SoylentNews

Imagine you have written an post. Taken time to check links, wording, context, language etc and perhaps even the facts! To have a look at the results you click "preview". However it perhaps took a while to complete so the server decided you have timed out or your connection fails, but you quickly get back with a new IP. However this makes soylentnews.org to go apeshit and claim "This resource is no longer valid. Please return to the beginning and try again." but if you go back your text is *gone*. Now you can rescue things with /dev/mem or fake webserver (hard with SSL). But any way you deal with it. You are in a world of PAIN. This is detrimental to the motivation to send posts to any site. Yes external editors is possibility and also an integration pain.

So my suggestion is to make sure that even if it takes hours to complete a post or if the IP changes. You still get your submitted post displayed which makes saving it way easier. Or even better cache any submissions for 2 days because the cookie usually reveals which user it is regardless of timeout and IP. So that they are under no circumstances is any submitted text LOST.

In the meantime a good advice to fellow submitters is to click in the text box "select all" and "copy". Then paste it all into a text file before hitting any button on the web page whatsoever. And keep the file as a backup because you can't really be sure where submissions go.

Nicholas Rubin, a 16-year-old programmer from Seattle, has created a browser add-on that makes it incredibly easy to see the influence of money in US politics. Rubin calls the add-on Greenhouse, and it does something so brilliantly simple that once you use it you'll wonder why news sites didn't think of this themselves.

Greenhouse pulls in campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including the total amount of money received and a breakdown by industry and size of donation. It then combines this with a parser that finds the names of Senators and Representatives in the current page and highlights them. Hover your mouse over the highlighted names and it displays their top campaign contributors.

In this sense, Greenhouse adds another layer to the news, showing you the story behind the story. In politics, as in many other things, if you want to know the why behind the what, you need to follow the money. And somewhat depressingly, in politics it seems that it's money all the way down.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/track-whos-buying-politicians-with-greenhouse-browser-add-on/

If you want to participate or just follow along, you can install Greenhouse for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari over at http://allaregreen.us/ Grab the add-on and then follow @allaregreen on Twitter.

My sister came down from London from Aberdeen for the week to visit friends and family. I met up with her and my other half and we went to the pub and out for sushi. My sis is great - she cosplays and reads comics and watches more films in a week than I have time for in a year.

While chatting about some sexist questions she was asked in a job interview ("Are you planning on having children any time in the next year?") the conversation came around to sexism in video games. She related to me the story of a gaming couple she knows, husband and wife. One day he logged on to the multiplayer rooms of a fairly reputable and well known first-person shooter using her gamer tag.

On his own account, this guy was a well respected and experience player. His wife's account had a tag that marked itself out as the property of a female and had showed no prior experience. The result? A tidal wave of verbal abuse through the voice chat even before the guy did anything in game or even opened his own mouth. People left matches he joined. Lobbies he entered mysteriously emptied themselves. As an experience player, he knew how his fellow male players acted and moved around, but a woman in the same situation was made as welcome as a leper.

Made me think of my own experiences in World of Warcraft. I never played PvP and many people wondered why I pretended to be a woman in my guild. I had empirically discovered what a recent study (posted somewhere on this site) found out - in co-op play, nice boys are taken advantage of and abused, while nice girls are treated respectfully and politely. My own gaming experience went from frustration of trying to find a raid group that needed healers, often turned down for free spaces in case someone better came along, to being made a guild's primary raid group main tank, leapfrogging a number of other players who were waiting for the spot.

Who knows, maybe I was just a better tank than a healer and this is all just anecdotal, but it seems there's a big difference in perception and attitude between male and female players depending on whether the situation is competitive or co-operative.

