(There's an illustrated copy of this at mcgrew.info)

The GNU Image Manipulation Program is an excellent free and open source graphics program that will do almost anything you want to a bitmap image.

Almost. When text is needed in an image, GIMP is indeed gimpy. Rather than use fonts installed in the computerâ(TM)s operating system, it has its own, very limited set of fonts, and no way to exactly position your text.

The workaround is easy: donâ(TM)t use GIMP for text.

Todayâ(TM)s word processors can all write PDF files, both closed source commercial word processors and open source tools. My favorite is Open Office Write. GIMP can import them as images, and it does an excellent job of it.

Say you wanted to use the above image (a 35 mm slide I took in 1974 and digitized with a cheap plastic slide viewer, a phone, a rubber band, and adhesive tape) and add âoeyour moveâ in the upper left hand corner of the image. First, open your word processor and choose the font you want. Any font installed on your computer will work, and there are literally thousands of fonts you can download from the internet and install in a few seconds. One Iâ(TM)ve downloaded is Callistroke. Weâ(TM)ll use that one for the example, and Iâ(TM)ll explain why shortly.

Once the font is chosen, type in the text and highlight it, center it, and make the font size large enough that it stretches from border to border.

Next, export it as PDF and open GIMP. Once GIMPâ(TM)s stuff has all loaded, you can open the PDF as an image. I simply put it on the last page of this document rather than making a new document. Before you tell GIMP to import it, raise the resolution to 600 DPI or higher to prevent pixelation. You can make it smaller later.

When it opens, select Tools --> Selection Tools --> Rectangle Select, and outline your text.

Now select Image --> Crop to Selection.

The reason I like the outline fonts in most illustrations and graphics is that I can have white letters outlined in black, which will show up clearly in any image. If your text is going to be in a landscape with a blue sky, a non-outline font in a contrasting color is as good or better. Donâ(TM)t use red letters on a green background as it will be invisible to some people.

There are a couple of steps to get there. First, select Tools --> Color Picker. Place your cursor over the white and click. Then choose Tools --> Selection Tools --> Select By Color. Now click anywhere white and press âoeDelâ and everything white will be transparent.

Now, select Select --> None.

Transparent parts will show up as a two shades of gray checkerboard. as in the illustration below.

Now choose Tools --> Paint Tools --> Bucket Fill to fill in the white part of your text.

Now open the image you want to put the text in. There will be a ruler at the top of the screen showing how many pixels in a given area. In our image, where we want the text is about 750 pixels wide. In the text image, select Image --> Scale Image. The following dialog opens:

Place the cursor in the âoeWidthâ field, then type in the number. Weâ(TM)re changing 1024 to 750. Now press âoeTabâ once and the âoeHeightâ field will change. Now just click âoescaleâ.

When it finishes scaling, press Ctrl+A to select the whole image, than Ctrl+C to copy it. Tab to the image youâ(TM)re adding text to, make sure the âoeRectangle Selectâ tool is chosen (see earlier in this article) and press Ctrl+V to paste the text in.

Now put the cursor on a letter and hold the primary mouse button and move the text where you want it.

Now merge the two images by pressing Ctrl+M then Enter. Here is the final image:

You can add all sorts of fancy things to your text with different images.

To make the above image, I got a picture of fire from Google, Wrote the word âoeFIREâ in open office, exported as PDF, selected black (lettering), deleted, and pasted it over the fire.

So finally, GIMP has everything I need. Well, maybe except the ability to make moving PNGs and vector graphics.

I like Open Office but needed .doc file to send science fiction to magazines, so I needed Word; I wasn't sure Oo would write the files properly and it turned out it can't export to anything except PDF, so I installed Libre Office. It will write the files, but MS Write can't read them.
        I had an idea for an article about playing cards, so googled for open source playing card images. There should be plenty since playing cards have been around for hundreds of years. However, finding them was really difficult. I managed to find an .eps vector graphics file that Windows didn't know what it was, so more googling.
        The internet said GIMP would open it, but it couldn't; it repeatedly crashed trying to open it. I tried importing it into Open Office, and got a blank screen. The internet said you could import it with Word, so I opened Word... or tried to. It wouldn't open and that I should try again or go to Control Panel to "repair" it. Tried reopening Word, same thing. Booted the computer and tried again, same thing. So I go into control panel and tried to repair, and that stupid fucking thing said I needed an internet connection. IT'S ON THE INTERNET, DAMN IT!!!
        I don't know where Microsoft finds its programmers, skid row? Homeless shelters? Crack houses?
        It's done this before. I had to reinstall the God damned OS to fix that stupid, stupid, program.
        They've always been terrible at networking. DOS and Windows 95 had no native networking at all. When I first got on the internet in 1997 I had to buy a floppy with a network stack and that primitive browser that the U of I came up with. They STILL can't do networking well. I assigned this computer's "documents" folder as the A: drive on the HP. Whenever I try to access it, it says the Acer isn't running, but if I go through "network" it works.
        Look, you idiots running Microsoft, here's a suggestion: the next time you roll out a new OS, how about making sure it actually WORKS?
        I'm in a really bad mood right now.

(The version at my web site is illustrated)

I was an amateur photographer in my youth, starting in high school when I bought a Canon 35 mm Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera. Iâ(TM)d been interested in photography since I was about twelve, when I somehow obtained a Three Stooges photo developing kit. That toy hooked me, even if I could only do contact prints until I got a job when I was a teenager and bought a cheap enlarger. Color film went to a commercial developer, as I had neither the knowledge nor equipment to develop color film.

So I have a lot of photographic slides and prints to digitize, since film photography is now obsolete; Kodak put itself out of business when they invented the digital camera which made their cash cow, film, obsolete. Prints are easy to digitize, as scanners are cheap and make good digital photos out of film prints. But what about my slides?

I asked at Walgreenâ(TM)s photo department if they could digitize slides, cringing at what was sure to be expensive since Iâ(TM)ve dug up half a dozen boxes of them. But they couldnâ(TM)t, and the lady said there were only two places in the country that could. I looked them up. Both were prohibitively expensive and you donâ(TM)t get the slideâ(TM)s frame back, only the film.

Then I had an idea, remembering the slide viewer I used to have and may still have somewhere. All I had to do was put my phone to the viewerâ(TM)s eyepiece and snap a photo! I looked, and bought one on the internet. It was only six bucks after shipping.

Alas, when the viewer came, there were complications; keeping the camera and viewer lined up still was impossible, making the digitized images awful.

So my next step was holding it together with a rubber band to keep it steady. I didnâ(TM)t have any, so the final cost was closer to ten bucks; you canâ(TM)t just buy one rubber band, you have to buy the whole bag.

If you have no computer, it will cost you the price of one, because later youâ(TM)ll need an image editor.

Hereâ(TM)s what the phone/viewer/rubber band combination looks like:

The next step is to turn the phoneâ(TM)s camera on and line the viewer up.

Next, carefully lay it flat on a table and tape the viewer to the phone. Any kind of adhesive tape will do, just make sure itâ(TM)s tight before removing the rubber band, which will interfere with the photo if left on.

Of course, you can use any source of illumination. I used a table lamp; a flashlight would do. You can vary the brightness and contrast by moving the contraption closer to or farther from the light.

Hereâ(TM)s what the raw output from the camera looks like, which is why you need an image editor:

I use the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). Itâ(TM)s free and open source and has everything you need to manipulate images, although it has a large learning curve. Here the slide is; digitized, cropped, and rotated:

One advantage of digital photography is very evident in this picture of Dover Air Force Base from the stairway to my barracks in 1972. The color has faded almost completely, leaving a pink tinge to the right, and bits donâ(TM)t fade.

So the final picture is saved as grayscale rather than RGB.

So now my slides, at least the ones Iâ(TM)ve found, are digitized. Iâ(TM)m keeping them, maybe Iâ(TM)ll have a better camera to better digitize some time in the future.

Hereâ(TM)s a slide I digitized of a friend and co-worker when I was a teenager; time was kinder to this almost fifty year old slide, although all the green color is faded; I restored it with GIMP the best I could. Itâ(TM)s obvious that where you had the slides developed matters a lot.

Now I need to buy a scanner...

