#bloomington

"My understanding is he helps send people to federal authorities," Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges said. "I think he’s going to see some federal authorities."

An employee with Immigration and Customs Enforcement who was arrested in a Minnesota child sex trafficking sting allegedly told police: “I’m ICE, boys.”

Alexander Back, 41, is a civilian employee who works as an auditor with the Department of Homeland Security. He was arrested along with 15 others earlier this month for allegedly attempting to solicit a 17-year-old girl for sex.

I freaking love Bassie!!! (≧∇≦)

Sorry for not posting as much I'm going through a burn out ˃̣̣̣̣︿˂̣̣̣̣

Send me requests via my ask/sub box!!! Please!!! Ty!!!

This week only, Barnes and Noble is offering 25% off pre-orders of my forthcoming novel Picks and Shovels.

My next novel, Picks and Shovels, is officially out in the US and Canada on Feb 17, and I'm about to leave on a 20+ city book-tour, which means there's a nonzero chance I'll be in a city near you between now and the end of the spring!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

Picks and Shovels is a standalone novel starring Martin Hench – my hard-charging, two-fisted, high-tech forensic accountant – in his very first adventure, in the early 1980s. It's a story about the Weird PC era, when no one was really certain what shape PCs should be, who should make them, who should buy them, and what they're for. It features a commercial war between two very different PC companies.

The first one, Fidelity Computing, is a predatory multi-level marketing faith scam, run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest, and an orthodox rabbi. Fidelity recruits people to exploit members of their faith communities by selling them third-rate PCs that are designed as rip-off lock-ins, forcing you to buy special floppies for their drives, special paper for their printers, and to use software that is incompatible with everything else in the world.

The second PC company is Computing Freedom, a rebel alliance of three former Fidelity Computing sales-managers: an orthodox woman who's been rejected by her family after coming out as queer; a Mormon woman who's rejected the Church over its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and a nun who's quit her order to join the Liberation Theology movement in the struggle for human rights in America's dirty wars.

In the middle of it all is Martin Hench, coming of age in San Francisco during the PC bubble, going to Dead Kennedys shows, getting radicalized by ACT UP!, and falling in love – all while serving as CFO and consigliere to Computing Freedom, as a trade war turns into a shooting war, and they have to flee for their lives.

The book's had fantastic early reviews, with endorsements from computer historians like Steven Levy (Hackers), Claire Evans (Broad-Band), John Markoff (What the Doormouse Said) and Dan'l Lewin (CEO of the Computer History Museum). Stephen Fry raved that he "hugely enjoyed" the "note perfect," "superb" story.

And I'm about to leave on tour! I have nineteen confirmed dates, and two nearly confirmed dates, and there's more to come! I hope you'll consider joining me at one of these events. I've got a bunch of fantastic conversation partners joining me onstage and online, and the bookstores that are hosting me are some of my favorite indie booksellers in the world.

Alco C430 Demonstrator

Someone on FB tipped me off that I may have unwittingly gotten a shot of an Alco C430 demonstrator unit. Once I had the chance, I did some digging and scanned a couple of slides today to confirm.

Indeed, I believe this unit, SCL 1275 is Alco 430-1 (one of three demonstrators built in March of 1967). At the time the L&N was leasing SCL units—hence the "L" applied to the unit I suppose.