Mr. Hunter is one of my favorite action/adventure writers. The Master Sniper is one of his early works and is a story about a SS Sniper at the end of the WW2 that intends to prevent the spread of Zionism with a special mission and weapon.
Rating (1-5): 5
I’ve read most of the books authored by Mr. Baldacci and this is another good one. It is a combination murder / mystery / techno thriller with enough twists and turns to keep you turning the pages. The book started out pretty good at the beginning but dragged in the middle. The ending was good but not all of the story lines that were introduced were closed out.
Rating (1-5): 4
I saw this book during a recent trip to the bookstore and I went and checked it out at my local library and read it one evening. Each “fact” is a page long so it is easy to read … perfect toilet reading! If you have a party coming up and you want to impress people with your vast intellect by saying something like “actually, that’s not true …” check this book out.
Rating (1-5): 3
Sample facts:
“The potato did not originate in Ireland”
“The pelvis is not a large bone below the waist”
“Adam and Eve did not eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden”
On the way home from Austin via Southwest Airlines, Terry Funk, the former professional wrestler, got on our plane in Dallas. I recognized him immediately. He’s in his early 60′s but still looks like he could probably whip about 90% of the population. He had on a cool t-shirt that had an outline image of a wrestler falling to the mat with the caption “I do my own stunts” underneath. He had a Texas flag-motifed hat with the caption “Funkster” on the front. My wife and I were waiting in line for the flight when he walked up to the counter … or I should say hobbled up. Wrestling has definitely taken a big toll on this man’s body. We got on the plane ahead of him. As he was walking down the aisle I reached out, tapped his bag, and complimented him on how I enjoyed watching him wrestle in the past. Terry Funk was more or less responsible for taking the “bad boy” concept to the next level and blazed a trail for all of the current professional wrestlers on the circuit. He stopped and very pleasantly thanked me and asked us where we were going and then continued on down to his seat. I was glad I said something to him.
I travel by airline quite a bit for business and occasional personal trips. Once in awhile I happen to spot a celebrity on the same flight. So I thought I’d mention these sightings in a blog category. This past week my wife and I flew down on Southwest Airlines to Austin for a short vacation in San Antonio and Austin. As we were boarding the first flight, Derrick Johnson, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, queued up right next to us. At first I wasn’t sure who it was but I remembered a picture of him and after we got back I compared my memory to online pictures and it was him. He flew on the various (3) legs to Austin with us. I didn’t approach him or say anything to him since I wasn’t 100% at the time. He was on the phone quite a bit during the layovers and carried a tennis ball that he bounced around while waiting for the flights. He seemed like an alright guy … has to be to be flying Soutwest Airlines!
I heard about this wine in a recent winecast.net podcast and decided to hunt down a bottle and try it out. My wife and I were on a small vacation down in Texas this past week (topic for an upcoming blog) and found a bottle. I bought it for about $9US and opened it after we got home. This is an excellent wine for the price. It tastes like a lot of Pinot Noirs I’ve purchased in the $20US range. If you are a fan of Pinot Noir and on a jug wine budget (like me) I highly recommend that you find a bottle and try it. It has a mildly fruity initial taste with a mild after taste (not bitter). The bouquet is quite pleasant as well. It is a good wine to drink alone without food. The label is also interesting as well!
Rating: Good
Poor = never repurchase, never drink again
Fair = never repurchase, might drink again
Good = repurchase and drink again
Excellent = repurchase and it is on my favorite list
This book is sort of like the Dummy’s guide to the Dummy’s Guide series. Doug Frost is a Master Sommelier and Master of Wine. I was a bet skeptical of the Master of Wine title so I did a bit of research. It appears to be quite difficult to achieve so I have a new found respect for the title. I thought this was a very good wine primer. Mr. Frost does a great job of introducing the different wines, countries of origin, varietals, etc from all over the world. It is a coffee table-sized book and is excellent for budding wine enthusiasts.
Rating (1-5): 4.5
This is the 4th in this series of paperback books. This series is a scifi-fantasy focused on the human rebellion to an alien invasion. The aliens are vampiric and have taken over the earth and split it into fiefdoms. These aliens use more crude versions of vampire beings as avatars to actually feed on humans and keep them under control. There is a group of humans that have formed a rebellion and are slowly but surely taking back control against the aliens and their human quislings.
