The Birthgrave - Tanith Lee. Her first book.
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub - Stanislaw Lem.

I don't know, would you rather be a Hydro-Ceramic Technician or Dishwasher?

Doesn't mean it's any more likely. Water is known to be quite abundant in the universe. While finding a whole shitload circling around a black hole is pretty cool, it would be more significant to find a shitload of water on a planet in the so called "Goldilocks Zone" around certain types of stars—for at least the type of life that we know of.

Wow that's a lot of data. Can't wait to see more of the results published.

IIRC XBox 360 has 256MB of system RAM and 256MB of Video RAM. That's pretty low-end by today's standards.

Who wants to order a 30.48 cm sub at Subway?

"Nelson’s philosophy toward computing is widely reported on being that a user interface should be so simple that in an emergency, a beginner is able to understand it within ten seconds."

Sounds like he's looking for the return of Microsoft's Bob! Time for Melinda Gates to break out that project manager hat and return to her former glory!

I get excited...and arrested.

I believe it is also quite dependent on the mass of the black hole which affects the Schwarzchild radius. In the case of a super-massive black hole, spaghettification would occur well after passing the event horizon. With smaller black holes the spaghettification would occur before hitting the event horizon.