top 100 sci-fi

So I found a torrent for the top 100 sci-fi books of all time on audio book. So I figure I will at least start each of the books and see which one I make it through. The ones that I have seen the movie are going to be tough because I don't like knowing where a book is going (eg. Contact, Jurasic Park, and Starship Troopers)

Count Completed Before 2011: 16

Count Completed 2011: 2

Count Completed 2012: 7
Count Quit 2012: 2

Count Completed 2013: 1

Total Completed/Quit: 29

Title	Author	Year	Comment
Ender's Game [S1]	Orson Scott Card	1985	before 2011
Dune [S1]	Frank Herbert	1965	before 2011
Foundation [S1-3]	Isaac Asimov	1951	before 2011
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy [S1]	Douglas Adams	1979	2011
1984	George Orwell	1949	before 2011
Stranger in a Strange Land	Robert A Heinlein	1961	2012
Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury	1954	before 2011
2001: A Space Odyssey	Arthur C Clarke	1968	2012
[C] I, Robot	Isaac Asimov	1950	2012
Starship Troopers	Robert A Heinlein	1959	2012
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?	Philip K Dick	1968	2012
Neuromancer	William Gibson	1984	quit in 2012
Ringworld	Larry Niven	1970
Rendezvous With Rama	Arthur C Clarke	1973	quit in 2012
Hyperion [S1]	Dan Simmons	1989	before 2011
The Time Machine	H G Wells	1895	before 2011
Brave New World	Aldous Huxley	1932	before 2011
Childhood's End	Arthur C Clarke	1954
The War of the Worlds	H G Wells	1898
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress	Robert A Heinlein	1966
The Forever War	Joe Haldeman	1974
[C] The Martian Chronicles	Ray Bradbury	1950
Slaughterhouse Five	Kurt Vonnegut	1969	before 2011
Snow Crash	Neal Stephenson	1992	2012
The Left Hand of Darkness	Ursula K Le Guin	1969	2012
The Mote in God's Eye	Niven & Pournelle	1975
Speaker for the Dead [S2]	Orson Scott Card	1986	before 2011
Jurassic Park	Michael Crichton	1990
The Man in the High Castle	Philip K Dick	1962
The Caves of Steel	Isaac Asimov	1954
The Stars My Destination	Alfred Bester	1956
Lord of Light	Roger Zelazny	1967
Gateway	Frederik Pohl	1977
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea	Jules Verne	1870
Solaris	Stanislaw Lem	1961
The Andromeda Strain	Michael Crichton	1969
A Wrinkle In Time	Madeleine L'Engle	1962	2013
Contact	Carl Sagan	1985
The Gods Themselves	Isaac Asimov	1972
Cat's Cradle	Kurt Vonnegut	1963	before 2011
Aback	Philip K Dick	1969
A Fire Upon the Deep	Vernor Vinge	1991	2011
The Day of the Triffids	John Wyndham	1951
Cryptonomicon	Neal Stephenson	1999	before 2011
A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess	1962
Red Mars [S1]	Kim Stanley Robinson	1992
Time Enough For Love	Robert A Heinlein	1973
A Canticle for Leibowitz	Walter M Miller	1959
Flowers for Algernon	Daniel Keyes	1966	before 2011
The End Of Eternity	Isaac Asimov	1955
Frankenstein	Mary Shelley	1818
Journey to the Center of the Earth	Jules Verne	1864	2011
Battlefield Earth	L Ron Hubbard	1982
The Dispossessed	Ursula K Le Guin	1974
The Diamond Age	Neal Stephenson	1995
Player Of Games [S2]	Iain M Banks	1988
The Reality Dysfunction [S1]	Peter F Hamilton	1996
Startide Rising [S2]	David Brin	1983
Ender's Shadow [S1]	Orson Scott Card	1999	before 2011
To Your Scattered Bodies Go	Philip Jose Farmer	1971
The Sirens of Titan	Kurt Vonnegut	1959	before 2011
Eon	Greg Bear	1985
A Scanner Darkly	Philip K Dick	1977
Lucifer's Hammer	Niven & Pournelle	1977
The City and the Stars	Arthur C Clarke	1956
The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood	1985
The Demolished Man	Alfred Bester	1953
The Stainless Steel Rat [S1]	Harry Harrison	1961
Sphere	Michael Crichton	1987
The Door Into Summer	Robert A Heinlein	1956
The Shadow of the Torturer [S1]	Gene Wolfe	1980
Revelation Space [S1]	Alastair Reynolds	2000
Citizen Of the Galaxy	Robert A Heinlein	1957
The Invisible Man	H G Wells	1897
The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch	Philip K Dick	1964
Doomsday Book	Connie Willis	1992
Ilium	Dan Simmons	2003	before 2011
The Puppet Masters	Robert A Heinlein	1951
Have Space-Suit - Will Travel	Robert A Heinlein	1958
Out of the Silent Planet [S1]	C S Lewis	1938
A Princess of Mars [S1]	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1912
Altered Carbon [S1]	Richard Morgan	2002
The Chrysalids	John Wyndham	1955
The Lathe of Heaven	Ursula K Le Guin	1971
Old Man's War	John Scalzi	2005
Use of Weapons [S3]	Iain M Banks	1990
Way Station	Clifford Simak	1963
Flatland	Edwin A Abbott	1884
The Road	Cormac McCarthy	2006
VALIS	Philip K Dick	1981
Roadside Picnic	Arkady & Boris Strugatsky	1972
Stand on Zanzibar	John Brunner	1969
[C] The Cyberiad	Stanislaw Lem	1974
The Postman	David Brin	1985
The Forge of God	Greg Bear	1987
The Many-Colored Land [S1]	Julian May	1981
The Fountains of Paradise	Arthur C Clarke	1979
The Lost World	Arthur Conan Doyle	1912
[C] Cities in Flight	James Blish	1955
The Uplift War [S3]	David Brin	1987

