6 December 1998: Borders of Infinity

Sunday, 6 December 1998:

Borders of Infinity

Predictably, it's been a pretty laid-back weekend for me.

Saturday I basically ran errands: Bought some Christmas presents, bought some cat food, and went to the office for a couple of hours, as my boss had asked the developers to come in for a few hours to test some piece of our code in the wake of Friday's big upgrade to Visual Basic 6. Only one other person - not a developer - was there, so I figured everyone else planned to come in later on, which was okay with me. I checked out what I had to check out, shored up a couple small issues I'd left dangling, and departed.

Then, last night, I read Bujold's collection Borders of Infinity, which encompasses three short stories about Miles Vorkosigan. The first one, "The Mountains of Mourning", is contained in Young Miles, between the first two Miles novels, and it's very good, all about Miles gaining perspective about why he's in his world's military and just who it is he, as a Vor Lord, is supposed to be serving.

The second, "Labyrinth", is an okay story about an adventure to the amoral world of Jackson's Whole, but it's pretty light. And the third, the title story, is about Miles being trapped in a prison camp which consists of an impenetrable dome through which food is occasionally issued. It's the meatiest - from a science fictional standpoint - of the three, although I think it's less successful than other Miles stories in terms of Miles using his brains and force of personality to persuade people to see things his way. It's still pretty exciting.

I wish I'd read this one before Brothers in Arms, since although the Borders framing sequence takes place after Brothers, it's pretty trivial, and all the main stories take place before Brothers. Still, not a big deal.

I did vanishingly little today. Spent a lot of time on-line, and backed up my hard disk. Spent a while playing with the cats, which they always love. Watched some football (as I type this I'm listening to the Minnesota Vikings knock the Chicago Bears back to college level), and mopped my floor. I also won an eBay auction for a rare Charles Addams book, but I may not end up with it since my bid was below the seller's "reserve" price, so they can choose not to sell it if they want. I think the seller sort of got shafted in that although the book is moderately rare, there were three other copies of the same book up for auction at the same time. Supply was momentarily high. If I'm lucky, I'll reap the benefits of this.

Oh, and I've forgotten to mention all the weather we've been having: The temperature has been up over 60 pretty much all week, and Friday this was combined with dense fog, so thick that apparently the Dane County airport was shut down. Yow! But today it cooled off to the mid-30s or so, and we started getting sleet and snow. We've ended up with light accumulation and a lot of slush on the road. Winter is here.

In the middle of all this, I called Karen and we went to Fat Jack's barbecue for dinner. It was a good meal, and we had a nice chat. It sounded like she needed to get out of the office anyway.

Watched a few more Homicide re-runs (haven't yet seen Friday's new one). The last two episodes of the third season were okay. "Colors" involves Tim Bayliss' brother having shot a foreign exchange student who was behaving strangely on his doorstep. I thought the racial overtones were a little forced. And "The Gas Man" involved a convict that Frank Pembleton had sent up the river getting out of jail on parole and deciding he wants to kill Frank. It's a very good psychological episode, mostly told from the stalker's side, which is intriguing.

And NBC re-ran a sixth season episode, "Full Court Press". The A story involved the murder of a high school basketball star, and was merely okay. But what was apparently the ongoing storyline at the time - a possible gang war, a corrupt judge, and less-than-savory personalities of some of the newer homicide detectives - including Mike Kellerman, who I'd never seen before - was more intriguing. I guess they're going to be airing several more re-runs over the next few weeks; I appreciate it.

Apparently Court TV will be picking up Homicide at the beginning of 1999. Hopefully they'll start from the beginning and I can get in on the whole series. One of my correspondents tells me the first two seasons are the best. (I also got tipped off to a rather neat TV scheduling site called TV Grid.)

Ahhh, television.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)