May 2018 – Dave Nelson

book cover

Continuing the adventures of Barney and the Beer Can… I mean Joe Bishop and the great and all powerful Skippy. The feels in this one are real and plentiful.

I don’t really have a lot to say about this book other than that it is a continuation of the last book with lots more Skippy doing his thing. If you read or listened to the first book and didn’t like Skippy so much, then maybe this series is not for you. But if you loved Skippy then I think you will love this book.

R.C. Bray continues doing an amazing job bringing the snark to life.

From the publisher:

Colonel Joe Bishop made a promise, and he’s going to keep it: taking the captured alien starship Flying Dutchman back out. He doesn’t agree when the UN decides to send almost 70 elite Special Operations troops, hotshot pilots, and scientists with him; the mission is a fool’s errand he doesn’t expect to ever return from. At least this time, the Earth is safe, right?

Not so much.

©2016 Craig Alanson (P)2017 Podium Publishing

I rate SpecOps an 8 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone who liked Columbus Day.

I attended the Mechanical Keyboard Meetup at the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast (VCFSE) in Roswell Georgia. I have attended the VCF a couple of times in the past and it has always been interesting.

Getting to see and touch computer from my childhood and before is a lot of fun, and even better, many of them are in working order and available to play with. Typing on a Commodore 64 brought back a lot of good memories. Typing on the Atari 400 chiclet keyboard, not so much.

The Mechanical Keyboard Meetup was held in a corner of the room with over 100 keyboards on display. It was a great opportunity to see and touch boards from so many manufacturers and custom one-of-a-kind builds. But the environment was so loud that I was not comfortable trying to talk with people, so overall it was not very satisfying.

There are upcoming plans for another Meetup in October, hopefully it will be someplace that isn’t so crowded and loud.