(If the formatting is borked, it's posted at mcgrew.info)

There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
        Taken literally, this is patently false, as anyone with a grandmother knows. You may say âoewell, Grandma paid for it so it isn't free.â But it is free â" to you.
        I have a fruit tree in my front yard, and all its fruit is completely free.
        What this old saying means is âoenever trust a salesmanâ. If a salesman offers to buy your lunch, it will cost you.
        From a physicist's perspective, it means you can't break the three laws of thermodynamics; you can never get more energy out of a system than you put in.

You get what you pay for
        This is another salesman lie, with the sales lady getting you to believe that the higher priced item is always better than the cheap item. But you donâ(TM)t always get what you pay for. Often the less expensive item is equal or superior, with over-the-counter drugs being an excellent example. Aleve costs three times what generic naproxin does, yet is the exact same drug.
        And of course there are swindlers. If someone sells you a counterfeit Rolex at a real Rolex price, or a diamond ring with a zirconium stone, you have been swindled and certainly didnâ(TM)t get what you paid for.
        You usually pay for what you get, but often you pay far less than you otherwise did. Just yesterday I saw a âoegoing out of businessâ sign at a Radio Shack, and since I needed a new soldering iron I went in. The iron and solder were a third what I would have paid had I not procrastinated, and I got a TV antenna for five bucks. I got a lot more than I paid for.
        Get what you pay for? Usually, but sometimes you get more than you paid for and sometimes a high priced item turns out to be utter junk.

What goes up must come down
        This was true until July of 1969, when astronauts left man-made objects on the moon. They're not likely to ever come back down.
        There are robots rolling around Mars. These, too, are unlikely to ever come down.
        Then there are the Voyager spacecraft, which are now outside the entire solar system. It's a certainty that these machines will never return to Earth.

Money doesn't grow on trees
        Of course it does, orchards grow lots of money. Not only does it grow on trees, it grows on corn stalks, tomato plants, soybean bushes...

A picture is worth a thousand words
        If it is, then draw me a picture that says âoea picture's worth a thousand words.â Pictures can be aids in communication, and a picture is better than a description, but it's impossible to teach using only pictures.
        However, it is true in a monetary sense, in that a thousand word magazine article will garner a commercial writer less than the artist who made the cover art did.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger
        Nietzsche was an idiot. Just ask any brain-damaged quadriplegic if he's stronger than he was before the accident.
        Oh, and also, God isn't dead, Nietzsche is.

You can never be too rich or too thin
        Whoever started this stupid meme was a gold plated idiot. Of course you can be too thin. Bulimia and anorexia have killed people.
        The âoetoo richâ is subjective. I'd say if you have more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime when there are hungry people, you're too rich. How can someone like that live with themselves?

Lightning never strikes the same place twice
        It amazes me how gullible most people are, believing everything anyone tells them. They even believe stuff that was proven untrue centuries ago, as in this saying. It was believed for at least hundreds of years and likely longer until Ben Franklin disproved it with his kite and his invention of the lightning rod. If lightning never strikes the same place twice, lightning rods wouldn't work.

Only the good die young
Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray
They built you a temple and locked you away
Aw, but they never told you the price that you pay
For things that you might have done
Only the good die young
That's what I said
Only the good die young â" Billy Joel
        I've heard this nonsense all my life, and canâ(TM)t understand why people actually believe that tripe. Yes, some good young people do die way before their time.
        But if only the good die young, then why are so many inner-city young men killed in gun battles with rival gangs? Good people never die in gang battles unless they're not a part of the fight and simply get caught in the crossfire.
        Why do so many young people get drunk and die in their cars when they wrap them around trees? Good people don't drive when they're drunk.
        And if you're Christian, remember that Jesus said âoenone are good, except God.â Only the very young; the small children who die innocent are good. But bad young people die all the time.

If slashdot hasn't fixed the unicode bug, there's a version of the article on my personal page. It will be included in "Random Scribblings", out June 19

        Ten years ago I wrote a humorous article titled âoeUseful Dead Technologiesâ about technologies that are no longer used that I sorely miss, like furnaces that still worked when the power went out, or things made of durable steel instead of todayâ(TM)s fragile and short-lived plastics.
        A couple of the things on the list have improved since then. Shoelaces, for instance. Ten years ago I wrote:
        âoeShoelaces have been designed for hundreds of years to keep your shoes on your feet. No longer. Today's shoelaces are designed with one purpose in mind â" to annoy you.
        âoeWhat are they making shoelaces out of now? Nylon! Good old frictionless nylon âbecause of its strengthâ(TM). One wonders if today's engineers even need a college degree, as it seems that some things, like today's shoelaces, were designed by âoespecial edâ students.
        âoeBecause now, not only are they made of a friction-free material, they're round rather than flat, further eroding their ability to stay tied.â
        Since then, theyâ(TM)ve been making them of both cotton and nylon woven together, with all the friction of cotton and the strength of nylon.
        And theyâ(TM)re flat again.
        Another item was knobs on car radios. At the beginning of the century they had buttons for tuning and volume, so you couldnâ(TM)t turn it up or down without taking your eyes off the road. It was dangerous. Thankfully, theyâ(TM)ve gone back to knobs, even though theyâ(TM)re digital rather than potentiometers.
        The radio in my car now really annoys me, because the morons who designed it stupidly put the volume knob right above the tuning knob rather than the time tested volume on the left side of the radio and tuning on the right. Often when I try to adjust the volume, Iâ(TM)ll grab the wrong knob.
        I also miss the way presets worked back in the analog age. They were simple to operate: to set a preset to a station, you tuned the radio to that station, pulled out on the button, and pushed it back in. These days you simply cannot tune a station to a preset while youâ(TM)re driving, at least unless youâ(TM)re a suicidal maniac. Whatâ(TM)s worse, every radio has a different way of tuning a preset button, and many are impossible to figure out without an ownerâ(TM)s manual.
        The worst thing about that radio is I canâ(TM)t change the time on the clock. The car came with a manual, but they put three different models of radio in those cars, and the manual lists all of them. But each of the three says to push a button that simply isnâ(TM)t on the radio!
        And I just discovered by watching a commercial where they were trying to sell new cars â" the morons took the knobs away again, and now itâ(TM)s even worse than the buttons. Now they have touch screens. Thereâ(TM)s no way possible to change the station or volume without taking your eyes off the road!
        Iâ(TM)m all for hiring the handicapped, but I wish they wouldnâ(TM)t hire idiots to be engineers. Touch screens for automobile controls are brain-dead stupid.
        The following items havenâ(TM)t all become extinct in the last decade, I simply didnâ(TM)t think of them when I wrote it. Here are some more.

Thermostats that donâ(TM)t need batteries
        In the twentieth century, thermostats were simple yet clever devices: a mercury switch on the end of two dissimilar metals. The metal would bend one way or the other depending on temperature. When the metal reached a certain shape, the mercury would roll down the inside of the switch and close the circuit.
        Shortly before the turn of the century they came out with programmable thermostats, and they were indeed superior despite the one disadvantage of needing a battery; perhaps it could be done, but I donâ(TM)t see how you could have a programmable thermostat without one. But they could be set to turn themselves down at bedtime, then warm the house back up before you arose in the morning. More comfort, lower heating costs.
        Fast forward to a couple of years ago when the landlord had a new furnace installed in my house. With the new furnace came a new thermostat. The old thermostat was programmable, the new one isnâ(TM)t.
        But itâ(TM)s digital and still needs batteries.
        At first I thought they had to be digital because mercury has been shown to be toxic, but on second thought you could simply have a copper ball replacing the mercury. Such a switch would be easy to engineer.
        Folks, digital thermostats have been in use for a couple of decades now. Why arenâ(TM)t new homes designed to have a low voltage DC supply to thermostats so batteries wouldnâ(TM)t be needed?

Sticky Menus
        When GUIs first came out they were a great improvement over the old CLIs. Easy to use and hard to screw up. Click on a menu heading and the menu drops down. Nothing happened until you clicked somewhere. If you clicked on an empty space the menu closed. Click on a different menu and that menu opened.
        So some moron had the bright idea that if you had the file menu open and simply mouse over the edit menu, File closes and Edit opens.
        This incredibly stupid change drives me nuts, especially in Firefox and GIMP. I have nested bookmarks in Firefox, and after clicking a folder I have to slowly and carefully slide the cursor over, making sure the cursor never goes over a different folder, as the folder I want will close and the one I donâ(TM)t opens.
        GIMP drives me nuts, too, especially trying to select the âoerectangle selectâ from the âoeselectionâ menu, as the âoefiltersâ menu will open when Iâ(TM)m trying to navigate to âoerectangle selectâ.
        Folks, losing sticky menus was an incredibly stupid, productivity killing thing. BRING THEM BACK!

