I figure I’ll use them again for Valentine’s Day. Week in advance should be enough, which it was. Crap, it’s on a Saturday this year. They deliver on Saturday! Perfect. They look great (durrr hurr) and the cost is okay! Well, wait, after shipping… well whatever, it’s Valentine’s Day and I can’t hide them anywhere so Saturday delivery it is. Saturday rolls around and I play my little game of secrecy so she may have doubted I was going to get her flowers (we had late dinner plans). I expected an early afternoon delivery. Boy, I guess I just expected too much. What happens when you want to surprise your girlfriend with flowers but are stuck waiting for delivery? Nothing. That’s right, you sit at home waiting because you don’t want to ruin the surprise. You’re stuck. At. Home. I was afraid to even take a walk to check the mail because surely they’d be delivered as soon as we stepped out! I know it’s not a big deal, but I had a nice thing going in my head.

8:45PM. You guessed it—that’s what time they delivered. Who? FedEx. Was it in a box? Yes! You know that Superbowl commercial where the chick gets flowers in a box and it’s all funny to get flowers delivered in a box? That was me! I was beyond myself. Fortunately the girlfriend was upstairs getting ready to go out to our late dinner (yes, 8:45PM) so I had a moment to open the BOX up and set the flowers on the table. Except they weren’t flowers. They were stems. Ugly ass stems. With instructions. I paid a good bit extra for a Saturday delivery to get a late delivery full of unbloomed flowers that I had to arrange myself. Obviously I didn’t have time to make it look nice so it was just a red vase (that was fairly nice I admit!), some stems, a cute teddy bear, and some stems. Did I mention they were unarranged stems?

Fortunately Ashton was happy with them and she was understanding of course, but this doesn’t change the fact that this is not the right way to receive flowers. After telling my friends what happened, I heard the same story from them and a “I coulda told you that” warning about not using ProFlowers. Oh well. Here’s an official notice to everyone. ON THE BRIGHT SIDE they had very understanding customer service and refunded me what I requested. If you’re just looking to buy and arrange your own flowers, ProFlowers is for you, otherwise, don’t be fooled by their marketing and their web site—they are NOT the right choice for a special delivery.

Okay. Wow. Where do I start? I guess about a year ago, when I first told myself it’s time to start reading, I was scouring my favorite forums for off-topic ‘favorite book’ threads. Granted, I stick to tech/geek related forums, however, each forum’s book threads had the same thing in common, a single series: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. I really had no clue what it was about, and had only a few books in my arsenal that I’d read—Ender’s Game, The Ruins, Jurassic Park, and Foundation—a little bit of everything. I was ready for anything. When I first opened A Game of Thrones it was a little difficult to get through the prologue and the first few chapters. It was fairly overwhelming for a book amateur like myself. GRRM continually spilled out one new character after another, and with him, often times it’s hard to determine whether this character would be really important later down the road. Regardless, they kept coming, as did the locations, as did the the different levels of power, the kingdoms, and so on…

I decided to make a single post about this series because it’s truly an ongoing story, and the encyclopedia that is A song of Ice and Fire could be written as a single book (and sometimes meant to be). To try to write about each single book would be difficult, as the story goes on as one and you are just completely submerged in this world that GRRM created. Westeros, the Seven Kingdoms, the Free Cities, Valyria, the Wildlings, the Starks, the Lannisters, the Targaryens, the Baratheons, the First Men, the Andals. The fact is, I could fill up a dozen paragraphs just naming the cities, cultures, families and characters from this epic series. Fortunately GRRM is kind enough to place a “world map” at the start of each book and the family lineage/trees at the end of them as well. This helps should you get a bit too overwhelmed.

It’s pretty typical to tell someone how amazing a book is, and God knows I’ve done it before, but so many people can’t be wrong. When you’re reading a book what are you looking for? Because I can tell you right now that this series has got it. Romance? Check. Forbidden love? Check. War? Check. Suspense? Check. Politics? Kings and Queens? Scheming and drama? Magic? Knights and honor? Check check check double and triple check. Honestly, the only thing lacking is the space ships and aliens, and I’m fine with that. People you just love, people you absolutely loath, and people you really hate to love. Heroes and villains (and not being sure who is which!). It’s got it all. Growing up I didn’t know the type of things I would really like. Girls? Sure—money, cars, whatever. I’m a typical guy. Yeah, I got into computers, I got into anime, I got into video games. What’s that mean? Well, absolutely nothing. You don’t have to be a science fiction or fantasy nerd to enjoy this work of art, truly.

