29 May 2017

Don’t Tell Anyone!

posted in: ebooks, free ebooks, my books, personal news, specials, The Chaos Chronicles | 1

Can you keep a secret? No—what are you doing?? Didn’t I just say, keep a secret? For God’s sake, don’t share this with anyone! No, stop!

(This is Bizzaro-Jeff. Regular-Jeff is off drinking himself senseless for the holiday or watching reruns of “Spock’s Brain” or I-don’t-know-what. Asleep at the switch, whatever he’s doing. So, I’m having a little fun at his expense…)

You know his book, Neptune Crossing? I just made it free again—everywhere!—and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t noticed! [Cackle—hee-hee—!] Oh, sorry about the drool; I do that sometimes when I get excited.

You know what this means? If you download the Kindle version? You know that audiobook he’s always yammering about, the one narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, who he claims won a Grammy, whatever that is? Well, if you “buy” the Kindle copy, you can get the $24 audiobook for frickin’ $2.99! Do you believe that? $2.99! That’s like, practically, nothing. Oh, they’re going to take a bath on this one, after you all run out and buy it. I can’t wait to hear them shriek!

Go! Do it! Now!  (But remember—don’t frickin’ tell anyone, and don’t share this post!  Now, what’d I just say??? And especially don’t tell D/u/f/u/s/-/J/e/f/f/ Regular-Jeff.)

Why are you still here? Go and get it!

Here he comes! I’m outta’ here!

 

19 May 2017

Probing Time!

posted in: aliens, personal news, quirky | 0

A colonoscopy without sedation? Not so bad, reports this reporter. Somewhat uncomfortable, yes. But it was pretty interesting to watch on the monitor. And leaving with a clear head? And being able to enjoy a cold one (of whatever kind) later that evening, and not feeling like you’re losing a whole additional day? Yeah, that seems like a good trade-off to me. I’ll probably do the same next time.

Which, sorry to say, will be in just three years. Oh well. I’m healthy.

And now, where’s that pizza?

From the movie Paul:

1 Apr 2017

Larry Predicts a Red Nova in 2022

posted in: astronomy, friends, personal news | 4

I was just reading in Astronomy Magazine that astronomers have predicted that a binary pair of stars will merge into one in 2022, and set off an explosion called a red nova, similar to this image of V838 Monocerotis, from the Hubble space telescope. It’ll be as bright as the North Star, and last for up to six months. That’s a pretty striking prediction, and not the sort of prediction astronomers usually make. (More here.) But here’s the thing…

I was most of the way through the article when I went, Wait—who? I scrolled back up to read again, who’s being quoted here. I wasn’t seeing things—it’s Lawrence Molnar of Calvin College in Michigan. Way to go, Larry! Larry Molnar and his wife Cindy are friends from way back, having lived right above us for several years right after Allysen and I got married. We went to the same church; we exchanged babysitting. He was my first consultant on the question of how one could theoretically set off a supernova (From a Changeling Star), and he introduced me to other consultants at Center for Astrophysics at Harvard. We also made a snow dog together (modeled on Sam, our first border collie mix), back in the 1980s.

Larry, Snow-Sam, Jeff

This is cool. I’m going to be watching, Larry, to see if it happens on time.

Curly and Moe were not mentioned as participants in the study.*

*Sorry. That’s the only part of this post that’s an April Fools joke. The rest is real.

15 Mar 2017

My Sister Nancy Loses Her Fight with Cancer

posted in: deaths, family, personal news | 3

My sister, Nancy Carver Adams, lost an astonishingly brief battle with lung cancer Monday night. Her death came as a terrible shock. She was not a smoker, and it was the flu and pneumonia that took her to the hospital, where the cancer was discovered. She had only just been diagnosed a couple of weeks ago—and had started immunotherapy a few days before. The prognosis was uncertain, but we thought we might have her for another year or two, anyway. An issue had developed of fluid buildup in one lung, but it was being managed, she thought. She was emailing and texting family members just a few hours earlier in the day. And then, in the evening she stopped breathing or her heart stopped, and they were unable to bring her around. She was gone, just like that.