Rectangular cabinets
        Stuff used to have cabinets made of wood. The better stuff had rounded corners, because they were safer.
        Every large CRT TV I ever owned was rectangular, before 2002 when I bought a forty two inch Sony Trinitron. It takes up a huge amount of floor space, and you canâ(TM)t set anything on it because itâ(TM)s stupidly shaped. My DVD and VCR and converter box should be able to sit on it, but nothing can.
        The rectangular shape is far from extinct, but more and more things seem to be eschewing it.

Useful user manuals
        Some would criticize me for this one, saying user manuals always sucked, and they would have a valid point. When I was young, user manuals were complete â" and completely unreadable to many if not most people. I had trouble making heads or tails out of more than one, and I could read at a post-doctoral level at age 12 (although I didnâ(TM)t understand the math).
        DOS 6.2 came in a box with two floppies and a thick user manual. Windows 95 came with a very thin manual. I donâ(TM)t remember what XPâ(TM)s was like, but the manual for this old Acer laptop was really thin.
        Then my phone. Honestly, come on, now, a smart phone is a complex, sophisticated piece of equipment but its user manual is three by five inches and a dozen pages?
        The worst was the âoeSeagate Personal Cloudâ, which is really a network hard drive. Tiny pamphlet with pictures and few words. Look, folks, pictures are good for illustration but lousy for information. I spent twenty useless minutes studying the thing, then finally just plugged it in and turned it on. It didnâ(TM)t even need a manual!
        I did find a detailed, very good manual for it online. Its printed manual should have added its URL.

Automobile hoods and trunks that didnâ(TM)t need props
        Before the 1970s, to open a hood you opened the hood latch, and springs opened the hood and held it open. It was an ingenious design where it didnâ(TM)t spring open, you lifted it a little first. Trunks worked the same way. It didnâ(TM)t matter if it was a Volkswagen, a little Plymouth Valiant, or a big luxury Cadillac.
        Then the Arab oil embargo hit in 1974 and the price of gasoline doubled in a matter of months. People started replacing their American gas guzzlers with compact Japanese cars that had far better mileage.
        The more weight a vehicle carries, the worse its mileage is. Part of the raising of gas mileage was replacing the heavy steel with a lighter material when possible, and those springs and the rest of the steel assembly for them were jettisoned, replaced with that stupid hood prop.
        Soon American auto makers started following suit. I donâ(TM)t know if big sedans and luxury cars ever went to hood props, but I know my â67 Mustang had no hood prop, nor did my â74 LeMans. My 76 Vega did, though, as did every other car I owned until I bought an â02 Concorde. Rather than springs or a hood prop, it had lightweight hydraulic struts for both the front and back.
        It was far better than a hood prop, but not as good as the spring mechanism. Those springs lasted forever, but the struts fail in a few years and you wind up propping up your hood and trunk with a stick. Either that or shell out for new ones.

Bumper Jacks
        All cars and trucks used to have bumpers, and there was a slot on each end of each bumper. The slots were for flat tires. If you had a flat, you got the jack out of the car, hooked it into the slot, and jacked it up with its handle like you were pumping water out of a hand operated well pump. This was easy on the back, as you were standing up. It took very little effort to jack up the vehicle.
        Now they all have scissors jacks, and I hate them. You have to get down on your hands and knees to slide it under the car, and jack it up by cranking it. It always takes skin off of your knuckles and takes twice the effort and three times the time.
        Yes, the new jacks take up far less space, but the trade-offs simply werenâ(TM)t worth it.
        I miss the full sized spares, too. If you had a flat, you changed the tire, got the flat tire fixed, and simply put that one in the trunk instead of having to change the âoedoughnutâ to put your real tire on.
        At least we have fix-a-flat now.

My touchpad got screwy and Control Panel said its driver was missing, so I reinstalled Windows and lost all my bookmarks in the process. Unfortunately I didn't have slashdot messages bookmarked on the other computer. Slashdot has no link that I can find and its FAQ doesn't mention messages.

So if someone could shoot me the URL I'd appreciate it, I like reading you guys' journals and "messages" is how I get there.

I finished this story early January, and it's made the rounds of magazines it would fit in that I submit to, except Analog and the new site Compelling SF. Compelling has "Agoraphobia" and it will be six weeks before I can submit anything else, and Analog holds on to them for six months. So you guys get it. It will be in a future book titled "Voyage to Earth and Other Stories". If it's borked, go to a less retarded site

          Iâ(TM)m going to kill a planet. I donâ(TM)t know how yet, but I swear Iâ(TM)m going to do it.

        I was making a routine prospecting run and got a radio message from my best friend. As luck and coincidence would have it, the radio relay was only a little over two light hours awayâ"and Roger was either dying or already dead.

        The radioâ(TM)s message started âoeWarning! Anyone who hears this, stay away from Darius. This is probably the deadliest planet in the galaxy. If you land here, youâ(TM)ll die here. Iâ(TM)ll probably be dead by the time you receive this message.â

        Darius? He was prospecting in the Luhman system, the same system that I was, and I didnâ(TM)t even know it. I doubt he knew I was in the system, too. I hadnâ(TM)t heard from him in months, and here he was only between a light hour and three away. I wondered what he was looking for? I was after rare earths. This system was supposed to be a lot like the solar system and weâ(TM)d mined quite a bit of it from our own asteroid belt. Most of the rare earths in the belt, in fact. But Darius? What of value could possibly be there?

        I couldnâ(TM)t bring myself to leave him there despite his dire warnings, at least until Iâ(TM)d heard the entire thing and knew he was... Oh, God. Roger!

        I started the jump drive and in half an hour Iâ(TM)d be on my way to Darius to see if there was any way I could help him survive. I listened to the rest of the message as the engines warmed up.

        âoeI donâ(TM)t remember the crash, but I suspect it was the cornodium that caused it. Do not land on this planet!â

        I wondered what in the galaxy cornodium was. Iâ(TM)d never heard of the stuff before.

        âoeI woke up on the floor with a terrible headache, not knowing where I was. Hung over, maybe? I sat up and looked around. No, I was in the pilot room of my craft and wouldnâ(TM)t have been drinking. I got up with my head reeling, and stumbled to the controls.

        âoeIt looked like Iâ(TM)d crashed on Darius, the third orbit out from Luhman. Thatâ(TM)s the weirdest star system weâ(TM)ve found so far, weird because it was so much like the sun, and its planets were so much like our own solar systemâ(TM)s planets. Darius even has a giant satellite like Earth does, and the Luhman system even has a ring of asteroids between the fourth and fifth planets, just like the solar system. Nature is really strange sometimes.

        âoeI was looking for cornodium. Only small amounts had been found anywhere, and my calculations said the substance would be here, and likely vast riches of it. I donâ(TM)t know how many of us prospectors roam the galaxy these days, but weâ(TM)ve looked for valuable ores either not readily available or not available at all in our own system on hundreds of thousands of planets, and cornodium had only been found on six of them. None had much of it. It had all been mined and taken to Earth, less than a ton of the substance.

        âoeI didnâ(TM)t know much about cornodium despite doing as much research as I could about it. It was discovered only ten years ago and had revolutionized high end electronics, and the highest end at that because the stuff was so rare, and therefore very expensive. All I knew about cornodium was that they used it for power generation, but I had no idea how they got power from it. I didnâ(TM)t know what the stuff is or why itâ(TM)s so rare, but I didnâ(TM)t care. All I knew was that it was rare and very expensive, and if I found a planet with it Iâ(TM)d be rich, so I learned as much about its origins as I could. I was sure Darius fit the bill. If I was right Iâ(TM)d be as rich as my buddy who had found all that gold and platinum. I know now. Lot of good it will do a dead man.â

        I choked up again; Roger was thinking of me as he died.

        âoeWell, I would have been rich. It was obvious Iâ(TM)d crash landed on Darius.

        âoeMy head was bleeding, which explained the headache. I ignored it; I needed to assess my situation and get help if necessary.

