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"In space. no one can hear you scream like a little girl." -Mark Watney

I'll be succinct before I become verbose: This is the best book I've read in years, including the ones I wrote.

If you like my stuff, you'll love this book. This guy writes like me only a lot better. Seriously. What's more, he looks to be half my age so damn it, you'll read more of his books than I will, I'm ageing.

This is his first book. I want a second.

I went to the library to return a couple of books and see if Nobots was on the shelves yet. Nope. Damn, they're slow. I'd reserved a Pratchett book I hadn't yet read that morning and didn't expect it to be ready (it wasn't) so I looked at the new science fiction section. I read the back cover blurbs but usually don't take any stock in them, but two caught my eye, one by one of the greats and one of my favorite authors, Larry Niven, who was quoted as saying "Gripping. Shapes up like DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe as written by someone brighter."

But the one that caught my interest was Chris Hadfield, and if you don't know who he is, what are you doing here? He says on the back cover "It has the rare combination of a good, original story, interestingly real characters, and..." what especially caught me eye, "and fascinatingly technical accuracy."

I had to read this book, and damn, it was good. Pratchett and Adams good, I laughed all the way through it; Whitney's sense of humor is his biggest weapon against the hostile Mars that's trying to kill him.

Whitney gets stranded on Mars and survives (oops, spoiler alert?) against all odds and with... well, very little.

RTFB. It's a damned good book and is at his website.

This book's history is interesting, too. I wanted to see what other books he'd written because I want more, but there was just the one. But the one, according to wikipedia, had a history. He'd submitted it to publishers and been rejected (much like Rowling and her Harry Potter) and released it on his web site in HTML and as a 99 cent Amazon e-book, which soared to the top of Amazon's charts.

So a major publisher has given him six figures for the rights. Lucky (and talented) guy. Wikipedia says that Ridley Scott will direct the movie, so fuck. The book made me laugh more than once, I can't see a Ridley Scott movie making me laugh. "Blade Runner, the Comedy?" Can't see it.

So, it appears we have quite a community of DF players here at SN, and enough I think to warrent getting a succession game going. For those who are unaware, succession games are when one plays for one year (Spring to Spring traditionally), then passes off the fort to the next player in line. Boatmurdered is perhaps the most famous of the succession games ever done, though there are others, such as Battlefailed, Failcannon, and .

I'm interested in doing this, especially since it requires relatively little in infrastructure to setup. I'd like to do it on SN itself, perhaps either with a shared account as journals, or just creating a new section on the site. Obviously I'm going to have to tweak the codebase to allow images, and it gives a way to help build our community out. So, if we do this, here's what we need to decide:

• What version of DF? 2012, or wait for the new release

• What type of biome?

• Any mods?

And probably some other stuff. I've been playing a fort which is at war with the elves, and I find its quite a bit of fun since you regularly get seiged, and requires that we have a badass military to survive (and there are ways, even in stock, to get military training to work and start churning out Lords and Masters relatively quickly.

I recommend we apply bugfixes to the raws such as elven treecap diplomacy, and human merchants, which seriously helps getting the supplies we need. I've had good look with Accelerated Modest Mod for bug fixes, and preventing FPS death even in crud hardware so its my vote if we just don't go vanilla. I also recommend we also use all the DFHack fixes (the patrol bug one is almost essential).

Post below if you're interested, turn list is first come, first serve, but you can sign up for a second turn after your first (likely necessary since I expect only 5-6 players). Regular updates, and timely turns are a must as well. Beyond that, the sky is the limit.

Space-X Dragon

I found this article fascinating. This new space craft is way farther advanced than anything now in operation. It will hold seven astronauts, dock with the ISS without the need for the Canadian robot arm, will land on land with the accuracy of a helicopter, and has emergency parachutes that deploy automatically if the landing rockets fail to deploy. And unlike the shuttle, which had to be rebuilt after every flight, this one can be refueled and take off again immediately!

Scheduled for use in three years, Musk unveiled it yesterday in response to Russia's threat that the US would need trampolines to get to space. "Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed."

Random Scribblings
As mentioned, I hit a brick wall with Mars, Ho! Nonetheless, I did write another chapter. However, it takes place two weeks before they reach Mars (and involves pirates again). I need a few chapters before it, however, unless the end of the story really stretches out.

The reason is, I enjoy the hell out of writing but publishing is a pain in the ass. So I'm going to submit it to Baen when it's finished, and a few more when they reject it; self-publishing this one will be a last resort. Baen needs a minimum of 100,000 words, and I'm only 20% of the way there.

