Fred Saberhagen

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I’m currently reading the first book in Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker series — and oddly enough, he died a couple days ago, no matter what Wikipedia editors might think.

That got me to wondering, is it possible some of the best Science Fiction writing is being written now? I know the greats are the greats, but it would seem an author wouldn’t have to be old and/or dead in order to be a giant in SciFi. For example, Isaac Azimov was a pioneer of robot stories, but he wasn’t known for his storytelling and plot development.

I’m so thankful for the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, etc, etc. It’s so wonderful to experience new writer’s work, and with all the choices out there, the award winning ones are a good place to start.

Now I feel like I should go write a bit…

Housecleaning

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Well, a couple things have changed. One, I am using a template that actually works for Windows Internet Explorer folks. Secondly, I moved hosting to an actual host instead of the computer in my closet. It was cool to host things locally, but some days my personal bandwidth is affected by web traffic. I need my speed y’all. 🙂

I have noticed that several name servers can’t resolve my site at all. Hopefully that will clear up before too long!

UPDATE: The hosting isn’t quite right, because although I paid for hosting, I’m getting ads on the page. That sucks, and hopefully will go away! I contacted technical support to deal with the problem…

Lydia, Oh, Lydia

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This video clip is kinda special for my family. Our daughter, Lydia, really likes it. I’m sure you’ll see why. 🙂

[flv:http://web.mac.com/shawnp0wers/lydia.flv 400 300]

It probably violates copyright of some sort, but for reference sake, it’s The Muppet Show, Season 1, Episode 2.

Enjoy!

Some things shouldn’t be found

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oddshawn.jpgHave you ever been looking through a box of pictures, or in my case a pile of hard drives, and found a picture that you don’t remember? Yeah, me too. Here’s proof.

I have no idea where this is from, but I found it on an old hard drive in my office. Apparently it was from a time that I was so happy to finally have facial hair, I was reluctant to shave it off. And no, that doesn’t mean it was last week. 🙂 I’ve had to shave at least every other day since I turned 30, thank you very much.

Yay for late bloomers!

No Windows?

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I just discovered that my website doesn’t render right under Internet Explorer… How odd!

I’m starting to get enough traffic that perhaps hosting from my home DSL line isn’t really the wisest move anymore. Perhaps I’ll run to blogger or something, now that they have well done domain interaction.

Did you know you can point your domain name to blogger, and they’ll host everything for you? It’s pretty cool. I do love WordPress, though, so I dunno, maybe I’ll just change to a theme that is Windows friendly.

Guitar

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I play guitar. Well, I want to play guitar. I’ve been learning for probably 20 years, but when it comes to actually playing a song, something doesn’t click in my brain.

Oh, I admit that I haven’t practiced as much lately as I should, but honestly, practice starts to feel futile when you can’t seem to strum out a simple 2 chord song. My problem has to do with rhythm and strumming. For some reason, unless I force myself to mechanically strum the strings “UP DOWN UP DOWN UP DOWN” forever, I lose myself in the rhythm, and awkwardly try to catch up or something. Oh, and if I do just strum up and down, it sounds horribly mechanical and awkward.

To try putting the problem I have into words — it seems like my brain/fingers are attempting to strum every syllable, or at least every word. I know it’s not as hard as I’m making it out to be, but the inability to comfortably play even ONE song does make practice frustrating.

I recently (at Bair Lake) watched the guitar leader play a million songs, and never change his strumming pattern. He changed chords SLOWER than I usually do, and sounded infinitely less awkward in doing so. I’m not sure what I’m doing, or why I’m doing it — but it’s really to the point that practice is not fun, and any singing attempts are usually cause for quitting altogether. We won’t even talk about playing with someone else, much less lead other people in singing.

So anyway, there’s my 2AM, can’t sleep, whining complaint-fest.

Back!!!

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back.jpgHi everyone! I’m back. I’m tired, but I’m back. I have a terrible headache, but I’m back. My nose is running like a faucet, but I’m back. I miss my wife and oldest daughter (they stayed for another week), but I’m back.

So far, being back kinda sucks…

Hope you are all doing well. I look forward to catching up on blogs, etc. in the next few days.