Are you sick of the praise yet? Okay, okay. So I do have a bit of a criticism. Currently the series stops at A Feast for Crows, yet GRRM has scheduled 3 more books forthcoming—A Dance with Dragons, The Winds of Winter, and A Dream of Spring. A lot of amazing stuff happens in the first 3 books. The plan GRRM had was for the 4th book to be A Dance with Dragons set 5 years after the events in the first 3. The book became so large, finding it “difficult” to manage the flashbacks, and on top of that he wasn’t close to finished at roughly 1500 pages. He had to split it into two stories, giving us A Feast for Crows. Basically we’re getting half a book told from the PoV of half the characters we want to read about, so we’re left a bit hanging (and by bit I mean very much so). It’s a tough way to end your read with such an amazing story. Some people don’t like the PoVs in AFfC but I enjoyed it. The really unfortunate thing is the last update GRRM made on his web site was in January of 2008 regarding the next book (which was slated for 2006) and as you can see it’s still not published. Fans are DYING for more, _I_ am DYING for more!

I’ll close this long post with some minor things. This series actually has a pretty major following. You can find a lot of information from the online Wiki, including links to timelines, FAQs, and a forum that’s a great read once you finish (and please, ONLY once you finish). GRRM puts a lot of sublties, foreshadowing, and prophecizing in his books, so keep that in mind should you take this series up. After reading the forums I realized I missed a ton of wonderfully interesting things and I’m really, really tempted to reread the series when the next book comes out, something I would have never imagined doing before.

In case you can’t tell, I HIGHLY recommend this series. Get them. All. Now. Here’s some Amazon.com links: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows. Keep your eyes out for A Dance with Dragons as well.

Let’s start with initial sign-up (this is for HydroBarn). The process went smooth, however, their internal billing system is shoddy. It runs off of a “billing” user account on their server and it doesn’t tie in to your original user account. Did I mention it’s slow as balls? Whatever. Up-time has been acceptable. So I need an SSL certificate for my shopping cart. I need a static IP. Additional $2 a month? Okay, I guess. I purchase an SSL certificate from GoDaddy and I’m greeted with a link to SSL configuration on their web page by a live chat support rep, no problem. Generate CSR, get my certificate. “Now what Mr. HostGator support?” Yet another link to their site. They want to charge $10 to install the certificate. What? WHY?!

Fine. One time charge to install it. First month billing rolls by and I keep getting these blank e-mails from billing@hostgator.com. No subject. No message. I open a ticket “What’s going on?” I’m told it does this every month. They don’t know how to fix it. Real professional, guys. Whatever, so life goes on and I’m paying $16.95 for a basic hosting package with private SSL support. Bit pricey, but I deal.

One year rolls around, my SSL certificate is expiring. I have to rekey and resubmit these stupid forms. I’m told they’re going to charge me $10 to update the certificate. WHAT?! Here’s some chat transcript from two different online CSRs:

danny: so i have to pay $10 bucks a year for you to update your Apache file?
Alan L.: It’s a little more complicated than updating apache

Yeah. Right. Whatever, I have to update it so I fill out the form. But this time I ask another rep.

Gary A.: and since this is to update the SSL, we probably won’t, which might be why they didn’t include it

Funny thing is, the moment I clicked to submit the request on their web page I get this:

Gary A.: The charge is still there, because this is a new SSL
Gary A.: even though you’re just updating it, it’s a complete new SSL

These retards have no idea what they’re doing. Oh, and I actually decided to check their hosting plans and saw that my plan has gone down to $7.95 a month. I ask the rep to change it for me.

