Dec 2007
Some good reading
Since I don't subscribe to cable I have to make good
use of my down time. I spend a lot of this time
reading. I've always enjoyed reading, and I find it a
great way to pass the time. I thought I'd highlight a
couple books I read this past year that I thought
were good.
Hungry Planet: What The World Eats - The premise of this book is an interesting one. A husband a wife team, one a writer the other a photographer, travelled the world and found families that would let them live with them for a week. The family would do their weekly grocery shopping and a photo would be taken of all the food that the family bought. A family recipe was also included. What makes the book so interesting is to see the various kinds of foods, how healthy some parts of the world are compared to others, and to see how much is spent on food by various cultures. Every story in the book was interesting, and the photos were spectacular.
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows - Yes, I realize I am 36 and this is a kids book, but J. K. Rowling writes in a way that makes it entertaining for all ages; plus, I read the other six books, can't very well not read the last one. I thought all the books of the series were great. It's a great story, the kind of thing I wish was around when I was young, maybe I would have read more. This book nicely wraps everything up.
You Suck: A Love Story - I love Christopher Moore. I have every one of his books, and I find them all entertaining. This book is a continuation of Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, so I recommend reading that one first.
The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime - Jasper Fforde has two lines of books that I read. First is the Nursery Crime books, which features Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department. In their world there is a such thing as fictional Nursery Rhyme creatures, and it makes for a great story. His other line of books are the Thursday Next series, which I also recommend. Jasper Fforde has a lot of the humor and great storytelling that Christopher Moore has.
People's History of The United States - I've been reading this book for a while. I pull it out at lunch when I have a chance and read a few pages. Howard Zinn is pretty controversial, and you shouldn't take everything in this book as fact, but it is a great history book. It's basically a book of history told through the people that lived at that time, through journals, newspaper articles, interviews, etc. This kind of lets you cut through the censored media to see what was really going on at the time, but it also presents you with a new problem, since a lot of this writing can't be backed up by hard facts. Still, I recommend it to anyone wanting to see the history of The United States from a different view.
Hungry Planet: What The World Eats - The premise of this book is an interesting one. A husband a wife team, one a writer the other a photographer, travelled the world and found families that would let them live with them for a week. The family would do their weekly grocery shopping and a photo would be taken of all the food that the family bought. A family recipe was also included. What makes the book so interesting is to see the various kinds of foods, how healthy some parts of the world are compared to others, and to see how much is spent on food by various cultures. Every story in the book was interesting, and the photos were spectacular.
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows - Yes, I realize I am 36 and this is a kids book, but J. K. Rowling writes in a way that makes it entertaining for all ages; plus, I read the other six books, can't very well not read the last one. I thought all the books of the series were great. It's a great story, the kind of thing I wish was around when I was young, maybe I would have read more. This book nicely wraps everything up.
You Suck: A Love Story - I love Christopher Moore. I have every one of his books, and I find them all entertaining. This book is a continuation of Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, so I recommend reading that one first.
The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime - Jasper Fforde has two lines of books that I read. First is the Nursery Crime books, which features Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department. In their world there is a such thing as fictional Nursery Rhyme creatures, and it makes for a great story. His other line of books are the Thursday Next series, which I also recommend. Jasper Fforde has a lot of the humor and great storytelling that Christopher Moore has.
People's History of The United States - I've been reading this book for a while. I pull it out at lunch when I have a chance and read a few pages. Howard Zinn is pretty controversial, and you shouldn't take everything in this book as fact, but it is a great history book. It's basically a book of history told through the people that lived at that time, through journals, newspaper articles, interviews, etc. This kind of lets you cut through the censored media to see what was really going on at the time, but it also presents you with a new problem, since a lot of this writing can't be backed up by hard facts. Still, I recommend it to anyone wanting to see the history of The United States from a different view.
|
Happy Holidays
Dec 26 2007 02:01 PM Filed in: Personal
It's the day after Christmas, and I am back in
Atlanta. I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in
Columbus, GA, visiting with my family. My sisters
were busy with their families Christmas Eve, so I
didn't see them until Christmas Day, when we all met
at Beth's house for our annual Christmas dinner.
This is the first Christmas that we didn't attend church on Christmas Eve. The past couple years we have gone to my sister Beth's church, as she is the only one in the family that actually goes to church more than once a year. This year my Mom wasn't interested in going there, so we spent Christmas Eve around the house. We were going to head out to catch a movie, but the more we thought about it, it just felt good to sit around in front of the fireplace, watch a little TV and talk.
My mother and I have a new tradition, we head out to Denny's for breakfast on Christmas morning. We've found if you get there early enough, around 8:30 or so, there isn't a wait. After that we both head home and nap for a little while before heading over to Beth's. Once we're at Beth's we eat then give the kids their presents.
It was a nice Christmas. I don't really expect much from the holiday any more. I am glad we don't do the whole gift exchange thing with the family and only concentrate on the kids. It relieves a lot of unneeded stress of trying to find a gift. The holiday has become way too commercial.
