Ireland: Killarney (Sunday, February 24)

Written Monday, February 25 at 10:40 am, Killarney (at the kitchen table)

Went to the Internet café last night, late, for just 35 minutes.  Barely made a dent in my accumulated e-mail, but made sure the Rain Country folk knew I was alive, and replied to a couple work items.  Then went to the Danny Mann pub to use their wireless, and got through a bunch more e-mail.  Should have set up the e-mail program while there to just download all my e-mail, to take care of offline, but didn’t think to.  Tried to update QuickTime on the computer, but failed to get a good enough connection.  Looks like I need an XVid codec to view the videos I took on this computer, but the one out there for the Mac won’t run on a G3, so I’m out of luck; I can store them, but not view them except on the little Flip camera.  I’ll have to wait until I get home to do anything more with them.

We’re going north to Tralee and then out on the Dingle Peninsula, about another 120 miles of driving, it looks like.  No idea what the roads will be like, of course, and thus how fast the trip will be.  It’s also windy and rainy, so it may be a slow trip.

Looks like I’ll finally finish Larry Niven’s The Ringworld Throne today (I actually finished it on Tuesday).  I’ve only been working at it in spurts (when I travel) for a year and some.  Not as good as the previous two novels in the series; doubt I’ll get the fourth one.  I think the plot is scattered; the parts with the vampire slayers and the parts with Louis and Hindmost and company are only sort of intersecting, and there are too many pieces missing from the latter plotline for me to do more than stumble along.  Maybe everything will come together in the final 40-50 pages, but I’m not confident that it will be a satisfying conclusion.  And then I can get back to the second half of Peter David’s latest Star Trek novel, Before Dishonor, also lain fallow for a couple months.