I hope to finish it this year, but if not I may assemble and self-publish a book called Random Scribblings, a collection of articles I've posted on the internet over the years; I think long-time fans will enjoy it. There may be more than one volume of that one.

Android music
I wrote and was going to post a rant about Winamp on Android, but wisely googled first and found that what was missing was indeed there.

Maybe I should rant about Google. They've spent the last week automatically updating Google's apps for the last week, each one taking days, and it messes my phone up, especially at Felbers.

My computer has no problem with the wi-fi (what a stupid name for a transmission/reception technology/protocol) there, but it drives my phone crazy. If bluetooth or wifi is on and in use and you shut the other on or off, the phone crashes and reboots itself, especially when some app is updating itself. Like the Google apps that take days to finish.

I suspect that their wifi somehow is interfering with bluetooth, or the other way around. But the phone still acts up there even when I shut wi-fi off (and the damned phone turnes it back on by itself and then crashes, who programs this garbage, anyway?).

I have a suggestion for Google's Android programmers: don't update any damned apps on my phone unless it's charging, because it charges when I'm not using it.

On the U of C Tragedy
People, including one especially pissed-off parent is blaming the tragedy on idiots in the government, and I kind of agree; crazy people should not have access to firearms. However, it must be remembered that half of the dead were killed by blades, not bullets.

Rather than blame guns and stupid legislators, I blame America's foremost religion.

No, not Christianity. America doesn't worship God, it worships money. The bible rightly says that "the love of money is the root of all evil," and money is what most Americans worship (i.e., love above all else).

Have you seen any of the weirdness he wrote? This disturbed and disturbing young man was brought up to love money, to believe that money solves all problems. His divorced parents had rich friends, and he hated his parents because they weren't rich.

He was also obsessed with the sex he could never get. Of course he couldn't get laid; girls don't get turned on by needy, crazy guys. Being needy alone will turn them off, let alone needy and crazy, even if you had Bill Gate's money. Yet, he thought that money would buy love and happiness.

Some might say that a Christian upbringing might have kept this horrible tragedy from happening, but I'm not so sure. I know an athiest (IRL, fellow Felbers patron who once punched me out of my barstool for accusing him of homosexuality) who was brought up in a very strict evangelical Kentucky family, who had spent ten years in prison for murder. Not exactly a good reference for Christian upbringing.

But it wouldn't have hurt.

If you consider yourself a Christian, you should talk to yourself about money. Don't worship the shit! It's merely a tool, and only a fool worships his tools. "He who lives by the weapon, dies by the weapon." And make no mistake about it, money is a terrible weapon, far more dangerous than firearms.

He who lives for the dollar dies for the dollar. Fools, all.

Managed to kick out the first draft of the bylaws, they're here on the wiki http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/Incorporation/Bylaws for anyone who wishes to take a look. I need to fill out some more paperwork, then submit the entirity of the mess to a lawyer. I got a few recommendations, so mostly now is lawyer shopping.

Here at the shop I get to use and try more gear than most and one thing I've noticed is that AMD driver 14.4 is to be AVOIDED at all costs! they have already issued one fix so far but even the "fixed" driver just doesn't work. I use a lot of the HD77xx series cards (liked them so much myself and my family are all on HD77xx) and the new drivers are just terrible on those cards, it makes boot slow to a crawl, many formats of video just don't play, even seeing BSODs when playing some H.26x formatted vids.

If I had to guess its the new HSA or Mantle causing the teething problems but until they figure out the cause its best to stick with 13.12 which is rock solid.

Is it my browser, my ISP, or the internet itself? Or have I been hacked? Yesterday the links at Soylent were all messed up; I moderated a thread, and the "moderate" button took me to a 404 and I still had the mod points. Other links were taking me to the wrong place as well. This morning I decided to see what was going on with the green site and FireFox informed me that its security certificate wasn't any good.

I think I should be worried. Maybe it's time to slap Linux on this notebook...

For those that haven't tried it lately Comodo Internet Security has added a bit of brilliance...a virtual machine desktop! With this even your most clueless users/friends/relatives can have the added security of surfing in a VM without having to know squat about OSes and VMs, here is how...