Sneakers
        I woke up a little early, maybe ten or fifteen minutes after seven. I started coffee and did my morning bathroom... oh, shut up, head, bathroom, what difference does it make? "Head" is a dumb name for a room you take a bath in, anyway, almost as stupid as bow, stern, port, and starboard. At least those make sense in an ocean ship even though they don't on a space ship. "Head" don't even make sense in an ocean boat. What? Well, that's a good reason they started calling them that but even ocean boats weren't like that was for over five hundred years back.
        Anyway, I was in the dining room drinking coffee and watching a zero gravity baseball game... What? You never watched zero G baseball? It's kind of like zero gravity golf except there's more to baseball; it has teams throwing and catching a ball that's bigger than a golf ball while people "run" (I guess that's what you'd call it, even though they were flying) from one pole to the next and golf is one on one and you just hit the ball into a hole. The sticks are similar, a zero gravity golf club isn't anything like an Earth-side golf club. Baseball bats are really similar to ground-side bats, though.
        I can't believe you guys never watched zero G baseball or golf. I like them almost as much as zero G football. Anyway, when I was watching the game Destiny came in the dining room wearing a robe. "What are you watching?" she asked.
        "Zero gravity baseball, St. Louis against Chicago. Six to two Chicago's favor, they're in the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded. If McMurtrey doesn't get on base the game's over, and probably will be anyway unless he hits a home run, and home runs are really rare in zero G. If he does hit a homer I'll miss the end of the game because I have to go to work at eight." Of course, if he'd hit a single the game would still be in play unless they threw anybody else out...
        She poured a cup of coffee and McMurtrey struck out. I switched it to the news and we had corned beef and cheese omelettes for breakfast. The epidemic on the Venus station was worse and three people had died from it. It was completely quarantined and supply ships couldn't even dock, they had to leave supplies floating in space and somebody from the station or maybe a robot, I don't know, the news didn't say, somehow they had to get them in the space station.
        At eight I went to the pilot room to do my eight o'clock chores. It turned out to be a light morning, the computers were all agreeing and we didn't need a course correction. All the droppers were asleep except the German girl, who was in the commons eating. The generators were fine, except that one of the two wouldn't work. all the engines were fine except seventeen, which wasn't going to be lit before the Mars overhaul, since it destroyed two mechs and damned near ruined the last generator. There weren't even any robots working on any of the other ones.
        We had an early lunch, ham sandwiches and... yeah, I was just checking to see if you guys were paying attention, we really had Italian roast beef sandwiches and chips, and Destiny put a movie on.
        We was watching the movie when I saw a light on the holographic map again. Huh? An old twentieth century western, Rawhide I think. Short movie, maybe forty minutes or so. It was in two dimensions, like I already said there wasn't no hologram movies back then. Hell, they didn't even have lasers and holograms need lasers. Haven't you guys been paying attention? I mentioned that show a bunch of times already. This one didn't even have colors, just shades of gray. Weird. A lot of old movies were like that, I mentioned them before, too. Why? What difference does it make?
        The map was a holo of nearby... huh? Maybe five or six light minutes. Come on, guys, it's standard, haven't you ever been on one of these boats? Anyway, it was a holo of any bodies close by and any EMF sources, didn't I say that earlier? ...and one lit up; it was another radio transmission. I hoped it was just another shipping company like the ones that had shown up earlier. The computer would record it, so I had Destiny pause the movie while I saw what the EMF was, and listened in.
        Shit, pirate traffic! More pirates this far out? I sure didn't expect that! We were two weeks from Mars and the company fleet wouldn't be accompanying us for another week, which was twice as far as pirates normally went. I didn't expect anything but false alarms until we were almost to the fleet.
        "Sorry, hon, gotta work," I said.
        "Is this movie boring you?"
        "No, keep it paused until I get back. Look, hon, I have to go, there's pirates. This is serious and I have work to do." I kissed her and went into the pilot room and looked at the holos there.
        For once I caught a break, but unfortunately at some other boat captain's expense. It wasn't our company, I don't remember what company, I didn't really care. Anyway, the pirates thought he was me and started chasing him.
        I masered Bill, hoping he was close enough that the signal would be strong enough to be understood. "Wild Bill, John here. Pirates ahead, go around if you have enough batteries. They think some other company's ship is me. I'm slowing down until they engage, then I'm hauling ass."
        I addressed the women. "Ladies, it would be a really good idea to strap in right now because gravity might get weird." By now they knew what I meant when I said gravity was going to get weird. Unless they were short on drops and they probably wouldn't even feel it then anyway.
        I reduced gravity, which probably pissed the whores off. Good, payback is a bitch, bitch. They're monsters, pains in my ass. Glad Destiny and Tammy was there, I'd probably have been dead by then, along with everybody else. They'd have killed me and then each other.
