a pecuniary influx

Yesterday, my wife received a very nice check from her publisher, for the delivery of the manuscript of her novel "Code of the Wolf". To say that this influx of money was eagerly awaited is an accurate description.

a steampunk moment

I have a laptop provided by my employer so that I can support our system from the comfort of home at all hours, ungodly and ungodly. I normally plug in thru a cable, but there are times when I take the laptop to the living-room, in which case I connect to the system thru my home's WiFi. (I'm so proud that I managed to set that up.) This week though, whenever I tried to connect, my laptop would say that there was no wireless network around (which wasn't true) and that I should make sure that the wireless switch was on. After poking around the various softwares, and finding no such switch, I called tech support last night. After a 30-minute wait listening to a voice breathlessly telling me that serving me was very important and that somebody would get to me as soon as possible, I finally got a live human to talk to. After 15 minutes of scratching our heads, I found the switch.

It's an actual switch hidden on the thin front side.
A physical switch.
In this day and age.
That was quite a steampunk moment.

As for why the laptop has a switch to interrupt wireless communications, I have no idea.

"Miracle"

Last night, I finished Connie Willis's 1999 story collection "Miracle and Other Christmas Stories". What did I think? Well, in 2 weeks, Willis, straight from Denver, will be coming to Albuquerque's SF club, and you can expect that I'll ask her where I can find her other tales.

"Realms of Fantasy" revived

I read today that the magazine "Realms of Fantasy" has been given a new lease on life, having been acquired by another publisher. This news makes me very happy.