This came as a shock on several levels, beyond the obvious. Our brother Chuck was diagnosed with his own cancer last fall, and has been on a chemo regimen that has us guardedly hopeful. Nancy and I were most concerned about how to support Chuck and his wife Youngmee through a tough period. We had no inkling that Nancy also had cancer, and that we’d lose her in such a blindingly short time.

Nancy was my half-sister, my father’s daughter from a first marriage. I didn’t grow up with her, but we started to know each other around the time that I was finishing high school, and over the years, we developed a real brother-sister relationship—partly because she was so determined to get to know her emotionally clueless younger brother. She and my mom became quite close, and I think that helped.

Nancy had two lovely daughters, Karen and Lyn, both of whom have families of their own. She also left behind a much-loved husband, also named Chuck, an old high school friend with whom she reconnected after the death of her previous husband, and married just four and a half years ago. They had not long ago settled into an extended care community in Florida, where they could relax and enjoy their golden years.

Life can be cruel that way.

I’ll be attending the funeral in a few days with my own family, and look forward very much to reconnecting with hers. That part’s good.

Here’s Nancy with my brother Chuck and me, at her wedding in 2012.

24 Feb 2017

Love the Weather, Hate the Climate (Change)

posted in: environment, personal news, public affairs, weather | 2

I went out biking today with a glorious, record-breaking temperature of 72 degrees in Boston in February. I can’t deny it was wonderful, a great day for walking, biking, dogging. Here is a selfie of me out on the bike path, soaking up the wondrousness. At the same time, I had recurring visions of icepacks melting into the sea, polar bears on ice floes, and sea levels rising. And the thought: This can’t be right.

You listening, Pruitt?

8 Feb 2017

Website Moving to a New Cave

posted in: personal news, web sites | 3

Website Moving to a New Cave

This website, and its sibling site WriteSF.com, have moved to a new home in the land of internet things. My host for the last twenty or so years, SFF.Net, is closing its doors, sending all of its inhabitants scurrying for new caves. SFF Net has been a major fixture in the SF community for a very long time, and besides being great people, they were known to authors with websites as being the people who never slept. You’d email them with a tech support question at virtually any time of day or night, and would get an answer back usually within the hour, sometimes within minutes. Plus, for years, they hosted my writing course for free, because it was aimed primarily at kids and they liked to help kids. I’m going to miss those guys a lot. Thanks, Jeffry and Steve!

So, with sadness, I embarked upon the job of looking for a new host. I’ve landed at InMotion, who offered a great price and were very helpful in moving my site over. That happened just today. As of this moment, the site is loading verrrrrry slowwwly. I’m sure we’ll work out the problem; at least, I hope we will. WriteSF.com is not yet working on its new platform, but I hope to get that fixed soon, also.

If you’re seeing this page, we’re 90% of the way there. Wish me luck for the last 10%.

Update: The site is still loading slowly, but writeSF.com is now up and running just fine.

3 Feb 2017

The Laptop Is Dead (sigh). Long Live the Laptop!

posted in: computers, personal news | 4

Yeah, this is not how I was planning to spend my first week at home. But my laptop, Cygnus-X, started failing on the trip and limped along just far enough to get me back to Boston. In this case it was the screen, not the smart innards, that went bad. I googled the problem and tried the most common fix, which was replacing the video inverter for $20 from Amazon; and that killed it dead. Here’s me, heroically trying to rescue trusty Cygnus, but it was too little, too late.

Given that the little fellow was over seven years old in laptop years—which is I don’t know what in dog years, but old, and slow—I decided it was time to replace it. (But really, two computers in three months? Seems extreme.) Anyway, here is the new beauty, Antares. Named for her glowing red backlit keys (Antares is a red star), and for the lovely Antares in the Chaos books.

Antares is an Asus gaming laptop. I don’t do gaming, but I wanted as much speed and capacity as I could afford, because in two years, it’s going to seem like molasses. So get a running start, is what I figured. Plus, I really like the keyboard!

Antares, live long and prosper! Please.

1 … 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 … 55