Posts from — September 2005

I’ve been re-reading my library of books since around the end of August. I’ve read The Belgariad, The Elenium, the Tamuli, The Elder Gods and The Treasured One by David and Leigh Eddings, along with The Magicians’ Guild by Trudi Canavan, Once Upon a Winter’s Night by Dennis McKiernan, and Her Majesty’s Wizard and The Oathbound Wizard by Christopher Stasheff.

I love the majority of David and Leigh Eddings work with the exception of Mr. Eddings’s first two novels, which I didn’t really get into. I have loved my copies to death and have reread them at least twice for the new ones and five times for the ones I’ve had for a while. If I need something to read, I’ll usually reach for Pawn of Prophecy or Diamond Throne or Redemption of Athalus as my backup book. I’ll even throw one of them in my bag if I’m going to be sitting somewhere for a while and I’m not sure of the reading material availability.

I did get annoyed by Khalad in the Tamuli. Khalad is Kurik's from The Elenium and serves as Sparhawk's squire. He had some firmly held class prejudices and expressed them quite often.

The Elder Gods and The Treasured One are books 1 and 2 respectively in the Dreamers series, a new quadrology from David and Leigh Eddings. They are pretty good and I enjoy them, but I haven't finished the series yet, so I'm waiting to see where they are going to take the story. The basic plot is that the world was created by 4 Elder Gods, and 4 Younger Gods, and they take turns sleeping or waking and watching the world. In the middle of the continent the Gods watch over, there is an insect like creature called the Vlagh which wants to take over the continent and eventually the world to feed its young. So Dahlaine, whose Domain is in the North, brings his brother and sisters a baby each to raise and who become the Dreamers, children who can make things happen by dreaming. But that isn't enough, as the people the Gods watch over aren't really equipped for war, so each Elder God gets gold from wherever Gods keep gold and went and recruited people from the outside world or outlanders. Zelana, of the West finds some Maags, ocean-going men who are very good at naval warfare. Her brother Veltane of the South goes the Trogite Empire and recruits several armies who are good at land warfare. Aracia of the East recruits some warrior-women from the Isle of Akalla and Dahlaine finds some horse-warriors from the Land of Malavi who will appear in more detail in book 3, The Crystal Gorge.

Once Upon a Winter's Night is a retelling of the fairytale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon". Camille is a beautiful 16 year old crofter's daughter living on the edge of the Land of Faery, who enchants Prince Alain of the Summerwood with her beautiful singing voice. A Bear comes and takes her to the Prince where she resides for awhile until a tragedy occurs and she must quest through Faery to find and rescue Prince Alain. She meets a Giant, a firedrake, Elves and the Fates who help her along her way.

The Magicians' Guild is the beginning volume in the Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan. Magicians are members of a Guild and serve the King of Kyralia in various functions-healing, etc. They are also known for the Purge, where ordered by the King, wizards go through the city and drive out all beggars, vagrants and criminals out of the city and into the slums. Sonea, a young girl being raised by her uncle and aunt visits some of her friends from when she lived the slums and is involved in the Purge. She shows natural magic powers and is in turn hunted by the Guild as she inadvertently injured a Guild member. She is eventually found as her magic powers are uncontrolled and could be dangerous to the city. A kindly magician helps her learn Control and along the way she learns several things about the Guild and its members. I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

Her Majesty's Wizard and The Oathbound Wizard start the adventures of Matthew Mantrell, a graduate student who stumbles upon a piece of parchment with odd symbols written on it which whisks him to land where magic works but not science, and the magicians use poetry for their spells. Words are taken very seriously in this alternate earth and hold great power. I'm looking forward to finishing the series which should be fun to find.

del.icio.us Tags: books Fantasy

Tags: books Fantasy

I was taking my husband to work today (one of our cars decided not to run Saturday and we think it’s the fuel pump) and he turned to the talk radio station WNOX 100. Well Rush Limbaugh was in fine form for the brief time we had it on the channel.
He pretty much said that the people who worked and participated in the anti-war protests were losers, failures and led by Commies.

Now I have no idea where he gets the idea that liberals are losers and failures. The way I see it, he’s not had to struggle to pay the bills, like I do. I see the government wasting money, money that can be used for things like better childcare and job training for people, education and healthcare and even better pay for our military personnel. Not to mention research and development into less oil dependent technologies for transportation and goods, new types of energy sources and space exploration. So many good things, yet the government wastes money on a illegal war, spying on American citizens and not using Homeland Security money properly to ensure that people are safe from terrorism and natural disasters like the recent hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and helping their business cronies out.

Almost makes me spit.

I've been beating (not literally) on this bloody computer. A lot of my problems could be classified as user error-lack of updated backups, not paying attention to what I'm doing, etc. Now I think of myself as intermediate in computers-I can do various things well but I'm not an expert by any means.
I think its my configuration-bought this PC from a system builder who used some seriously cheap parts with a lot built in-video, Ethernet, sound, modem. I have had issues with Ethernet-bought a new card when we had a series of errors caused by the combo of a SiS 900 ethernet card and a cable modem that didn't have a power off button with two days of intermittent power outages caused by a lovely thunderstorm. Next went the video-it was sharing 256MB and boy did it kill performance. So we bought a 64MB PCI NVIDIA MX-4000 video card. I found out that I can't uninstall the previous video card so I can only disable it. So any time I have to reinstall Windows which I had to do last weekend (Sept. 10-11), I have to be sure and check the Device manager and update drivers for the NVidia and disable the SiS software. The modem is always a bit of a problem. I always forget what kind it is, but I used my dad's PC and went online and found the drivers which are now on CD. I also found an IBM CRT monitor driver that works fine and made sure to get my sound drivers.
I've just now got around to getting music and video files put back into my files so I'm pretty much set. I've lost two video files and about 4-5 iTunes songs, which is a bit irritating but I can fix them.
I would be really happy if Comcast got off their hind end and upgraded the cable system in Vonore because they and DirecWay are the only ones who can do broadband in my area. I'm too far from the cetral office for DSL. DirecWay is too bloody expensive for the speed they offer-400Kbs versus the now 6meg Comcast has. I'm going to call them in a bit and ask when they would be upgrading the service, as I'm tired of the slow dialup and the feeling that I'm now a second class citizen on the net as I have dialup and want to play games online (NeverWinterNights), find AMV's and update my music collection by buying on iTunes or other places. Not to mention it takes forever to dl my Gmail POP mail, newsgroups and RSS feeds, and even general browsing.

My thoughts almost exactly. I told my husband that we would have been stuck in NO if we lived there. I can see getting necessities but electronics and appliances? Absolute chaos. I didn't watch much of Bush's speech Thursday as we were running errands-paycheck in bank to cover insurance with a stop at McKay's to trade in some old books we didn't want anymore and to get my husband a book he's been waiting for for about a year.

I'm reminded a bit of the aftermath of Lucifer's Hammer, a SF novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, about a comet striking Earth and the absolute chaos that resulted-landowners guarding property lines, expeditions to get supplies from flooded stores, faction led fighting to gain control of whatever was left. I'm going to re-read it in the morning. (Insomnia resulting from too much nap and caffeine plus I can't breathe through my nose well when I lay down so I'm staying vertical.)

I was saying to my husband that there is going to be some heads rolling (metamorphically) and something has got to change or else there is going to be a Civil War II.

Not to be so pessimistic about it, but I think Bush took advantage of 9/11 and rode the aftermath for what it was worth so he could change America to suit him and his buddies.

del.icio.us Tags: Katrina NOLA NewOrleans

Tags: Katrina NOLA New Orleans