A fond farewell to a friend I never met.

Tonight I wish a fond farewell to Arthur C. Clarke, my favorite author, well, ever.

Despite being born well-after the space race happened, his stories of adventures beyond this planet fascinated me from a young age. Although people are mostly familiar with 2001: A Space Odyssey, I was more enamoured with his short stories. The very first one I read was The Nine Billion Names of God, and with those eight pages I was absolutely hooked.

Sadly, I have had a few opportunities to meet Arthur C. Clarke while he was in town giving discussions, and I never took advantage of any of them. Regrets? Probably. Such is life.

Thanks for energizing my imagination of time travel, far-away planets, criminals on astroids, kittens in space, and other unusual topics which provides a wonderful escape into what may become the future of our civilization.

A dying art form.

It seems that electronics and media are taking over home entertainment more and more each day.

Growing up, I always played a lot of board games with my family. I also put together a lot of jigsaw puzzles. In a fit of nostalgia this weekend, I went in search of a new jigsaw puzzle.

The first stop was at Fashion Place mall, where I distinctly remember a kiosk set up with tons of board games and probably a few puzzles. At least I thought I remembered, that is. I wandered the mall back and forth several times, but there was no source of games to be seen.

Undeterred, I made my way across the street to Toys 'r' Us. Surely they must have puzzles! I walked down the board game aisle and noted that it was labeled with puzzles too ... but the only thing on the shelves were Lego sets. I wandered over several aisles in either direction of the supposed puzzle aisle, but there were none to be found.

Frustrated, I finally broke down and asked an employee. They seemed a bit taken aback that somebody was actually looking for jigsaw puzzles! They pointed me to a back corner of the store. And what did I find in this back corner? Maybe ten puzzles, seven of which were horrible Thomas Kinkade paintings, two of which were puzzles with 20 pieces for kids, and one Simpsons "puzzle" which didn't even consist of any pieces. Nothing with 1000 pieces or more.

And you know what's worse? My search for Trivial Pursuit came up empty-handed too! They had Trivial Pursuit for Kids, Trivial Pursuit 80s Edition, and Trivial Pursuit with DVD, but not just plain-Jane Trival Pursuit. What the hell.

I guess I'm turning into an old geezer, and I need to get over my love of entertainment which has fallen by the wayside.

Luckily I can order a few puzzles off the internet, but the $7 shipping sucks, not to mention having to wait a week for them to show up. I WANT MY ENTERTAINMENT NOW!