Everyone's a knockin'!

I telneted into my home Linux system and was able to ftp my work mail file to an outside server, after which I downloaded the file to my laptop here in Pearland. Interestingly, the data transfer rate locally is better than 6 kbps, so it didn't take all that long.

Among my new e-mails was an item from a client containing an assignment that consists of revising 30 small files. I agreed to do the work without thinking about how I was going to be paid. After opening a few files, I called my client and suggested a flat rate for the whole job.

Around 1:45 pm, on my way in to JSC, I got a call from a new client who wants me to do a 1200-word job by Thursday morning. This is good news. I said yes.

When I came out of the MCC at around 7:30 pm, I had a message on my cell from a Washington, D.C. client asking if I was available for rush work.

Indeed when it rains (and it has been raining here in Houston), it pours.

Tomorrow's sim starts at some ungodly hour (6 am, if memory serves), and instead of air-to-ground, I'm going to be interpreting for the RIO and the Russian PRP. During yesterday's sim, the young lady assigned to that function had trouble staying awake due to a lack of activity on her loop; tonight, the fellow on that loop almost interpreted himself hoarse owing to the nearly constant exchanges between the sides.

Then again, tonight's sim kept piling all sorts of problems on top of one another (comm failures, ventilation failures, computer failures, and so on) until the flight control teams decided it simply would not be a good idea to dock the (simulated) Shuttle to the (simulated) station, at least not today.

On Thursday, I'll be interpreting for the ISS Capcom and the Russian glavnyi operator (known to Americans as, simply, "the glavnyi" - pronounced "GLAV-knee"). Friday, I have a turn at translating the real, actual, non-simulated Execute Package for the Ops Planners on the third floor. What the client has in store for after Friday is something not currently known to me.

Time to go to sleep soon.

Cheers...

Gyrene sci-fi and fantasy!?

A stint in the Marines changes you, of that there is no doubt. The nature of the change is unique to each individual gyrene, and someday, when I have some time to think about it, I shall have to describe what the Marine Corps has meant to my life.

However, I think there is no doubt but that writer David Sherman came away with good vibes about the Green Machine, or at least about what the Green Machine is/was supposed to represent. Let me freewheel a bit here...

He, together with Dan Cragg, have written a series of military science fiction books centered around the adventures of a 25th century military unit that is a direct descendant, as it were, of the U.S.M.C. To be frank, I probably never would have started reading the series - which I have enjoyed very much, by the way - had volume 1, First to Fight, not been on sale on the local library's discard book rack.

I recall reading the first few pages while browsing for sci-fi at a Dalton's some time back, but the action didn't grab me with any immediacy at the time. Then again, some time ago, I'd become "allergic" to multi-volume publications.

It wasn't always that way. I remember, as a kid, being gonzo about the Hardy Boys. The only problem with that was that I only owned three volumes of the series and there was no (I say again: no) possibility of obtaining others. I received no allowance and as far as books were concerned, my mother's advice boiled down to: "Get it at the library."

Normally, this was reasonable advice, but the problem in this case had to do with the fact that the Hardy Boys were considered "trash" books by virtually all self-respecting librarians, who were otherwise engaged in a vast conspiracy to have us read about Kit Carson and Babe Ruth, and consume "safe" mystery and science fiction stories whose only claim to fame and library shelf space (as far as I could see) was that they were written by awful writers.

One summer, I was bundled off to a nice WASP camp (with a nice Viking name; go figure) on the shores of a Vermont lake. Their library was stocked to overflowing with the works of "Franklin W. Dixon" (a pseudonym, I was later to find out), the author of the Hardy Boys series. I spent every rest hour during the 8 weeks I was there scarfing down these stories.

I didn't get to read one or two, as the camp library didn't have them. At the end of the summer, I remember, the counselors cleaned out everyone's library books and returned them to the camp's library while we were out playing "capture the flag." The only problem was, all three of my volumes - which were on the same shelf - had been reclaimed, too. I let out quite a wail, but I never did get the books back.

Around the time I was in the Marines, I started to read books in The Destroyer series and the The Executioner series. After a while, the stories began to pale with their repetitiveness, and since I wasn't very assiduous about reading every single one in numerical order or keeping track of which ones I'd read and which I hadn't (something Barbara Cartland fans learn to do, I hear), I'd sometimes end up buying a book I'd already read. That was no fun.

The last time I was in town, I read First to Fight. It was actually a good read. Upon visiting the local Barnes & Noble, I got volume 2, School of Fire and read it, followed by volumes 3 and 4. Volume 5 could not be found on the shelves of any local bookstore. Upon starting to read volume 6, Hangfire, it became clear to me that there would be things I would not understand (not having read volume 5), which would detract from reading both volumes 5 and 6. (Such was not the case with the Hardy Boys series, as I recall, where plugs for previous and next volumes in the series were simply that - advertisements - and not integrated into the plots of the stories.)

Eventually, I ended up ordering volume 5, Technokill, from the bookstore down a few doors from our shop in Pagosa, and it, too, was an engaging read. Volume 6 lies on my shelf, unread for the time being.

I did, however, pick up the first of a new series by Sherman, titled Onslaught, and read it over the past couple of days. It is a strange book, featuring a couple of Marines (kinda) in a strange world filled with warriors, princes, demons, magicians, and slaves. If there is any doubt that Sherman hold leathernecks in high esteem, check out this excerpt:

When their vision cleared, the priests and the philosopher were stunned by the vision in command of the altar.

It was a man in a fighting crouch. He spun to face first one way then another until he saw no one advancing to attack him. Then he stood so erect he might have had a spear for a spine.

He was a man such as none of them had ever seen. It wasn't only his near impossibly erect posture or his obvious musculature. It was his resplendent garb - a tunic the blue of the deepest sea and trousers the blue of purest lake. A bloodred stripe ran down the outside of his trouser legs. Each of his upper arms was adorned with three inverted V's over two saucer curves with crossed, crossed... somethings in between. Those adornments were in cloth-of-gold mounted on scarlet. His lower left arm bore four diagonal cloth-of-gold stripes on scarlet backing. A panoply of rainbow-colored ribbons supporting dangling medallions adorned his left breast, and other strips of rainbow hue were on his right. Golden emblems glittered on the tunic's high collar. Gloves the white of new fallen snow covered his hands. A stiff billed hat sat squarely on his head, its crown as white as his gloves, its flat top slanted back from a peak, and the whole top stood out round like a halo. A gold emblem sparkled so brilliantly on the front of the hat, none could make out any details. The bill of the hat and his shoes were leather that shone so brightly they might have been polished obsidian. An ornately guarded saber hung in a polished black, gold-toed scabbard at this side; no one thought to wonder why he hadn't drawn it when he first thought he might be attacked.

Slowly, the man curled his upper lip with disdain. He looked around at the stunned priests. When he finally spoke, his voice was so loud it knocked down the philosopher who was struggling back to his feet, staggered the nearest priests, and woke sleepers in nearby houses. No one in the temple understood his words. They were in a language even further removed from the temple than the language in which the philosopher had chanted. But the meaning was clear when he bellowed:

"Who's in charge of this circle jerk?"

And now it really is time to go to sleep.

Cheers...