Book Review: Forever War

In The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, you are given the story of a soldier fighting a far off enemy for reasons he does not understand. But in fighting that enemy, he is rapidly alienated from his own species by the progress of time and his lack of aging due to relativity. There are many direct associations that can be made between this and the Vietnam War (for reasons of the Author's involvement) and many have made comparisons between this and Starship Troopers by R.A.H. where the focus of the comparison has been on Starship being more optimistic while in Forever War there is a general sense of dread and then just resolve.

This book was excellent. This is the first time, in my relatively short time of reading Science Fiction, that a book gave me very real sense of dread about the future. On the main characters first trip back to Earth, he is faced with a very different world that has been changed in the 30 years he was gone by food shortages and rising class violence and lawlessness because of how food is handled. Just reading the causes and effects that Haldeman lays out still gives me chills at how very plausible it is.

Of course this trip back to Earth really sets forth the desire for the main character to re-enlist just to leave behind an Earth he does not know. And for then on out, you are given glimpses into the way that the worlds change as our hero finds himself out on longer and longer missions, where he just loses touch with what humanity has become.

Overall, this is definitely a book I can recommend. Don't be put off by the timeline as it is still an amazing story and setup. Also I recommend to make sure you get the latest author definitive edition as that covers alot more of the negative future aspects.

Miranda playing "Where is..."

Taken on Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas

I know many of you are eagerly awaiting Boxing Day, but some of us are content with a nice relaxing Christmas day. Presents are nearly open. Family has been mostly called. Internet occasionally has been working.

So far Michelle has talked to all her family. I will likely talk to my family tonight once they get back from other family stuff. Miranda has been opening presents like crazy and loving it. Although it is funny when she finds a toy she likes, you can ask her to open more presents, but all you get is vigorous head shaking and a quiet little no.

It might be disconcerting for some but we have been avoiding the whole Santa thing. I think we are better off just telling Miranda what the holiday means and to say that the presents from from those that we love and love us. I think that is better than Santa.

But here is to the start of an excellent day and fun times spent with my small little family. May all of you have a great and wonderful Christmas.

I am not dead

I swear I will make a real post sometime this weekend. If you want to blame anything, blame the video games. When Miranda is awake it is time to play, but when she goes to bed... I tend to game.

Speaking of which, if you have a 360 and don't have Crackdown, you should pick it up cause it is only $20 at Amazon. (See previous posts...)

$20! Seriously, get it.

Review: Call of Duty 4

So recently I purchased Call of Duty 4 based upon the reviews of Tycho and my friend MatchesMMalone. Let me say that the Multiplayer mode had me hooked right away. The role playing game aspects of experience leading to new abilities and new weapons is really addicting as the leveling up is not tedious in the early levels and really addicting as you bring new weapons into play. Basically as you progress through the multiplayer game you have experience affecting your rank and personal abilities, along with unlocking new sets of challenges. Challenges are ways of increasing rank more quickly as you get experience bonuses for accomplishing a challenge. One challenge would be to kill 5 enemies while in the crouched position or perhaps to call in 5 UAVs. Then there are also specific challenges associated with each weapon in the game. By completing these challenges, you not only get experience but you can acquire new camouflage for the guns or new scopes and capabilities.

So multiplayer aside, there is a great single player campaign here as well, but it is missing a multiplayer coop mode that would have made this absolutely stellar. The single player campaign puts you in the shoes of 3 separate soldiers with specific objectives to meet. The missions are well scripted (much to the same degree that the missions in Halo 3 or other Call of Duty games are well scripted), the story is well told and missions range from easy to fun to challenging without getting to terribly annoying. I ran through the game on Hardened difficulty and really got stuck in only a couple of places where I spent ungodly amounts of reloads attempting to accomplish the mission. But the ending is satisfying and spectacular and very anti-climatic.

So based on this, the multiplayer aspects alone would warrant getting this game, but add in a fun, exciting (~6 hours) single player mode and I think we have a winner.

Where have I been?

Well, it seems that I took a long break from posting. I don't count the flash post as I was just playing with one of the Amazon associate widgets. They are written in flash and I was curious about how they looked on a web page. Now I know.

As hit the national news, large chunks of the Pacific Northwest ended up underwater. Luckily, we avoided that, although we did get a large amount of rain, there are advantages to living near the top of a hill although one could worry about mudslides. Nope, we made out ok.

Mostly I have had a few house guests. John "MatchesMMalone" Knight spent a few days with us as he was out for work. He got a tour of a couple of facilities at Microsoft as well as doing some speaking at the University of Portland. But wait he wasn't all. My parents came out for a week as well to spend time with their granddaughter.

Overall it was fun. We had a cookout while John was here so that we could get together some ex-Whirlpool folks for reminiscing. But I also got my butt kicked playing Risk. Never fight a land war in Asia.



