Author: Mark

Mark works as a [REDACTED] for [REDACTED], currently residing in Iowa. CoffeeBear.net is a place for him to blather on about whatever strikes his fancy. He currently spends his "free" time working on a photography project, playing with his cat and attempting to keep his wife happy (not necessarily in that order).

I moved to a new house not that long ago. A couple of weeks back, my wife and I went to the DMV and updated our driver’s licenses. While we were there, we both requested that the DMV update our voter registrations. Approximately one week ago, my wife got a card in the mail confirming her voter registration had been updated. I got… nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. I got busy fighting with HR and the insurance company trying to get my health insurance cards1.

Then today rolls around. On a break at work, I start checking the Internet to find out where I’m supposed to go and vote tonight. While I’m doing that I run across a link allowing Iowa voters to check their voter registration. I try it out and find that my voter registration did NOT get updated. Grrrr. Tonight after dinner (roughly 6:15PM), Ariesna and I head over to the polling place to vote. I tell the person inside the door that I need the provisional ballot. She tells me to tell somebody else after I’ve signed in. I sign in, get in line and then tell the pollworker who has the book of names. She looks confused and refers me over to my 3rd pollworker of the evening.

Again, I get to wait around for my chance to talk to her. I explain my situation, including the bit about already talking the county auditor’s office. Her eyes look a bit glazed over and she seemed pretty confused. She mumbles something and then brings me some paperwork to fill out. Then she goes to try help 3-4 other people, disappears for a while and eventually comes back to take my paperwork. I hand it over and she disappears again. I hear somebody mention that the phone in the polling place doesn’t work, so apparently she’s running around the building to another room to call the county auditor’s office. Of course, if she could have kept track of what I’d said she wouldn’t have had to do that…. Eventually she comes back, gives me one of the provisional ballots and lets me vote. Wheee!

Next year, I’m so totally going to sign up for the absentee ballot. It’s just so much easier than dealing with understaffed (one of the other pollworkers mentioned they’d all been there since 6AM) & undertrained people at the polls.

1 So far, I’m still waiting. *sigh*

I recently ran across a couple of items online, but not on Amazon.com that I showed my wife as things I would like for Christmas. Since they weren’t on Amazon, I cannot just add them to my wishlist. She requested I add those items to CB.net as a blog post. I started to do so, but it occurred to me when I find other ideas I’d have to keep coming back and editing that post. And eventually the post would disappear off the front page, making it more difficult for her to find those suggestions. Then it I thought, why not just use my del.icio.us account and tag interesting items with “wishlist”? I couldn’t see a downside, as it’s easy for me to update and I can setup a bookmark for her to pull up the page to look at. So have at, oh wife of mine! 😀

At work, we had a massive potluck and I definitely won’t be packing a lunch next time we have a potluck. I’m used to potlucks where most people bring desserts and you have to bring your own “meal”. Yesterday’s potluck had the expected massive table of desserts but people also brought in 2 kinds of chili, 2 kinds of stew, roast beef, potato salad, a veggie tray, crackers and cheese.

At home, we weren’t sure what to expect for trick-or-treaters as this is our first Halloween in the new house. I’d talked to a neighbor and he said to expect something like 50-80 kids. We bought 2 large bags of candy and had some Halloween toys from previous years. Naively, we thought this would be enough. And perhaps it would have been if we only got 50-80 kids, but we actually got somewhere between 100-120 kids1! Still our goodies held out until about 7:45PM and trick-or-treating officially ended at 8:00PM; so we didn’t do too badly.

Overall, the kids were polite and it was a fun evening. Especially since I was lazy and let Ariesna do all the running around to get the candy to the kids2. However there were a couple of downers during the evening; for one, there were several kids who stood on the porch looking in their bags after getting their treats asking what they’d been given. What the heck is up with that? Sure, Ariesna was tossing some toys in with the candy but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what they were. Especially if they wait until they get home and really look over their loot. I probably wouldn’t have minded it much, but most of them doing it were the older kids who were probably borderline too old to be trick-or-treating anyway. So it was really ticking me off.

1 My wife has the exact number, but I forgot what she said it was.
2 I wasn’t entirely lazy, I spent about half the night trying to get a a fire blazing in the fireplace.

These quotes are all snippets of conversations with friends, familys and co-workers. Sometimes the people I know say the darnedest things (and they’re not even kids). *grin*

  • “Yeah, but I’ve got more crazy in me than life, the universe and everything.”
  • “Never give a nuclear weapon to an unstable girlfriend.”
  • “I’ll let you stick it wherever you want.”
  • “Graham crackers make everything better, even cold-blooded murder.”
Valley of the Soul

Valley of the Soul
My rating: 5 out of 5.

My first introduction to the world of Faldorrah came about 2 years ago. AWelkin knew the author and had an early copy of the first book, Ghosts in the Snow. My wife and I were over at AWelkin’s house for a visit, planning to watch some anime. However my wife picked up Ghosts in the Snow and was lost to us for the evening, as she wouldn’t put down the book for anything. I got my chance to read the book later that weekend and was hooked myself. That first book in this series combined elements I really enjoyed from a variety of genres into one book and it was fantastic. Then last year, Threads of Malice, the sequel was released. It was a good read, I found the second book to be too dark disturbing for my tastes. At the end of this month, the third book will finally be released. But having “connections” helps, as AWelkin was kind enough to provide me with an advanced reader’s copy. Fortunately, I’ll have to give it back and go out to buy my own copy.

Yes, you heard me right. I am quite happy to return this free copy so I can go out to buy my own copy. No, I’ve not lost my mind or been replaced by one of the pod people. While I tend to keep a grip on my spending money; this book is definitely worth buying to support the author. This third book in the series is probably Ms. Jones best work yet.

This time around Dubric is out of the castle investigating some gruesome1 animal killings. All of the characters who survived the Threads of Malice are still around but have definitely been psychologically scarred by their experiences. It’s really good nice…. Hmm, it’s horrible the sorts of things these characters have been put through but it’s great that Ms. Jones continues to build on her previous work, rather than just ignoring how her characters would react after living through something like that.

While Dubric is out in the field, he almost gets his first ghost of this book. I say almost because it’s just the head, the rest of the ghost’s body is missing. This is something new and disturbing for Dubric. The reason behind the ghosts showing up in parts2 was a surprise but one that fits nicely into the world Ms. Jones has created. In a sense there are multiple villains in this book and Ms. Jones kept me guessing throughout the book. Basically, if you like Ms. Jones’s other works (particularly her first book) then I’d highly recommend you pick this one up as well.

1 Not nearly so gruesome as the 2nd book in this series, but still rather unpleasant.
2 If you think revealing that there will be multiple ghosts in this book is some kind of spoiler, than you must be completely unfamiliar with Ms. Jones’s work.