Thick raindrops pelted the freshly green grass, the temperature barely warm enough to keep the rain from turning to snow. A few hundred meters away, a sheer mountain rose up towards the gray clouds, proudly crowned with freshly driven snow. But the entire valley was brilliantly green, a stark contrast to the mountain's white snow, and untouched by the worries of humankind. Here and there bunches of yellow and purple-blue flowers clung to the rocky sub-alpine landscape, shivering in the cold m

Wish me the best of luck tomorrow morning. I'll need it.

I finished book twelve of The Wheel of Time, the first book written after Robert Jordan's death. It's written by Brandon Sanderson, a young, up-and-coming fantasy author. The million dollar question that everyone is asking is, "was the book any good without Mr. Jordan writing the book"?

The answer is yes. Book twelve is in contention as perhaps one of the best in the series. But, with that being said, there is one glaring, very annoying flaw:

It's the year 2071, or somethin' like that. Nobody really keeps track anymore. It's amazing how what was once important becomes irrelevant when every day is a fight for survival. I pick up the shotgun laying on the dusty office desk and make my way through the facility. The throaty hum of 60hz is loud enough to make my ears ring, but that's just fine by me. My work here is done.

Land of Devastation
By: Thomas Matthews

Before I had the chance to attack, the Giant Newt leapt at my arm with its teeth gnashing. I tried to dodge, but the beast took a small chunk out of my arm. I threw it off me and pulled out my ElectroBlade. With one swipe, I cut the Newt into two pieces.

November 19th, 1987. Vegreville, Alberta.

I'm sitting in the basement, watching the title screen of "The Castles of Doctor Creep" on my Commodore 64. The game itself is good, but I'm more interested in listening to the music playing along to the title screen. The SID chip continues to play its rendition of Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 5. I'm completely mesmerized. I don't know it, but this is my first exposure to classical music - through a computer. I won't know the title of the tu

The server that runs RRX has been in the need of some repairs, lately. One of the drives in the RAID6 array failed, both CPU's were hitting their temperature thresholds way too early, and the kernel needed to be patched to fix the sendpage() vulnerability, among a few other things.

So, having conquered the breadth of Liechtenstein (all 10km of it) by hiking, I decided to do the same to a somewhat larger country: Great Britain.

Hadrian's Wall was built around Emperor Hadrian's time, and demarcated the northern boundary of the Roman Empire. The wall spans about 134km from Britain's eastern seaboard to the west, and is still largely intact through most of the route. This plays very well to my fascination with borders and interesting hikes in general.

An article on VGPG showed that the value for Michael Jackson's "Moonwalker" game on the Genesis rose from $15.00 to $200.00 in a matter of hours. Moonwalker is rated "3" on the Digital Press rarity scale, which in human terms means "somewhat uncommon but not hard to find." The value has since started to trickle back down.

So, Stephen and I decided to go to the top of Grande Mountain in Grande Cache for amateur radio Field Day. I figured, since HF performance was so great in the town itself, it *must* be great atop a mountain that almost doubles in elevation from the town site itself. More sky coverage, less RF interference.

~
Ecce gratum et optatum
ver reducit gaudia:
purpuratum floret pratum,
sol serenat omnia.
iam iam cedant tristia!
estas redit nunc recedit,
hiemis sevitia.

lam liquescit et descrescit
grando, nix et cetera;
bruma fugit, et iam sugit
veris tellus ubera.
illi mens est misera,
qui nec vivit nec lascivit
sub estatis dextera!

So I had the pleasure of attending an Edmonton Symphony Orchestra concert last night. It was titled "A Night in Vienna", which I found to be slightly amusing, having actually been to Vienna in person. To anyone thinking of going to Paris, *forget all that* and go to Vienna instead. It's a really classy city without so much of the tacky tourism.