Archive for October, 2010

I read it in one evening. It was extremely well written. Eric Raymond is a hacker with a tremendous command of the English language. He imparts information and his beliefs in a way that even non-geeks should understand. I gave it to my boss and he was fascinated also. This book is an important work that juxtaposes the traditional “Cathedral” style of software development (i.e. Microsoft) with the contemorary “Bazaar” style in which open source software is written (i.e. Linux). It explains how hackers all over the world somehow came together to form a formidable revolution of open source software. Linus Torvalds started it. Eric Raymond explained it. Long live the revolution! I have been using Linux for 2 years so I am partial of course. But ask yourself – Why would you pay for mediocre software, created by good people with bad deadlines, when you can get better software, created by good people for the love of it, for free, that is better supported?
The Cathedral and the

The individuals who harp to have the 10 Commandments put in public spaces should read this very comprehensive historical text from Moses to present day application.
The Ten Commandments Laws

I bought this book with high expectations after reading all the glowing review. I was disappointed as it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. Ms. Gruen is a talented writer, and the book starts off well, but then travels into sappy “chick lit” territory, especially the ending.

However, the one thing that ruined this book for me was the depiction of mental illness. The character August is described as a paranoid schizophrenic. I am not a psychiatrist but I am a mental health professional and his symptoms sound closer to bipolar disorder. Also, August is cruel and violent, to say the least, when acutally most paranoid schizophrenics are NOT VIOLENT. Yes, I know it’s fiction and the author is free to take artistic license, but misconceptions about mental illness are common and this book only furthers them.

Lastly, I understand that the book is being made into a movie with Reese Witherspoon. I like Reese and even though I wasn’t crazy about the book, was thinking of going to go see it until I learned that Robert what’s-his-fang from the horrible “Twilight” series is playing Jacob Jankowski. Noooooooooooooo!
Forever Collectibles NCAA Kansas

I love this ipod touch.
I use it a lot on the plane and it dosen’t take up a lot of space in my tote bag.
River

What would we do without Office? I shutter to think! I can’t wait for 2010 to come out!
Lexerd TomTom ONE Europe

I am surprized at the weight of this watch. It is like that I will rarely wear it. The instruction book is near useless. One has to have a magnifying tool to read it and the diagrams are very misleading. I would not purchase it again.
Casio Men s Ana

Ordered this (newest) model July 2, 2010 for $263.59 and it died within days. Amazon shipped replacement with another on July 18, 2010 also as the newest model. On September 19 it died completely. Will not reboot, will not recharge.
Return window expired on August 21, 2010.
Did get help from Apple customer service.
Touch Control 4 Function

This cable was great for what I needed it for. Don’t waste your money on big names like Monster Cable, they’ve been ripping the consumer off for far too long. You can read around on this subject if you’d like, but don’t think about it anymore and just buy the cable, worst comes to worst, you can return it. I’m 100% sure that won’t be necessary though. When it comes down to it, digital data is all 1’s and 0’s, distortion doesn’t occur the same as analog products. It can be somewhat more important to spend a little more when you’re going across long distances, 25-50+ feet, but otherwise, buy cheap HDMI cables. Always.
Trolley Parade Philadelphia PA

My husband and I travel and whenever we are in a new city, we like to walk a lot. We end up walking for 3 or 4 solid hours, but never know how far we have gone until now. We bought the pedometers just before a 3-week trip to Scandinavia and the Baltic region and tracked our steps every day. Turns out we were walking a lot more than we thought – 199 miles in 23 days. Except for the days we were in airports, we easily topped 10,000 steps a day and one day we even topped 30,000. Our mileage doesn’t quite correspond, but it is close enough. It has also helped motivate us to get moving. If we haven’t done 5,000 steps by lunch we know we have to kick it up a notch to get in our minimum 10,000 goal. We both love it and are looking forward to breaking our record on our next trip!
Boom Boom Out Go

It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that I truly loved (probably not after A Thousand Splendid Sons). I really really liked this book. Couldn’t put it down once I got into it. I love Minny’s character (what she does to Hilly was just too funny…I had to re-read that part several times, just because I was laughing so hard). What I like about this book is that it doesn’t just portray the bad & the ugly about relations.. it does have good stories about the help and their employers. For instance, Stockett touched on how black people were lynched, shot, abused – verbally & physically, how afraid they were of the white folks, but she didn’t dwell on it too much to bring the reader down. If Aibileen got mad about something Miss Hilly or Miss Leefolt said, Stockett would balance it out by showing the deep love between Mae Mobley and her Aibee. It is very apparent that relations were complex between the blacks and whites living in the South. The former weren’t treated like slaves (Skeeter’s dad fully lending his support to his workers, how the maids weren’t expected to work 7 days a week – 20 hrs in the day, etc), but they were definitely oppressed emotionally so that they couldn’t aspire to be anything more than hired help.

I loved one line in the book where Aibileen tells Minny that the lines between people are only in their heads, created by people a long time ago to segregate themselves from others by class, race, color and sex. In a way, although we have come a very long way from where we all were 50 years ago, I feel that it still somewhat exists today…it’s not apparent, but is camouflaged under the term “modern & advanced era.” For example, I sometimes read peoples’ comments on Obama in articles and their post-comments, and truly about half of them don’t even concentrate on his politics, but on his being of a different race. Women are considered equals with men and is definitely practised today, but underneath the surface, a lot of us still have to work hard
SKQUE Internet Cable Cord