Meet Hank

A 10-week-old yellow Golden Retriever/Yellow Labrador puppy sleeps on his bacon pillow.

Meet Hank. He’s a Golden Retriever/Labrador Retriever puppy that my family and I will be raising for the next year as part of the Seeing Eye’s Puppy Raising Program. Like Olaf, the German Shepherd puppy we raised, we’ll be teaching Hank basic obedience while socializing him to the larger world. As part of that process … Read more

Summer 2016 Reading List

An ominous starship looms against a blue-black nebula background

I’ve compiled my summer reading list for 2016. As is normal for me, it’s dominated by space opera and military science fiction, but peppered with some steampunk and superhero fiction. It weighs in at 14 books and 6 graphic novels. That’s one fewer than last year, but that gives me  gives me some wiggle room to … Read more

Olaf’s getting a trainer!

Olaf, a black-and-tan German Shepherd, meets the Lafayette Leopard mascot

Olaf, the German Shepherd puppy that my family and I spent the last year raising for the Seeing Eye, has gone off to college. He’s being assigned a trainer, and with any luck we’ll be getting status updates about him soon. During his time with us, we taught Olaf basic obedience and socialization. Now that … Read more

Categories Fun

What I’m Reading: The Hundred Days

My slow voyage throughPatrick O’Brian’sAubrey/Maturin epic series nears its end with The Hundred Days, his 19th novel . The books are set in the late 1700s and early 1800s against the backdrop of a series of European wars. The protagonists are Jack Aubrey, an captain in the British navy, and Stephen Maturin, Jack’s long-time friend, sailing companion … Read more

Moodle Hack/Doc Fest hits Indianapolis in Summer 2016

The Butler bulldog stands atop the Butler University sign, with a large grass field in the background.

Moodle Hack/Doc Fest — that biannual summer camp for instructional technologists, web developers, and other folks who work with Moodle — hits Indianapolis this summer. It’s being held Tuesday, June 21 through Thursday, June 23, 2016 at Butler University in Indianapolis, IN. A pre-Hack/Doc documentation and coding sprint will be held Monday, June 20, 2016. … Read more

What I’m Reading: Sun of Suns

A close-up photo of the sun.

Sun of Suns takes place in an immense habitable Dyson sphere (or something like a Dyson sphere) inclosing the star Virga. A freefall civilization — complete with barrel-like towns spun to produce gravity — has spread throughout the enclosed habitat. The book tells the story of Hayden Griffin, a young man seeking revenge against the … Read more

What I’m Reading: The Jennifer Morgue

Bob, the main character of the novel, is suspended in a watery cage while wearing a business suit.

The Laundry series is an amusing mash up of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The X-Files, Call of Cthulhu, and The Office. The second book in the series features its hero, Bob Howard, in a very James Bond-ish style adventure in which he has to re-enact all of the tropes of the spy genre in order to … Read more

My Summer Reading List for 2015 … reimagined

My original summer reading list was done as a cover gallery. Let’s see what it looks like reimagined as thumbnails accompanied by the book’s title, author, and brief description. Aurora Kim Stanley Robinson Aurora is Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel about the crew of a generational starship finally arriving at their destination … and dealing with … Read more