Ok, this book certainly falls into the category of cheap entertainment but it is much better than watching 90% of the TV shows available!
Rating (1-5): 4
We got our ‘soon-to-be’ 16 year old son an Xbox 360 for Christmas and I’ve been watching what he has been doing with this system over the holiday break. In my humble opinion this system is the first useful implementation of a central, home media system. Not only is it a good game box (we have it hooked up to our 48″ flat screen TV via the YUV cables … my audio receiver is down right now so we don’t have surround sound hooked up yet) with great graphics but the networking connections and software have been the most intriguing thing for me.
These features include:
* Ability to access your home computer via your home network. You have to first download the media center software from Microsoft. It is easy to setup and I think it requires WinXP. Once you have it setup, the Xbox 360 sends out a ‘broadcast’ to your local net and finds any PC with the software installed. You can then browse your My Photos and My Music folders on your PC and playback any photo or MPEG-3 file stored on your PC via your Xbox 360. This means that your photos can be displayed on your TV via the XBOX 360. This also means that any MPEG-3 file can also be played to whatever audio system that you have connected to your XBOX 360 as well. Once I get another AV receiver, I will connect it to the audio output of the XBOX 360 and our home PC becomes a storage jukebox! You can also hook up an iPod directly to the XBOX 360 as well via the USB port and access and playback anything on the iPod. We have a couple of iPods so this is also very handy. Network access is either wired or wireless depending on how you have your home network setup. The Xbox 360 comes with an RJ-45 ethernet connector and is very easy to setup.
Not only can you playback the music and photos in standalone mode but you can also create playlists and play them back simultaneously. You can also playback music while you are gaming …. some games just lend themselves well to heavy metal music!
Goodbye CDs …. goodbye cheap PC speakers …
* Online internet gaming subscription service. You can buy access to the central Microsoft gaming service that lets you participate in multi-user games online. The more you play, the more points you accumulate which lets you access more games, etc. This is probably where Microsoft makes their money ….
* Ability to communicate via voice with any other online gamer (requires the online service). The Xbox 360 premium system we got came with a headphone and microphone that connects directly to the controller (wired or wireless … we have (2) wireless controllers). This feature works somewhat like a walkie talkie. You create an online chat room that other onliners can then subscribe to. From there on, you just press a button on the controller anytime you want to talk to someone. My son and one of his good buddies team up in online games and have running conversation throughout the game. The quality is not too bad at all.
The Sony PS/2 we got several years ago also came with a network adapter but it was clunky at best and the online service was never very well designed. The folks at Microsoft have done a good job, and I think, have set the bar for home media systems of the future. It will be interesting to see how other vendors respond.
iPod – What I’d do differently
January 10, 2006I’ve owned an iPod for about 3 months now and I use it constantly. Not only does it contain my entire music collection of about 3500 songs but I’ve also become a big fan of podcasts and currently subscribe to 18 different ones including podcasts from NPR and the Discovery Channel. I have also taken full advantage of the Playlists and have created about 15 of them so far with different artists, music genres, and “moods” represented.
What would I have done differently?
* Ripping CDs
I had already ripped most of my CDs into MP3 format for a 128Mb player that I owned. I ran into a few issues moving these over to the iTunes application … particularly with some of the files that I had recorded to MP3 format from some of my old albums. If I had to do it all over again I would have trashed all of these files and ripped all my CDs from within iTunes. This is very easy to do and I think it would have alleviated some of the issues that I had.
* Organizing iTunes
I created my playlists, deleted undesirable songs, “fixed” labels, etc. on the iPod itself. This was a mistake. I should have done it first on the PC files and then let iTunes synch the iPod. Now the two libraries are out of synch. This is not a big issue but it annoys me from time to time.
* Initial setup
Make sure that you have decided on your file location BEFORE you operate iTunes the first time. I changed this setting later on and that led to some synching issues that I had to resolve. Everything works good now. I would recommend using an external drive to store your files for portability reasons.
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