Last Call Powers

I just finished a book. Last Call by Tim Powers.

Last Call
I thought it was very good and I would recommend it to anyone that plays poker, which I don't, or that likes books about magic in the modern world. I would recommend any of Tim Powers books, even though I've only read three so far. His plots are done very well and he ties in historical facts and people. If you think you like the kind of book I'm describing, and you're going to Las Vegas or like Vegas or you play a lot of poker, read it!
My problem is that I get addicted to it (the book), and I just keep reading when I should be doing other stuff. It's that good. I do that often with books, but this one really had me.
As for buying the book, I would suggest going through Amazon.com's used book section and buying it from there. I don't remember how much I paid, but I paid less than retail, it came pretty quick and it was in (seemed to me) perfect condition.

Update

Yeah, yeah, I haven't updated in ages. I know. I'll get around to it. In fact, this constitutes a posting.

Little information: quiet Christmas; loud New Year in Venice.

New blog at VOX: http://klepzig.vox.com

Don't worry; I haven't posted anything there, either, but I'll get around to it and maybe include videos, as well, but I'll make sure to keep them to a tiny little size.

Attached is an old picture of Natalya (lookin' good, as usual) and myself (lookin' grim) on a ferris wheel in Heidelberg.

Wii & TV

Lyngbox is still in development, as far as I know. I posted about it previously and was excited about it, but I’m still waiting for the time when I can actually buy one. What I’m looking forward to now is the Wii. Three weeks, baby! I’m still looking for a source to preorder one. So far I’ve looked at Amazon.com, ToysRus and AAFES, but no deal, yet.

It just looks fun! A lot of games these days are more like work than fun. Sometimes it is fun to simulate someone else’s job, and that’s what a lot of games do, concentrating on the fun aspects and downplaying the tedious boring aspects. It seems to me that Nintendo seems to concentrate more on making games fun than other aspects of games, like plot, graphics, or realism. I also like the idea of a more natural control scheme. Instead of both hands gripping a controller or one hand on a mouse and the other on the keyboard, you’re essentially gripping a magic wand. The Wii comes with a sports game and to mimic the motions that you perform in real sports is just plain cool. I’m really looking forward to it.

TV. Lately we’ve been watching Lost, Desperate Housewives, Gilmore Girls, Heroes, The Nine, The New Adventures of Old Christine and old episodes of Seinfeld. I still watch episodes of CSI, but Natalya won’t watch them with me because of the blood and guts. The last episode of Lost that I watched, I didn’t like too much. It was a bit unbelievable. Natalya & I regularly ask rhetorical questions like, “Why did she do that?” or “Why didn’t they do this?” and the answer usually is just, “Because it’s a TV show.” If there’s too many of those TVisms then it wasn’t a great episode. There were too many in the Lost episode “Every Man for Himself.”

Heroes is currently my favorite of the ones I listed, and also, Natalya’s least favorite. I think her favorite is either Seinfeld or Gilmore Girls. Seinfeld still hasn’t aged as far as quality. It aged enough that even though I remember main plot points, I’ve forgotten enough that I’m still delighted to watch them. Heroes is just an adult comic book made into live action, but still subdued enough that they can put it on TV. They’re trying to save NY from a nuclear explosion (some of them at least). I wonder if the show gets cancelled, in the last episode, they just fail to stop the nuke, and Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) happens around the globe. I hope it goes on to several seasons.

By the way, the picture is of Natalya on the Spanish Steps in Rome, taken last year on our New Year's trip.

Sick in the Loo

Not much to say. I’m sick. So is Natalya. Just normal colds with sore throats, runny noses and fuzzy heads. We still went out on Friday and Saturday night though. Smart, huh? We went to an EMBL party on Friday, which was interesting. The party was for the new bunch of scientists going for their PHDs. English is the language for EMBL so I liked it because I know everyone there can speak English.

Saturday we didn’t do much all day, but at night we went to “The Loo,” a small bar that we didn’t realize was a gay bar, even though we’d been there before. It was ok though because we went there to meet a friend of a friend that was visiting from Moscow and he happened to be gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.

“The Loo” is decorated like a toilet. It has some toilet seats (we sat on the comfortable, non-toilet shaped seats), a toilet paper dispenser, paper towel dispenser, and a bathtub, among other things.

Then we went to Ziegler’s, which wasn’t too crowded when we got there, but only got fuller as it got later. I was falling asleep, so I had to excuse myself and walk home. It was cool with Natalya and she wanted to stay, so I gave her some money and told her to take a taxi since nobody would be walking our way and it wouldn’t cost much because it wasn’t far. When I left, all the seats were taken, and there was a big line of people paying to get in. It was around midnight. I went home and crashed.

Sunday we just stayed in and watched TV and slept and ate some soup. We took a little walk, but barely a block.

Happy 33rd Birthday to me!

I spent the day before my birthday, Saturday, Oct. 7th, cleaning up my Mini and changing the oil in it to sell it. Then we had a party and at midnight, cut and ate the birthday cake. Then we went down to O'Reilly's and I sang "In a Little While" by Uncle Kracker to finish off their night of karaoke. It was great.