1.- Give them the free Comodo IS, 2.- If they don't have it install MSFT Silverlight (no worries about zero days and the like though, because the VM runs in a locked down sandbox), 3.- Show them where the big button is that says "virtual desktop". For the most clueless Comodo comes with a widget on the desktop with most functions including virtual desktop. 4.- There is no step 4, let your user enjoy a virtual desktop loaded with Google apps and Comodo Dragon for surfing while you enjoy not having to worry about infections on their system. Hell it even comes with Angry Birds to give 'em a reason to start using it!

For years we've known that using a VM locked down and separate from the OS was a good thing but its just been too complicated for Joe and Jane, well Comodo hs that problem licked, I have handed it to some of my most clueless and virus prone customers and so far? Clean as a whistle. Its easy, increases security by a large amount, and its free...what's not to like?

I saw something, again, about a book called Freakonomics on TV and decided to check it out. So I tried to log into the card catalog and... my library card had expired. So I went down there; I wanted to talk to someone about donating books, too.

No such luck at the second task, as I would need to speak with someone on the third floor, and because of construction on the second floor the second floor was only open to construction workers and the third floor was only open to library staff. I got my card updated and looked at the new science fiction, and chose Annihilation, which I discovered after getting it home is the first volume of a trilogy and the other two haven't been released.

I almost passed over Mentats of Dune. I have all of Frank Herbert's Dune novels on my shelf, and for me, when Herbert died, so did Dune. But I was curious; its co-author was Herbert's son, so I checked it out.

After a few chapters I determined that Brian Herbert is an even better writer than his dad, and Anderson is an incredibly talented hack who can perfectly imitate other writer's styles, a rare gift. Or perhaps it's education, I'm uneducated at writing myself so can't tell.

This was a good story well told, and contains a lot of wisdom. It is a prequel to Frank Herbert's series.

Its title is misleading; Although Arrakis is part of the story, there are no mentats there. The mentats are on Lampadas. The jihad is over and the terminators (I kept thinking of those movies while I read the book) have all but one been destroyed, and it is a disembodied electronic brain.

It concerns Harkonans and Atreides and there's even an Idaho. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Until I reached the "end". It had no end; it was part of not a series, but a serial. And I hate serials, which is why I only saw one episode of Babylon Five. As soon as I see a work is a serial, my interest stops right there.

Sorry, Brian. I hate soap operas, always have.

Reverse
                I went into the pilot room still haunted by the horrible, awful, terrible sight of a faceless woman, and strapped in. As normal, I warned the cargo and crew that we were going to zero gravity for a couple of minutes in a while. The computers can give you a better idea of the maneuvers so I won't go into detail about that.
                However, there was one thing that wasn't right: One of the computers disagreed with the other three about a reading. I dropped to point one gravity and trudged (bounded might be a better word at .1 G) to the remaining generator, which is what the computers disagreed about.
                In all my years of driving these boats I've never seen the computers disagree about anything, so I was pretty worried. Especially since we only had one generator left; we could make it to Mars on batteries, but if we had to we'd be like Wild Bill and in danger from the pirates when we got close to Mars. That's where the pirates usually are, because that's when shipping is most vulnerable to them.
                The disagreeing computer was right, there was a tenth of a volt overvoltage going to engine seventeen, but a tenth of a volt wouldn't hurt anything. I shut number seventeen down anyway, and then went back to the pilot room, strapped in, got ready to maneuver and dropped the thrust to zero G.
                The maser beeped. "John, Bill here. I got some bad news for you, buddy. I picked up some radio traffic from pirates, and one of the boats you destroyed had survivors. They're really, really pissed off at you, John. Be careful when you get close to Mars. Have all your weapons armed, not just as many as the book says but all of 'em. And if I was you I'd even have atomics ready. You should have heard them talking about you... there's a price on your head, John. Sorry to bring bad news, hope I see you on Mars, I'll buy you a beer. Kelly out."
                Shit. God damned pirates, I wish the company would build a few warships to rid the solar system of those God damned mother fucking sons of bitches. God damned bastards!
                I got the boat turned around and went back to my apartment... sorry, "quarters".
                Destiny looked up from her tablet as I came in. "What's wrong, Johnnie?"
                "Bill called," I said. "One of those damned pirate boats had survivors and now the pirates want my head. We're sure to be attacked when we get close to Mars."
                Her eyes got wide. "Oh, my,"she said, "Are we going to be okay?"
                "Don't worry," I reassured her, worried myself. "I called the company. They'll sent a huge armed convoy to escort us on the last leg. Meanwhile we can still outmaneuver them with one generator. And we have arms ourselves. In fact, I'm getting a cup of coffee and then checking out our weapons.
                "That generator itself is a weapon, even. I can make it spew gamma rays behind the boat, they'll be too sick to fight in minutes and dead in days. Honey, we're armed to the teeth. We have rail guns, lasers, EMP mines and rockets, other atomics..."
                I got a cup of coffee. "Ugh," I said after taking a drink.
                "Sorry," she said, "the robot made it."
                "Nasty damned robots," I replied. "Ill make a fresh pot."
                "What do you mean by 'other atomics'?"
                "We have hydrogen bombs. Lots of 'em. You don't think the company would leave their property defenseless, do you?" Damn, I didn't want to wait for a cup. Oh well.
                As the coffeepot gurgled I said "Don't say anything about pirates to anybody, especially the whores. They're the last ones I want to upset. I'm a lot more worried about them than pirates."
                She laughed. "you finished Tammy's book."
                "Yeah," I said, "I did. Scariest book I ever read."
                "You've read a lot of scary books?" she asked, grinning.
                "No," I admitted, "I don't really like reading."
                "That's too bad," she said. "Look how much help Tammy's book is to you."
                "That book gives me nightmares!" I exclaimed, finally pouring my coffee.
                "It might save your life," she said sternly.
                "Yeah, I agreed. "I wish I'd read it before that first rock rain. I'd have known the effect of lowered gravity on dropheads."
                "You've been calling them that lately."
                "Got it from the dropheads themselves. Seems that a 'drophead' is an angel tear addict and a 'dropper' is someone who uses them but isn't addicted. One of them said 'I ain't no drophead, bitch.' But they're all dropheads, some get addicted the first time they try it, according to Tammy's book."
                "I know," she said, "I read it."
                "Why didn't you tell me?"
                "I thought you read the book."
                "I should have. I should read more."
                "Yeah, you should."
                I finished my coffee. "I gotta get back to work."
                She asked "want to watch a movie when we get back?"
                "Sure," I said, "make it a funny one. One without any damned droppers."
                "Old one then," she said. "Today's comedies all have droppers."
                "Nothing funny about dropheads," I growled. Damned whores...