man in white

So I almost didn't write this post. Really my last post was based on the idle thoughts of a dog walk and doing it again would be redundant. But in the case of a story that wants to be told, the story will not stop until it must be told.

First of all, Jenny is off visiting family in Minnesota and I am left at home to supervise the puppies. I spent the morning at Snowbird enjoying a bluebird day on groomed runs, came home and took some nappy time. I figured I should take the dogs on a walk around the neighborhood, so I opened the door to check out the weather. It was one of those moments where you realize you have been napping inside on a beautiful 60 degree day in the middle of February. Looking for a reason for a journey I decided that a man with black shoes should own a black belt, to live otherwise would just be silly (Jenny has made me watch one too many episodes of What Not to Where). I made it a couple of houses down the street in a short sleeve shirt before realizing that the shady areas were a bit chilly.

I have a rule that I like to break, never buy anything nice and white. This isn't to doubt my purity or me ability to eat without spilling. It ultimate comes down to me liking to play at any given time. Awhile ago I bought a white zip-up cotton jacket that I could where over a polo shitrt at work. My work has a casual dress code but I don't think looking like a dirty mountain bum would go over well, so I try to put some thought into my apparel. When buying this, I thought very clearly that this was for work and not play. This story is so predictable that I almost can't bare to tell it.

So I walked the dogs to Nordstrom Rack and bought a black belt. Then saw a park across the street and figured with the warm weather it might be worth a trip. I walked on the sidewalk, used crosswalks and even walked the paved loop around the park. How could anything go wrong?

Near the end, I figured the puppers were a bit thirsty and there was a babbling brook off the side of the trail. So I started to walk them over when I saw that it was extremely muddy from the freshly melted ice and snow. I tried to change directions when my right foot slid in the mud. My left was still on stable ground, so I pushed off of it to get my balance and to land on the dry ground just ahead. Once my left foot landed in the mud just in front of me which was not dry ground, I put on full-flail mode.

Now lets take a break for me to pat my own back. I am an excellent faller. Some people are athletic and well balanced and rarely fall. That is not me. I am constantly finding my self hiking, climbing, running, and jumping with no clue how I am going to stay on my feet. In general once I flail enough, I find myself standing where I started no worse for ware.

So I flail. I think I throw in about 3 additional steps (on top of my first 2) while my center of gravity is falling towards the ground. Yet this magical mud before me seems impervious to my flailing. I decide (loosely used word since this all happened in less than 1 second) to just catch myself with my hands and land on my knees to protect my white apparel. Super-mud takes out my hand, drops me to my elbow and lands me on my back. I quickly bounce up to minimize the oozing.

So I walk the rest of the way to the water. Get the dogs their drink and wash off my hands.

Now I head home. I have a nice 30 or so minutes to think abut my stupid fall and wether it was even worth the time to tell the story. I figure it isn't really that funny unless you understand how clearly I had thought when buying this jacket that I would never put it in a situation to get dirty.

I get to my front door, ready to wash myself off, when I realize I don't have my keys...

