Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

I never would have thought that reading about a train circus set in the depression era could be so interesting to read.

Make no mistake; this novel is a work of fiction. However, in the author’s notes a lot of the anecdotes in the story were based upon real events.

Sara Gruen does an excellent job of bring not only the people to life, but also the key animals of the story.

I actually read this back in December, but this is easily my favorite book for all of 2008. Noting was as engrossing and overall enjoyable as this book. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Are Wii Fit?

In a word, no. I’ve been playing Wii Fit on and off for roughly three months and that’s the main problem. The game is supposed to be played daily, or very close to that, and yet that’s the problem. For whatever reason I can’t be drawn in to get my exercise on any regular basis with Wii Fit.

A large part of the reason, in my mind, is that there’s too much lost time in between the different activities. For me anything that gets in the way of just working out kills my excitement. What Wii Fit really needs is a way for the user to string together a group of exercises. I don’t want to spend half of my work out time looking at the ranking screen, selecting Retry or Quit, seeing how many coins I received for the given exercise, and the time it takes just to move from one activity to the other.

Then there’s the graphics. In general, I’m getting real tired of Wii games with bland graphics. For Wii Fit that is not too much of a problem as long as you’re not doing any of the jogging exercises. Then you’ll get so tired of seeing bland courses you’ll want to tear your eyes out. The Wii can do amazing things, just look at Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime. Why couldn’t Nintendo do something to make that portion a better experience?

I actually wanted to do a test to see if I could set a goal to loose a given amount of weight for a couple of months time, but Wii Fit is not doing anything to motivate me to do so.

I guess I’ll wait and see what Wii Fit 2 will bring, for now it's back to my soda, and bag of potato chips.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

I have wanted to read this book after seeing the movie through Netflix for over a year now and thanks to my local Costco I picked up a copy.

It’s beautifully written and the author does an excellent job of creating life on a small island town.

The story is a mix of courtroom drama, murder mystery, and romance.

I also watched the movie again after reading the book. Obviously the book is better, but if you are only mildly interested in this book I do recommend the movie.

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald

This book is the best biography I have ever read.

It all started when I asked a friend I work with if there was a good biography on Lincoln that covered his whole life. I was looking for a complete picture not just a specific time in his life.

This book is what he came up with and I am very glad he did. This book covers his life from start to finish and really gives you a lot of insight into all things Lincoln. Reading this book I found that a lot of who I thought Lincoln was, why he made the choices he did, and his overall character where a lot different than I had naively assumed. It's amazing how much I took for granted.

Some examples would be the fact that he was a very unpopular president, he didn't like the sight of blood (just like me), and emancipation wasn't his chief motivation for the civil war.

This book is very well written. I found it to be engrossing unlike any other biography I've ever read. There was never a dull moment. I don't remember the word count, but it's not a small book by any means, however, I can't recommend reading it enough.

Moleskine Alternatives from Black Cover

In Black Cover's own words, "Check out this site which is dedicated to finding Moleskine alternatives. I’m shilling to win a contest, so please check them out!."

Basically if I win I'll get a set of five Piccadilly notebooks, so please check them out. If you are in to notebooks at all this is a good site to visit.

From the Mouth of a Five Year Old

Me: "So... how do you like school?"

Her: "Dad, my eyes are shy but they're happy."

Where Have I Been - MySpace vs. Facebook

I haven't been posting her in awhile. Primarily because I got a notebook months ago and I've been writing in there a lot. I've also been checking out both MySpace and Facebook. Seeing how there's only so much time in a day those three things got a lot more of my attention.

So on to MySpace vs. Facebook. I've been using both social networking sites for a few months now and I'm having trouble deciding which one I prefer. On MySpace I think it's easier to customize your layout and such, but most layouts (including mine) are very sloppy and it's hard to read the text. Facebook is a lot cleaner but everyone's profile looks very similar.

Both suffer from being hard and unintuitive to figure out what you can do there and how to do certain things like update photos and such. I do find Facebook easier than the two but that's not saying a whole lot either.

Initially they are both exciting to use, when you first are setting up different things and adding content and friends, however, that excitement soon ends.

A strange trend I've noticed as well is that people who would normally email me directly now log into either site and email me from there. It's not nearly as direct but it does seem to be more popular. In all fairness I do the same thing ironically.

There is one thing that irritates me with MySpace that really hampers my enjoyment of the site. While looking at different people's profile's I've had it crash my browsers on enough occasions to discourage me to look up too much stuff there. This happens to me both on OS X at home with various browsers and at work running Windows XP with various browsers once again.

Due to that one glaring issue I have to say that Facebook is my preferred social site.

I am still learning the ins and outs of both so in a few months I'll try and post a follow up to see if my opinions have changed any.

Spartacus “Sparty” 2001 to 2008

Our cat Sparty is no longer with us. He was an excellent mouser and would even take down gophers, but he’ll be remembered the most for how good he was to my kids. I’ve never seen a more gentle cat around young children as him. Little kitty you will always be remembered.

