Hellraiser97

Finished Service Model week before last. It was good. Enjoyed it more than Cage of Souls for sure. That said, I'm not reading another one of his books for a while. Didn't realize I'd missed an Expeditionary Force novel last year, Aftermath, so fire that up and finished it yesterday. Lots of good laughs but overall the story was meh. Really I'm surprised they continued the series. It was pretty wrapped up I felt at the book before that. Not sure what I'm going to listen to next. Don't want to just plow through the next Expeditionary Force novel. Agreed. Finale was very satisfying and the epilogue was fantastic.

Criminally stupid cirlce jerk is the perfect description of A&M

So finished Cage of Souls and yeah, it was something. Again, excellent writing and world building, but a bit depressing. Not sure why I'm doing this to myself (probably because I had it in my Audible accout) but I'm reading another one of his books, Service Model. It's interesting for sure. Like Cage of Souls, not sure exactly where he's going with it and I'm 2/3 through. Next up, I'm hitting the latest Expeditionary Force book. I also got this recommendation from Audible - Ilium by Dan Simmons. It's about the Trojan War more or less it seems. Any of you recommend it? I liked the Hyperion series as I said above.

I'm a little pissed at aggy. Several of my friends that went there have already simply resigned themselves to the fact that we're going to win and that their school will always be second tier. They're non-stop lamenting the blown opportunity of the past 11 years. How the fuck am I supposed to enjoy taunting them with an attitude like that?!?

The two series I've read of Tchaikovsky's are Shards of Earth which I really liked and it's not sad/depressing and Children of Time which some may not find sad/depressing, but it's certainly not upbeat either. Both are high quality writing for sure. I read that about a decade ago when I went on a spree reading classic Sci-Fi. Could be really interesting as a movie for sure. I never read the sequels, but I heard they were not that great.

I finished the latest Undying Mercenaries book, Throne World. It was nothing original and seemed kind of short compared to the others, but still a fun read. I also finished Books 3 & 4 of the Bobiverse series. REally enjoyed those and where he's going with the series. Looks like there's a Book 5 that just came out. Right now, I'm listening to Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I'm on chapter 9 and so far, I'm not sold on it. The writing is excellent, but outside of it taking place in the distant future, doesn't really feel like Sci-Fi so far.

Yeah, there are plenty of other reasons we're a bunch of idiots!

It already has in many ways. I'm enjoying our seasons to be sure, but I was shocked at the start of the season to find out our top FOUR receivers are all transfers that came in after last season.

Just finished the last book. Yeah, it got a little wierd! I think what really annoyed me was there was SO much detail that frankly felt unnecessary. Overall enjoyed the series though.

I saw the movie with David Bowie a few years ago. Didn't realize it was a novel. Adding it to the list!

I have PreCheck. I realized after I posted that about the loyalty points. Good news though, I have one property still going on (and may do them as one off, side work in the future) and I can easily charge $70k as we finish that build. That would get me Platinum status and then with the amount I'll fly, maybe I can maintain it. Yeah, here's a short run down - 2015 moved from NYC to Austin, started business, 2016-2017 hit problems with banks, 2017-2019 worked through them, 2019 told wife things were good now, 2 days later she files for divorce, 12 months of divorce (including finding out all sorts of bad stuffI was oblivious to), business hits trouble due to divorce, as divorce wrapping up, try to scale business back up, but literraly come to agreement on divorce first week of COVID, made it through a couple years more, but the speed we could move, largely due to COVID crap, started killing us and tying up capital, 2022 rates spike, and business starts declining, through if we got through 2023 we could turn it around, decided at the beginning of the year that no, it was time to wind it down, been job searching since, can't find job in Austin for what I am best qualified to do (and can't get jobs that I'm reasonably qualified to do either), so now I'm looking at travelling, but at least I won't be broke. Started dating girlfriend about 2.5 years ago after doing the requisit dating crazy after crazy. Thanks for the link! Didn't know about that.

Thanks. I don't have status on AA right now. I think one of the credit cards you can get with a high fee gives you some type of status, so I'll check into that before I start flying.

My plan is possibly to leave my truck at long term parking (not sure how much that is these days) or even at the office and take an uber there. I won't be traveling with anything more than a backpack, so I'm not lugging anything around. I don't think the bus is an option on Wednesdays, but for Sundays going up, that's 4 hours and 15 minutes I can be doing something. I've only flown between AUS and DFW a handful of times, but my experience flying has been that it's not much faster overall when you factor in security, getting to the flight before take off, getting on the flight, flight time, taxing, getting off the plane, exiting the terminal, and the only real time do do anything is most, but not all, of that 50 minutes in the air. I appreciate the input, but I think at least for Sunday, it's somewhat feasible (and a lot cheaper than flying)