It may be a while before I post another chapter, as I'm at a loss as to what sort of trouble Knolls finds himself in next, except a vague idea about droppers not liking having lowered gravity as they approach Mars. So I'm going to work on the ending for a while, but won't post it until whatever chapters will come next.

I'm 18.3% towards the goal of 100,000 words. If I get there I'll see if Baen will publish it, self-publishing is a pain in the ass, a lot of work. OTOH you have almost complete control over the finished book, so if Baen rejects it I'll publish it myself.

I've gone through and edited a few times, but not what is posted here. So far I was pointed to a typo that I might never have seen, and another informed me of the best way to present the German sentence, and I thank them both. Editing seems to make the chapters longer, which is fine because I want to hack out a lot of verbiage that hopefully isn't garbiage.

(this chapter's title is unprintable without unicode)
                I heard cats fighting again: the Thai girls. They always sounded like house cats fighting when they argued. I looked in the commons area and they were nose to nose and looked like they would be coming to blows.
                Damned whores. The pay raise wasn't enough for me to put up with this shit. "Knock it off, you two. Now, what's going on?"
                "My tenee drops!" one babbled.
                "What?"
                "She says she doesn't have any drops but she's lying."
                "And?"
                She frowned, crossed her arms and turned her back on me. "Well?" I said.
                She whirled around and kicked me in the head. I went out like a light.

