I first read his Stainless Steel Rat books in a small town in the bible belt, whre my stepfather was a minister. His were the first books I ever encountered that openly made the case for athiesm. It was so different form everything else I'd run into-of course I had head of it, but to come right out and openly advocate it in the books (and a bit after the story proper, IIRC) was definitely a bit of a first. Tonight, I'm heading out to a sushi joint with the other members of my Skeptic/Freethinkers' singles group, and I'll raise a toast to Slippery Jim. For me, he was step one on a long, long journey, and I am grateful.

With me, it was a summer gifted class. I had a choice of acting or computer programming. I'd never played with computers all that much, and wanted to grow up to be an actress, but for some reason I cannot for the life of me went with the computer course. A room full of Model IIIs, learning about PRINT and INPUT and all that fancy stuff. Well, I was hooked. I've been a programmer ever since. TRS-80's were still a damn pain, though. Sooooo slow.

*hee* it's been a few years. Writing workshop, actually. These days I mostly write nonfiction: articles, critical pieces, that sort of thing. Actually, I do have a couple stories in the fire...I should really pick 'em up, get back to it...

Amen to that... more than his hard SF work, his stories of sheer damn everyday magic -- and I'm talking Dandelion Wine here, and Death is a Lonely Business, and so many others, captivated the hell out of me. He was the high water mark of what speculative fiction can accomplish, and taught me what SF is really about. When a reader told me my writing was alike a cross between Bradbury and Lovecraft, it was the best thing ever. Tonight... well, tonight I have a jug of dandelion wine sitting in my fridge--liquid summer, my first attempt but no less sweet. Tonight I'll raise a glass to him, and remember the long ago summers and the magic they held and the man who taught me to see them. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Actually, some ladies wouldn't mind havin' a crack at it themselves. Got any leads for good getting-started websites, books, etc?

I understand that they're just taking four large playing cards, jamming them in the spokes of the wheels and leaving it at that.

I know exactly what you mean! For years--YEARS--I'd remember the cantina scene in which the guy with the funnel for a head would pour a drink straight in, and every time I saw the movie I would watch carefully, trying to catch that bit and never able to. When I finally saw the SWHS again and saw that it was just Harvey Kormann, it was like a burden lifted off my shoulders: no wonder I'd never been able to catch that bit in the movie--it was never IN the movie! But that was weird, watching it the first time, eh? I was 6 also at the time, and I forgot most of it, just from time to time having these weird little clips in my head: the four-armed chef (Kormann again!?) and the announcer at the beginning saying "And R2 D2, as R2 D2!" Strange how things stick in the mind.

We run a B2B site over here, and I've noticed a definite drop in IE use, though admittedly rather less pronounced than, say, the Spongebob site above. Just at the moment for July, my numbers are running: IE: 77.88% Firefox: 15.18% Safari: 5.69% Chrome: 1.16% (finally broke 1% for us) Everyone else 1% of course. If I compare it to June, IE was at 79.04%, and June of last year was 90.58%, so a pretty good drop there over time. Funnily enough, the big mover seems to be Safari, which was less than 4% not so long ago, and esp. considering that our desktop software is windows-only (mind you--mac-head that I am--I have re-engineered the site to be more safari-friendly, so I like to think that's a factor).

"Not dead yet? Too late, now..."
"Do you love me?" "No..........yes."
"Look out for the--never mind."
"I am the KING! Ack--! *thud*"
Where does it end? Right here.