of her work.

(Note also for anyone besides me who likes reading historical romance: A Madness in Spring and The Dress of the Season were both available for free on Kobo, where I got them. You may wish to consult your ebook vendor of choice to see if you can get them for free as well, if you want to check out this author.)

Total for the year: 19.

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My version of pandemic anxiety dreams maybe?

So this morning I woke up out of a very disjointed sort of dream, but a vivid enough one that it stood out for me. Here are the bits of it that I remember:

  1. I was starting a new job at an office somewhere in Seattle.
  2. Simon Beaudry of Le Vent du Nord was there, only working there as a day job. Note that at no point during this dream did I ever actually interact with Simon, in English or in French. He was just there as a coworker. Which is pretty friggin’ amusing given that a) he’s a musician, b) he’s Quebecois so even if he had a computer-based day job I’m pretty damn sure he’d be doing it in Montreal, and c) usually if my favorite musicians show up in my dreams it’s to play music, and Simon didn’t even have his bouzouki, so what the hell, me?
  3. The office had an open floor plan like most modern offices do. So I had a desk as part of a little rectangular-ish area of desks, all of whom were getting set up with new incoming workers. However, they kept rearranging who was going to sit where, and I mean, quoi? Pick a place where you want me to sit and let me just sit there, mmkay?
  4. Despite the office in question having a modern floor plan, once they finally settled on what was going to be my actual final desk, they loaded it up with something like six different machines. (Note: the most machines I’ve ever had on or under my desk in an office environment was four, at Big Fish.)
  5. Also, the machines were all ancient. I mean, ancient enough to have floppy drives. What the hell I was supposed to be testing on those, I have not the slightest idea.
  6. Also, absolutely nobody would actually tell me what I was supposed to be doing to provision those machines and get them into a testable state.
  7. Somebody finally came over to do machine setup, at which point I realized I could not actually see what he was doing, on the teeny-tiny Commodore-sized green screen monitor, because my glasses were gone. Not on my face where they belonged, not on my head, nowhere in immediate sight. I distinctly remember thinking I’d better ask everybody in the immediate area to stop what they were doing lest they step on my glasses…
  8. … but right about then I also remember thinking it was nearly 5:30pm and what the hell was I still doing there in the office when I had to get home?
  9. So I left, only to discover that the office was in a completely different part of Seattle than I was used to, and I had no immediate idea how to get to the busses I knew to get home.
  10. The only thing that really keeps me from calling this a pandemic anxiety dream was that at no point did it occur to me to worry about nobody in the immediate vicinity, not even Simon, wearing masks. Or me, for that matter.

One of those dreams that, in general, falls into the bucket of “aaaaaah everything is going wrong and I can’t fix any of it WHAT IS GOING ON”. I don’t have to stretch very far to guess this is maybe my version of a pandemic anxiety dream, though if it is I still have some questions about what my subconscious is apparently trying to vent.

  1. Because I mean honestly, me, you hate open floor plans, and right now you’re working from home in your very own home office setup that even has a window view, so what’s this all about then? (Best guess, maybe I just miss interacting directly with people in an office? Slack and Webex calls aren’t the same at all.)
  2. Also, I sure as hell don’t miss the commute.
  3. Okay I can kinda see the floppy drives thing being an example of “stupid decisions enforced on me by people further up the food chain at work” anxiety. Though i can safely say that at no point has any employer I’ve had in the last 15+ years made me have to deal with actual floppy disks to get anything done on my systems.
  4. Apparently I miss Le Vent du Nord concerts hard enough that my subconscious is resorting to sticking occasional members of the band into the background of whatever the hell I’m dreaming about, regardless of whether it has anything at all to do with concerts or music? Or maybe it’s more like “oh shit, Anna’s anxious, here, have a pretty bouzouki player, you like those, don’t you?” In which case, okay, subconscious, that was rather nice of you.
  5. I have had “I have no idea what bus route I’m supposed to be taking” dreams before, so having this show up as a side plot in the overall dream wasn’t terribly surprising!

I woke up after the part where it got to the busses. Hopefully whatever I dream about tonight will be less fraught.

(Although, more pretty bouzouki players would be appreciated. Subconscious, get on that, kthxbye.)