        I went back to Rawhide. "That didn't take long," Destiny said, unharnessing. "And is gravity less?"
        "Yeah."
        "The droppers won't like it."
        "They wouldn't much care for pirates, either," I said. "Pirates would make them slaves if they could live long enough without drops. There's pirates chasing some other poor son of a bitch who they think is me. He's hauling ass and they're hauling ass and me slowing down helps us. When I see a battle I'll haul ass. I masered Bill, he's behind us, hope he can get around."
        And right then Bill answered. "What should we do, old buddy? I'm on batteries! The best I can do is a quarter gravity."
        "Arm all your shit and we'll try to sneak past when they're attacking that other company's boat."
        Bill had seen me in action and was probably grinning right then; he was too far for video, at least with our equipment. "Poor pirates!" he said.
        "Fuck all them God damned pirates," I growled. God damned sons of bitches. I hate pirates.
        My holo showed more EMF; a battle. "Hit it, Bill," I said. "I'll follow."
        "Roger."
        Destiny asked how long it would take.
        "I don't know," I said. "You need to strap back down." I kissed her and went back to the pilot room.
        I gradually increased power while Bill gave his boat all it had, which wasn't much, being on batteries and all. We were doing maybe point two gravities, if that. I followed. I saw, thankfully, that they were still battling the boat they thought was mine and I almost kind of felt sorry for the poor bastard the pirates were after because they thought he was me.
        Lucky pirates. For now. I was pissed and I hate pirates anyway. Yeah, getting pissed is unprofessional but professionals went to college and I ain't, so fuck you, I'm retiring anyway. Now shut the fuck up before I just walk out of here, there ain't nothing you can do to me.
        Yeah, asshole? Prove it.
        Okay, I accept your fucking apology. Now shut the fuck up and let me finish this God damned thing so I can go buy a ring for Destiny. Where was I?
        Oh yeah, me and Bill was trying to sneak past the God damned pirates and get to Mars alive. Anyway, I told everybody it was safe to unstrap. It was all right for quite a few hours, but they must have finally boarded that other company's boat, and no doubt killed its Captain and commandeered his ship for their own use. Poor bastard, I felt sorry for him.
        It looked like me and Bill was okay, at least for now. I went back to Destiny and my movie.
        Huh? Christ, guys, what does it matter? It was a show about driving cattle across the ancient American west. And God damn it, I'm hungry and I'm getting some God damned lunch. Excuse me.
        What? You're all hungry, too? Well, okay, a hamburger and brogs and a glass of Shike will do for me. Yeah, with caffeine. Thanks.
        I put a plug in my ear to hear the pirate traffic without bothering Destiny and still be able to hear the show myself. Huh? Really? You never heard of it before? Jees, guys, a lot of the greats that shaped culture for well over half a century had a hand in it. The art form was in its infancy then, barely half a century old. Go watch it, there's a series of 'em, just pull the library up on your tablet, it's there. I guess Destiny's wearing off on me, she's big on movie history. Actually, she likes history, period.
        Anyway, when that was over Destiny put a really silly one on, an old two dimensional movie that was hilarious. I don't think I ever laughed at puns before. I don't remember the movie's name, sorry, but there was one place where a woman wearing a dress is on a ladder with a man looking up saying "nice beaver." She says "Thanks, I just had it stuffed!" and then hands the guy a stuffed animal, a beaver a taxidermist had worked on. I laughed my ass off all the way through -- at least, until the pirates realized they'd boarded the wrong boat and knew I was still alive.
        Shit. I'd hoped they'd been fooled. They must not have been. I wonder how they figured it out.
        They knew I was alive, wanted me dead, and had an extra ship, full of whatever cargo the boat was carrying. I hoped it wasn't weapons. I'm glad it wasn't one of ours, not just because I work for the company but because we have the best boats and especially the best weapons. Guys from the other companies are always bitching about their crappy boats and especially about their crappy weapons, but they get paid better than we do and they say the robots on their boats make okay coffee.
        At the rate they were traveling they'd catch up to us in maybe twelve hours. We were in trouble. I was in for some serious trouble, because if I lived through this I was going to be in some deep trouble with the company because of what I had in mind.
        I got back on the PA. "I'm sorry, ladies, but everyone is confined to quarters because of an emergency that's come up. You will need to strap down again at seven forty five tomorrow morning, I'll let you know over the PA when we need to strap down. If you get hungry, call the computer and it will send food to you."
        The doorbell rang, it was Tammy. "John, I have to be able to treat the droppers," she said.
        "You're not confined, that's just to help keep them under control until we can speed back up. Just pretend you sneaked out or something. Have a robot deliver drops if you can."
        "What's the emergency?" she asked.
        "I can't talk about it right now."
        "Okay, I'll adjust the dosage so they'll sleep through most of the low gravity," she said, and left.
        We watched the end of the movie but I didn't laugh much after that. It was still early but I was going to need a good night's sleep.