                I came to in the infirmary laying on a gurney with an IV needle stuck in my arm and wearing an oxygen mask. Destiny and Tammy were there. I took off the mask and started to get up, but they pushed me back down. "Hold off, John, you should rest."
                "No I shouldn't," I said. "I should kick that cunt's ass and lock her up."
                "The robots already did. They tased her." I thought, really? I didn't know they could do that. Why the hell can't they make decent coffee?
                "You two tased her," I said.
                They looked at each other. "I did," Destiny said.
                "Thank you," I replied.
                "I'm sorry," Tammy said. "She should have had drops. I missed her. It's my fault."
                "What's going to happen to them on Mars?" I asked.
                "They think they're going to be prostituting, but they're going to be rehabilitated. The study of the brain and mind has really advanced in the last couple hundred years and these days we can undo much of the harm done to them in their lives.
                "When their five year contracts are up they won't be the same people. We hope they'll stay on Mars, Mars needs people badly. It has too many PhDs and too few less educated people; there are things that need to be done that don't require a higher education."
                It dawned on me that she didn't talk like a college professor around the whores like she did when none of the hookers were around.
                "So you conned them?"
                "No, we said up front that addiction treatment was not only part of the deal the primary purpose. These girls don't want to be addicts or whores, that's just where life put them. But they worried about income; most of these girls know of no other way of making money. We're going to teach them."
                "Who's paying for all of this?" I asked. It sounded like I was Captain of a charity boat.
                "The CEO of your company's daughter is a philanthropist. She's paying for it." She looked at Destiny. "Destiny works for them, too."
                Destiny looked sheepish. My brain actually started working. "You two don't work for the corporation, you work for that charity."
                "Look, John," Destiny said, "you're not supposed to know any of this. So you don't know any of this, okay?"
                "Okay," I said. Hell, I didn't care about Tammy but I didn't want to get Destiny in trouble. "I'll play ignorant."
                I hate to get Destiny in trouble with her charity, I hope my including this doesn't cause trouble but I'd hate for something I didn't say to make somebody die later. Drops and dropheads are really dangerous.
                The computer beeped and the readout said I could leave. We started the walk home.
                "Ich nicht habe keine Augentropfen, bitch!" we heard while walking past the commons. God damned whores... We went in the commons. The fat blonde was there arguing with one of the Thai chicks; I have no idea what "Ich nicht habe keine Augentropfen" means except yeah, I do, since after she said it she said "bitch". The Thai chick was out of drops. Damn. I called the other Thai chick's room. "Lek, could you please come to the commons? I need an interprepter."
                "Okay, Joe, I be right there. Cost you some drops, though, okay?"
                "I'll try but I can't promise."
                "Try hard, Joe," she said threateningly.
                "My me drops!" The other one said. "Tenee drops!"
                Damn, I hoped Lek hurried. "You'll get drops," I said. "Just be patient."
                "Meow drops!"
                "I'll see what's taking Lek," I lied. I was seeing someone who knew what the hell they was doing, and that was Doctor Winters, my expert on dropper whores who had pretended, and still did in front of everyone except Destiny and me, that she was one, too. She was walking quickly toward me. "We have a prob..." I started.
                "I know. My fault, sorry. I'll fix it. And John, finish reading that damned book!"
                "I will..." hell, she was in the commons already. I shrugged and went back to the cabin to read some more. Oh, you guys should put chapter three from her book in this report, the whole thing will make a lot more sense that way. Chapter three is a video of a drophead going through withdrawal. It's a hard video to watch. I'd rather I had just read about it, and I really don't like to read. I threw up watching it.
                The woman in the video tore her own face off with her fingernails! It was horrible, and I puked and shut it off. How does Tammy study this kind of thing? Glad we had the noisy damned maids, the vomit stank and made me want to puke more.
                Then they had one woman they called a "subject" in a straitjacket, locked in a padded room. Dead the next morning. Damn but that shit is nasty.
                Destiny came in. "Are you okay, John?" she said with a worried look on her face.
                "Yeah. Damn, how does Tammy do it?"
                "Do what?"
                "Study a Frankenstein monster. God," I said, "Worse than a Frankenstein monster. That book... Destiny, a women tore her own face off! My God but that was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life!"
                She said "I read it. Why do you think I'm working for them? These poor women... the withdrawal from this drug is horrendous torture and they all die if they stop taking it. We're trying to find a cure. The problem is, we just can't tell on Earth because the drug is so easy to make there, needing Earth's exact gravity. A chemist could do it with a centrifuge on Mars, but not a drophead. On Earth, we can get them clean but they go right back to using. So we're trying it where a drophead can't make drops, with the very best medical help there is."
                "If we succeed," she continued, "we can not only rid Earth of its dropper problem but populate Mars!"
                I was doubtful but didn't say anything. It would be nice if they could pull it off, but I didn't think they would.
                Uh, guys, I need to piss. Thanks.

                My fone and tablet went off at the same time. Fifteen minutes to decel.
                "Gotta work, huh?" Destiny said.
                "Yeah, you can cheer me up later. I gotta turn this tub around."
                "Do we get zero G?" She asked. "Only a little," I said. I know what the book says is acceptable. I hate books.
                Especially Tammy's.

I'd appreciate your help on this one. I don't speak German and used Google Translate to convert "I ain't got no drops" to that language. I'm sure quite a few of you are fluent in German, if so, did I get it right?

I also used Google Translate for the written version of the Thai word for "catfight". I was never fluent in Thai, haven't used it in 40 years and never was literate in that language.