This is the Green lace card. Black had "Deathlace" and Red had "Chaoslace". While I like the idea of the "Lace" cards, as a beginning player I never found a good use for them. Even now, I suspect I wouldn't be able to find a good use for them. Cards like these are the chaff of the set and you would have to try really hard to make something good work out of them. But for some people, that is half the fun, ie, trying to make "jank" (the magic term for garbage cards, I have no idea where it came from) cards work. I am not one of those people though. So I will just look at the card and admire the art and call it a day.
Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, died for our sins and paid the penalty that a Just God demanded. Jesus showed His power over sin by not just dying for them, but overcoming them and rising from the dead. If you accept Him as Lord and Savior, you don't need to fear death or what awaits you in the afterlife.
Just as there are a multitude of platforms to blog from (wordpress, blogspot, tumblr, substack, etc) there are also a multitude of ways to follow those blogs. The ways I am aware of are as such:
Wordpress.com Reader
RSS Reader, such as Feedly
A Manual List of links saved somewhere easy to access for you
I use the Wordpress reader, which technically IS a form of an rss reader. It has its set of problems, which is why I am looking at other potentials. The biggest problem I have is that wordpress will randomly unsubscribe me from people's blogs. I follow around 45 blogs and it can be hard to keep track if someone has simply dropped off the blogging radar or if WP has unsubscribed me. I've tried counting and come up with different numbers on different days. And then I come up with different numbers whether I'm using the Jetpack app on my phone or online on my web browser.
The reason I keep using the WP Reader even with those issues is because of the notification system that WP has. While it sometimes falls down on the job of letting me know of pingbacks (when another wordpress site links to a specific post of mine, I get notified), in terms of letting me know about likes and comments and replies to comments, it does an excellent job.
From what I understand, RSS Feeders like Feedly don't do that. They simply list the sites you are following and the new posts by them. All other interactions are null. I also don't know if an rss feeder can unsubscribe you randomly like WP does.
Finally, keeping a list of the sites you follow however it is most convenient to you. Back in my early Blogspot days I had a separate blog dedicated to just the sites I followed. I checked them every day and went back to every site I had left a comment on in case the blog owner had replied. I was only following about 20 people and that dwindled drastically when Facebook opened up to the public. So it was do-able. I also wasn't working 45hrs a week. Now? I do NOT have the oomph to repeat that.
So what I want to know is how you keep up with the blogs you follow. Also, are keeping track of "Likes" and "Comments" important to you or not? I really want to know how you all do this aspect of blogging. Let me know in the comments. Cheers!
This
review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained
therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to
copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions.
Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted
Permission
Title:
Tower of Terror Series: Able Team #1 Author:
Dick Stivers Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars Genre:
Action/Adventure Pages: 123 Words:
41K Publish: 1982
Sigh.
I knew after reading The Stony Man Doctrine in
January (no review) that this attempt at reading more of the 80’s
and 90’s Men’s Adventure Stories probably wasn’t going to be a
splendid success. Even still, this was not what I was hoping for.
There
is action. Bad guys get beaten up, the good guys get beaten up.
People are shot and kabloo’ied and kidnapped to my heart’s
content. The problem is that there was a LOT of running around or
driving around between those bits and that was so boring that I was
going out of my skull.
I
was expecting a Die Hard rip off, even though Die Hard hadn’t been
produced yet ;-) The actual stuff at the tower takes about the final
10% of the book. Able Teams gets in, kills the bad guys, rescues the
hostages and warns all the law enforcement outside about tons of
booby traps inside. The End. I wanted some cat and mouse inside the
so-called Tower of Terror. Alas, it simply was not to be.
Finding
out that the owner of the company that owned the tower was embezzling
possible billions of dollars and using the terrorists as a cover, was
a good idea. It just didn’t translate into good writing which would
have translated into a better story.
I
know I loved the Mack Bolan books as a teenager and not so much as an
adult (Mack
Bolan #448) and that has
carried over to these other Gold Eagle productions. I’m not
surprised or even disappointed, but I admit I was hoping that maybe
the boy inside me would like this more. I’ve got one more “Action
Man” book to read, about another group of special forces men,
called Phoenix Force and then I’ll be done with these.
★★✬☆☆
From
the Publisher
A
Wall Street skyscraper had been invaded. Hostages were being held -
and, with them, enough confidential banking data to imperil the
entire world.
Ugly,
city-wide panic was inevitable until Able Team was called in. Carl
Lyons, Pol Blancanales and Gadgets Schwarz were the only possible
hardmen for such a mission.
The
invaders claimed to be FALN, the Puerto Rican terrorist group. But
they were not who they said they were, and their huge quantity of
devastating armament appeared to have come from. . . the Vietnamese.
This review is written with
a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede
all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing
without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at
WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Return of the Black
Widowers Series: The Black Widowers #6 Authors:
Isaac Asimov Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre:
Mystery Pages: 270 Words:
108K Publish: 2003
This is the final, posthumous volume of
the Black Widowers stories. When I started, I was under the
impression it was all reprints with a new intro and some blathering
by other authors. I was quite glad to find several new stories AND a
new Black Widower inspired story by another author.
