Back at Home, Reading

Mon 21 Nov 2005 2:59am

I braved the pitfalls of three airports, at-the-gate luggage checking, and four hour layovers today, but I am now safely back at home in Billings. I find air travel mildly exciting and tiring at the same time. It’s fun to pretend that you’re some important traveler or mover/shaker with your laptop. On the other hand, the seats on those darn planes (Northwest) are so uncomfortable that my squirming quickly destroys any illusion of mysterious “coolness” that I may temporarily be able to create. Flying in first class is really the only way to unify the two, if only it weren’t so expensive.

Luckily, I had a good book to take my mind off the seats and the layover. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Neal Stephenson is an excellent author. Newsweek called him “the hacker Hemingway”, and they are definitely correct. He’s clever, intelligent, very fun to read, and he actually weaves interesting musing on technology into most (if not all) of his stories without making it sound corny or forced. Snow Crash may be one of the best books that I’ve ever read. I would highly recommend it, especially to the technology literate. I’m currently reading Quicksilver, the first book of his Baroque Cycle. I’d rather be reading Cryptonomicon, but it was already checked out of the school library. However, I recommend any/all of his books without hesitation.

Finally, my friend Brian posted on the simultaneous releases of Firefox 1.5 and the new album by The Darkness. The stars are aligning. Let us rock.

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Sean McBride
Engineer / Web Developer
Boston, MA - Billings, MT

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