The light is on

It's time for Appleseed to once again cast the net out for reals; gonna spend some of today trolling through jobs.perl.org and such. I'm in an OK position, with an active client and the promise of another around the corner, but circumstances have given me room (and need) for one more.

So, if you happen to learn of some entity's need for some damn fine software consulting, you know where to direct them.

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Why yes, I am somewhat concerned about doing this in the midst of the changing financial climate. I am not aware of all the ways it affects this sort of activity, but it's probably making it harder for other business to borrow money for new projects - and that's just enough to worry about. But, here I am anyway.

Hmm, I guess a "Now accepting new clients! Lucky you!!" post on the Appleseed blog wouldn't be untoward. I should make the latest blog post show up on the front page somehow, mumble mumble...

Scary, but sad.

The McCain campaign decided to let Palin do as she please, and she's responded by encouraging entire crowds to hurl obscenities at their own media coverage, shout racial epithets, and call for murder.

Some pale that it sounds like the start of a lynch mob, but I disagree; they have no teeth left for that, and anyway that works best only when nobody's watching, which is hardly the case. No, the other side, smelling defeat, has nothing left to do but spend the campaign's waning weeks lolling about in their own filth, being stroked by their gibbering base. May they enjoy their one last decadent month before they sink into the bog forever.

Tonight's debate is going to suck to watch, though. Expect McCain to all but insinuate that Obama is suppressing photographs of himself, Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright and Matt Damon cackling together over a bomb-making bench.

I'll be here liveblarghing it again, regardless.

Beer taste update

Contrary to my earlier thinking: when I'm feeling a little overheated, I rather like a good hefeweizen.

(The one in my hand right now is Magic Hat Circus Boy. I am a little overheated because I just took a brisk walk around town on various errands, and was perhaps slightly overdressed, for lo it got a little warmer. Teh end.)

What I'm reading

I borrowed Charlie Stross's Halting State from radiotelescope a few weeks ago, but am still only halfway through it. A police procedural about the game industry, even a lightly SFnal one (set in a newly independent Scotland circa 201X), is not really what I wanna read right now. Deciding that I was more in the mood for a totally whack fantasy, and recalling that ahkond brought up Jack Vance's Dying Earth series in recent conversation, I sought that out. The Harvard Bookstore had a new paperback collection of all four novels for $20 - sold.

So far, I love them. The metagame hook for a modern fantasy fan is how they define a great deal of what would decades later become much of D&D's basic ruleset and milieu, particularly the notion of spells that vanish from your mind after you cast them, and sorcerors capable of holding more, and more difficult, spells in their brains as they gain wizardly experience. My enjoyment of the stories goes beyond this novelty (though I do get a kick out of it). They're smooth reading and, for half-century-old stuff, hardly dated.

So where am I with Brust? I have read through the first two Taltos collections (which cover Jhereg through Phoenix) and also picked up Dragon separately. I don't feel like reading the most recent two novels, both readily obtainable as new paperbacks, until go back to I fill in the holes.

Need games nao

I need to go play games now. I might end up blowing off the debate rather than blogging it; we'll see.