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I’ve been reading a couple of interesting books lately:

Stephen Baxter’s Manifold Time

This story is about Reid Malenfant who is an astronaut. Mankind is turning inward but Reid wants to colonize space. He learns about the Carter catastrophy. Put simply, it is a probalistic experiment where, given a small sampling, you determine how many things exist. Say for instance that there is a box that dispenses balls, one at a time, at random, at a push of a lever. You are told that only one ball has your name on it. And you are also told that either this box contains ten balls or it contains a thousand balls. So you push the lever and a blank ball pops out. You push it again with the same result. However, on the third attempt, a ball comes out with your name on it. You then deduce with a 66% percent chance of success that the box contained ten balls.

Baxter uses this thought experiment as motivation for Reid that Humanity will destroy itself within 240 years. So he uses a cheap existing rocket to launch an intelligent squid out to a near-Earth asteroid called Cruithne. When production is up and running, he visits the asteroid and finds a portal that transports himself into alternate universes where different conditions created much different formations of the galaxies.

The book is fast paced and contains a lot of scientific speculation. I liked it. And was the Carter catastrophy real? You will just have to read it to find out!

Stephen Baxter’s Manifold Space

The second book in the series. It too contains a Reid Malenfant but this story is different. Humanity goes to the Moon but not much further. When an alien speices called the Gaijin appear and begin to mine the asteroid field, Humanity doesn’t respond. Only Reid and a couple other characters have the drive to find out what is happening. In this story, life is everywhere! On the moon, on all the planets, in all of the solar systems out there. However, something is destroying that life, for many cycles. And another cycle is coming…

This book is as fast paced as the other. Some of the old characters are in this book. But their lives are different now. More scientific speculation: baking oxygen and water out of moon rocks, and digging deep within the moon to extract trapped water and other resources. This story was a little more scattered than the first and not as cohesive. I liked it but it was a little bit worse than the first.

Small-Batch Baking by Debby Maugans Nakos

Just glanced through this one. It has an interesting concept: making desert for just a couple of people! For example, the recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies makes 6 cookies. The Apple Crumble Pie recipie makes 2 pies in 4-inch tart pans or jumbo muffin cups.

I hate the waste that occurs when you make a batch of 42 cookies. You each a bunch of them and then you throw out the rest when you are disgusted with yourself. Making just a couple of items at a time is the perfect concept! And one that I am surprised that hasn’t been done before. You have to get used to the concept of using only a part of an egg for a recipie. So there will be some waste. But better throwing away 1/2 of an egg than 20 cookies.

I am definately trying some of these!


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I went to Gumbo’s for lunch today. This is currrently on of my favorite restaurants. And the food was excellent as always. But what was interesting was the conversation that I overheard which sounded like it was straight out of a letter to Penthouse (which I only read for the articles, of course).

To my right was a table of four young males. One of them was telling a story and he was obviously bragging. Which went something like this:

He travelled to some town (which I did not catch the name of — I was not really paying attention at this point). Apparently, it was a Wednesday night and the night life was rather dull. But he goes to a bar and checks it out. After circling the place he goes and orders a beer. Not two minutes later, but this woman walks up to him and asks him if he wants to go somewhere else. He is interested, so he goes with her and leaves the beer. He doesn’t go into much detail what happened that night. But apparently, they start seeing more of each other and somehow the Mother enters the picture. Mercifully, he does not go into detail about the Mom.

The next surprising thing that I hear is that she is about to have cosmetic surgery performed on her. His audience now jokes about if something is added or removed. It seems that she is having her breasts enlarged. So he remarks that he gets to see the before and the after. He also mentions that he is going to rub cocoa over her scars. (I imagine that they are non-existent now adays. They can go through the belly button after all!)

All throughout the story, he kept stressing how special he was. How unique he was. Blah, blah, blah. One example was when he mentioned that the next time he goes to this bar, other men would be lined up to see the new look. They would remember him and wonder why he was picked when they were there far longer than he was.

Good thing I was facing away from them. I would not have kept a straight face at all…

When Marty blogged about eating at Boomer’s, I had to try it. I originally tried to get our sushi-eating lunch to go. But trying to get them to attend was an excercise in herding cats. So I went myself.

They have quite a variety of selections. And they also had a special on buying four frozen pies for $15. So I bought one Southwestern Abode Chicken pie with “made fresh” kettle chips. The pie was good but the chips were cold and greasy. I will definately buy the salad for the next time. And, to take home with me, I bought a Spicy Mexican, Mexican Veggie, Texas BBQ, and Mediterranean Veggie.

The store is not located very well. It is on the opposite side of Guadalupe Street. Driving south, I saw the sign for it. But it was located on the other side of 31st street. There was parking in the rear. But no sign on the exterior of the building nor on the door. Those red signs on the umbrellas had some other name on them.

And what looks like a spot to turn in for parking is actually where guests sit!

I was able to eat here and then stop by Central market for shopping. And I was able to return to work in an hour and a half. So, just going for lunch should be doable! I definately plan on going again.

Went to the movies with W—– (as he likes to refer other people) and tried to buy a ticket at the kiosk. But was greeted with this screen. And the other screen was dark! Forced to interact with a human…

Wilson! favored me today and delivered my Adam Spielt package today.

The popular games were Antike and Tichu (of course). Many new and interesting are waiting to be played by our group…

So, I took a swim today… literally. Last week, I lost my Wraith when I was playing in a really windy day. So windy in fact, that when John threw a disc 100′ in front of him, it would roll back to a spot behind him… twice! Anyways, I went back to see if I could find my disc. The water is really stagnant and murky. It is not deep but in the middle of the channel, you can sink up to a foot in the soft muck. Sadly, I did not find my disc. But I did find six discs:

• Innova Champion Firebird (Rob Feather)
• Disc Craft Elite Z Wildcat
• Innova Champion Viking
• Innova Champion Orc (MP 512)
• Innova Champion Valkyrie (BLF ’05)
• Innova KC Pro FireBird (R. Mims CWARE)

and two clams! (Huh?… How did they get there?) I won’t talk about the shower afterwards…

The moral of the story is that many champions give their life for the sport. Searching in the internet can be interesting: Rob Feather, BLF

Well, it just had to be done. My tree was growing into a dense ball. And given enough time, it would grow into a black hole which would devour the earth. Fortunately for me, my neighbor, Warren, likes to prune trees. And he helped me out this weekend. Well, let me rephrase that. He did all of the work and I stood there while meditating over bonsais. Maybe I should take time lapse pictures of this tree…