The last several chapters are the latest chapters written, with the exception of the book's final two chapters, so they're pretty short. Most of the rest have been pretty heavily edited already; edits usually add words. I keep track of progress by recording a daily word count, when it gets to single digits or below I'll just count changes.

Do you remember the first time you did a sudo'd "rm -rf /*" and nuked an OS? I did it today at the age of 33 on a Mac OS X 10.4 system heading for recycling. After all, it's not the kind of thing you just do on a whim, unless you're in the employ of certain groups within Russia and China. Maybe next time I do a reinstall, I'll do some messing around first because this was fascinating.

It occurred to the fellow tech I shared this experience with that neither of us had ever actually done it before and had never seen what happens. He had been assured by one of the older guys in our company that this entire enterprise couldn't possibly work and that the operating system would stop the process before it removed anything essential. Personally, I'd heard of this accidentally being done on exactly this version of Mac OS X and that the aftermath was as reported to be as severe as it gets, so we were both interested to see what would actually happen.

While Terminal did it's thing, we settled down to watch what was happening with a Finder window and Activity Monitor. The occasional message popped up about things that couldn't be deleted - symlinks to network devices and the like - and we made comments about the rate of hard drive reads and writes, the erratically rising free hard drive space report and the fact no error messages or problems seemed to be occurring. I say "seemed", it may have been that all sorts of shit was hitting the cpu cooling fan throughout this process but the error reporting systems would have been deleted roughly the same time as the rest of the OS, so perhaps it just couldn't tell us how badly wrong everything really was.

About 20 minutes later and almost everything had been deleted while the system itself was still running. What the remains were capable of was fascinating. I tried to look at what was left over in Terminal, but the ls command had been deleted. So had shutdown. And virtually everything else actually. Activity Monitor didn't seem to give two hoots that the copy stored on the hard drive had been erased, it just kept on faithfully reporting what was going on and didn't skip a beat. The wireless network connection was maintained. Finder kept on showing us what was around.

Issuing commands to an OS that only now exists as whatever was in the RAM at the time to browse around the area of the hard drive it was duplicated from just a minutes ago gave us quite an eerie feeling. I wish we'd had more time to play around with it, but we were at a client's office and I'd unplugged the mouse to use on another system for a few minutes while this was all going on and, oddly enough, it wasn't recognized again when I plugged it back in...

Arena
        I woke up about seven, maybe a little earlier. I laid there a while before I got up and started coffee.
        I did my business in the head, and Destiny was just getting up. We had eggs over easy, sausage and toast. It was hard to hold the fork; I had blisters on my fingers from the plug on that stupid damned robot.
        They were trying to worry people even more about the Venus virus; someone had died. One of our competitors had a fire in its factory in Peru and somebody died in that, too.
        Someone tried to assassinate Britain's Prime Minister and their bobbies put seventy three bullets in the would-be assassin, as well as a few more bullets in some innocent bystanders. Why in the hell can't cops shoot straight?
        I was hoping today would be a lot lighter than yesterday. At least all I had to inspect was downstairs. The eight o'clock readings were normal so I sauntered down the hall to the damned stairs. Lek and Tammy were in the commons drinking coffee and reading. I marveled at the job Tammy was doing with Lek, Lek was really coming along.
        As I walked past I heard Tammy telling Lek "Your eyes are really getting bloodshot. Better have a dose before you start hurting and I can't help you." I didn't hear what was said after, I was just passing by.
        Two droppers were arguing in the hallway so I called Tammy, and she said she'd take care of it.
        Down my damned stairs everything was okay, except another robot was trying to plug itself in to seventeen, but was too stupid to know it had to unplug the plug I'd cut from the burned up robot. I logged it and trudged back up those damned stairs.
        Tammy'd had to spray one of the two I'd called her about, and the other one was being treated in sick bay for two black eyes. Luckily, Tammy hadn't been injured. Destiny and her was just coming out of the commons as I passed. "Rough one," Tammy said. "I'm sure glad my bottle worked!"
        "How did it happen?" I asked.
        "The one in sick bay had stolen her drops. The one I sprayed was almost redeyed. Quite frightening, but it turned out all right. Maybe Karen will think twice about stealing drops from now on after that, but I really doubt it."
        "Those poor women," Destiny said.
        "No kidding," I replied. "I wonder what time it is?"
        "I don't know," she said, "but my stomach says it's lunch time. Want to have lunch with us, Tammy?"
        "Sorry, I can't. I have a paper to work on and don't have time to eat right now, I want to get a passage written down before I forget what I was going to write."
        We went home and had fritter dogs and Turkish potatoes. I'll bet there's no way at all to tell that God damned stupid computer to make roast turkey and Turkish spuds.
        We had the news on as we ate. The closing of the Mexican hog farm, a huge operation that used a lot of human labor, caused a ripple effect through the Mexican economy and its two biggest banks went bankrupt. The closing of the banks had caused riots and Mexico had to get help from the American military. There was talk of Mexico becoming part of the United states. Most Mexicans wanted it, but few Americans did because of fears of what it would do to their economy.
        Tammy put on a short, really stupid twentieth century two dimensional science fiction movie called Arena about a spaceship's captain who has to fight a giant sentient lizard with a really bad costume. It was so stupid it was almost funny. Traveling faster than light was dumb enough, but the rest of the show was even dumber. No robots and everything looked really primitive, especially the costume the actor playing the lizard was wearing.
        We watched another Emergency; that one was pretty good. Then a short western, I forgot what it was called but it was a gray movie about a nineteenth century rancher and his young son.
        We ate some Irish sandwich Destiny said was an ancient Irish working man's lunch, with French fries and cole slaw and she put on a modern holo named Yesterday's Promise. Then we cuddled to some old classical blues and went to bed.

