I'm happy to announce that Sophia Rose Edwards was born this morning at 10:35 weighing 6 pounds (2.7 kg) and measuring 19 inches (48 cm). She's a cutie and is doing well.

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Title: Starswarm
Author: Jerry Pournelle
Published: 1999 by Tor
ISBN: 0812538935

It's been a while since I've read a work of fiction, and even longer since I picked up any science fiction. That's a real shame because there's some good stuff out there. I learned about Jerry Pournelle from the TWiT podcast, which I listen to regularly. On the show he seems to be quite abreast of technology and somebody (could have been him, not sure) recommended Starswarm as a good first read of his. That's how this book and I became acquainted.

The story is about a boy named Kip who lives on a planet named Paradise, somewhere far far away from Earth. It's a colony run by a corporation named Great Western Enterprises. The planet is fairly earth-like, although not a clone by any means. First thing you might notice would be the blue sun. The local flora and fauna are different, although similar too. Some of the notables include centaurs, haters and the lovable starswarm. The latter is some kind of a water based plant which can grow to immense proportions but is largely misunderstood by the humans.

Well it turns out that Kip isn't an ordinary boy. For starters he has a computer chip in his head which he can use to talk to a mainframe computer. He's also not who he thinks he is. During the course of the book, he does eventually find the truth (which I'm trying hard not to give away). The events leading up to the discovery and those that unfold afterwards are pretty interesting and exciting.

I was rather pleased with the book. It held my interest well and I finished it in about a week. The story flowed smoothly and the science all seemed to fit in with the environment.

The one complaint I might make would be that the book ends rather abruptly. One page there's an intense standoff and the very next the book is over. There is very little in the way of resolution beyond a quick hand wave that "they lived happily ever after". In one way that might be a good thing as it left more pages to be filled with helicopter chases, gun fights and other assorted excitements. On his website, Pournelle indicates that Starswarm may be developed into a series, something that I'm certain it would be well suited for.

I enjoyed the book immensely and would recommend it to others. I undoubtedly will read more Pournelle novels.

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Way back on the 2nd day of this year I signed up for a digital TV converter box coupon. Actually I visited the site at about 2am on January 1st, but apparently they hadn't launched the site yet. Just this last week, on Tuesday in fact, my coupon finally arrived. I only got one because we only have one TV and if we were to ever get another TV, it would be digital so there really wasn't any point.

We had the option of shopping at Best Buy, Radio Shack, Circuit City and Walmart. Since I've sworn to never shop at Circuit City and to never buy electronics at Walmart, that left only two options. And Radio Shack kinda gives me the willies, so really I only had the one option. That's OK though. Best Buy hasn't ticked me off yet. Well, except that every time I go in they manage to slip my purchase into a plastic bag before I can ask them to use my canvas shopping bag. Oh, well.

I was hoping to have a few choices, which is why I took along the list of approved devices, but it turned out that Best Buy only carried a single model, the Insignia NS-DXA1. That made that easy. It was $59.99, which of course dropped to $19.99 with the coupon (plus tax).

For a quick review, I'll just say that the box works just as it is supposed to. We plugged it in, it scanned the frequencies and found every available channel. I was worried that I would have to get up and reorient my antenna (a large boom secured to my chimney). I was therefore extremely relieved that it Just Worked®. There was a brief period of concern though because it didn't pick up two channels, but after reading about them on Wikipedia I discovered that they were not assigned sister digital channels for the conversion. Instead, sometime between now and February 17, 2009 they will make an instant conversion. Luckily, those are the channels we watch the least.

With my digital converter the signal quality is great. The analog channels ranged from mostly OK to mostly not so much, but all were watchable. Now they're all crystal clear. We also now get 5 extra channels, one is a weather channel from the NBC affiliate, and 4 extra channels from PBS. The latter are a real bonus because one of them shows cartoons all day. My kids love PBS Kids.

My assessment would be that the digital conversion has gone well for me. Just took way too long. But is anybody really surprised about that?

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