So I’m at the dinner table with Jerry Pournelle and L.E. Modesitt, and Jerry turns to Leland and says “Who are you?”
“Lee Modesitt.”
“Oh. Haven’t heard of you. What do you do?”
Lee smiled. “I’ve written almost as many books as you have, Jerry.”
Jerry, only a little flustered, said “Well, I don’t read as much as I used to,” and then shoved a bite of salad into his mouth.

The two of them seemed to get along just fine after that. Jerry told us all a very amusing story about how Louis L’Amour became a famous author (it involves buying lots of beer for truckers).

Earlier in the afternoon we did a Star Trek LARP at the McAuliffe Space Education Center. It’s an amazingly cool facility, even if you do have to use a mouse to interact with the ship’s (Macintosh) computers. It was hilarious — Jerry was running sensors, but long before we actually boarded the ship he started shooting holes in the scenario. “Do you people know how big a light year actually IS?” Oh, and one of the “enemies” we had to placate on this mission was a team of 24th-century Greenpeacers, out to save Space from warp ruptures. Jerry and I agreed that as soon as shooting began with the Orion Nebula Pirates, the Greenpeacers were going to be declared “collateral damage.” Jerry’s first suggestion involved a black hole (“I guarantee, we will NOT have to worry about them complaining to the Federation President… even in the Star Trek universe”) but plausible deniablity is trickier there.

Kiki (my 9-year-old) was running the internal comms, and during a collision alarm she jumped under a nearby table. It turns out the smoke effects (yes, they blew the room full of smoke when we had our little collision with the Greenpeace runabout) pumped into the room through several vents, one of which was under the table with her. Almost as soon as the smoke began pouring out I found myself with the 9-year-old Internal Communications Officer in my lap, quite terrified, but laughing about it. Shortly afterwards we ran out of time. It’s a good thing too. The shields, they cannae take much more o’ this.

I use Staedtler Mars pigment liners for inking Schlock Mercenary, and they come in six sizes: 005,01,02,03,05, and 07. Most of my foreground characters are inked with the 03, but for the last couple of weeks I’ve been struggling with that pen. The nib is damaged, and I’ve been nursing it along in an effort to save some money.

Today I got fed up, and grabbed a new 03 from the box. Two panels’ worth of work later, I pick up my 03 to ink a foreground character, and realize that the nib is broken. Not only that, it’s broken EXACTLY like the 03 I replaced it with. Grrrr…

I looked down and figured I’d use the 02 instead, and there was another 03 in front of me. The new one.

Duh.

When you’re going to throw away a marker because it doesn’t work right, you have to throw it ALL THE WAY AWAY, Howard. That’s why there’s a trash can in your office.

–Howard

So the iTunes store has a Pepsi “redeem song” button.

My Diet Vanilla Pepsi bottles have no iTunes “Free Song” codes under the caps.

Does anybody out there know which Pepsi products DO have said codes?

–Howard

Fascinating article here.

Upshot: employees may risk getting fired for what they put in their blogs — especially if they talk about who they work for. This kind of speech is NOT protected under the First Amendment.

My opinion: Duh. Just because you CAN say something without being thrown in jail for it doesn’t mean you SHOULD. When I worked for Novell there were all kinds of things that I was not to talk about openly, under pain of being fired with cause. It’s a no-brainer, folks.

The article also talks about NON-employees being targeted, and how they can defend themselves the same way mainstream media journalists do. In this case the First Amendment is pretty good protection. If what you’re saying is true, or at least substantiated, you can’t really be sued for it. And as a non-employee you certainly can’t be fired for it.

Anyway, the article struck home for me because of my relationship with Novell. For example, while employed by Novell I was not allowed to voice ANY sort of opinion about SCO’s lawsuits even though as an IT industry insider it’s obvious that I HELD an opinion. Following my departure from Novell, I cheerfully mocked SCO and McBride with impunity, expressing an opinion formed from publicly available facts and the application of the same intelligence available to any primate capable of walking upright.

The 21st century has elevated the street-corner soapbox well above “lectern” height and handed us all megaphones. Through the resultant cacaphony, there actually seems to be useful information… just be careful about discussing the fingernails of the hand that feeds you, dawg.

–Howard