This is the newest chapter, so it's also the least edited chapter which is why it's quite a bit shorter than the following chapters. They've been edited extensively.

There are 11 more chapters.

cf: http://dev.soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=1115&cid=27307

See: http://www.w3.org/2004/04/uri-rel-test.html

All of the following were entered using <a href="...">>...</a>

Test 101: http://www.w%33.org/

Should be: http://www.w3.org/

Test 111: http://r%c3%a4ksm%c3%b6rg%c3%a5s.josefsson.org/

Should be: http://räksmörgås.josefsson.org/

Test 112: http://%e7%b4%8d%e8%b1%86.w3.mag.keio.ac.jp/

Should be: http://�豆.w3.mag.keio.ac.jp/

Test 121: http://www.%e3%81%bb%e3%82%93%e3%81%a8%e3%81%86%e3%81%ab%e3%81%aa%e3%81%8c%e3%81%84%e3%82%8f%e3%81%91%e3%81%ae%e3%82%8f%e3%81%8b%e3%82%89%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%81%a9%e3%82%81%e3%81%84%e3%82%93%e3%82%81%e3%81%84%e3%81%ae%e3%82%89%e3%81%b9%e3%82%8b%e3%81%be%e3%81%a0%e3%81%aa%e3%81%8c%e3%81%8f%e3%81%97%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%81%a8%e3%81%9f%e3%82%8a%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84.w3.mag.keio.ac.jp/

Should be: http://www.�ん�����������ら�����ん���ら�る����������り��.w3.mag.keio.ac.jp/

Test 122: http://%e3%81%bb%e3%82%93%e3%81%a8%e3%81%86%e3%81%ab%e3%81%aa%e3%81%8c%e3%81%84%e3%82%8f%e3%81%91%e3%81%ae%e3%82%8f%e3%81%8b%e3%82%89%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%81%a9%e3%82%81%e3%81%84%e3%82%93%e3%82%81%e3%81%84%e3%81%ae%e3%82%89%e3%81%b9%e3%82%8b%e3%81%be%e3%81%a0%e3%81%aa%e3%81%8c%e3%81%8f%e3%81%97%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%81%a8%e3%81%9f%e3%82%8a%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84.%e3%81%bb%e3%82%93%e3%81%a8%e3%81%86%e3%81%ab%e3%81%aa%e3%81%8c%e3%81%84%e3%82%8f%e3%81%91%e3%81%ae%e3%82%8f%e3%81%8b%e3%82%89%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%81%a9%e3%82%81%e3%81%84%e3%82%93%e3%82%81%e3%81%84%e3%81%ae%e3%82%89%e3%81%b9%e3%82%8b%e3%81%be%e3%81%a0%e3%81%aa%e3%81%8c%e3%81%8f%e3%81%97%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%81%a8%e3%81%9f%e3%82%8a%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84.%e3%81%bb%e3%82%93%e3%81%a8%e3%81%86%e3%81%ab%e3%81%aa%e3%81%8c%e3%81%84%e3%82%8f%e3%81%91%e3%81%ae%e3%82%8f%e3%81%8b%e3%82%89%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%81%a9%e3%82%81%e3%81%84%e3%82%93%e3%82%81%e3%81%84%e3%81%ae%e3%82%89%e3%81%b9%e3%82%8b%e3%81%be%e3%81%a0%e3%81%aa%e3%81%8c%e3%81%8f%e3%81%97%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84%e3%81%a8%e3%81%9f%e3%82%8a%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84.w3.mag.keio.ac.jp/

