Sunday, November 24, 2013

Timeline by Michael Crichton

I finished another book. Timeline by Michael Crichton. It was a good book. A fast paced Crichton read. In the book a group in France is excavating a 14 century site with castles on opposite sides of a river. The work is sponsored by a secretive company called ITC from Arizona. While doing the excavation the team finds an unexpected document on ancient parchment. Another unexpected document arrives via a man found mumbling incoherently in the Arizona desert. The France researchers realize ITC knows more about the site as it was in the 14th century than they should and they are summoned back to Arizona.

Back in AZ ITC has been working on a fantastic device. Based on the famous double-slit experiments where it was shown that every electron in the universe somehow "knows" about every other electron. They exploit the multiverse to show with some leaps of logic that it is possible to travel back in time. The modern researchers are sent back to 14th century France to find and bring back their professor who went back a few days earlier and then failed to return.

Typical Crichton techno thriller there are numerous unexpected twists both in France in the past and in USA in the present. The transporters only work for 37 hours and it's a race against time on both sites to bring the researchers back.

I liked this book. It was from a good phase in Chrichton's career. Crichton does the "grad students thrown into crazy situation" theme pretty well and this is a strong title.

I found the book at Doull's, a fine store. I thought I might be finished with Crichton but on the sites I can see there's still a couple titles left.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

switched to FibreOP

I'm writing this from Internet provided by Aliant FibreOP. They were in this week and did the install on Thursday. It's been working well so far. I was thinking of switching and there was a deal with a 42 inch TV to switch so I made the jump. Nice intro price $99 for the first three months. Then it just goes to what I had to pay Eastlink so no cost increase. The TV should be in by Christmas.

It's nice having some HD channels now. It will take some getting used to the new channel numbers but everything I cared about from the past is still there. The PVR is something that I've heard about but never used. Another nice throw in.

I now have a landline number again for the first time in many years. I still have to get a phone for it though. I don't need an answering machine as there's voicemail thrown in. It will be nice to have a reliable number again the cell can be sketchy where I live. I'll have to think about the phone. I might get a cordless.