What’s going on

Reading

The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

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I am still working on The Club Dumas. The book is good so far, but to be honest, it hasn’t “grabbed me” yet. So far in the book, the main character has been set up pretty well, as well as the narrator, and two supporting characters. One of them is the mysterious evil influence that I am sure will pop up throughout the book and ultimately be defeated, or possibly befriended, based on some of the setup for this one. Other than that, the book moves kind of slow. A lot of time is spent on discussing or explaining The Three Musketeers by Alexandrea Dumas. Yes, I realize this book is called “The Club DUMAS”, but I wasn’t expecting to read a book that basically explains and interprets another book. I thought it was more of a background item in the story. Hopefully this is just more setup for the book, but I am almost halfway through already and this hasn’t let up yet. I still have high hopes for the book to pickup and grab me, but I won’t know for sure until I get there. I’ll make sure I update again once this book is finished.

Watching

Lost, Fringe, Flash Forward and V

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I took House off of the list. This isn’t because I no longer like the show, in fact, I still enjoy it a lot. The reason it is off the list is because Fox blows. They started the new season of House, and had to go on hiatus for a while because of the Olympics. Once the Olympics were over, the show should have come back on, but since that time they have only had a few new episodes. Because of that, I can’t watch the show whether I want to or not. So Fox is going to end up killing their own show. In case someone from Fox is reading, haha, the next statement is for you. People can’t watch your show, if you never put it on. Hopefully Fox’s plan to have ratings domination while not showing a new show works out for them. Good luck with that.

Fringe just came back from their hiatus, and the first episode was great. I’m expecting more great episodes coming up, and I’m sure this show will continue to get better. Once again, this assumes Fox actually puts the show on each week.

To be honest again, Lost is losing me (no pun intended). Last week their episode with Richard as a focus was great. Other than that, most of this new season is boring me. They haven’t answered much of anything, and I think they have created more questions now. One of their only methods to deliver their answers, Jacob, is dead now. So who do we get answers from? Nobody else on the island seems to know anything, except the “Man in Black”. Hopefully this changes soon and the show gets good for it’s last episodes, but I’m not sure that will happen. Maybe having two TV shows, and a couple of movies going on at once is too much for J.J. Abrams.

Now if you want a show that has some mystery to it, but actually works toward answers, and not creating more questions, Flash Forward is for you. This show is also back from it’s hiatus (maybe someone can explain these beginning of the year hiatuses). They picked up the action a bit in this half of their season too, in my opinion. I don’t have much to say. You need to see this one to understand and get into it I think. I highly recommend this show to everyone.

Lastly, V is back from hiatus too. I’m still not sure about this one. The show is interesting, but I am not that into it. I find a lot of times I start watching the show, and then I’ll go and play with the computer and forget about it. Hopefully with the pending war between the V’s and the humans, things will get better.

Playing

Torchlight

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I ran across this game on Steam last week. It’s a Diablo style game, and it’s pretty cheap ($19.99, sometimes on sale for $5). The game is what you would expect from a Diablo clone. It has the same interface, play style, items and so on. It seems a lot shorter, with a tiny fraction of the quests Diablo II has. I think I’m done with the game, to be honest. I’m not really sure. I beat a nasty bad guy, but I am not even half of the level max, and the main quest giver mentioned “continued travels”. Unfortunately I can’t find a way out of the town I am in. I might just be missing something, and I am sure a search online will tell me. If you liked Diablo and Diablo II, and need something to play for a little bit, this is a good buy.

Other News

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I started the new job this week. Anyone who has a job, knows the first day is usually HR stuff, and kind of a weird day. Mine was no different really. I started off in the office, greeted by a nice sign at my new pod, and some SNHU swag. I did the HR thing, and then went back to the office. We had a nice pizza party for lunch to kick off my new employment at SNHU. We had SNHU pizza, which is actually pretty good and better than anything in Concord. The pizza from SNHU has twists in the crust, which I’ve never seen before. It doesn’t add anything to the pizza from a flavor perspective, but it looks different. Day two was some more training, followed by me getting a good jump on a small styling issue that occurs in some browsers on the search page. Day three was different. I had a campus tour, just to get the lay of the land in case I need to get around campus in the future, and to learn more about the school. After that I had lunch with the rest of the web services team, and then we went to “Web Wednesday”. It’s an open help session for the folks who work on content in the site, and have questions or need some sort of assistance. It was quiet, so I was shown more of the internal workings of the site, and managed to get some more work done on another section of it. After that, the day was pretty much at an end, and I came home. Tomorrow will be my first day that is more open, schedule wise. No campus tours or HR stuff. Just a weekly staff meeting, and then business as usual (or what will become usual for me). I’m hoping to finish one last thing with the code I worked on today. Finalize the styling fixes I made and then get started, and maybe finish, another code update.

Overall the first week has been great, and looks like a great beginning to the job.

Some other things going on this week. Saturday is the Phantom Gourmet Wine and Food Phest. Jess and I have tickets, and hopefully Jess is up to going this year. If not, I’m going anyway, hehe. I also ordered a new camera this week, in preparation for the new racing season, which starts this month. I decided to go with the Canon 7D, and a Canon 70-200mm f/4 L USM lens. After looking around, the 7D seems to fit my needs well, and I have seen what it can do in respects to RC photos. The lens I picked was based on suggestions from the members of the Digital Photography Review forums. For anyone looking for news, reviews, articles, and guidance on digital photography, that site is a must. Once the camera shows up, I’ll post with my initial impressions and some first photos. If this turns out the way I am hoping, my RC Gallery will have much better photos this year.

Have fun and keep it between the ditches.