Should be: http://�ん�����������ら�����ん���ら�る����������り��.�ん�����������ら�����ん���ら�る����������り��.�ん�����������ら�����ん���ら�る����������り��.w3.mag.keio.ac.jp/

Lameness filter encountered.
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi porta tempus nunc, vel gravida eros. Fusce ac sapien sed elit adipiscing pharetra at vel neque. Cras consequat a nisi vitae interdum. Nulla pulvinar, nisi a varius venenatis, lorem mauris posuere nulla, sit amet venenatis enim mauris quis tellus. Fusce nec ullamcorper lorem. Proin vulputate leo sapien, sollicitudin tincidunt urna eleifend vel. Etiam eleifend nulla id leo egestas interdum. Sed dignissim mauris eget tincidunt fermentum. Sed nec felis et nisl ullamcorper gravida varius in augue. Morbi ac erat quis dolor ultricies pulvinar. Vivamus sagittis viverra leo et sollicitudin. Maecenas at vulputate tortor. Donec ipsum erat, bibendum vel viverra eu, ornare vel sem.

It wasn't in the nineties when we had a series of very cold winters in central Illinois. Not even that frigid day when the high temperature was ten below (-23C) and I was trying to replace a heater hose in my old car. I finally wound up taking it to a mechanic, because my fingers were too cold to work.

No, the coldest I ever was was in the month of August, forty years ago sometime this week; I don't remember the exact date, although I'm pretty sure it was today or tomorrow.

Two days earlier I was in Thailand, where I'd been stationed for a year. Four of us were scheduled to go home the next day and decided to celebrate our upcoming trip on top of a large hill, where we could overlook the base for a final time and have a little "going home" party with wine and that great Thai ganga.

The bottles were empty and the weed as gone, so we got up to start down the hill, which was a pile of dirt and rock they had excavated to build some new barracks. A voice yelled "freeze!" and we all froze like statues; you could tell from the tone of voice there was a firearm involved. It was just like in the movies.

A guy came up the hill carrying what appeared to be a huge automatic pistol, and he was shaking like a leaf. "G-G-G-G-GIs?" he stammered.

"Yeah, man, don't shoot!" someone said.

He yelled down the hill, "Hold your fire! Hold your fire! For Christ's sake hold your fire!" and then asked us for I.D. After showing our IDs the five of us walked down the hill, where we were met by what looked like a whole army, with jeep mounted fifty caliber machine guns, rocket launchers, M-16s, all of them pointed at where we had been at the top of the hill. If one round had been fired we'd have all been MIA, because there wouldn't have been anything left of us.

That was certainly not the coldest night, though. The low that night, usual year around in that tropical jungle close to the equator, was well above 80 (27C). We all left for the US the next morning.

We reached Alaska (I don't remember if it was Fairbanks or Anchorage) about ten PM for a connecting flight to San Fransisco and got off the plane, and damn but it was cold. It had been over a year since I'd been in a temperature lower than 76 (25C), which was a record low, and they had been keeping records for thousands of years. The thermometer outside the terminal said it was 60 (15.5C). I was wearing a uniform designed for the jungle.

We got bumped off the flight so they could carry a fire truck somewhere and were all going to spend the night in the terminal.

I walked inside, the cold wind blowing through its open doors, as cold inside as it was out. I thought I'd succumb to exposure.

All the headlines on all the newspapers in the newspaper racks screamed "NIXON RESIGNS!"

It was the first I'd heard of it. Being stationed in Thailand, the only news I'd gotten was the Stars and Stripes and the Armed Forces Radio Service. Rent Good Morning, Vietnam to see how badly our news was censored; there had been no news about Watergate, streakers, or the Arab Oil Embargo whatever.