Gary A.: https://secure.hostgator.com/downgrade.php
danny: why the hell do you guys charge $10 for everything
danny: jesus
danny: that’s stupid that i have to pay to change my plan
danny: i know you’re just a support rep but what the fuck is that about?
Gary A.: It takes admin time, which means it costs us money to do, which means we don’t want to be losing money, which is why we charge.
danny: do you guys not have in-house admins?
Gary A.: We do, but we still have to pay them.
Gary A.:

Wow. Another stupid web page, another stupid $10 charge. You have in-house techs on salary and you’re charging your customers for 3 mouse clicks. Fuck you and fuck your piece of shit company. A company apparently that’s so distraught and spent all their money on marketing that they have to screw their customers on basic needs like installing an SSL certificate and DOWNGRADING YOUR HOSTING PLAN. Scum. I responded to the SSL update ticket immediately telling them not to install it. They sent an e-mail saying the ticket’s been “resolved” with no other information. Think they’re going to try to scam me? Won’t shock me. Found many horror stories about them and their employees after the fact—wish I found those earlier.

I submit a cancellation through yet another form—I’m surprised they didn’t ask for $10 to cancel. I decided to go with HostDime.com because I know they have at least a bit of professional management, and hey guess what, they don’t charge me $10 every time they move their mouse. As of now, HostGator still hasn’t responded to my cancellation request, seeing as how my cancellation was the same day as my next billing cycle, mark my words, you’re going to get some happy charge backs from AMEX if you dare charge me.

In closing, STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM HOSTGATOR.COM. Thanks and have a nice day.

Foundation

The Galactic Empire had lasted for 12,000 years and ruled over a million planets. But now it was dying. Hari Seldon, creator of the science of psychohistory, knew that it’s death would be followed by 30,000 years of brutal barbarism and savage warfare. To preserve knowledge and shorten the dark period to a mere thousand years, Hari Seldon set up the Encyclopedia Foundation and staffed it with the best scholars and scientists of the Empire. Then he placed it upon Terminus, a bleak world at the edge of the galaxy. But now the Empire was retreating, leaving the Foundation isolated and unprotected. Around it, little barbarian kingdoms were already beginning their wars in search of dominance. The Foundation knew itself as the only hope of mankind. But what could it do, alone and helpless, against the greed of the warlords who were reaching out to conquer and destroy it.

The novel is actually a series of short stories revolving around a single theme. We continually have to follow different characters and stories that revolve around the Foundation and Hari Seldon’s plan for the future (which we progress through with each chapter/story). I found it a bit difficult at first but once you allow yourself to read the story as if you were watching history unfold, you stop focusing on any single character. The writing is dated, and so is some of the science fiction, but Asimov does a good job putting us through the “history”—the politics of the future. With the end goal being initially described as simply surviving, we learn that it’s much more than that, and of course more exciting.

Asimov takes us through human psychology in politics, one extreme to another, in an interesting and entertaining story. If you like politics, history, and science fiction then I highly recommend this book. Initially this book was the first of a trilogy, but in the 80s he continued the series. I look forward to the next Foundation book: Foundation and Empire.

Ender’s Game

Foundation

Ender’s Game is set far into the future where we find humans preparing for their attempt to [drumroll...] save humanity! They’d been attacked twice by an alien race, the “Buggers,” and believe they may not survive another attack. Ender is 6 years old, a “Third”—3rd child at a time when families are limited to no more than two children—and is believed to be the one. For what? The government is looking for soldiers to lead their fleet and save the world, in this case a Commander, and they’re doing this by monitoring all newborns. Ender’s got an older brother Peter and sister Valentine whom is younger than Peter. Both of them extremely smart but ultimately deemed failures by the government in what they’re looking for. Because of that, however, they allowed a them to have a 3rd child.

After some events Ender is taken to an academy where they train soldiers. The training is all done via battle games, and revolves ultimately around the “Battle Room.” The children train together and are pitted against each other in a weightless room designed to enforce strategy and critical thinking amongst the students and teams. As you can imagine Ender tops the charts despite being the youngest, and soon leaves the school for Commander related training.

OSC takes us through Ender’s situations—ridicule, praise, failure and success—showing us how he feels, thinks, reacts and so on. His thoughts on himself, his family, and his friends are familiar thoughts to anyone reading. All the way through to the end of the story, we are basically put inside his head. He gives us an adult view of a child’s mind as the child sees it, and it’s incredible. It’s hard to say more about the story because I’d recommend this book to anyone, and I almost don’t want to spoil a single thing. This is a science fiction story that’s written so well that it appeals to anyone who’s ever been a child. Sorry, that’s just a stupid way to say it appeals to everyone.

