May 9, 2013

Harold Covington: A Distant Thunder
Harold Covington: A Mighty Fortress
Harold Covington: Hill of the Ravens
- One more to go in this quintology.  Standard disclaimer applies.  I do not endorse, recommend, or condone the ideas in Mr. Covington's books. 

John Scalzi: Redshirts
Great book.  Loved it. The first chunk of the book had me laughing like an imbecile and Coda 3 had me balling like an AT&T long distance commercial.

April 28, 2013

Busy week.  We bought a farm.  Yeah!

I've been rereading
The Have-More Plan
How to Grow More Vegetables
And a pile of Permaculture books.

April 13, 2013

Michael Connor: Sneak it Through - Smuggling Made Easier
Michael Connor: How To Hide Anything








 - Today's first two books were inspired by the Wall Street Journal.  I read one of their online articles today about legislators discussing possible limits on the maximum size of IRAs.  Lovely.

Master Hei Long: 21 Techniques of Silent Killing


- Behold my new quinternary backup plan.  If IT, Plumbing, Metalworking, and Farming don't work out; I can always become a ninja assassin.  Wouldn't you agree? 

-  Today was a busy day.  I tilled one of our flower beds, fixed our swimming pool pump, gassed myself with mustard gas, got the swimming pool topped off and started, picked up a Mazda 6, turned the compost bins, taught the neighborhood kids about some edible lawn plants, asked them not to eat my entire lawn, played PlanetCraft 2 with the boy, bought daughter a virtual baby DS game, fixed my sons DS, went shopping for unmentionables, and read a couple of books. 

Mustard Gas is technically inaccurate.  I understand actual mustard not to be straight Chlorine (Cl2) but instead a heavier Chlorine Carbon Sulfur compound.  I dealt with what I suspect to be the former, thank goodness.  To explain, one of the pool's chlorine tablet containers leaked over the winter and was half full of water.  When I opened it a plume of choking yellow green gas emerged. presumably Cl2.  I poured the highly concentrate chlorinated water solution into the pool and dumped the tablets into a bin.  I rinsed the bin into the pool and dumped them into a clean container.  I then staggered away and let out the giant breath I'd been holding.  Hello Hypoxia.  Cough. Hack. Cough.  That's not healthy.  In hindsight I wish I'd thought to close the container back up when I saw the gas.  I read (in the Golden Book of Chemistry) that steel wool will spontaneously combust in a Chlorine gas environment.  I've always wanted to see that.  Perhaps another time.  Perhaps with a gas mask too.


One nice thing to report.  I broke a drain plug off in the pump.  I tried the broken screw extractors from the Handyman club of America.  They actually worked fantastic.  I was giddy that a.) the product worked as advertised b.) I'd been able to locate it in the garage.  Full Disclosure: I am no longer a member or customer of HCOA. 

The pool is running, that's a win.  The boy wants to have a swimover before school lets out.  I'd like to make that happen.
 Last bit:  I shared this blog with my lovely wife today.  Hi sweetie!

April 12, 2013

A couple of Loompanics books today.

Jim Hogshire: Opium for the Masses
 - I have no real interest in Opium, but I saw some lovely Poppy plants at a nursery.  I wanted to be doubly sure I wasn't opening myself up to legal trouble if I planted them.  As it turns out the object of my affections is NOT opiate bearing and I can plant without fear.

Harold S. Long: How to Collect Illegal Debts

 - Ironically, the latter book describes many of the same ideas as the last parenting book I read.  Primarily the concepts on establishing authority and responding vigorously to rebellion and disrespect.  Fun times.

Robert A. Heinlen: Columbus Was a Dope
 - This one is fantastic.  It's a rehash of the "If men were meant to fly, they'd have wings!" argument about the impossibility of space travel.  The characters are a bartender and a couple of Joes, (spoiler) in a bar on the moon (/spoiler).

April 11, 2013

Robert A. Heinlen: Coventry

Robert A. Heinlen: Orphans of the Sky
 - The one about the Muties and normals living on the ship that don't know it's a ship.
Robert A. Heinlen: Destination Moon
 - The one where the nuclear powered rocket has to sneak off the launchpad to make it to the moon.

Robert A. Heinlen: Delilah and the Space Rigger


 - It's funny.  When I don't write down the titles as soon as I finish reading them I remember the story but not the name.  :D

April 10, 2013

Richard Stephenson: Collapse
 - Got this one as a Kindle freebie.  Good read.  The quasi-omniscient AI "Hal" is a nice touch.  I wonder how many are in the series?  If it's not to many I might follow along.

I should devote some cycles to modeling the current economic climate.  This book and several others have talked about global economic issues, and I wonder if that is really a risk or hyperbole.  SDDI.

April 7, 2013

Robert A. Heinlen: Citizen of the Galaxy
 - This was originally published as a serial, and it felt unfinished.  I like how the author conveys normalcy bias in the latter parts of the novel.  Specifically, "the that's silly, that can't be true.." response to slavery and piracy.