I was outside the Base Exchange, shivering and covered with goose bumps when it opened the next morning. I bought a blue jean jacket that I still wear, not caring a bit about uniform regulations or an Article Fifteen, I was freezing!

Nobody complained about me wearing it, though. I sure was glad to get the hell out of Alaska, with its tiny, weak sun.

Heat
        It was only a little after seven when I woke up. Destiny was asleep, so I put on a robe, started coffee, and went to the head to take a piss. I turned on the video; nothing on but the news. Nothing new, some "special report" about Martian piracy. I finished my cup and took a shower. Destiny was waking up as I was getting dressed.
        "You're up early again! Another alarm, sweetheart?"
        "No," I said, "I just woke up early. I don't know why I fell asleep so early last night. It isn't like yesterday was a busy day or anything. Hungry?"
        "I don't know, what time is it?"
        I had to ask the computer. It said seventeen after seven. She got a cup of coffee and told the computer to make a turkey omelette, and again the stupid damned thing said "There are no Turkish omelette dishes listed in the database."
        Stupid computer. She sighed. "Stupid computer," she said, "I want an omelette with turkey meat. A turkey omelette has nothing to do with the country called Turkey."
        The idiotic thing replied "Parse error, please rephrase."
        "God!" Destiny exclaimed, "Jesus but Dad's computers are stupid. Computer!"
        "Waiting for input."
        "I want an omelette with turkey meat."
        "There is no meat that has come from that country."
        "Turkey the bird, damn it!"
        "Parse error, please rephrase."
        "What meats are available for omelettes?"
        "Chicken, duck, turkey, and beef."
        "An omelette with turkey meat."
        "There is no meat from that country," the idiotic thing repeated.
        She was becoming annoyed. "Damn it, computer, I want an omelette with bird meat."
        "Please name the bird."
        "Turkey."
        "Acknowledged, complying."
        "That must the dumbest computer I ever saw," she said.
        "Waiting for input," the computer stupidly said, obviously picking up on the word "computer".
        "Damn it," she started.
        "Roast beef and cheese omelette," I said.
        "Complying."
        By the time breakfast was finished cooking I only had fifteen minutes to eat, the stupid computer had wasted most of our morning time together because its programming was so idiotic.
        The "special report" didn't have anything I didn't already know. The news is almost as stupid as the stupid computer.
        I left for the pilot room with two minutes to spare. I hadn't even finished my breakfast. God damned computer!
        There was a light on the map as I went into the pilot room. Damn, but that computer has shitty timing; I had to do readings and couldn't check it out.
        Luckily everything was normal; the computers were agreeing, we were on course, and it showed nothing except engine seventeen and the port generator had anything wrong with them.
        The light was pirates, about four and a half light minutes away, but they weren't headed anywhere near us. A few minutes later it was off the radar.
        Still, it was worrying. Even though we had tangled with pirates farther out, this was the first trip I'd ever seen pirates anywhere near this far from Mars. And it would still be well over a week before we met the fleet.
        I went back to our quarters to fill my coffee. Destiny asked "Trouble?"
        "Pirates," I said. "They showed up at the fringe of radar but are gone now."
        The robots hadn't thrown the rest of my breakfast away, so I finished eating before starting inspections, chatting about droppers and pirates with Destiny. I kissed her and started inspections. Luckily I only had to inspect downstairs. Luckily? Hell, there were all those damned stairs... but I guess that has nothing to do with luck.
        At the bottom of the stairs there was nothing wrong except number sixty two, which had a robot attached, and seventeen. I logged sixty two and started towards all those damned steps.
        But as I passed the starboard generator, there was a yellow light. What the hell? I looked closer and checked the panel -- it was dangerously warm. Damn it, that should set an alarm off! Looking closer, number seventeen was drawing an obscene amount of power. I hit the generator's emergency shutoff, and the readings said the batteries were draining at a rapid rate as gravity got lighter.
        I took off at a run to seventeen, and the robot attached to it was starting to smoke badly. I also saw that the robot had plugged itself into the main power. I tried to disconnect it from the engine, but the lead was too hot to touch. My fingers were going to be blistered. I kicked the robot's main power cable loose from mains with my boot as the robot burst into flames and the alarm went off. I got the hell out of there and ran back to the generator room.
        The batteries weren't draining like they were; something in the robot had shorted and had been feeding number seventeen with the mains it had plugged itself into. At least the yellow light had gone out, but it was still way too hot for my liking, it being our only remaining generator. I'd let it cool some more before I fired it back up.
        I went back to seventeen, which was in a vacuum by now. I waited for the door to open. Still smoking, the robot was half melted. This robot wouldn't be doing any more repairs! It was surely totaled. I found a pair of gloves and was able to disconnect it. I got some cable cutters, cut off the plug and plugged it back into the engine's robot plug. Maybe other robots couldn't try to fix it. I hoped so, anyway.
        I walked back to the generator. It had cooled almost to normal, so I restarted it. Gravity started to rise again.
        My phone buzzed; it was Destiny. "What's going on, John?"
        "Trouble with an engine and the generator," I said. "I hope it didn't upset the droppers too much. I'm on my way upstairs now, have you had lunch yet?
        "Well, yeah, it's two in the afternoon. I was worried."
        "So was I," I said, "but I think it's okay now. Have the robot make me a sandwich, would you?" I was starved, but I'd been too busy to even notice I'd been hungry.
        I trudged wearily up all those stairs to correct the ship's course. Destiny brought my lunch to the pilot room. "You're sweet," I said, "thanks, but this will only take a few minutes and I'm done... I hope. Just put it on the table and I'll be right there." She kissed me and left.
        I went and finished my lunch, and had a beer with it. This had really been a crappy day. Shit, except for Destiny the whole damned trip was a trip through hell.
        We sat on the couch cuddling and I didn't even hardly notice that an old gray Dracula movie was on. I must have been really tired, because even though there weren't any colors, Dracula's eyes looked red.
        Destiny was comforting me after my bad day, and I fell asleep in her arms. She woke me up and led me to bed, but I was too tired to do anything but sleep.