        âoeI checked the controls, and yep, I was screwed. I tried to radio for help, but radio only goes at the speed of light and the closest radio relay craft was thirty light minutes away. I sent a distress signal, knowing it would be over an hour before I heard back.

        âoeTwo hours later it dawned on meâ"the antenna was on the bottom of the craft to better communicate with bodies one was taking off from or landing on. No one had heard me.

#
        âoeLike I said, Darius is really weird. Theyâ(TM)d only surveyed it by telescope so far, but Itâ(TM)s exactly like Earth and its moon, with two exceptions: the land masses are quite different, and there is no life whatever. The air is mostly nitrogen like Earth, with about the same amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and science couldnâ(TM)t explain where the oxygen came from. On Earth, it comes from vegetation and photosynthesis, but Darius was completely lifeless.

        âoeThat didnâ(TM)t matter to me, though. I needed to find the cornodium I was certain was here and stake a claim.

        âoeThe trouble was, I seemed to have wrecked my craft, and it was all I had. It was insured, of course, but with my antenna busted how could I collect on the insurance? And find the cornodium and stake a claim?

        âoeI decided to go outside and think about it, since I needed to see how much damage was done in the crash. After all, what danger could there be? This planet was lifeless, including microbial life. It being lifeless was, of course, the biggest mystery, even bigger than where all the oxygen had all come from. The planet was perfect for life to have formed, yet it hadnâ(TM)t. It should have even had sentient life, even though so far our own species was the only sentience we had ever found, which still puzzled evolutionists. Weâ(TM)d discovered lots of life in the galaxy, but most of it was no higher form of life than bacteria, and none smarter than a cow is on Earth.

        âoeI got out to do an outside inspection, and wow, I was right; the cornodium was everywhere, just laying on the ground! One piece looked like a daisy; nature comes up with some strange coincidences, and I laughed at it. There was a weird sound in the air, and I couldnâ(TM)t figure out what it was or where it was coming from.

        âoeIt looked like Iâ(TM)d smashed up the bottom of my craft pretty good. Iâ(TM)d have to find a way to make the radio work, and I decided to eat lunch and take a short walk first, since I was going to need all my brain and it didnâ(TM)t seem to be working right, so I decided to give it a break. I ate lunch and went back outside.

        âoeDarius reminded me of Mars, except there was air and water. And mud. And the skyâ(TM)s blue when Luhman is shining. It wasnâ(TM)t the same color as Mars, either, more brown than orange, with all of the patches of the bright blue cornodium. Lots of large areas didnâ(TM)t show dirt, just piles of small to tiny pieces of cornodium. And that strange sound, and it was heavy like Earth and the horizon was different than Mars, but it still reminded me of Mars, anyway. I donâ(TM)t know why.

        âoeIt wasnâ(TM)t all that muddy, kind of like dry dirt that had a small shower maybe the day before and there were enough rocks to keep my boots from getting too nasty. Most of the rock and gravel was cornodium.

        I figured the planet wouldnâ(TM)t be lifeless for long; this system had only been discovered six months ago. I came out as soon as Iâ(TM)d heard of it, because I had a hunch based on what Iâ(TM)d read about cornodium: it had only been found on lifeless planets with gravities between Marsâ(TM) gravity and one point five Earth gravities within a starâ(TM)s âoeGoldilocks zoneâ, and Darius fit perfectly. I wondered why nobody else had figured that out, the numbers were all there.

        âoeI walked up a shallow incline, and when I reached the top I saw in the distance what looked like it might have been a large machine, halfway buried. I started walking toward it to investigate, but it started sprinkling and the sky looked menacing, so I went back to my ship. I needed to work on that radio, anyway. Iâ(TM)d have to find some wire that didnâ(TM)t feed the radio or kitchen or air refreshment to use as an antenna.

        âoeShortly after I was inside my craft it started storming badly, with thunderâ(TM)s noise and the windâ(TM)s howl echoing through the boat constantly. I searched the ship for wire I could scavenge from the wreckage without stopping the kitchen or radio. I found enough to reach just outside, and now needed something to use as an antenna.

        âoeI thought of what had looked like half-buried machinery, and hoped there was wire in it, since all I would need for an antenna was a little more wire. I figured to go exploring it as soon as the storm abated.

        âoeIt stormed all afternoon and half the night. The next morning when I woke up, Luhman was shining brightly in a cloudless sky. I ate breakfast, despite not being very hungry, and packed a lunch, because it had looked like the machine might be quite a way off. It seemed Iâ(TM)d gotten a concussion in the crash, because my head still hurt, and I was still weak and disoriented. My stomach was a bit queasy, too, especially after breakfast.

        âoeIt was a two hour walk to the machine, and I had to rest halfway there. Where was my normal stamina? I should have been able to sprint to it. âProbably has to do with the concussion,â(TM) I thought. I still wasnâ(TM)t thinking clearly.

        âoeThe thing was bigger and farther away than it looked. Space ship, perhaps? I looked for a door or a window or a hatch. I didnâ(TM)t find one, but I did find an opening where the thingâ(TM)s metal had torn; it had to be some sort of craft, although it was nothing like any craft Iâ(TM)d ever seen or imagined.

        âoeI didnâ(TM)t find any wire, but I did find a steel rod I could use for an antenna, and two statues of some weird animal Iâ(TM)d never heard of, made of cornodium. There were strange sounds coming from the statues, which were clothed in rags. Art? Or... A chill went up my spine. Were these intelligent aliens that had somehow become cornodium? I thought of when Iâ(TM)d seen what looked like a flower made of cornodium earlier, and had thought it was one of those coincidental freaks of nature.

        âoeBy then I wasnâ(TM)t feeling well at all. In fact I felt downright sick, and decided to go back to my boat. I went outside, and noticed that my skin had taken on a slightly bluish tint.

        âoeBy the time I got back I was weak and shaky, and cold. Really cold, as if Iâ(TM)d been in the snow in summer clothes, even though the day was very warm, almost hot. It only took a minute to hang the rod from the wire and start the radio.

        âoeI had made quite a few incredibly profound discoveries, discoveries that were incredibly important to humanity. Iâ(TM)d found evidence of alien intelligent life in the crashed alien craft, and another alien was taking me overâ"the planet itself. Rather than being lifeless, the planet itself is alive. It grows, reproduces, and eats. The cornodium is its brain! I now know why the strange sounds were coming from the alien statues; the planet was trying to taunt me in an alien language. Itâ(TM)s talking inside my head right now, in English. I... I have to... I have to set this on repeat... before Darius...

        âoeWarning! Anyone who hears this, stay away from Darius. This is probably the deadliest planet in the galaxy. If you land here, youâ(TM)ll die here. Iâ(TM)ll probably be...â

        I shut it off and saved my best friendâ(TM)s last words, tears welling up in my eyes. Even if I could have gotten to him in time, I couldnâ(TM)t have rescued him. I doubt itâ(TM)s possible to land safely on Darius, as I suspect it caused Rogerâ(TM)s craft to crash land.

#

        The jump drive made it seem like I got to Darius immediately, but it would have actually been five to twenty minutes later when I really got there, and hours since he had sent the message. I went into orbit around Darius and called the survey bureau and staked a claim to it. Nobodyâ(TM)s going to make batteries out of my friend! And Iâ(TM)m going to contact the authorities when I get to Earth and see if I can get the use of cornodium outlawed before all life there becomes cornodium. And Iâ(TM)m going to learn everything I can about the stuff. Including how to kill it.

        God, but the government is exasperating! I not only didnâ(TM)t make any progress getting cornodium outlawed, I was issued a gag order! The substance promised to do wonders for the economy, because it seemed to produce free energy, despite the laws of thermodynamics.

        But of course it wasnâ(TM)t doing that. It was getting energy from somewhere, and I was convinced that the somewhere was from the energy in life forms that were, little by little, becoming cornodium themselves. My friend Roger who had died and become cornodium died in a about a day, but it had been a planet that was almost completely covered in cornodium. People, animals, and plants on Earth were only exposed to tiny amounts of it. They would die of old age before becoming cornodium, because there was so little of it.

        But eventually Earth would become cornodium, I was sure. Ultimately enough live matter would become cornodium that it would awaken and eat everything that lived on Earth.

