(Oldest item in the email inbox) Way back on June 6th, I noted JobVent Takes Dirt Dishing To a Broader Audience and earlier this week, TechCrunch returned to the genre with New Forum Site To Gossip About Work. I’m not that interested in this class of sites except for the name JobVent. My one early…

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Last night, I caught up to the rest of the family and saw Ratatouille. Pixar fun, with a nice short to lead off the film per usual. Metacritic score of 96 is stratospheric. I enjoyed it, but wouldn’t put it up on that pedestal. A G movie that works for children but never talks down…

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I had a lot of fun seeing Live Free or Die Hard two weeks ago. Metacritic score of 69 is a touch low. Aside from the poor riff on True Lies (the jet scene), suspending disbelief and just going with the flow is fun. Not sure why Bruce Willis defines sardonic humor, but it’s a…

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Jarhead is a book I wouldn’t have picked up without seeing the movie. Subtitled “A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles,” Anthony Swofford’s memoir makes me wonder again that my father was in the Marine Corps reserves. Just doesn’t feel like my father’s kind of organization, but then I didn’t know my…

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Such an airplane book… The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer… if it hadn’t been sitting in a pile, I wouldn’t have remembered reading it. And it took the jacket blurb to clue me in to the story again. And that’s maybe three weeks after reading the book. Enough said.

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In past years, I’ve watched several days of the Tour de France in the early morning, or catching the repeat on OLN (now Versus) in the evenings. Some of my fonder moments a few years ago were getting up early with the boy and teaching him who Lance Armstrong was, as we ate breakfast in…

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Simon Winchester published A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 less than a year ago, in October 2006. Since April 18, 1906 was the earthquake of the title, he just made the centennial — hardly a coincidence. After my other recent earthquake book, I’m now fully…

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I returned Mad Dogs by James O’Grady to the library a few weeks ago. I liked the flashbacks in this thriller, which made the reading slightly more than just brain candy. The characters are more memorable than the ending, at least these few weeks later. I’ve heard of Six Days of the Condor, but never…

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Yesterday’s 4.2 magnitude earthquake was reported in today’s Chronicle this way: Quake rattles East Bay. The sub-hed? Magnitude 4.2 temblor causes little damage but may be foreshock Since every earthquake is seen as a possible precursor to the “big one,” the foreshock reference feels like a bit of dramatic license. But I did read A…

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I woke up to an earthquake this morning. My eyes didn’t snap open, but I woke up, clock says 4:43am, and things kept shaking for maybe 10 seconds more. I could hear things shaking, but nothing fell or was out of order when I got out of bed. I tried to go back to sleep,…

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