The intro by Harlan Ellison was a
complete failure in my opinion. I’ve never read Ellison and after
this intro, I never plan to. I don’t like the man’s humor, his
writing style nor how he manages his words. He was supposed to be
praising Asimov and maybe in his own way, he was. But I disliked it
from the start. The afterwards, from Asimov’s autobiography was a
bit better, but that might just be because of my aversion to the
Introduction.
What really surprised me, in a good
way, was the two guest stories that were excellently done. I was
expecting some hackneyed writing that was riding on the coat tails.
Instead, I got two stories that I thought were worthy of inclusion
with the rest of the Black Widower tales. That’s a good way to
end.
It has also inspired me to go read
Asimov’s memoirs. I hope I have better luck with that than some of
the memoirs I’ve read in the past ;-)
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
"Introduction"
(Harlan Ellison)
"The Acquisitive Chuckle"
(from Tales of the Black Widowers)
"Ph As in Phony"
(from Tales of the Black Widowers)
"Early Sunday Morning"
(from Tales of the Black Widowers)
"The Obvious Factor"
(from Tales of the Black Widowers)
"The Iron Gem"
(from More Tales of the Black Widowers)
"To the Barest"
(from Casebook of the Black Widowers)
"Sixty Million Trillion
Combinations" (from Banquets of the Black Widowers)
"The Wrong House"
(from Banquets of the Black Widowers)
"The Redhead"
(from Banquets of the Black Widowers)
"Triple Devil"
(from Puzzles of the Black Widowers)
"The Men Who Read Isaac
Asimov" (William Brittain)
"Northwestward"
(from Magic)
"Yes, but Why?"
"Lost in a Space Warp"
"Police at the Door"
"The Haunted Cabin"
"The Guest's Guest"
"The Woman in the Bar"
(from Banquets of the Black Widowers)
We have a saying here in New England: "In Like a Lion, Out like a Lamb". This is in reference to March's weather. You can also reverse it. So if March starts off, say, by dumping almost 2feet of snow on you and then continues to snow every week, well, that's coming in like a lion. It means we're supposed to get gradually better and ease into April with warmer temps and smaller amounts of moisture. Ha! Ha I say. March came roaring in like a lion and dragged our carcass all over the place the entire month and then we got ticks from that lion when he left. Boooooo!
Work has changed a bit. We had one of the crew chiefs (we have 3 crews, each consisting of 2 men) leave end of February, beginning of March and one of the other instrument operators (not a crew chief) left last Friday. So we are down to 2 crews, just as the spring is coming and our busy season is starting to ramp up. Not that we haven't been busy before, mind you. There is a lot of work and we don't have the manpower to handle it. I'm glad I don't have to deal with that problem in the office.
The medication that Mrs B has been taking for close to 15 years now for her crohns disease is no longer effective so her GI dr (gastroenterologist) is trying to switch her to something else. We'll see how that shakes out with insurance. It'll be the same battle as her old medication but on a new hill, sigh. I'm also dealing with my own insulin changes but without the help of a Endocrinologist, just my family practice doctor. It is just going from name brand to generic, so it's more about the doctors office filling out the prescription correctly so the insurance accepts it. Let me digress for a second...
(Health Insurance is the worst thing to happen to our medical system here in the US, ever. There have been times that I have wanted to off every single Health Insurance CEO and their entire board of directors. They will burn for their crimes in the afterlife, for sure!)
Mrs B and I were introduced to the card game Munchkins last year and for Christmas we got 7 of the expansions to the game. We've been playing a game a couple of times a month and it's been fun. It is a simple game but with just enough complexity to keep me interested while not being so complex that Mrs B throws up her hands in despair (like Magic the Gathering). I like it enough that I'm even considering getting the Munchkins: Warhammer 40,000 version :-D That would all depend on whether Mrs B will play that or not.
Finally, since I changed the boring "My Week" posts to the sizzling and exciting "Imperatoris Chronicorum", I decided to latinize these Monthly Roundup & Rambling posts as well, because nothing says sizzling and exciting like a re-branding of the same exact product ;-) Ave, Caesar Bookstooge, morituri te salutant!
Cover Love:
Nothing was good enough to take the effort to put a full size picture in my dropbox account, create and edit the dropbox link so that WP will accept it and then put it here. Sometimes it is worth it and sometimes not. This was a "Not" month.
Plans for Next Month:
RE: Extinction will be reviewed next week.
Magic cards every Monday! Whooowheee ;-)
Exactly the same as this month. I'm still fighting the (losing) battle to keep Wednesdays free but I'm not giving in completely.
Why anybody would choose this name (Lifeforce) for a card is beyond me. I am certain somebody knew that horrible movie (Brian's Review), which was based on an even worse book (Bookstooge Survived "Space Vampires", but barely). But they sure would have had to have a sick mind to think it would be funny to put that name on a Magic card. Shame on them!