Paige and I exchanged gifts Sunday evening. She got me art supplies. I used to love to sit down and draw, and have really wanted to get back into it. I need to set aside time for doing it.
Paige and I are renting a villa at Callaway Gardens for New Years. We usually head to a restaurant and toast in the New Year there, but decided to try something different this year. We both enjoy staying away from annoying drunk party goers, which is why we aren't heading to a New Years party. Will be nice to toast in the New Year together.
Happy Holidays!!
This is the first Christmas that we didn't attend church on Christmas Eve. The past couple years we have gone to my sister Beth's church, as she is the only one in the family that actually goes to church more than once a year. This year my Mom wasn't interested in going there, so we spent Christmas Eve around the house. We were going to head out to catch a movie, but the more we thought about it, it just felt good to sit around in front of the fireplace, watch a little TV and talk.
My mother and I have a new tradition, we head out to Denny's for breakfast on Christmas morning. We've found if you get there early enough, around 8:30 or so, there isn't a wait. After that we both head home and nap for a little while before heading over to Beth's. Once we're at Beth's we eat then give the kids their presents.
It was a nice Christmas. I don't really expect much from the holiday any more. I am glad we don't do the whole gift exchange thing with the family and only concentrate on the kids. It relieves a lot of unneeded stress of trying to find a gift. The holiday has become way too commercial.
Paige and I exchanged gifts Sunday evening. She got me art supplies. I used to love to sit down and draw, and have really wanted to get back into it. I need to set aside time for doing it.
Paige and I are renting a villa at Callaway Gardens for New Years. We usually head to a restaurant and toast in the New Year there, but decided to try something different this year. We both enjoy staying away from annoying drunk party goers, which is why we aren't heading to a New Years party. Will be nice to toast in the New Year together.
Happy Holidays!!
Another Year Older, None The Wiser
Dec 19 2007 10:41 PM Filed in: Personal
This past weekend was my birthday, I am the big three
six. I had a great birthday. I spent it with friends.
Paige, Robin and I went out and had a great dinner at
Eurasia, in downtown Decatur. Robin gave me this
great gift, a History of American Beers. A galvanized
container with 6 different types of American beer
from the past, and a book on The History of American
Beer. I also got a great gift from Paige, Super Mario
Galaxy. I played it for about an hour, and it's
amazing. I love games that are all about game play
and not just fancy, realistic, graphics.
Almost launch time
Tomorrow is our final build, barring any major bugs
that need to be fixed, before our soft launch to a
few customers next week. It's amazing how this agile
development has produced a very usable application.
We've spent the past couple iterations doing a lot of
front end work. The back end and services seem to be
working well, we haven't had to touch any of the code
in a while. We've learned a lot about agile
development along the way. We've gotten better at
many aspects so it doesn't seem as overwhelming as it
sometimes felt. We still have a lot of development to
do, this is just us getting it in front of the users
so they can start banging on it, giving us feedback.
Had a blast in Santa Fe
Dec 13 2007 10:44 PM Filed in: Personal
Paige and I returned from our short little vacation
in Santa Fe Sunday. We had a great time. There aren't
many tourists in Santa Fe this time of year, so the
city was even quieter than usual. We stayed at the
same hotel as last time, The Inn of the Anasazi. We
actually got the same room as last time too, room
218. Paige's Mom stayed next door. Paige's sister,
her husband and their dog stayed at a hotel a couple
blocks away. The weather was great, more wintery than
the 70+ degree weather we are experiencing in
Atlanta. We're both glad we had visited Santa Fe
before, because we didn't really do much sight seeing
this time. We mainly spent the days eating, drinking
and hanging with her family.
Back up those back ups
Dec 13 2007 10:29 PM Filed in: Personal
I came back from my short vacation to a surprise. My
external backup drive was no longer booting up. I
tried a couple times, but from the sound of things,
the platters aren't even starting to spin, plus I get
no activity light. This wasn't too much of an issue,
because it seemed to me that the drive was near
death, so I purchased a new 500GB drive and started
moving stuff off one drive to another. I probably
have 90% of my music over, and all of my photos. I
lost a lot of my new TV shows I have downloaded, but
I have watched all of them, so that's not an issue.
The one file I did lose though is the file used by
RapidWeaver, the software I use for my web site.
RapidWeaver is a great piece of software, I got it as
part of one of those Mac bundle things they run every
so often on MacUpdate or MacHeist. It's not so much
drag and drop web development, or straight HTML
coding, although you have the option to do that. It's
more along the lines of you add a new Contact Form,
fill out a couple fields, and the form is generated
for you. Same with my blog. I add a blog page, all
the catagories and tags, RSS info, etc, then start
typing blog postings. RapidWeaver takes care of the
themes, publishing, etc. I like it. Since I lost the
file I had to create a new project. I will slowly add
back all the pages on my site. For now I just have a
home page, contact form and my blog. I have placed
the file on my laptop, so Time Machine will now be
making back ups, in case I need to recover the file
again some day.