Past that my parents, wife and daughter spent time traveling the area while I took off a couple of days to hang out with them as well. One of the days we made it down to the newly renovated Seattle Aquarium. They have really done a great job with it and Miranda had a blast. Also caught some lunch at Ivar's Acres of Clams which was excellent.

Otherwise it was just a week of visit with friends and family (not to mention all the cleaning leading up to it) and just had a relaxing time.

Things my daughter loves playing with

Happy Thanksgiving

I am thankful for many things, first and foremost that the day is nearly over and I get some rest. Wow is it a busy day.

We followed the lead of last year and invited the Vassigh family over for the daily feast. It was lots of fun and it is great to see Ali, Steph and Darius again. No pictures this year. Had too much fun to remember the camera.

House guests

Well, I haven't posted much lately because we have been prepping the house for some guests that will be staying with us the first weekend of December. Mr. Knight aka MatchesMMalone will be visiting the PacNW as well as my parents. So along with that, I needed to make sure we had enough sleeping berths for everyone. So Michelle picked out a new bed and we have been turning my office into the fourth bedroom. I can pleasantly say that the office is clean (which is the first time since I finished drywalling, mudding, painting, and carpeting this room) and now has a bed in it. The worst part about it was just the shear amount of stuff that was scattered about in here. We really have some filing to do now and to decide what papers gets shredded (old stuff) and what we keep (new stuff).

Next to do is move the bed from our room to the guest bedroom in preparations for the arrival of a new bed next week. So I have to say that I have had a pretty productive weekend. Oh, and I really haven't slept.

And with that I believe that some coffee is in order.

Computer...

Well, I have to say that it feels weird still to have a fast computer again. The effect it's had on what I do with my computer is still nill. I still check email. I still surf the net. Although, I can do so with ease and speed. The biggest surprise to me so far in these intervening years is how fast USB 2.0 is compared to it's previous versions. Pretty pathetic huh?

That being said, working with photographs is now much more of a joy. And I am looking forward to trying out some of the PC only games that I have missed out on, specifically Spore.

I am not sold on Vista. I ended up turning off most of the Aero improvements. I don't need fancy stuff when I use the computer. I made it look like good old Win95. I am ok with that. More it is just easier for me find things. I may switch it back when I feel like monkeying with it, but I see these things as very utilitarian.

Cork Dorks

Given that I am not a connoisseur, but try to be one, I found this article on the Subjectivity of Wine to be pretty cool. Most of the time, I tend to keep my classification simply to drinkable and not drinkable. The second part of my analysis hits on day two with the size of my headache.

Will talk about my new PC later.

Misc post

Couple things have happened lately. First, I am likely to do nanowrimo this year, but I have firm beliefs that I won't finish it. I just want to do it to practice writing, but in no way will feel obligated to complete the 50k words in a single month. Mostly to do so would risk time with family and I don't want to do that. In such, I am going to try using one of the online office programs as I am replacing my desktop computer.

I recently got a Zune, mostly cause it was cheap, and partly because I wanted a media player. The device arrived yesterday, but due to gaming, I just set it to charging and played for a while. Once I was done gaming, I started the whole installation process. Now I would like to say that I feel like I am handy at computers, I have cobbled together many machines and have limped many along for a while. This installation process left me with tons of wasted time. First off this is a gen-1 zune and I figured my 4+ year old desktop would suffice for it's media connection. Wrong. The Zune may say that it works with USB 1.0 but that is a lie. I spent 3 hours trying to install the software in such a way as to work with my device and at the end of that, I pulled out my 3 year old laptop with a broken power plug and installed it on that. But the problem is that it is a 1.4GHz Centrino which translates to slow. So today, I did some bargain computer shopping while waiting during installations and have purchased a HP Pavilion M9040N Elite Desktop PC. Usually I order Dell, but due to the fact that lately I have noticed more and more troubles with Dells (over the last 3 years) and coupled with a decent amount of machine for the price, I went with the HP. The real drawback I see here is that it has Vista. Sigh.

Along with this Zune purchase, I was also under the incorrect assumption that it could possibly work with Amazon Unbox since I have a couple of shows downloaded that I have not watched. Again, I am disappointed. Sorry Microsoft, but when I buy a player from you, I expect it to work with Plays for Sure. Yes, if I would have done some research I would have realized this. Shame on me. But this DRM thing is really screwing with the consumer. I mean, damn it, I want to spend my money with you fuckers, but I do and ... and ... and you punch me in the face.

(I lost in the beatdown again! I need to switch to boxer.)

Nanowrimo

Well, we have finally reached November. Now I need to decide if I am going to do National Novel Writing Month. I have done this in the past as in before Miranda. I am not sure if I am up for it though.