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

Now here's a book that I starting reading over four years ago, got half way, and then thought it was lost only to find it recently.

This is a book about Theodore Roosevelt's presidential years. What I found the most interesting after reading this book is both the amount of energy Theodore had and also his insight into preserving our national resources. The fact that he was aware and trouble by the fact that the further a person is removed from nature the more resources they consume.

For me this book did have it's ups and down and with any biography about a president there's a ton of people that you read about for only a few chapters.

It's worth checking out from your local library.

Why Does Costco's Local Book Selection Suck

If you ever go to Costco's web site and look at their selection of children's books you would find a lot of excellent titles to choose from. Some examples are Diary of a Worm, Where the Wild Things Are, and The Three Snow Bears. This doesn't include series books like Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Now contrast this with the Costco's in the Treasure Valley. You'll find huge piles of gimmick books, you know the kind that have a toy packed in or buttons you push with very little story to them. Sure you can find the latest Harry Potter.

The selection is nothing close to what it looks like online. In fact you don't really see the gimmick books there. Why the difference?

Costco would get a lot more of my money if this was changed but whoever stocks their stores either doesn't have kids, or doesn't like to read to them.

Of Mice and Men - The Movie

So I finally watched the 1992 movie Of Mice and Men.

For a movie adaptation it does a good job of keeping the spirit of the book and staying true to it. As always there's things that happen in the book that are either excluded or shortened for the sake of the movie. If you are a person who is pressed for time or just too lazy this movie would be a good substitute for the book. For everyone else I'd read the book first and then the movie.

Whither IM Users

Does anyone really use IM clients anymore? I never really hear anything going on with them, with the exception of each dot release of OS X where they add functionality.

Now I don't have a lot of buddies so that could be a part of it, but even of those that I do have I think I only see one or two of them online at all and neither one of us initiate a chat. Part of the problem my be because my primary client is through Google and their Google Talk within Gmail can be hard to notice that someone is trying to chat with you.

Or maybe everyone is trying to avoid me. That's food for thought.

These thoughts exclude folks who use an IM client at work as that's a different situation.

So tell me, have you noticed the same thing?

Brad Paisley Concert

The wife and I don't get out too much any more but on the 23 of January we went to see Brad Paisley in concert. His opening acts where Chuck Wicks and Rodney Atkins.

All three put on an amazing show, however, Brad is by far the most talented of the bunch. He also played the longest as his piece went from 9:30 p.m. until 11:20 p.m.

The most enjoyable part of the concert was when he had all of his band members take a break and it was just Brad and his acoustic guitar playing three or four songs.

I'm not big on going to concerts since a lot of times the groups don't sound that good and I don't feel that you get your money's worth. Brad Paisley is the exact opposite. His shows are well worth the money and he sounds as good in person as he does on his albums.

Something That I Can Really Relate To

Over at Slate there's an article by Michael Lewis called Dad Never Again The Nutcracker Suite. For any guy who's ever had a vasectomy, or for any woman who's ever wondered what it's like mentally for a guy to have one read his article. It will give you a good laugh.

Is it Holiday Music or Christmas Music

So the other day I was importing a new CD into iTunes. Kidz Bop Christmas to be exact and when iTunes downloaded the track names etc. it tagged the genre as Holiday. Then I looked at my Christmas music play list and noticed that all the Christmas music I have is tagged as Holiday music.

This brings up two questions. First is there any other Holiday's with music associated with them?

And then, why not tag Christmas music as Christmas. I'm sure it's so some dip shit isn't offended, but the only people who are going to by Christmas music are people who are not offended by Christmas music to begin with.

Crazy.

Family Christmas Tree 2007

We once again made our annual journey up into the mountains to get our Christmas tree. What amazes me is how different and unique each year is.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

I have never read anything by John Steinbeck so I figured this book would be a good place to start. I was not disappointed. It's a short story of commitment, loneliness, hope and loss.

The story is just long enough to completely suck you in but short enough that it's easily a weekend read. I enjoyed this book so much I'm going to try and convince my wife to read it next When my girls are older it will be required reading.

This is a true classic and worth every bit of your time.

Potty Trained!

That's right folks for over two weeks we've been diaper/pull-up free and we're not looking back. It's a beautiful thing but it still feels odd to go to the grocery store and not buy pull-ups or diapers.

Put Him Back

John Cloud at TIME sums up how I feel about J.K. Rowling announcing that Dumbledore is gay. It makes me wonder what her agenda is.

Put Dumbledore Back in the Closet

Everything I Thought About Swinging Was Wrong

I ran across this survey the other day: Today's Alternative Marriage Styles:
The Case of Swingers

Very fascinating. I was especially surprised by table 14 that showed that 78.5% of swingers are very happy in their marriages compared to 64% for non-swinging couples. Table 16 blew my mind as well with 62% of both females and males being happier in their marriages after swinging.

Those are just two examples that surprised me but the entire report is very interesting. I guess it goes to show you what assuming can do. I wouldn't have believed any thing would be like that for swingers.