I spent most of the holiday weekend in the Houston area, visiting family and friends. On Thursday I had the traditional turkey dinner with my mother and brother, and we watched sports afterward. Friday I visited favorite bookstores. The trip to Bedrock City, my old comics shop, was wonderful. Less successful was my visit to Murder by the Book, ( Read more... )

It's a season of thanks, and there are many things in my life for which I am grateful: my friends, my job (which I found after the shortest job search of my life), my dog, my house, and my relative prosperity ( Read more... )

My dog likes to greet trick-or-treaters, so I stayed in Friday night. About 50 kids visited us between 7 PM and 8:45. I saw one Iron Man costume, but otherwise costumes were old standards: skeletons, vampires, fairy princesses, Darth Vader, and Harry Potter. I asked the boy in the Harry Potter costume if he'd read all the books, and his response ( Read more... )

This year I've sampled several of the new shows with sf/f content. Here's a quick take:

• My Own Worst Enemy (Monday on NBC): Has possibilities. Christian Slater is an appealing lead. Basically it's True Lies: The Series.
• Fringe (Tuesday on Fox):  No sympathetic characters. Too gross. Reminiscent of other shows I didn't like. Gave up 5 minutes into ( Read more... )

My first day working at Stray Bullet Games went fine. My coworkers seem friendly. It's nice to be back in an office after a couple of years in a cubicle. I'll be learning a lot of new software and technology used to make the game. I was pleased to be included in the lunch group that went out to eat at Chuy's. My office is in the Far West area, so ( Read more... )

I've enjoyed being off for the last couple of weeks. I made a day trip to San Antonio, accomplished numerous home improvement projects, had lunch at new (to me) restaurants, and saw a lot of movies ( Read more... )

The local NBC affiliate (KXAN) and my cable company (Time Warner Austin) couldn't reach an agreement by the time a contract expired last night, so Time Warner customers won't be able to watch NBC any time soon. I wasn't too thrilled about the prospect of missing SNL, Chuck, and Heroes. So I just went down to Radio Shack and picked up an inexpensive ( Read more... )

This week I ate tacos from three well-known Mexican restaurants in Central Texas:

• Taco Taco Cafe in San Antonio, named "Best Tacos in America" by The Food Network
• Panchito's in San Antonio,  a longtime area favorite
• Taco Shack in Austin, winner of "Best Taco" from the Austin Chronicle Restaurant Poll

My favorite was easily the puffy tacos from Taco ( Read more... )

Last week was interesting. I'd been interviewing heavily for about three weeks, but when I woke up Monday morning, I had no interviews scheduled nor any leads to follow. I was waiting to hear back from several recent interviews, so I just took it easy for a few days. I saw movies, met friends for lunch, shopped for a new tennis racquet, and did ( Read more... )

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