Laying in the mud between step 3 and step 5 on the bank of a babbling brook were my precious house/car keys, just waiting for this story to be interesting enough to tell.

No Animals were harmed in the writing of this blog

So I don't really blog all that much. Normally one or two sentence on Facebook accomplishes my goal. This little 5 minute event takes at least 3 sentence to tell.

I was stopped at an intersection of a fairly big street and a fairly average street (900 S, 700 E for SLC folks). I saw a lady walking two yorkies on a retractable leash or I guess in this situation two retractable leashes. Now these leashes are normally 10 or 12 feet long. I just checked online and they do have 26' long leashes, so I am guessing this is what she had.

As she approached the intersection, I was astounded by how far ahead these leashes could stretch and was waiting to see her pull them back or to see if they were trained to sit at intersections. The best I can tell she called for them as they got close and they jumped around like little excited cat-dogs. They never went into the intersection but they didn't seem too under control. The lady then turned to walk down the street I was driving on and the direction I was driving. Luckily this is a street with a sidewalk which is about 10' away from any cars. (Yes some of you can see where this math might start heading).

As I approached the dog walker, her dogs were on the grass between the sidewalk and the road. Fortunately being a dog lover, I was watching the dogs and not the road. Now the cool thing about retractable leashes is that they come with a lock button on them, so you can stop your dog from walking into the street and the cool thing about yorkies are that they are so light you can pull on their leash and whip them around like a...something you whip around. I then saw one of the yorkies jump off the curb into the street, so I honked my horn and took my foot off the gas. I really figured having a dog in the street and car honking its horn would cause the lady to put the brakes on her dog or to pull her dog back to her. A half second later, I realized she was not reacting at all.

Now heading at 30 mph to a dog that has walked an additional 6 ft to the center of my lane and cars coming at me in the other direction. I decide it is about time to slam on my brakes as hard as possible. Honestly by the time I felt the car start to slow down the dog was too close to the front of my car for me to see and by the time I stopped the dog's previous location was about even with the center of my car or even with my back tires. I really couldn't tell if I hit him or not since it would be an 8 lb dog impacting a 2000 lb squeeling car.

As soon as I stopped I looked up to my right and saw the lady casually standing there. I looked down and there were two doggies jumping around playing. I waited another second to see if the lady would show any emotion or something...nope.

So I drove home and wrote this.

Cupid's Snowy Arrow

Dear Robin Moores,

(name corrected on 1/5/09)

This email is written in the form of a letter for two reasons. One is that I am pretty sure Rob is the only one who reads my blog and B if he reads this he should come to Utah ASAP.

I ended last week snowboarding with two of my ole' college friends at Brighton and Solitude. They were tele skiing and we had a rompus good time hitting the blues. I also took Jenny out for her second day boarding and it went spectacular. Leaving this high for a week of work was a bit of a let down and so was having Jenny working on weekends. Let's say that the week itself was a bit of a hassle and I wish a quick painless death upon it.

I started the day off by doing some grocery shopping and house cleaning. After making up for Jenny working (I do chores to alleviate guilt about having free time), I set of for Snowbird Ski Resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Wait... "little" then why did you drive to the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon. I make mistakes. So I head over to the correct mountain and stare at the clock. Is it worth going to the mountain and spending $45 to board for 4 hours. I've been driving for an hour and would be sad if I didn't play in the snow a bit.

The parking lot and road are packed and it was a bit of a hike to the lift. Sidenote: I got new Solomon boots and they were awesome. So I get on the first lift I see and hit a blue to start the day off right. Now I find myself sitting in the snow stuck on a flat spot staring at 12 yr old skiers learning to do slalom. I am not feeling it today. I was so confident last weekend and now I'm forcing every turn.

I make it the next fast lift and decide to start balling down an other blue. There is about 12" of powder in the ungroomed and untouched parts of the mountain. Then I see it. A small opening in the fence with two little symbols of a black and pointy nature. They were so enticing and the trail didn't seem all that perilous.

Thus begins the greatest day of snowboarding in my life.

I head through the gate and the trail is full of powder and not to steep. I eventually get buried up to my waste. Sure it took some digging and hiking to get out but it was beautiful. I head around the corner and there is a steep drop off with tons of fresh snow and not too many trees to dodge. Heart pounding fun like I haven't had in ages.

I go for another two runs and am constantly checking out the super expensive tram that goes to the top of the mountain. I was wishing and hoping that the chair lift up there would open sometime soon. Now I look closer and it is moving. I can love the tops of things.