        Iâ(TM)m a very wealthy person, having discovered a planet that was mostly made of gold and another made of mostly platinum, two metals that are incredibly useful in electronics, and my mining licenses donâ(TM)t come cheap. I decided to buy as much cornodium as I could, hopefully all of it, and send it to Darius. I hoped I could afford it.

        Iâ(TM)d bought half a ton at ridiculous prices when the government stepped in again. Iâ(TM)d dropped all the cornodium on Darius, and they took Darius from me. Imminent domain. There were a year of legal battles but I lost. Sure, I made a fortune on it, and I was now the richest individual on Earth, but damn it, I wanted Earth to live and these idiots were going to kill it!

        Crap. What to do next? I decided to chance ignoring the gag order and talk to a scientist, and contacted a local university. I was to have a meeting with a Dr. Felber, a materials scientist who was studying cornodium and trying to find a way to make artificial cornodium and a way to recharge cornodium batteries. I was a little uncertain about what the outcome might be, what with the gag order and all.

        She turned out to be a delightful woman, but of course the court order had me worried. âoeDr. Felber,â I said, âoeIâ(TM)ve been under a gag order about cornodium, and Iâ(TM)m not supposed to talk to anyone at all about it or theyâ(TM)ll put me in prison. Can you keep this to yourself?â

        She became a bit pensive. âoeNot if itâ(TM)s something subversive.â

        âoeIt isnâ(TM)t. I have a recording of a dead friend that Iâ(TM)m not allowed to play anywhere, and if they knew it existed it wouldnâ(TM)t exist. They had erased it from the radio relayâ(TM)s data banks, but didnâ(TM)t know Iâ(TM)d kept a copy.â

        She raised an eyebrow. âoePlay it,â she said. I did.

        When it was finished, she said âoeIâ(TM)ve been exposed.â

        âoeYes,â I replied, âoeand so have I. But there is so little of it youâ(TM)ll be dead of old age long before it affects the tissues; Roger was on a planet where most of the whole crust was covered in cornodium. But we need to save the Earth!â

        âoeYes,â she agreed, âoeBut how?â

        âoeI donâ(TM)t know, youâ(TM)re the scientist. How can we kill it?â

        âoeKill what?â she asked.

        âoeKill Darius,â I said vengefully.

        âoeKill a planet?â

        âoeYes,â I replied, âoebefore it kills us! It will, you know, if it lives.â

        She looked doubtful. âoeIâ(TM)m going to have to study that sample some more, our present theories may all be wrong. That recording explains a few things that had puzzled us and may be a paradigm changer. Iâ(TM)ll get back to you. Donâ(TM)t worry, this is between us.â

        A year and a half later rumors started leaking about government mining expeditions that had gone to Darius, all of whom had âoemysteriouslyâ disappeared. It was no mystery to me; those people were now all cornodium, no longer human, or even alive as we know life. They had been eaten by the evil monster that was Darius.

        Friends and relatives of the missing people were served the same gag order that I had been served, and a few were jailed after publicly complaining. So far, it was only rumor as far as the public was concerned... for now. Later on, a lot of politicians lost their jobs. But Iâ(TM)m getting ahead of myself.

        Six months after the rumors started, Dr. Felber emailed me. âoeSee what I foundâ is all the email said. So I did, and visited her at the university.

        âoeItâ(TM)s easy to kill,â she said when I visited her. âoeMiddle C.â

        âoeMiddle C?â I asked, perplexed.

        âoeTwo hundred sixty one point six Hertz,â she replied. âoeThat tone kills it. Earth is full of music, including that note, which we think is why they ever run down at all, so we have nothing to worry about.â

        My jaw dropped. âoeSo if Roger had been playing music there he wouldnâ(TM)t have died?â

        âoeMaybe, maybe not. It might have taken a very loud continuously operating tone generator, and even that might not have been enough.

        âoeThere are only tiny amounts in any one place on Earth, where thereâ(TM)s lots of music, and cornodium batteries last ten years or more, and most of Darius is covered in the stuff.

        âoeIn any case, even if he had lived, the cornodium would have been useless. Like the Land Bridge theory was replaced by continental drift, and the solid state universe was discarded in favor of the big bang theory, all of our theories about what made it vibrate were completely wrong.

        âoeWe had believed that the vibration was caused by some process internal to the substance and trying to find where its power was stored; we had thought it must have been a chemical reaction that we hadnâ(TM)t found. It made perfectly logical sense, since it seemed that the energy drained like a normal old fashioned chemical battery, except far more slowly and they couldnâ(TM)t be recharged. People have been seriously injured trying to recharge them.â

        Wow. Dead cornodium wasnâ(TM)t useless. I wondered why nobody thought of military and construction applications, since such a small amount was so explosive; the cornodium in a thousand watt battery was only about a cubic centimeter in size, although most of the battery is the piezoelectrics and the battery takes up a lot more room than a cubic centimeter, more like four cubic decimeters, and that thousand watts lasts for ten years or more. Yes, Iâ(TM)d learned a lot about cornodium since Darius had murdered Roger.

        Of course I didnâ(TM)t say anything; kept to myself this could bankroll whatever it took to kill Darius. I needed to get that planet back.

        And kill the evil thing and let the military and construction crews blow the stuff up. Roger didnâ(TM)t deserve to die like that! Iâ(TM)d had my legal team negotiating with the government for months by then, ever since the rumors about the missing miners had started floating around.

#

        Six months after that the government, failing to find a way to mine Darius, ceded the planetâ(TM)s rights back to me, at twenty percent of what theyâ(TM)d paid me for it. Of course there were a lot of lawyers involved, but I can afford the best, and you can trust that I hired the best. When you need a lawyer, the most expensive one you can afford is usually your wisest investment.

        The next day I was in orbit around Darius with a drone, a tone generator tuned to middle C, and a hamster. I would have used a plant, but didnâ(TM)t know how long it took for plant tissue to become cornodium, but it takes about a day with a mammal on Darius. I sent the drone down, wondering if it would crash.

        It didnâ(TM)t, so the cornodium had affected Roger before he even landed. If heâ(TM)d landed on autopilot the fool might have lived. But probably not.

        This was a truly evil thing, and I planned to destroy it, full of hate for my friendâ(TM)s tormentor and executioner. Hate for the monster that had eaten him. Hate for the evil that wanted to consume all life.

        Forty eight hours later the drone returned, with a cornodium statue of a hamster. Damn, the doctor was wrong. Oh, well, my cornodium hamster would pay for the trip and a whole lot more. That was a valuable statue, at least after it was made into batteries.

        It was a six month jump from Luhman to Sol, and I donâ(TM)t understand the math behind that at all. The jump seemed instantaneous to me, but it was six months later when I arrived. The part I donâ(TM)t understand is it should have been years instead of months, and a whole lot more than only six. I simply donâ(TM)t understand jump drives. Yeah, they covered them in pilot school, but I just didnâ(TM)t get it. It has something to do with artificial worms drilling holes or something, and has a lot of really complicated math that has to do with space, time, and gravity. Like I said, itâ(TM)s over my head. Iâ(TM)m lucky I passed the test, it was multiple choice and I guessed at a lot of it.

        In any case, when I got back to Earth I of course visited Dr. Felber, who told me âoeWe have additional data since you left. The sonic frequency must be out of phase to discharge the cornodium; if itâ(TM)s in phase it strengthens it. Itâ(TM)s still dangerous to Earth!â

        âoeHave you said anything to anyone else?â I asked. âoePlease donâ(TM)t let anyone know cornodium batteries are rechargeable! My God...â

        âoeWell, finding a way to recharge them was one of my original goals, but donâ(TM)t worry. This thing needs to be gone before we are. Iâ(TM)m working with an engineer on a device that will take the cornodiumâ(TM)s frequency and send it back out of phase. Iâ(TM)ll email you when itâ(TM)s done.â

#

        It only took a month and I was on my way back to Darius with my drone and another hamster. Again the generator was sounding middle C, but the computers had measured and sent a perfectly out of phase middle C. I waited the two days to see if it would come back a hamster or a cornodium statue of a hamster.

        I got my hamster back, alive and bewildered. But maybe hamsters are always bewildered, I donâ(TM)t know. Anyway, it worked. I could mine explosives to make up for my losses now, then figure out how to kill this horrible thing once and for all. By âoethis horrible thingâ I mean the monster, Darius, of course. That bitch has to die! I returned to Earth to talk to Dr. Felber again, and maybe talk to my government contacts whom I had sought out during and after the gag order and imminent domain court proceedings, about sales of explosives to them. It would depend on what Dr. Felber said.

