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Here are some more mini-reviews of books, thanks to having too many books in the summer to read so they piled up and I eventually got to them. I’m going in order of when I read them.

First up: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Victoria Forester

And now, the thrilling conclusion to last week’s story, or rather, to the trilogy The Girl Who Could Fly.

At least that’s what I was hoping for. I mostly got a conclusion, but she left a couple of loose ends to have an opening for a fourth book. If you read the second book of the trilogy and liked it, then you should read this one.

Next up: The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett

This is the second book in the Discworld series. Maybe “series” is the wrong word for Discworld, more like collection of books. But this one definitely directly follows The Color of Magic. I still like his writing. If you liked the first book, go ahead with this one. If you didn’t read the first book, don’t start with this one.

Next up: Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

Like everyone else this year, I read Theo of Golden. Also like everyone else, I read it because a couple people I knew were reading it and all raved about it.

I liked it, it was worth reading.

Do not skip ahead, do not read the last part of the book early.

The book starts off seeming like a “slice of life” story. It ends up being a few slices of life and works in a plot. And some life lessons. The chapters are on the short side, so it’s a good book for reading in spurts, since you can set it down whenever you need to and pick it back up later without having to get back into it.

Next up: Sorcerer of the North by John Flanagan

This is book 5 of the Ranger’s Apprentice series. It follows book 4, but does not continue its plot.

This book was good, in the same vein as the rest of the series. The main characters are there, they get into trouble, they get out of trouble. If you’ve read books 1-4 then you’ll know what to expect. The only thing to note is that this is only the first half of the story – this book ends in a “to be continued” situation. So make sure you have easy access to book 6 after this.

Last up: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

I didn’t know much about this book, other than it was in our library and somewhere it made a list of good sci-fi books.

This took a long time to read. Unlike Theo of Golden, this book has long chapters and complex threads and I could not just read it whenever – I had to set aside blocks of time to read this.

But it was worth it.

There’s a bit of world-building involved, but more interesting was the species-building in the story. It takes a bit to understand the creatures in the story, because Vinge does not explain things right away. And that’s what makes the book good – you have to think about what you’ve read and put in effort to understand what’s going on. It also brings about a bit of joy of discovery, rather than having everything laid out for you. He doesn’t try to hide things, but because of the uniqueness of the worlds and species in the story, I didn’t quite catch onto some things until a chapter or two later, and then earlier things made more sense.

There is a plot, it’s not just worlds and species. There’s a main plot and then some side plots, the story is told from a few points of view. The conclusion was not exactly what I expected, but it was a conclusion. I later learned there is a sequel, but I’m not sure if I want to try that yet, just in case it doesn’t live up to this book.

That’s it for this review. More book reviews coming up later this year.

For some reason, I saw the words “centaur” and “centurion” in the same day and I wondered what would happen if you put the two together. So I found two renderings (since actual photos are not available) of a centaur and a centurion and I mashed them together and made this image for the internet to have.

Everyone knows the quote about an angel getting his wings, but I decided to update it for today’s world.

Teacher says “Every time you use AI, a data center gets its funding.”

Thanks to Zuzu Bailey for that quote.

I was wondering what would be next for Trump to rename, and it has always been weird that the federal government is located in the District of Columbia, so it made sense to me that Washington DC should become Washington DA for District of America.

Yes, I made this one up.

I go to usually one Michigan football game a year, with whichever children want to go. Now that the older two are at their own colleges, it was just me and Gamma this year. We happened to choose the Western Michigan game.

It was not a good game. It had a fantastic finish, but before then it was not good, unless you were a WMU fan.

The consensus among the UM fans in the section of the stadium where we were was that UM was not getting its money’s worth out of the NIL they are paying the QB.

My favorite quote, from some annoyed fan during a play in which the QB was scrambling around and looking like he was running out of time: “Throw the ball!” and then he did throw the ball but, since he was flinging it out of desperation and not on purpose, it fell incomplete, and then that same fan quickly followed up with “No, TO someone!”

That, along with various other grumblings, inspired me to slightly modify a photo of said quarterback, with a more appropriate name on his jersey.

A number of my logins require Two-Factor Authentication, where they email or text me a code to enter in addition to my password.

The accounts that text me are more convenient. I could just glance over at my phone, and the alert would pop up with the sender and the first part of the message, and the message was short enough that the snippet that appeared in the alert had the code, so I could quickly memorize the code without leaving the login page and continue on my merry way.

It also worked well if I happened to be on my laptop – I could glance over at my phone, see the code on the lock-screen alert, and no bother opening anything to continue working on my laptop.