I ride up and see it again. Two pointy black symbols indicating a potential doom and a beautiful bowl full of sugary white goodness.

(not my image)

Done!


I ride a traverse around the top of the bowl. When I run out of momentum I drop in and yes I am Done!

Life is good and I have found peace.

In the end I found myself riding through trees, dropping off ledges, falling in powder, sliding on my chest, and the whole time I was daydreaming about writing this. Immortalizing this adventure.

Love Always,

Jimmy Budnik from the ultimate team

dawning of the age

So I meant to write an exciting blog about 2 consecutive days of snowboarding, followed by a snow storm and a night of snowshoeing. Unfortunately I was too busy playing in the snow to do that. Instead I shall welcome the dawning of the age of yuppiness. Ohh, sure I've been a yuppy for a while. Driving around in sports cars, wearing suits to work, dreading going to work in the morning, and so on. But yesterday I crossed the line.

I went out and not only bought a blackberry. I bought the fancy-shmanciest blackberry on the market, the Blackberry Bold (or Crackberry Cold if you like). I'm not counting the storm because I think they feel weird.
I don't really know what it can do so far. I have found an app where I talk and it searches for things from my voice. Google maps will find my location and be a GPS for me, with street view. I shall see.


Now for the long rambling story. Jenny gets an ATT discount through work and Tmobile doesn't get great coverage in this area, so we were thinking of switching plans. Since Skidaway ate my phone for dinner a couple years ago I still had a contract. This was going to end on 5/24/09. I looked at Tmobile's contract and saw that with over 180 days, it cost $200 to terminate a contract and with less than 180 it cost $100. Since my work will cover some of the expense of me getting a blackberry, I figured it would make up for this loss. ATT is so proud if it's 3G network that I felt like I had to use it but the Bold was the only blackberry with 3G capabilities and I do love toys. Yes, I had a sidekick before all the kids of the world even knew they existed. Jenny found a cool Pantech Matrix. It slides out to a QWERTY keyboard in one direction and a number pad in the perpendicular direction. So we went to get these. Oh, I missed a part and don't want to edit this. We got to the store at 7:05 and the sign said they closed at 7:00. Lucky for us the door was unlocked. We later found out the lock was broken (: So we went to get the phones and to jenny's discontent they did not have the Matrix. A bit later she settled on another phone and we asked to be put on the waiting list for the cool phone. So 45 minutes later a contract is signed, hundreds of dollars have vacated my life, and we are at home. I was a bit afraid ATT was going to rip us off, so I made sure we liked that deal before calling Tmobile.

I called Tmobile and they tried to pull the ole' "you owe us $200" game. I explained about the 180 days and asked to talk to a supervisor. They said he was in meeting and he would call me back in an hour. Two hours late I call back. By this time I read the contract in more detail and they had a fair argument. There is a link in the contract for people who signed before a certain date to go to in order to get their contract (very shady). It now takes about another half-hour of me explaining how my wife works all the time and she has no coverage there and how we need to switch. No deal.

Now I am going to go back to ATT and give up on my blackberry dreams. I head over at lunch and wait patiently to talk to the worker there. He listens to my story and says it won't be a problem to cancel my plan. At the last second he runs behind the scenes and comes back with a counter offer of 50 bucks for me plus 50 bucks for jenny to keep the phones. Deal!

Now I got my blackberry and jenny has her second best phone. At 5:00, I get a call and the cell phone guy says "guess what?" I quickly figure out that he has her phone...The Matrix.


The villagers rejoice.

PC is better than MAC

So I saw someone at work pop-up a mac looking thingy on a PC. This has inspired me to visually and somewhat functionally turn my PC into a mac. For the most part I just downloaded skins over things and a couple other programs. For more detailed information go here:
http://features.engadget.com/2004/06/09/turn-your-pc-into-a-mac/

Here is a screen shot of my pc (click to enbiggen image):

dog year and one

Over the past 8 years, I have lived my life.

I have moved across this country in that time, including Oklahoma, Indiana, Minnesota, Georgia, Colorado, and Utah. I have also traveled to France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Belize, Canada, Peru, Amsterdam, and other fun little places around the world. I have tried and failed and tried again and fallen in love. I have entered the work force and been through many jobs. I have been a truck loader, shelf-maker, paper-stacker, waiter, educator, even a cowboy one day, and yes an engineer. I have walked, run, jumped, driven, strolled, slept, talked, played, pondered, cared, teased, cried, hoped, hugged, and loved!

I am excited by the next 8 years because I can do and be more.