The funny thing is that nearly everyone I know has either recommended this book or has had it recommended to them; I now know why! While I’m told it’s the best of the series, I still look forward to reading the other 7 books. Speaker for the Dead will be next.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. Most people have heard of this and automatically assume it’s just a science fiction tale of dinosaurs in our time, but it’s a lot more than that. We start off with strange lizard attacks in Costa Rican areas and a ravished construction worker who’s brought into a clinic. What the hell happened to him? We’re soon introduced to Dr. Alan Grant who is looking for baby Velociraptor fossils up north. His understudy, Dr. Ellie Sattler, soon receives a fax of a strange x-ray, could this be? He’s interrupted by a gentlemen doing an investigation on one of his project contributors. John Hammond, an older wealthy gentlemen with an aficionado for dinosaurs, appears to be buying up all sorts of suspicious things, including supercomputers, huge quantities of amber/sap, and more. Why?

Afterwords, Hammond invites Grant to see the creation he’s been building. On an island off the coast of Costa Rica, Hammond appears to have manufactured a huge park. Flying down the country on a private jet, Grant is introduced to Donald Gennaro, one of Hammond’s investors, and Dr. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician. Hammond is looking for a green light from a different group of people on his project, Jurassic Park

“Spoilers” ahead. Okay, we know this is about dinosaurs. We know Hammond used DNA in fossilized amber to create a park for these dinosaurs. We know something goes wrong and the park has to be destroyed. What went wrong? The compound wasn’t designed with enough securities to ensure nothing could go wrong. When Hammond’s computer programmer, Dennis Nedry, decides to defect to a competitor’s company for a lump sum of money, he successfully shuts the park down and gets himself killed because you don’t shut down a freaking system that shields you from dinosaurs. Sorry. Anyway. Crichton does a great job not only with his writing, the feel, and the characters, but reminding us about the Chaos Theory—the deep seed of the story. Man cannot predict what’s not predictable, and here, man cannot control nature, as the theory reminds us.

It’s a great story that goes into the DNA and cloning contraversy we had in the 90s. Chaos Theory, and a lot of things that still apply nearly 20 years since the book was written. We have a few more important characters—Robert Muldoon the guide/expert, Timothy and Lex Murphy whom are Hammond’s grandchildren, Ray Arnold the park engineer and Dr. Henry Wu, the DNA/cloning expert. I feel all these characters were written very well—whether we cheered them on or they annoyed us, the development was spot on for the length of the book. Even if you’re not a dinosaur fan, this book is a great read for a number of other reasons, I highly recommend it.

The Ruins by Scott Smith. It’s a story of two young couples (Jeff and Amy, Eric and Stacy) on vacation in Cancun, Mexico when things turn sour. Their tour guide, Matthias, seeks out his brother Henrich who hasn’t returned from an archaeological dig site with a new found lover. Jeff, the boy scout feeling excited for some real adventure before they head home, decides they should accompany him. Oh, and one of their new found non-English speaking Greek friends “Pablo” decides to join them with a bag of tequila. Where’s this place? It’s a bus ride from their hotel to Coba, a several mile dirty cab ride to the path (during which they’re unsuccessfully advised to turn back), and a few more miles to the site. In another country. In the middle of nowhere.

I could go for that, sure. After taking a wrong turn and hitting an Aztec camp with—guess again—non-English speaking people unsuccessfully advising them to leave (or so we assume). They find their way down the proper path to the site, which is blocked (do we see a trend here?), and continue on. They get just outside this marvelous Aztec site, surrounded with beautiful bright green vines and flowers, and are again approached by the gesturing Aztecs. Amy accidently takes a step into the vines, and the Aztecs do an about face, draw their weapons, and force them ALL into the vines and up the site.

What the hell? At any rate, while the story is a bit cheesy, Smith does a pretty good job conveying the transition from excitement to uneasiness to downright scared. It doesn’t take too long for the story to jump into the beefy parts, either. Throughout the book I think he spent too much time detailing past reminiscent situations of these kids, but did do a good job creating visuals of what kind of people they are. As the transition happens and the environment changes—I was on the edge of my seat wondering what’s going to happen next, right up until the last page. I was surprised by how he finished the story, as well. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say Smith puts you right in the middle of a true to the name Horrifying story.

Even if you don’t like horror novels I believe that your imagination will be captivated while you read this book. I enjoyed the his writing and the visuals he provided, and infact, it was enough to get me into reading.