But there was one company that sent longer texts, so I couldn’t read the code from the text alert. I had to open the text to read it. And that was inconvenient and thus annoying.

Then I got to thinking about it, and I realized that one company is the only one that’s actually secure. The other 2FA texts are not. Because if someone steals my phone, they can’t open it and read my texts, but they can read any text alerts that pop up on the lock screen.

I suppose I could change my Messages settings to not show a preview of the text in the alerts, but the main one that matters to me is the one that does it correctly, so I’m not going to bother.

We took advantage of the newly-opened Gordie Howe Bridge’s free multi-use pathway. All the other methods of entering Canada from Detroit cost money. But thanks to our friends to the south, bicyclists and pedestrians are not charged any tolls on the GHB.

So on a sunny Sunday afternoon, we tried it out. Here are some things that we noticed, and some might be helpful for you to know before you go.

The signage is lacking
You enter through a nondescript building. Here is the building, as seen from the bike path that connects to it and takes you to downtown Detroit if you want.

Can you tell if that closest doorway is the entrance or exit? No? Neither could we. It turns out that’s the exit, and the entrance is the farther door (left side of the photo, and the left of the two doors if you’re looking at the building from W. Jefferson).

The only way we could tell is by the sign off to the other side of the pathway.

You could also try the doors, as the exit doors won’t let you in. We did not do that, as we didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention from the border patrol people.

There are 3 ways to get cross the border at Detroit/Windsor: 2 bridges and one tunnel. Approaching all of those by car, there are plenty of signs to direct you where to go, and you know where to go and what to do and what is expected of you.

With the bike path, there is none of that. No sign on or near the doors that says it is a point-of-no-return. Nothing that warns people they will need proper documents past this point. We generally knew what we wanted to do, but it was still a guessing game.

When we through the entrance, there was a line of people.

We weren’t sure if that was the line to enter the official bridge pathway or what. We didn’t want to be rude, so we went the end of the line and started waiting. But it didn’t seem right because the line was facing the wrong way, so we asked people in line what the line was for and they said it was to get back into the US. If you want to go across the bridge, just go that way.

So we walked down the fully-fenced-in path (AKA the cage) and ended up on the start of the bridge. I turned around and took this picture, you can see the end of the cage on the right.

Once we were out in the open, it was a nice day – sunshine and a good breeze. The bridge was popular, but not too crowded. I expect once the novelty wears off it won’t be as popular.

They have a fence along the whole way that is meant to discourage people from jumping off the bridge, so the view looks like this:

But if you stick you phone between those slats it looks like this:

It is required of all bridge walkers to get a picture from straight underneath one of the two main towers. Here is my participation in that.

And at the halfway point on the bridge, there is a sign noting the actual border and some flags to help you remember which side is which.

We walked over the bridge, then when we got to Canadian soil, we turned around before having to go through Canadian border patrol.

There is not a good destination for walking.
After you get through the Canadian border patrol, you’re in an industrial area. It’s maybe half a mile to the nearest thing you could go to, which happens to be a Tim Horton’s because this is Canada.

I understand the industrial things there aren’t going to go away, because they are along the river for a reason and it’s not worth it to move things like electrical substations. But I would have liked a reason to continue my walk past the border patrol – give me a destination of some sort. Maybe someone is waiting for the initial flurry of activity to die down and see just how many bikers keep using the bridge, to justify setting up a cafe or bike shop or both near the bridge.

And it’s not just Windsor’s problem, the Detroit side isn’t much better. If you want a tour of bleak industrial settings, both sides of the bridge are fine.

The other two crossings (the tunnel and the Ambassador Bridge) take you to actual neighborhoods with things to do right there, but they don’t allow pedestrians. The GHB is the only one that allows pedestrians, but it was placed for direct access to the 401 freeway so there is not a good destination for pedestrians.

The trailhead is in the wrong spot.
The bridge website lists the official trailhead for starting in Detroit as the Clark Park. And it looks like a nice park. But there is not much parking, and it is almost 2 miles from the GHB pathway entrance. Nobody uses Clark Park to start their walk on the GHB.

There is street parking on W. Jefferson, all along the area by the GHB pathway entrance. There is a parking lot at the historical fort across the street too. And there is Delray Park just a block over and a block down. The official trailhead with parking should be close to the trail, not farther away from the trail than the trail is long.

So after we crossed back over the bridge and got back to the USA border patrol station, we joined the line confidently, knowing what the line was for. It was a long line but kept moving. An once we made it past the border we got in our minivan and left, mission accomplished. The consensus in the group seemed to be that it was fun to do once but no reason to do it again.