Recent Annoyances

Believe it or not, I’m trying not to rant and complain too much these days, as I said last night to some friends I was hanging out with. But you know, I just spent the afternoon dealing with something that, as usual, incompetent idiots didn’t deal with, and I’m in a mood. And yes, this involves a water leak and my closet, though it’s a different closet — though the source of the previous one’s leak, if that says anything to you… But if you’re not up for a rant, just click on the link above, about the friends I …

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Got a Call from Starbucks Korea… :)

Right, so after my message the other day to Starbucks Seattle, I got a very courteous, polite, apologetic, and professional call this afternoon from someone at Starbucks Korea, who works in marketing and who gave me the lowdown on this story, after getting a call from Seattle sometime today. She told me that the Alien Registration Numbers weren’t usable for Starbucks wifi access at first, but that this was fixed in early February. (I think she said the 6th, but I’m not 100% sure of it.) She said that it should be working now. I told her that it had …

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Starbucks Nespot No Movement? Help!

UPDATE (Friday, 20 February, 2009): Starbucks called me the day after I posted this, and it looks like the problem may have been fixed since I last tried. (Or partially fixed, with more fixing to come?) Read the followup-post here. ORIGINAL POST: I personally find it annoying that Starbucks Korea offers (with partner NESPOT) free wifi in all its branches throughout Korea… but only to Korean citizens. I find it even more ridiculous because when they launched it, it was advertised in English, all proudly and happily, until it was discovered that foreigners couldn’t register with their alien registration numbers …

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Reactions…

Here are some recent reactions to my writing, or collections in which my work appears: Karen Burnham’s discussion of Hugo-worthy stories mentions my own “Dhuluma No More” and even links to a very flattering discussion of it in the course of a review of the Oct/Nov 2008 Asimov’s SF, tellingly titled “So What Should SF Be Talking About?” She called “Dhuluma No More” “the stand-out story” of the issue, and explained: This story hits a lot of Big Issues, and Makes You Think. Obviously there’s the idea that whatever we come up with in the West to mitigate climate change …

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