Erin lasted longer than he expected. Two weeks he’d traveled through towns picking up supplies and killin’ every damn zombie he saw. But Erin knew he’d never make any genuine progress that way, so he left the back-roads for good. He followed the tributary streets into highways and finally the interstates, heading to the biggest mall he could find, knowing the zombies would congregate there to feed. He went in with guns blazing, hurling Molotov cocktails in every direction, and somehow emerged unscathed, like an immortal action hero.

Sam pressed the accelerator into the floorboards, trying not to stand in his panic. He risked a glance at Kristen and suppressed a sob. “She’s fine, man. Just drive!” Ben barked, holding her head and pressing the towel into her throat. Maybe a towel wasn’t the best choice, but they had to use something, didn’t they? “God damn it!” yelled Sam. “Just God damn everything.” Angry tears rolled down his cheeks even as he concentrated on the road, almost never looking at the speedometer that blared 90mph like an accusation.

I promised myself that Honor Among Enemies would be my last David Weber for a while, but I’ve already started In Enemy Hands. Ah well. This particular entry is pretty tame so far as the Honor Harrington Mythos is concerned. In order to get back into the good graces of the Manticoran military and political complex, Honor is given the task of ridding the Silesian Confederacy area of the pirates menacing their merchant and freight liners.

PostgreSQL can be both a beautiful thing, and an infuriating mess. Occasionally I look through the logs on one of our database servers to see if I can’t optimize some queries. It’s good practice, and is an excellent way to monitor basic system performance by watching for queries that take longer than might otherwise be possible. Sometimes performance can be fixed by tweaking an index, or manually rewriting the query and convincing a developer to integrate the changes.

At this rate, I may actually finish the Honor Harrington series before the heat death of the universe. Having just finished Flag in Exile by David Weber only fifteen years late, I think I’m getting the hang of this series. Though a friend at work recommended the series, and due to the length, I was suspicious it would be throw-away pulp; I’m willing to admit now that that my fears were mostly unwarranted.