A Link and Some News

First, the link. I've got a review up at SFSignal of Jay Lake's Green. Go and read! I think you'll like the book and I hope you'll like the review. I'm also continuing my experiment in full disclosure of how a book gets to the top of my to-read pile... or my experiment in shameless name dropping. Either way.

But now the news! As of Monday I will be returning to the ranks of the fully employed. This is a real job, and I will really be working at Johnson Space Center (although not for NASA, for one of their contractors) which is nine kinds of awesome. I'm really excited about working with this group, and I can't wait to get started.

However, this is going to have all kinds of implications. You may have noticed that after a long dry spell (during which I was taking 4 graduate level electrical engineering classes and continuing to do work for SFSignal and Strange Horizons) I've finally been getting reviews posted both here and elsewhere. However, now with my 40+ hour/week commitment elsewhere, that will probably slow down again. Also, next semester I will most likely be taking 2 graduate classes (at night) along with my full-time job; things will likely grind to an almost-complete-halt (again) at that point. It will be worth it, however: if I go that route, I'll only delay finishing my MSEE by one semester, and I'd be done next spring. Over time I'll find a balance between all these different things (and eventually I won't be taking graduate classes anymore), so we'll see how things develop.

Some things are going to have to just get dropped. Unfortunately, one of them is the super-sekrit research project that I had told people about at various times. It was going to have to do with labor-intensive data collection and reader response theory. Because last winter was full of family emergency, and last semester was full of class work and editing work, and now this summer will be full of real full-time work, there's no way I'll be able to do the paperwork and data collection for this. Someday I hope to revive the idea, but I'm afraid for now it is not to be. Still, getting a full-time job, in this economy, working for the manned space flight program, is 100% worth it.