Deciding on the school for my master’s. Had two choices: the no. 1 school in the US at that time, or an up-and-coming pgogram. The top school would have set me back about 200k in debt, but I was virtually guaranteed a job with a starting salary of 150k+, and a career path to the C-suite. The other school would give me a free ride, but it was anyone’s guess where’d I end up. I picked the free ride, and ended with a dead-end job for 40k. That was 20 years ago. Since then, that job gave me the push to leave the US, settle elsewhere, find a wife, start a family, and have an exciting new job with career progression. The choice, when I was deciding, couldn’t have been more clearly defined, and for years I kept thinking what if I picked the top school. Not anymore…

20C and sunny today, possibly the best beach day of the summer around here. And the local Starbucks had a sign up, saying that yhey ran out of pumpkin spice…

I always respond that in that case, “jpeg” should be pronounced “jfeg”.

"No pain, no gain. "

As someone who’s been running for over 30 years and working ou for 20, if there is pain, there is injury. When there is injury, you take a break and regress. People may say that muscle pain or stiff muscles are a sign of a good workout, not an injury. However, even with those your risk of injury is much higher, and you’ll eventually hurt yourself. “No pain” should be one of the outcomes of smart exercise, not an admonishment for not working hard enough.

If you insist on pronouncing “gif” as “gif” instead of “jif”, you should pronounce “jpeg” as “jfeg”.

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Tapiooooca!

Sorry; you are right. I never saw that reader with any other authors, so it’s not something that’s really stuck in my memory.

The Hyperion books by Dan Simmons. Hyperion has full cast, the rest doesn’t, but still very high quality narration.

Honourable mentions:

• Alastair Reynolds and John Lee collaborations. Lee has the perfect voice and tone for Reynolds’ precise (and somewhat aloof) language.
• Neil Gaiman books. Gaiman does his own narration, and I can’t imagine his books without his voice.

Dishonourable mention:

• John Scalzi, read by Will Wright. Wright reads as if every line in Scalzi’s works was hillarious. Scalzi is a very funny writer, but his books have somber set pieces, and Wright ruins the immersion there.