Books, and the love of.

I've finished Trickster's Queen and now must wait. The next two books from her are due next year, one in each of the two universes. But neither is what I had hoped for - I want more that will show me Alanna and Aly and Daine and possibly Keladry. The next book in the universe is supposedly to be set 200 years in the past. I think I will come to like it, because she has that effect - but I don't feel that Aly's story is done. It's true her immediate tale was finished, but she promises to have a good many more important stories about her, and I want to see them more than I want to meet the new girl from 200 years ago....

Ah, well. Meanwhile, I was enthusiastically recommending Amy Thomson's The Color of Distance to someone (the sequel to it, Through Alien Eyes, is a good book - but Color is so exquisite it made of its sequel a huge disappointment for me - they are not on the same level). So I reread it. Now I can't stand the Star Trek books I had remaining. They're perfectly fine for what they are, I'm sure; but comparing them to the exquisite work of art that is Color is a vast disfavor, and I find myself uninterested in Trek just now. So I'm returning a couple of them to the library unread. I'm glad I had read most of them before I did this; I'll have to pick up the others another time, when the vivid wish for more books in the Color series (and closer to its awe-inspiring quality) has faded.

She has one out, Storyteller, that I hadn't heard of; not the same universe from what I can see, but so what? I've checked; the library has it, and there's a copy at my library. I'm thinking I will just go snag that one today (I can always place a hold if someone beats me to it, but with my luck if I hold it now, I will be unable to get it today). The only one of her books I'm aware of that the library doesn't have is Virtual Girl. That one's a good story - none of the three I've read by Thomson could be called less than good, in my opinion - but it's no Color. I don't imagine this one would be either. Everything came together in that book. But perhaps this one will be. I'm hoping for something good; that's a fair expectation from this author, I think. I wish she could consistently hit the Color mark, but I know an author who can do that sort of thing is rare. That she did it at all...I'm so glad I have that book.

Good? Bad? Which way to jump?

The house color is less distressing in full light, or else I am already beginning to be accustomed to it. I do not like it. Nor do I see it as an improvement from the neighborhood standpoint - it still stands out like a sore thumb, only now it is less pretty as it does so. The painters seem to be doing a good job but I find it hard to be pleased with them when they are engaged in the process of turning my house this color. Plus, we will owe them and we have property tax coming due soon as well. This does not thrill me. Granted the board will be paying us back most of it, nonetheless we foot the bill first and the timing is exquisitely annoying.

We've got a new network set up here, a proper one. I just did it myself and I'm already annoyed, as I was afraid I would be. The router I picked up made nice promises about IPSEC pass-through working, and it seems to be at most 3/4 true. I can get onto the work VPN with it, but I can't get to our email server, which was never a problem before. The ip ranges don't overlap - not that that should make a difference, but 'should' or not such things sometimes do. And I'm annoyed because it indicated it was fully configurable but it seems to in fact have no suitable option to change the timeout, just as I feared.

I could return it, and try again with another model or - better still for my bruised and annoyed pride - one from one of their competitors. But I don't really have hope of getting anything any better. This is why I asked Scott to ask his friend (who works on such things) for advice. Which his friend never gave. He just talked big to Scott about coming out and setting everything up, even going so far as to discuss the cost of NIC cards, thus indicating either he is a complete dolt or Scott gave him no real idea of what we wanted. I have no idea which one. I wanted the help of someone local who knows networks, but either the questions/answers were getting lost in translation or the guy was a useless moron - at least as regards this. I should have started this months ago, ignoring his existence, but I kept hoping for some actual help. Now I'm wishing I'd pestered D at work or asked around some more. I hate doing crap like this; I absolutely hate it.