        Dr. Felber was pleased that the experiment was a success. âoeAdd more amplifiers,â she said, âoethen blow up the dead parts.â

        Blow up the dead parts? Not me, I was going to mine it and sell it to the government like a patriot and let them blow it up. But I took her advice on the amplification.

        But first I needed to do one more experiment before talking to my government contacts, to see how much of Darius died from the out of phase middle C. I had one constructed that would run for two days then attempt to âoerechargeâ it with electricity. According to Dr. Felberâ(TM)s theories, it should explode several square kilometers of the planetâ(TM)s surface.

        It didnâ(TM)t. So she had some calculating to do, I guessed. I sent a drone down to collect a hamster-sized chunk of dead cornodium for her to examine.

        I jumped, and six months later even though it seemed like a second later I was in orbit around Earth, and talking to Dr. Felber again the next day. âoeIt should have worked,â she said. âoePuzzling. Weâ(TM)ll examine the sample you brought back and call when we have an answer.â

        âoeOkay,â I said.

        I waited in the Bahamas on a beach. No point stressing about it, weâ(TM)d kill that terrible thing eventually.

#

        I sat on that beach for months. Finally Dr. Felber contacted me. âoeIt has to be processed before itâ(TM)s explosive,â she said.

        âoeProcessed?â I had no idea how these batteries worked, even though Iâ(TM)d tried to learn. It did make me think of something Roger said in his warningâ"it had stormed when he was there. If raw cornodium had been explosive it would have blown him up.

        âoeGround into a fine powder. Do that and the individual grains all sing in harmony, and you can turn that into a lot of electricity with a piezoelectric device, a really small one. Here, Iâ(TM)ll show you the math...â

        âoeDonâ(TM)t bother,â I interrupted, âoeI wouldnâ(TM)t understand it anyway.â

        âoeWell, okay,â she said, âoebut we can still kill Darius if you can afford it.â

        âoeI can afford it,â I said. âoeHow?â

        âoeIt emits sound. Kill a patch with your biggest amplifier and send a robot with a sound meter tuned to middle C to see how much is dead, and you can kill Darius a little at a time.â

        âoeYes!â I exclaimed. âoeLet that bastard suffer!â God, but I hated Darius because of poor Roger, who had been killed with extreme malice. It had to have been horrible for him.

        I teared up a little. It seemed I wasnâ(TM)t going to sell anything to the government, since dead, unprocessed cornodium was worthless. But that wasnâ(TM)t what made me tear up, I was thinking of poor Roger. I missed my old buddy terribly. We were partners way back when these boats needed two people to fly them, and still got together all these long years later. We had some great times, and I was looking forward to more good times. But it was too late now.

        The next day I made the jump to Darius with a huge bank of midrange speakers, a phased C tone generator, and fifty thousand watts of amplification, with all of it mobile. I sent a robot with a sound meter down with them.

        The next day the robot reported a dead zone a hundred meters wide, so I sent all the equipment moving in an ever widening spiral. When this land mass was clean Iâ(TM)d move it all to another land mass and get to work there. I figured it would take months to kill the entire planet, but I was determined.

        A week later the spiral, now a hundred kilometer radius, wasnâ(TM)t widening. Apparently, dead cornodium could regenerate in the presence of live cornodium. I left the equipment there running in circles, not wanting my meager progress to be erased, and went back to Earth for more sound equipment. Before I left I had a drone land with a robot to collect a few hundred kilos of live cornodium to bankroll the venture with.

        Killing Darius would be worth the incredible riches I was going to destroy by killing it. Poor Roger!

        I got to Earth immediately six months later. I sold the cornodium, mostly to Chinese buyers, and bought a huge number of mobile amplifiers, speakers, and the computerized gizmos that sent cornodiumâ(TM)s middle C signature back out of phase. I also bought the nicest casket I could find for Roger, and hired an engineer. An expensive one who had several different engineering degrees.

        I worried about taking all that cornodium to Earth, but the newspapers said that there was a backlash against cornodium and the rich people who used it, and middle C phase generators were becoming popular among normal folks who couldnâ(TM)t afford cornodium devices and were afraid of them. Justifiably afraid, I thought, despite Dr. Felberâ(TM)s initial reassurances. That relieved me quite a bit.

        I thought it was funny, I was very wealthy and rather than using cornodium devices, I was the first to call for their prohibition. But I did have more cornodium than anyone, a whole planet full, even though I was extirpating all of it. Well, what I didnâ(TM)t sell to mostly China, at least.

        A year later, Darius seemed completely dead. There wasnâ(TM)t a milligram of cornodium on any of the land masses at all, even dead cornodium; Iâ(TM)d mined it all and sent it to the heart of the perpetual fusion explosion known as Luhman.

        It looked like Darius had destroyed an intelligent species from what few artifacts had surfaced. The planet had been lifeless for a long, long time and very little was left to tell us about these aliens, but this monster had very obviously destroyed a great spacefaring civilization.

        Of course, before mining the dead cornodium and sending it to the star we recovered the cornodium bodies of the people who had tried to mine cornodium for the government, Darian artifacts (We found a cornodium Darian, but we donâ(TM)t know if it was the intelligent species), and the intelligent aliens Roger found that Darius had eaten, and shipped them to Earth. The bodies, both alien and human, were now dead cornodium and therefore harmless as long as they were kept away from live cornodium. The few ruins of stone buildings stayed, as did Rogerâ(TM)s ship and the alien ship. Maybe some day they would be tourist attractions.

        I thought I had beaten the evil monster, but I hadnâ(TM)t.

        I had several tons of Earthian dirt shipped to Darius for its microbes, and enough grass seed to wipe out the supplierâ(TM)s inventory. I was determined to bring Earthian life to Darius, starting with grass and then with cows, and other species of flora and fauna later. I had a home by the sea side built there, and a shrine and burial site for Roger. I really missed Roger and the good times weâ(TM)d had together.

        I ran the C generator for a year just in case, with nary a peep from it, and finally shut it off. I shouldnâ(TM)t have.

        I went back to Earth for a visit, and to buy supplies. The few folks I had hired took care of my grass and cows when I was gone. Those cows were incredibly useful, widening the zone where plants would grow.

        Back on Earth, the Chinese had really taken to cornodium batteries. They actually believed that the batteries promoted health! Very wealthy Chinese folks powered their entire households with cornodium batteries. The government there had outlawed phased C generators, saying they were a plot to ruin the Chinese economy.

        However, in the Americas, particularly South America, most communities had outlawed cornodium. It was illegal in all of Peru and Venezuela, as well as most communities in the rest of the countries in those continents. It was also illegal in much of New Zealand, Australia, and in parts of many African and Asian nations. Europe was in the grip of a massive economic recession, so there were very few cornodium devices there. Most of the world got power from rooftop solar panels and back yard windmills. China was the only country still using fossil fuels, and was the only country to outlaw the phased C devices.

        They had also developed something called âoetwist jump radioâ. I donâ(TM)t understand how it works, but it has something to do with âoetwisted pairs of photonsâ. At any rate, it made communication instantaneous no matter how far away the other radio was... well, usually. Sometimes there were lags, and the theoretical physicists were still trying to figure out why.

        This was a real breakthrough in communications, since normal radio was useless between stellar systems, and messages had to be sent physically on a ship with jump drive.

        Of course, I bought five of them.

        After visiting friends and family I returned to Darius with all sorts of seeds, several honeybee hives, some pigs, chickens, a few other animals, my new twisted radios, and other supplies. Darius would become a pest-free paradise.

        A few months later I made the mistake of wading in the ocean for an hour or two, maybe even longer. It made me weak and dizzy and nauseous and I had a terrible headache, so I headed back to the house. I noticed that my skin seemed to have a slight blue tint, as if I were really cold, and I felt like I was freezing.

        On a hunch I turned the C generator on, and it came on very loud; there was cornodium somewhere, and lots of it.

        The cornodium it was reacting to was in me! I was suffering from cornodium poisoning, the same thing that had killed Roger.

        The ocean... Iâ(TM)d forgotten about aquatic life, and apparently the seas, rivers, and lakes were full of that damned cornodium. I got a blanket and sat weakly on a recliner, hoping the C generator would help.

