I've finished reading the Short Story category of the Hugo finalists. That went rather fast. Then again, they *are* short stories. Also, there were only three of them. I wonder how often a category hasn't used up all five slots.

Best Short Story (662 nominating ballots cast)
"Immersion", Aliette de Bodard ( Clarkesworld, June 2012)
"Mantis Wives", Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
"Mono no Aware", Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)

An action taken by the new henchboss has left yours truly and one of our team's other coordinators feel *extremely* prickly.

There are only 10 days left for David Gerrold's Kickstarter for "Star Wolf".
Do you want to watch a good space adventure show?
Yes?
Do you want the chance to prove that there are other ways to make a TV show happen?
Yes?
Then what are you waiting for?

I probably spent close to one hour today getting a simple Change Request approved by a gatekeeper who makes Heimdall look like a revolving door. I kept insisting that there would be no backout plan, but he insisted back that there must be a backout plan so I put one in, which turned out to be too generic for him. I finally came up with words that sounded technical enough and specific enough to satisfy his non-technical mind. Maybe I should have used the following as the backout plan:

“…Okay, so what you want to do is this: You want to attack at the most vulnerable spot. Come at it from this angle and locate the automatic flip-flop override device here, which in turn will defuse the antigyroscopic preinterface thruster chamber, and the pneumatic centripetal antigravity shield deflectors, then you simply deactivate the axial gyro-presubinertia-photomegatronic oscillator that you see here…”

On the other hand, he might have recognized that quote as being from “Hardware Wars”.

Being nerds and/or geeks, do you sometimes fulfill a request, turn the results in, then have people respond that it was the best way it could have been done, and you find yourself thinking that it was the only good way it could have been done?

On Monday, management had finally given my team a real project to work on and asked me for a plan on how I'd implement it. I delivered it today and they were ok with it. The plan was divided into three phases, and bullets for each phase's distinct tasks.

That's it.

My former minion who's now also a coordinator later wrote to say how much she loved the way I'd laid things out. It'd appear that she's had to work with people whose plans were less well-thought-out, and less well-laid-out.

That being said, this project will allow me to show how things should be done around here.

That desert willow at the top of the backyard is dead. I'll have to hold off on taking it down though because there's a big cactus next to it, and in the cactus are two curved-bill thrashers and their not-yet-flying kid.

"Let's go home."

I just finished reading the novel "Guardian" by Jack Campbell, aka John Hemry. It shows that the author was influenced by "Star Trek" - which he discovered when he was living on Midway. (Yes, *that* Midway.) It shows not in a matter of specifics, but of attitude, with characters who do the Right Thing, and not just when it's convenient.

Recommended.

I'm only two years younger than Ricardo Montalban when he last played Khan.

How did that happen?

We watched "The last Mimzy" tonight. I hadn't see it since it first came out in 2007, but I still had fond memories of it so I put it on our Netflix queue. Very little to do with Lewis Padgett's short story, I know, but I liked it.

"She is a danger to Science!"

Pierre Curie about the lab assistant who'll later become his wife in 1943's "Madame Curie", which we watched last night.

I woke up at 4am, which isn't as ungodly as it could have been. I must say though that there are more pleasant ways to wake up than from a dream in which I was trying to remember everything about a dormant computer project that had come back to live status. At least, when I woke up, I realized there were no such projects. I wonder. Such dreams reflect what your life is about. If you're a student, you worry about having boned up on a subject before taking a test. Did my prehistoric equivalent dream about having made enough good stone arrowheads for the tribe's hunters?

"As a rule, he thought that meetings should be hard to hold and hard to get to, crowded into stuffy, uncomfortable rooms where everyone wanted to leave as soon as possible."

Admiral Jack Geary on P.165 of "Guardian", the latest novel by Jack Campbell, aka John Hemry.

Wow... Somebody on Facebook rather tersely took me to task for revealing which character Cumberbatch plays in "Star Trek: Into Darkness" even though it's pretty much been an open secret for a couple of weeks. I took him off my FB list. Yes, it's the second person I've done this with in less than a week, but I don't want to ever accidentally spill any secret to him. He might not know who Rosebud was.

My plans for today had been to cut down that dead bush and take it along with other yard debris to the dump, then mow the lawn, put some bookshelf units together for Sue, then keep her company while she'd be working on her novel "Black Ice". Alas, within 5 minutes of my starting work on the lawn, our electric mower croaked, after more than 15 years of faithful clipping. It wasn't easy, finding a big-box store with a mower in our price range. At least, in the process of driving around town, I took an old but functional exercise machine to Goodwill, thus freeing up some space in the garage. By the time I got home and had mown the lawn, it was close to supper so no bookshelves. Oh well... Tomorrow maybe.

"When they come out... does it hurt?"
"Every time."

We watched 2000's "X-men" tonight. Primitive FX in places, clumsy dialogue at timess, but still the first time that someone finally had done a comic-book movie *right*.

"The night I told him his parents had died, he hid in here for two days. When he did come out, he wasn't a boy anymore."

We watched 'Skyfall' last night. Great movie, although the Shanghai part of the plot diluted things. By the way, I find myself thinking that the modern incarnation of Bond is a post-patriarchal one.

I took someone off my FB list.
Better that than risk once again irritating him.
Jerk.

There's a bunch of feathers under my home office's desk.
I wonder how Agatha the Cat managed to bring in an avian guest without our noticing it.

