I don't have a single overriding topic to discuss this time around, so you get a flotsam and jetsam entry today.

The Computer is Dead, Long Live the Computer
   My Dell Dimension 2100 died a couple of weeks back. In my part of Texas, we get a fair number of lightning storms, and a doozy of one a while back, which struck while I was away from the house (but my computer was still running) caused a power outage that damaged my power supply and, apparently, the boot drive. Ever after, a warm boot would give me an "unmountable boot volume" error, though cold boots still worked.
   More recently, a set of stealth storms — caused by very humid conditions interacting with cooling nighttime temperatures, so there was no warning from the weather radar — resulted in more unexpected power outages, further weakening the system.
   But it was still running until a few days ago, when the second hard drive, the data drive, suddenly stopped acknowledging that it was formatted. I was in my second day of fiddling with that when the boot drive decided it would only boot to safe mode, and then only one time in three.
   So I bought a replacement, a Dell Dimension B110. It has 2.53GHz speed, 1 gig of RAM, a 160-gig hard drive, and a DVD-RW burner. Because of its status as a "refurb" (actually, it had simply been ordered by someone else and then returned before being opened, thus it's not refurbished at all) and because of a 15% discount I got by scurrilous means, it only ended up costing me $320 plus another $60 for tax and shipping.
   I'm very pleased with it so far, but the process of reinstalling all the software and retrieving all the data from backups is taking quite a while.

Okay
   Here's my rant for this installment. The word "okay" is not intrinsically evil, but it's distinctly modern. It can kick me out of the subjective reality of a Star Wars novel as fast as Jedi Reeboks, a Han and Leia visit to American Idol, or a cameo appearance by Lindsay Lohan (as herself) would. It all but shrieks, "You're not in a galaxy far far away, you're in your living room with a book in your hand." This makes me crazy, and if you ever see the word in a Star Wars book I've written, it has probably crept in by accident — the odds are very high that I didn't put it there.
   So I was wondering whether it had the same effect on other people. Leave me some feedback on this question, okay? Okay.

Philosophical Moosings
   I recently read The Dark Moose's eloquent entry on Blue Mod Group about the Talifan. I've known about fans like this for some time, but was disappointed that they'd been dignified with a name that some of them, however misguidedly, might embrace.
   On the comments for that entry, Wampa_Jedi asked if I'd ever been the target of trolls like this. Since comments are closed for that blog entry, I thought I'd reply here.
   After I temporarily took over the X-Wing series, I received some anonymous hate mail suggesting that my books sucked and that I should die, but it didn't persist. I received some more when, in one of my NJO novels, Kyp Durron opined in internal monologue that he was mightier than Luke, but that largely died down after I had explained the concept of subjective vs. objective point of view for about the thousandth time.
   So, no, I haven't yet been the subject of such a campaign. I certainly wouldn't welcome one, but if it happens, I'll deal with it. You take the bad with the good. And if you're lucky, you take the high road as you're doing so.

Book Tour
   I'm back from the most recent weekend of my book tour. In Indianapolis, the Bloodfin Garrison of the 501st and members of the Indy Knights put on a great show at the Barnes & Noble at Carmel. In St. Louis, local and midwest chapters of FanForce and the 501st did the same at the Sunset Hills Borders. Everybody made me feel very welcome, and I signed a lot of copies of Betrayal.
   Speaking of which, the book has hit the bestseller lists: #41 on USA Today (note that, unlike other bestseller lists, USA Today lumps all categories of books together — hardcover and softcover, nonfiction and fiction), #10 on the New York Times list, and #7 on the Publishers Weekly list. So when nobody's watching, I tend to break out into a Sithly jig from time to time.
   While I was in St. Louis, I did a podcast interview for Star Wars Action News, a collectors' show. You can access it from their web site, at http://www.swactionnews.com/. Please note that my part of the show starts about two-thirds of the way in, and I was jacked up on too much early-morning caffeine that day, so I sound a bit, um, rushed. (They should have been playing Flight of the Bumblebees on continuous loop behind me.)
   (By the way, the picture at the top of this blog entry is not from either of my booksigning events. The "2700" over Spider-Man's head suggests more than strongly that it's from San Diego Comic-Con.)

That's all for now...