        It did. An hour later my chills became a fever, and I threw up my breakfast. The vomit was blue, and later my urine and feces were blue as well. I was perspiring profusely, and my sweat came out with a blueish tint. I couldnâ(TM)t eat at all for a week, and it was a sick, painful, miserable month before I was anywhere near normal.

        When I was mostly over the poisoning I returned to Earth again to hire another engineer to help me figure out how to kill the rest of Darius and to talk to Dr. Felber about sending an out of phase signal underwater. It turned out that she knew little about underwater sound, but put me in touch with a sonic engineer who could, and he got me acquainted with another engineer who specialized in robotic submarines. Both agreed to visit Darius and work on the underwater sonic equipment.

        The news on Earth was all about a panic in China, and it was about cornodium. It seems that a large part of the very wealthy Zhejiang Provence had succumbed to cornodium poisoning, and thousands of people and uncounted plants and animals there were now cornodium. The Chinese government quickly outlawed cornodium and cordoned the area with phased C generators. They then confiscated every cornodium device in China and sent them to the sun, and suspended trade with any country where cornodium was legal.

        The engineers and about fifty other folks went to Darius with me and a great big load of supplies, as I had more and more people working for me on Darius now. It wouldnâ(TM)t be long before Darius was self-sufficient, at least as far as food was concerned. Weâ(TM)d need to import some robotic harvesters soon.

        Everyone wore a C generator on their belts to protect against cornodium poisoning, and we put up large phased C generators every hundred meters along all the planetâ(TM)s seashores.

        Of course, one of the workers, new to Darius, got drunk and fell into the ocean. His two drunken buddies hauled him out laughing, and took him home. They werenâ(TM)t laughing for long, though, as all three developed mild cases of cornodium poisoning. Even a âoemildâ case is pure sick and painful misery, but at least now we knew that a C generator was a cure.

        A message came over the twist radio from a doctor on Earth saying that one of the men had gotten a routine physical before coming to Darius, and his test results showed that he had developed a small tumor in one of his lungs and had to return to Earth for treatment immediately. It was the man who had drunkenly fallen into the water. The message had been terribly lagged, and should have reached Darius months before we did.

        The engineers, both family men, went back to their families on Earth. I accompanied the three of them, deciding to get a physical myself; I hadnâ(TM)t seen a doctor in years and actually worried a little about the cornodiumâ(TM)s effect on my health after I found out about the guyâ(TM)s tumor. After all, who knows? The stuff might cause cancer or something later.

        The doctor said she was amazed at my health. I was almost fifty, and she said I looked thirty five and my vitals were normal for a healthy twenty five year old!

        Sheâ(TM)d been the doctor Iâ(TM)d seen years earlier, and asked when Iâ(TM)d had my mole removed and who had done the surgery. âoeI didnâ(TM)t,â I said. âoeI hadnâ(TM)t noticed it was missing.â

        âoePuzzling,â she said. âoeThey donâ(TM)t usually go away by themselves. Your vitals are puzzling, as well. Iâ(TM)ve never seen anyone your age so healthy.â

        After I left, the fellow with lung cancer whose name I canâ(TM)t remember called, saying he was going back to Darius with me.

        âoeBut you need cancer treatment,â I exclaimed.

        âoeNope, the doc said he couldnâ(TM)t understand it, but there wasnâ(TM)t any cancer. Said none of my vitals were anything like they were when I saw him seven months ago either, said I was healthy as a twenty year old. My warts went away, too!â

        I called Dr. Felber and told her what had happened, that it looked like controlled cornodium poisoning could cure some diseases. âoeWell, I donâ(TM)t know,â she said, âoea sample size of two isnâ(TM)t very meaningful. Iâ(TM)ll talk to some of my colleagues.â

        When I got back to Darius I stopped decontamination of one medium sized lake. After all, if this was a cure for cancer...

        Five months later Dr. Felber showed up with over a hundred other scientists, from different fields; biochemists, chemists, biologists, materials scientists like her, and a lot more.

        One of the scientists was dying of liver cancer, contracted because of exposure to some chemical when he was young. He ran straight into the lake as soon as he left the ship!

        None of my crewpeople went into the water to drag him out, since theyâ(TM)d seen how nasty even a mild case of cornodium poisoning was. However, after quite a while two dumbass PhDs waded in and got him out. They all got sick, of course. The scientist with the cancer almost died, I think. He was in the water a long time before his fellow scientists even missed him, and the cancer had weakened him considerably.

        He did recover, though, and there was no cancer afterward. Three out of three!

        A year later Dr. Felber published her teamâ(TM)s first report. Cornodium attacked the simplest life, like viruses, first. Next was microbial life, then aberrant cells in the higher life form, then that life formâ(TM)s healthy cells. It affected plants far more slowly than animals.

        Weâ(TM)d not just cured cancer, but almost all diseases. It wouldnâ(TM)t cure diabetes, or arthritis, or baldness, or disease caused by genetics, or mental illnesses, but there were other treatments and cures for those ailments. It would cure the common cold or flu, but the cure was far worse than the disease in those cases. Believe me, you have to be really sick or dying before youâ(TM)ll want to get cornodium poising, even a mild case.

        So weâ(TM)re building a health facility around that lake, and decontamination of the rest of the aquatic bodies continues, as does the research. Right now the biologists are testing its effects on heart disease in rodents, since the worry is that the cornodium may make it worse rather than better, weâ(TM)ll see.

        Roger and I were hailed as heroes, saviors of the Earth. He hadnâ(TM)t died in vain after all.

        I do worry, though. What if thereâ(TM)s another cornodium planet somewhere?

The first copy of Random Scribblings came about a week ago, and I was happy that there only needed to be some very minor changes to some of the graphics, and the cover needed to be completely redone. They shipped the corrected copy Monday, so I'll probably get it next Monday.
        I'm releasing it on June nineteenth, and having a book release party at George Ranks from noon to two. I'll have copies of books for sale, including the new one that won't be in bookstores until late July at the earliest.
        I'm also raffling off a hardcover copy of Yesterday's Tomorrows. No purchase is necessary but food and drink will be available. I may raffle off a copy of the new book as well.
        So if you're in Springfield Sunday the nineteenth, drop by and say "hi". You may get a free book out of it!

People try to put us d-down
Hard for us to get around
Things kids say sound awful c-c-cold
'cause I didn't die before I got old

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

Why don't you all f-fade away
I can't dig what kids all s-s-say
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

Why don't you all fu-fu-fu go away
Forgot what I was going to say
I'm not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

People try to put us d-down
Hard for us to g-g-get around
Things they say sound awful c-c-cold
I didn't die before I got old

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

A photo of me with a phone from 2020

Note: Typed this out last year but never got around to posting it.
        Iâ(TM)ve been meaning to install Linux on this notebook for quite some time, and finally got around to it Friday.
        I started using Linux back in 2002 with Mandrake, and I loved it. They later renamed it Mandriva, and I kept using it. Then I found out that they were disbanding and patches would stop coming, so I switched to kubuntu, which is Ubuntu with a KDE desktop instead of that God-awful Gnome desktop. It ran happily on an old HP tower for years until the old tower had a severe hardware failure. I still need to take its hard drive and video card out and install them in the old Dell, which isnâ(TM)t on my network because itâ(TM)s running XP.
        My first notebook I had like this one was stolen in a burglary five or six years ago. It was the same model as this, and it ran kubuntu very well, far better than its native Windows. With Windows I had to run a program from the ISP to get wi-fi working on it, but it just worked fine on kubuntu without my having to do anything.
        So Friday I put it on this notebook dual-boot, since I need Microsoft Word even though I hate Microsoft Word. Knowing it would take a while I plugged in its power, and plugged it into the network for more speed. It took ten minutes to get my part of the installation done, and watched the news as Linux installed.
        I booted it up when I was done, and egad, KDE! What have you done?! Yes, itâ(TM)s a beautiful desktop, but it isnâ(TM)t the same KDE Iâ(TM)ve been using for almost fifteen years.
        What the hell, you stupid wet behind the ears software designers, are you NUTS? Look, you dumbasses, changing an interface all around for no good reason is just brain-dead stupid. I donâ(TM)t want to learn a brand new God damned interface unless itâ(TM)s instantly recognizable as an improvement, and this is about the same stupid move Microsoft made with Windows Eight. Look, you morons, if I wanted to learn a new interface Iâ(TM)d install Gnome or something.
        Next I wanted to hear music, so I needed on the internet. I tried to connect to my server but simply couldnâ(TM)t get on with the wi-fi. Strangely, I was able to connect with someone elseâ(TM)s unsecured wi-fi. It had gotten on the internet easily with the network card plugged in.
        Someone had said that Libre Office could read and write .doc files well, so I tried it. First I opened an Open Office document, and the font face was some cartoonish sans serif font instead of Gentium Book Basic.
        Then I opened a .doc file, and it opened, although instead of Courier it had a different sans serif face.
        I wanted to get at some files on my external hard drive, so I plugged the network cable in. It indicated a connection, and I could get on the internet through the router, but the external drive didnâ(TM)t show up.
        I doubt thatâ(TM)s the OSâ(TM)s fault, though, since it wouldnâ(TM)t let me connect with my own wi-fi but was fine with someone elseâ(TM)s. Iâ(TM)m pretty sure itâ(TM)s that damned modem-router that the cable company makes me rent. Iâ(TM)d change ISPs if I werenâ(TM)t planning to move next Spring.
        At any rate, KDE now sucks. Someone said XCFE was good, Iâ(TM)ll have to try it.

