Ten Things I've done that you haven't

With thanks to John Scalzi's challenge. This was an intriguing exercise.

1. Fathered six children. With the same woman. That I'm still married to. Over a twenty years span.

2. Played big band jazz in a hundred year old theatre.

3. Ran over a skunk. On a motorcycle. (I was on the motorcycle, not the skunk). That bike still smelled faintly of skunk when I sold it two years later: he baked into the exhaust.

4. Early online pedophile stalkerage: was propositioned by a transvestite on The Well at the age of 15 or so.

5. Owned a 1978 Ford Mustang King Cobra v8. It was a piece of crap, but a relatively rare piece of crap.

6. Cooked hot dogs by essentially plugging them into a standard outlet.

7. Nearly blown up a house while experimenting with making my own hydrogen. (A garbage bag full of hydrogen makes a BIG fireball.)

8. Had the brand XYLINX burned into the back of my hand while testing FPGA's for heat issues. It stayed for about three months.

9. Pitched the championship game for my "B" league team. (OK, I'm stretching now).

10. Got a signed rejection from George Scithers at the age of twelve. Thought my crap didn't stink: still haven't published.

The Traveler

I just finished "The Traveler" by John Twelve Hawks. To be honest I'd heard nothing of this book or the author before buying it. I ran across it at The Frugal Muse and it looked interesting.

Apparently the internets are rife with speculation about who John Twelve Hawks might be. The book tells us that he lives "off the grid", and not much else. Some say it's Dan Brown writing for the YA market.

I'm not sure who the author is and don't really care. It's mediocre at best.

It details an omnipresent corporation that has fingers into every database, every public surveillance camera, every system. Big Brother is most certainly watching you. There are folks called Travelers that can cross over into other "realms", and folks called "Harlequins" that protect them. And of course, the bad guys are out to kill or control the travelers.

It's not a bad book, by any stretch. It kept the pages turning, and most of the action was well-paced and believable. It just didn't have a character I could bring myself to give a rip about.

I won't seek out the next book in what will be a four book series, but I won't turn it down if I see it for $3.95, the price I picked up this one for a The Frugal Muse.

I'm ordering one today....