Remember that there are only 16 days left for David Gerrold's Kickstarter for "Star Wolf".
Do you want to watch a good space adventure show?
Do you want the chance to prove that there are other ways to make a TV show happen?
Yes?
Then what are you waiting for?

My blood pressure apparently is a bit high.
Things have been getting in the way of my regular workouts.
Problem is that I also need sleep.
I'll figure something out.
I usually do.

"Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter" would have been a better movie if it had focussed on one era of Abe's life instead of being all over the map. Also, if this was supposed to be a Secret History of America, how come the public seizure of all the silver all over DC never made it into the History books? What? You didn't know that the Union used silver bullets and silver cannonballs at Gettysburg? Oh, and speaking of Abe, did I ever tell you about the train controller who said to another, regarding some confusion over my ticket, that I most likely was telling the truth because I looked like Honest Abe?

One of our team's three coordinators is transfering to another outfit within the corporation and our henchboss has decided to reassign the departee's minions to work under the existing coordinators, with some reorg thrown in. As a result, my newest minion, who really was working under the coordinator who used to be my minion, is now officially working for that coordinator who used to be my minion. That puts her in charge of three minions. I currently have only one minion, who lives 12 hours into my future, being on the other side of Earth. The departee's remaining minion will be assigned to me as soon as he comes back to that other side of the Earth with his new bride, whom he's so far met only thru Skype.

"You made me clean throwup!"

So said one usher to another at the local multiplex yesterday while Sue and I were waiting for "Iron Man 3" to begin. What did I think about the movie? There were a few good coming attractions, and the one for "Man of Steel" looks like it may work out, and it's funny to see in it many echos from the good parts of 1978's "Superman". And... What's that? Oh, yes... What did I think of "Iron Man 3"? It was...

...better than "Iron Man 2".
...not as good as "Iron Man".
...not as good as "The Avengers".
...better than the "Fantastic Four" movies.
...better than "Green Lantern".
...not as funny as "Avengers 1978"

And it reminds us not to piss off nerds.

"Using good leadership principles against me? That's low."
"If you really want me to be a bad leader..."
"Oh, knock it off!"

"Guardian" is the latest in military space adventure series "Beyond the Frontier" by Jack Campbell aka John Hemry. I haven't read as much of it as I'd like, due to Life - but mostly because of the interference of Work, which is not the same as Life. I've enjoyed what I *have* read though, as expected, and the above exchange between the hero and his fellow Captain and wife is a good example of the reason why.

Note to myself... Get more of those little Keurig koffee kups. I had 4 hours of sleep last night, and may have less of those tonight. That being said, this week's rerun of Mythbusters was a lame crossover with the network's "Deadliest Catch", with a gratuitous explosion at the end, but it confirmed what I've long known - that you can be functional, staying awake for 30 hours, provided you have a 20-minute nap every 6 hours.

"We're mixing our lives together, Maily, and we'll never be able to unmix them again, and we'll never want to. I take you for what you are, and all that you are, and mix you with all of me, and I don't hold back nothing. When you're cold, and hungry, and afraid, so am I. I'm going to stay with you all that I can, take the best care of you that I can, and love you 'til I die."

"I will always love you and honor you and serve you, and stay as near to you as I can, and do everything for you, and live for you. I won't have *any* life except our life together. I will just love you, Frenchy, all of me, loving you forever."

From 1966's "The Sand Pebbles"

My office calendar for May features art from March 1948's "Startling Stories", in which a redhead lady clad in a very décolletée green dress has clapped her hands together so forcefully that the nearby lab equipment is flying apart. The lady's gleeful expression leads me to believe she meant to do that.

I just finished reading the first draft of Mary Robinette Kowal's novella "The Forest of Memory". Next is the novel "Guardian", latest by Jack Campbell (aka John Hemry), which came out yesterday.

Woe is me.

( http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/guardian-campbell-jack/1115218571?ean=9780425260500 )

I just had that weekly one-on-one with our team lead and I expressed concern about being confined to production support. When he started sayiing I need to prove I can do fdevelopment, I immediately rattled off four big development projects I had *singlehandedly* taken from beginning to end, and with great success, most of them in the recent past of 2010. Guess what his reaction was.

He had no idea I had done any and all of this.

I've begun building my book-buying list for the worldcon.

Sure it's almost 4 months away, but it's better to start now than kicking myself in the butt after the con when I suddenly remember something I should have looked for.

Besides that... I'll bring my copy of "Ravens in the Library", one of the best anthologies I've ever read to the autograph sessions of people like Catherynne Valente and Seanan McGuire. I already had Carrie Vaughn sign it at Bubonicon last year.

The day so far... I watered all of our flower beds, after which I uprooted the last bushes that hadn't made it thru the dry winter then clipped off the dead branches off our many Birds of Paradise. (Speaking of clipping, my limbs remained untouched this time and yesterday's accidental excised wound is healing nicely.) I loaded all the debris onboard the minivan and went to the dump. I've now taken a much needed shower, and gone thru our check book's transactions. I guess I'm done with everything I needed to do and can now spend the rest of the weekend indulging my slothful nature.

Only a few plants remain to be potted. I pulled some weeds from the lawn. I'm taking tomorrow and Friday off for major housecleaning, what with Sue's two sisters arriving on Friday afternoon to visit for the weekend. That's OK. I'll recuperate on Saturday and Sunday while the trinity is off to Santa Fe.

I am beginning to believe that this potential job opening that my formerformerformer(...)former boss had told me about back in October will never materialize. Disappointing. I'll survive.