(Note: I've been way too busy)

If this is mangled, go here.
        I received a strange note, made of cut up magazines pasted to paper and slipped under my door. It read âoeYour muse has been kidnapped. If you want her back, meet under the Facebook Street Bridge after dark. Bring your wallet, passport, and an umbrella.â
        Crap, my muse was gone? I looked, and sure enough it was missing. It's really important to me, so I got my passport, made sure my wallet was in my pocket, and took an umbrella, even though the weatherman said there was no chance of rain. I went to the bridge around sunset and waited.
        The weatherman was wrong. As I waited under the bridge it started pouring. A little after dark a black limousine pulled up, and the rear door opened. âoeGet in,â a woman's voice said. I did.
        A mean looking short haired blonde in the front passenger seat was pointing a very large black handgun at me. âoeYou're not Neo,â the skinny dark haired girl in the back said accusingly.
        âoeMe?â I replied, scared to death. Or scared of death, maybe. âoeNo, I'm mcgrew, I don't know any Neo. I'm missing some property and someone said to wait under this bridge and I could get it back.â
        âoeOh,â said the blonde, putting the gun away. âoeMorpheus said to give you this,â and handed my muse to me!
        I put my muse in my jacket and started to open the door. The blonde had her gun out again. âoeFifty bucks, asshole!â
        I gave her two twenties and a ten. âoeWhy was I told to bring a passport?â I asked. The dark haired skinny girl laughed. âoeMorpheous was just fucking with you. Now get out!â
        I still can't figure out what that was all about...

I doubt the magazines will want this and I haven't given you guys any new stories for months. Since slashdot won't fix its text mangler I've posted it here.

It's that time of year again. The time of year when everyone and their dog waxes nostalgic about all the shit nobody cares about from the year past, and stupidly predicts the next year in the grim knowledge that when the next New Year comes along nobody will remember that the dumbass predicted a bunch of foolish shit that turned out to be complete and utter balderdash. I might as well, too. Just like I did last year (yes, a lot of this was pasted from last year's final chapter).

I've lost the URL to my slashdot "messages", damn it!

Some of these links go to S/N since they don't have slashdot's patented text mangler. Stories and articles meant to ultimately be published in a printed book have smart quotes, and slashdot isn't smart enough for smart quotes.

As usual, first: the yearly index. Articles and stories slashdot has mangled the text in are at S/N without the mangling. Slashdot should be ashamed!

Journals:
the Paxil Diaries
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014

2015 articles:
Where's my damned tablet?
Are printed books' days numbered?
A suggestion to mobile browser makers and the W3C
Futurists...
"My God! It's full of fail!" -David Bowman
Where's my fridge??
1950s TV
What a mess!

Sci-Fi:
Nobots
Mars, Ho!
Yesterday's Tomorrows
Stupid Tourist!
Amnesia
Stealth
Voyage to Earth
Plutus' Revenge

There are six more stories finished and one started, but I'm giving the magazines first crack at them. They are:

Dewey's War
The Exhibit
Sentience
The Naked Truth
Cornodium
Weird Planet
Trouble on Ceres
The Prisoner

All except The Prisoner are finished or in final edit except The Prisoner. That one has me stuck, and it may never be finished.

Last years' stupid predictions:
I got one wrong; Random Scribblings didn't come out. I could have published it this year, but since the subtitle is "Junk I've Littered the Internet With for Two Decades" I decided to add this years scribblings and a little of next year's to it.

This year's predictions: same as last year's, with one addition. I'm not going to predict publication of Voyage to Earth and Other Stories because chances are it won't be done. As I write this the stories finished so far make up 36,000 words, which is halfway there at least. But I will predict:

Someone will die. Not necessarily anybody I know...
SETI will find no sign of intelligent life. Not even on Earth.
The Pirate Party won't make inroads in the US. I hope I'm wrong about that one.
US politicians will continue to be wholly owned by the corporations.
I'll still be a nerd.
You'll still be a nerd.
technophobic fashionista jocks will troll slashdot.
Slashdot will be rife with dupes.
Many FPs will be poorly edited.
Slashdot still won't have fixed its patented text mangler.
Microsoft will still suck

Happy New Year! Ready for another trip around the sun?

I was watching the morning news the other day, and opened the computer to record KSHE's "Lone Klassic"... and it was in Linux. What the hell? Apparently I should have shut it off the night before, because Microsoft had apparently installed an update and then rudely and maliciously rebooted the computer. It was in Linux because kubuntu is the default OS in GRUB. So I rebooted again, selected Windows, and the little thing came up and... just sat there. Ten minutes later I still had a black screen.

I pulled the battery and tried again. Ten minutes later and I still had a black screen. So when I'd yanked the battery again and restarted it, I selected "Windows Recovery" from GRUB. An Acer screen came up with selections for reinstalling Windows. The first wiped the hard drive, the second kept your files. I picked that one; there was data on the hard drive I hadn't backed up in a few days, including a new story I'd started the night before and was on a roll with.

Twenty minutes later the first progress bar said "1%".

I'd decided a long time ago to get a DVD burner for the old Dell, until about three weeks ago when I'd taken it apart to install the video card and hard drive from the old HP that had computed its last. There were no slots that would fit the card (older computer than I thought, I guess) and the drive ribbon was a single drive ribbon. I probably have a spare double drive ribbon in the basement, but since the card wouldn't work in the Dell, there really wasn't any point. I'd decided then to get an old laptop that already had a DVD burner. So this was the time, because I had writing to do and the install was going to take all day and half the night.

I drove to the pawn shop and bought an HP laptop with Windows 7 and a DVD burner. It's a lot bigger than I like a laptop to be, but the smaller, cheaper one with a DVD burner ran Window 8, and I didn't want to deal with that garbage. Windows 7 is still the least annoying and least problematic of all of MS's OSes.

Of course I had to download Windows Defender and Firefox with IE, install Firefox, uninstall Norton and McAfee and Bing Bar and all the other effluent that comes with a new computer, reconfigure everything, and download and install Open Office and all the other programs I need.

Meanwhile, the Windows reinstall on the Acer had hung. Damn, I was going to lose everything I'd written the day before, since Windows had surely overwritten GRUB. I got lucky; it hadn't. So I went into Linux to copy everything to thumb drives, since I still can't get it on my network (time to try a new distro). I even found some movies I thought I'd permanently deleted by mistake months ago!

After I saved the data on thumb drives I rebooted again, went back into Windows restore and let it wipe the drive. That was the next morning, and it took all day. By then I had the new laptop running pretty smoothly and was writing again. The next day was mostly spent getting the old Acer back to normal. I was amazed and pleased that it had destroyed neither Grub nor Linux.

I'd lost a few passwords and haven't yet reset them all, and lost all my bookmarks.

That new computer is too big, but it's a lot faster than the Acer.

So I turn the TV on this morning and it wouldn't pick up channel 49. Flipped through the stations, and all of them had really screwy colors. I have my fingers crossed that it's the converter and not the TV, since the converter had fallen off the shelf last night. I hope it is, because they're not expensive and TVs are. I'll find out when I play a DVD.