I also had a read through Mr. Heinlen's Wikipedia page.  Interesting chap.  I would not have pegged him for a Democrat or a Socialist.  I need to sit down and matrix out the core beliefs of political parties, as my assumptions on those two are obviously wrong.

I'm going to look at a farm today.  With any luck, Plan F proceeds!

Cheers.

April 6, 2013

Robert Heinlen:All you zombies
Robert Heinlen:Black pits of luna
Larry Niven: Yet another Modest Proposal

- It's short story time!

April 4, 2013

Carol Hupping Stoner: Goodbye to the Flush Toilet
 - I seem to have fallen into a Permaculture obsession.  Yesterday I watched a bunch of videos on it, and today I'm thinking about really DIY fertilizers.  It's excitement about getting a farm, methinks.  In regards to the book it's less hands-on than the humanure handbook and the section on greywater treatment was lackluster.  That said, I'd trust the Rodale hippies more than the average hippie. :D

Still slogging through Security Engineering. It's a well written book, but my brain wants books about green things and dirt, not electrons.

April 2, 2013

Ross Anderson: Security Engineering
 - Started reading this today, up to chapter 4.  Reading protocol exchanges in the technical notation hurts my brain.  The author explains it well though, so I just need to SDSU and work through it.

Frank Barnaby: How to build a nuclear bomb
 - Bonus points for having the BEST TITLE EVER.  I suspect a visit from a three letter agency on that basis alone.  This book is a brief introduction to weapons of mass destruction (NBC) history, development, proliferation, and terrorist feasibility.

Most interesting bits from this book.  Officially, at least one country has not tested their nuclear arsenal.  Also it had first person accounts from a chap in Nagasaki and a Kurd that lived through the Iraqi chemical gas attacks.  I feel particularly sorry for the latter, as even the text is going to give me nightmares.  I'm quoting this bit below, though it's not suitable for most readers.

[...] a young woman, perhaps twenty, in a magenta and orange dress, holding a baby in her arms. The mother could have been sleeping, but the baby's eyes were white and dead. Its clothes were continually fluttering in the slight wind.

We wandered around the houses. Most of them still had people inside. I went into one where a rocket had come through the roof. There was a sound of buzzing: flies were at work on the food the family had been eating when the attack began. There were six of them around the table. A child had rolled out of his chair and lay on the floor, face down. A man and a woman were hunched down in their seats: I couldn't see their faces. An older man, the grandfather, lay with the side of his face on the table, his hand to his mouth, his jaw still clamped on a piece of flat bread which he had been in the act of biting when the rocket came through the roof and filled the room with poison gas.

I sniffed the air: mustard gas smells of sewage; nerve gas has a much more pleasant smell, like chocolate according to some people and new-mown hay according to others; cyanide gas supposedly smells like almonds, though if you take a single breath of it you are likely to die. According to the Iranian doctor who accompanied us it was cyanide that killed the old man eating his bread and the mother with the child in her arms. All over in a second or two, he said. The others were really bad. [...]

I won't be sleeping tonight, methinks.

April 1st, 2013

Eden Press: 100 Ways to Disappear and Live Free
- This book is from the 80's, and as dated as you'd expect.  It seems to be aimed at those fleeing bill collectors.

Canada Emergency measures organization: 11 Steps to survival
 - Good ol' Nuclear war...

Russ Kick: 50 Things you're not supposed to know
 - Interesting bit about agent provocateurs and medical errors. 

H.P. Lovecraft: The Alchemist

March 31st, 2013

Harold A. Covington: The Brigade
 - This was referred to me as a book on psychological warfare and effective guerrilla small unit tactics, and it was so.  It's also racist, nazi, anti-gay, and antisemitic.  I do not endorse, condone, or recommend the ideas in this book.

Most importantly this book changed my assertion that racism and intelligence were incompatible.  The author is obviously intelligent.  This leads to the new question: how does one reach the conclusion that a race or group of races is the root cause of all one's woes? superior or inferior to another?  More research required.

Favorite books of all time

When I was a child, my favorite books were
Don C. Reed, Pamela Ford Johnson: Sevengill, the shark and me
Scott O'Dell: Island of the blue dolphins

My brother-in-law got me hooked on science fiction, and gave me a dogeared copy of
Thomas J. Ryan: The adolescence of P-1
- Great book.  Loved it and still have it. 

So far this month

So far this month:

Paladin Press: The .50-Caliber Rifle Construction Manual
 - Interesting book.  I really think the receiver and bolt group should be heat treated, and of a named alloy.

Robert Heinlen: Gentlemen, Be Seated
Robert Heinlen: By his bootstraps
Robert Heinlen: The moon is a harsh mistress
- This one could be subtitled "A DIY manual for inciting a revolution"

Daniel Suarez: Daemon
- Fantastic book... and OMGOMGOMG there is a sequel!!!  (To amazon I go!)

Ernest Cline: Ready Player one   (Loved it!)

Frist!

This is a log of the books I read.  There may be occasional commentary, but mostly it's about the list.