Hurricane Ian chez aztec

I still live in Central Florida, and a week ago we were on the path of Hurricane Ian.

We were incredibly lucky once again. There was flooding, some of it serious, in parts of the Greater Orlando area, but the wind didn’t do as much damage around here as it could have.

Letter from a YLS alum to Amy Chua–transcript

Courtney Milan shared this letter in a twitter thread, starting here. Due to the length of the letter, I am hosting the transcript here. For the record, I am adding screenshots of the pages Ms Milan posted at the end of the post too.

Hurricane #Irma chez aztec

As some of you may know, I’m in Florida, in the Greater Orlando area. We were in Hurricane Irma’s forecast path for several days. Fortunately, we were not hit directly.

My house is still standing. Lost some siding, some soffit, and the back porch is a loss, but otherwise, the house is still structurally sound. Yay!

On the other hand, my side yard is impassable, due to tree limbs and other debris that, by the grace of some unknown deity, didn’t hit the house itself. And I have no power, no internet, and no cell phone signal. Yay.

I am one of the lucky ones.

Thank you all who sent good thoughts our way.

So, about that “writing reviews” thing…

As some of you may know, I am a moderator at MyMedia, which started as one of the biggest LOST discussion forums back in September 2004. I cross-post most of my reviews over there, and recently I was asked to write a quick and dirty primer for the movie review subforum.

After a bit of thought, I realized it addresses one of my main pet peeves about reviewing (i.e., what makes for a good review). The post is after the fold, minus the bits that pertain specifically to MyMedia; I also have added a few further thoughts after it.