This. The weight machines are not furniture. And playing with your phone isn’t a workout. Get your set done and get off. If everyone did this, none of us would have to wait very long for a machine.

His CRYPTONOMICON might just be the best novel I’ve *ever* read. But that’s just me: I read his THE BAROQUE CYCLE - which is a three thousand (!!!) page historical novel published in three volumes in the U.S. and eight in the U.K. - over a four months period, and if you had told me there was a three thousand page…

I recall that William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Lauren Beukes all have new novels coming out in 2019. They’re each on my “must read” list.

In the spirit of full disclosure, my daily driver is a 2016 Subaru WRX, in the summer I can often be found on a Triumph Bonneville, and I own a *lot* of watches. Used, new, mechanical, quartz, automatic, windup, you name it, I probably have one. I am not wealthy by any means, but I own *three* Rolexes, and at the…

Preaching to the choir. Car & Driver made the case for this decades ago - putting snow tires on a Porsche made it a passable winter driver. I’d been driving all season radials for decades, but when I bought my WRX, I splurged for a set of aftermarket wheels on which I but Blizzaks. Takes the tire shop maybe ten…

From Nobel prize winning physicist Kip Thorne’s 1994 book BLACK HOLES AND TIME WARPS. I was forced - FORCED, I tell you - to order three inexpensive wooden meter sticks from Amazon just so I can do this in real-life.

Get three meter sticks: that’s a measuring stick like a yard stick, but it’s one meter long, it’s divided up into one hundred centimeters, and every centimeter is divided up into ten millimeters.

(A couple of winters ago I was driving home from work in the dark in a bad snowstorm and I passed a county dump truck with a snow plow blade rolled over on its side in the median, its chains clearly visible on its tires. Sometimes it just doesn’t matter what equipment you have, you’re screwed anyway.)

Eh. Denver Colorado. All seasons is what I did for decades. Then, Subaru WRX. Now I have two sets of wheels, one with the OEM tires, one with Blizzaks. Takes just a few minutes for the tire shop to swap them. I worry a lot less.

I think I was carrying a Glock 23 that day. Now I’d probably use my HK VP9.

The instructor was all about choice #1 being avoiding a confrontation in the first place. I totally get that. Just don’t let yourself get into that situation if at all possible.

Years ago I took a tactical shooting class. Here’s what I learned that’s pertinent to a knife wielding attacker. A handgun has a useful range of about the length of a car or the width of a room. Any further than that and either you won’t hit your target or you won’t do enough damage to stop your attacker. If you’re…

Similar story with a five year old Goodyear Assurance Tripletred on my old Subaru Legacy GT. Alls well that ends well, but it could have turned out very different, coming apart on Interstate 70 during rush hour within sight of my exit.

No jury of your peers would have convicted you.

I couple of years ago, Mrs. Overclock and I were smack in the middle of the second season of DEXTER. Then one evening, we tried to bring it up on Netflix streaming on our Tivo, and it wasn’t there. We grabbed a tablet, noodled around on with the Netflix app, and verified that it has disappeared. Netflix no longer had…

(I wish that woman in the lead stock photo *was* Allison Shoemaker, because then I could ask her where she got those awesome sunglasses.)

This was always how I figured it worked - some kind of quantum tunneling on a macroscopic scale - until they had a Duplicated Kirk, and later a Duplicated Riker, and later a trapped Scotty, and... well, you get the idea. Stargate SG-1 pulled a similar thing: I figured it was a wormhole you just stepped through, until…

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” — James Mattis

I don’t care where the beef comes from or who ground it. I’m getting my steaks medium-rare but my burgers well done. That’s my plan to stay out of the hospital.

This. They make a *great* double feature. And watching them that way reveals how many tropes they share. (That’s not a bad thing, it’s a fun thing.)