Back from Oootaw

Well we are back from Salt Lake City and our visit with Ben and Karen (and 4 kitties). It was lots of fun. Miranda seemed to do passably well on the airplane, but it was only a 2 hour flight so we weren't really pushing it. In fact, I think any longer and we would have been in trouble. But it was fun seeing friends that now live in a lonely part of the world.

We did our routine match of Munchkin (Cthulu) along with some gaming on the DS and knitting (although you can guess who was doing what). Sleeping was interesting. Miranda slept great, we didn't as we heard all of her tossing and turning. Honestly, I didn't think you could run a marathon in your sleep but now have to reconsider my assessment.

I got to watch part of the Lions victory (woo-hoo) even though watching football makes Karen break out in hives. Also Ben introduced me to Portal which might have to be the coolest game I have run across in a long time. The graphics were great and the music was fantastic, but the real killer is that it is a first person puzzle game. Really makes you think through a lot of the levels. So that is my stamp of approval. Lots of thinking, lots of fun (the voice acting and script are fantastic) and it just makes for an enjoyable 4 hours.

As for the Lions... well, they were not stellar on every play but overall they made each drive on offense and defense strategically important to the game. They made the Bears work for long stuff while going soft on the short and I have to say that I was very impressed with the defensive line while there were a few breakdowns on the offensive line. But they were going against the Bears.

Halolcatz

INVIZIBEL WARTHAWG GUN

Found it! DJ Jazzy Jeff talks about music innovation

Innovation: The Digital Prophecy Of DJ Jazzy Jeff

10 minute draft timer

Thank goodness. Last years draft (which I watched all of) and this years draft (which I watched all of) took way to long. Finally they are going only have the first 2 rounds on day one and they are shortening the time to make the pick (which I think will lead to more Minnesota type draft day snafus).

Family tries

Well we pass through a few weeks since I last did a family update. Everyone's fine. Yup. Miranda had her 18 month checkup and the doc is pleased with the weight she has regained and with the motor skills. Also Miranda went to the pumpkin farm on the same day and thoroughly enjoyed playing in the mud puddles.

I'm doing ok and Michelle seems to be doing ok. We survived the windstorm. We've been playing way too much puzzle quest on xbla. Michelle is doing a bunch of alternative cooking where she puts pureed vegetables in various things (meatloaf, cookies, mac and cheese, brownies) and to be honest it is pretty good. I can definitely say that I could use the additional vegetables, so big win for Michelle. Miranda is still picky, but occasionally decides she will gorge...

Lately I have been reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Great book. The book centers around a book called Cryptonomicon and the families that have had a heavy involvement in it, covering both modern day and WWII. The writing is excellent and engaging and the characters are interesting. Once I get further I will put up a review but I have been working on it for about 2 weeks and am only half way through.

Finished Ringworld by Larry Niven and found it to be good and interesting, but at the same point it did not grab me and make me read till I couldn't keep my eyes open. The story of a vast engineering marvel created by an advanced civilization that doesn't seem to be around anymore in any great numbers, while the science was good, the characters were neat but not great or compelling. As I try to increase my reading base, I figured this was a book I needed to read although, I am thinking I should have read The Mote in God's Eye instead, although I may read that at a later time.

Next up on my reading list is Speaker for the Dead (Ender, Book 2) by Orson Scott Card, although I may insert Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1) before it as I haven't read the first book in the series in about 8 years so maybe I should brush up on the story... Either way I am looking forward to reading some OSC.

Why George?

Dear owner of the Star Wars franchise,

I have been dumb enough to purchase many things that are part of this extensive franchise over the years. Some have been pretty good like the original trilogy and the Bioware games based on the license, but some have been just plain bad like some of the various books using the same recycled plotline or perhaps the Darth Vader voice helmet. I am really saddened by how much you have taken something that was iconic in our childhood and used that lovely nostalgic feeling to drain our bank accounts and destroy a memory. Sometimes tighter quality control can help, but sometimes it is just better to STOP.

Thank you,
Aaron

More on the mini music revolution....

Jeff Townes aka DJ Jazzy Jeff talks about his views on the digital music movement. It is interesting to see other artists talking about what music means and what the recording industry is trying to go through. One of statements:

As a result of his commitment to understanding the digital space his revenues from being a DJ have seen a dramatic increase now that he practically gives his music away for free and focuses on "super-serving" his customer with an "experience" vs just selling plastic discs. (Sounds very Long Tail right?) He is the first to say, "Music should be free, the experience is what you should be paying for"

is interesting especially if you have had a chance to the read the book, The Experience Economy. People pay will pay more for better experiences. Does that mean that music is now a commodity and all we are seeing is the industry fighting that fact. A fact that many other industries have had to face?


*** UPDATED: I removed the link. For some odd reason it was empty. I don't think I posted it empty. But maybe I did. Either way, my searching the net did not bring up the article :(