I woke up early yesterday, and as I do on early days I turned on the TV news and opened Google News on the laptop. After I opened a dozen or so tabs, the notebook ground to a screeching halt. Obviously its 1 gig of memory was completely full. It took a full five minutes for task manager to come up.

I rebooted it (the ancient Linux box with 750 megs never needs rebooting!) and did something I should have done years ago -- I installed Flashblock. After whitelisting KSHE I opened the news back up, and the notebook performed flawlessly.

After reading the news I opened Mars, Ho! for editing. I'll go through the whole book, reading and editing, and when I get to the next chapter to be posted here I post it. Thirty seven was Monday, I reached chapter 50, the last chapter, yesterday.

I've been struggling to get books into e-book format for almost a year now. The trouble wasn't Calibre, even though it has its quirks. It was Open Office's confusing documentation (in fairness, Microsoft documentation sucks, too). It made an incredibly easy and simple procedure seem obscure and convoluted.

I'd decided that on the next pass through Mars, Ho! I would format the typeface and size of chapter names and numbers, and mark it so I could easily convert it to the ePub format.

I had struggled with and experimented with converting Nobots while not exactly sober, but Oo's documentation was as confusing full of coffee as it had been when I was full of beer. But when I opened the file in an eBook reader it became apparent; it was dirt simple. I spent as much time on Nobots yesterday as I did on Mars, Ho!.

I did run across two minor problems with Calibre. It wanted to remove paragraph indents and add blank lines between paragraphs. A little mousing around the interface and I found where to fix it.

The other was a bug in Calibre. You're supposed to be able to drag and drop image files for the cover, but it simply didn't work. It displayed the cover in Calibre, but not in the eBook reader. However, there's a button that lets you choose a file, and that worked.

This morning I converted The Paxil Diaries, uploaded the ePub files and edited the index files. So if you would like an eBook version of either of these books, they're available for free download at my web site. A little googling showed that the Nook and Kindle and about all eBook readers support that format. I neither know nor care if Sony's reader supports it, and in fact would rather people not be able to read them on a Sony device; I've hated that company with a passion since my daughter infected my PC with Sony's XCP malware. Their CEO should have gone to prison!

I'm taking a different approach with Mars, Ho! than with my previous two books. Having them printed is terribly expensive and I'd at least like to make the money back on copyright and ISBN registrations, so I'm going to release it as a two dollar Amazon eBook first, with PDF and HTML versions still free.

If you want an eBook version of the two finished books, rather than making you visit my web site I'll just link them here:
The Paxil Diaries
Nobots