You rule, Dr. Schrag.

I totally forgot that you were defending today. I was thinking about driving down to heckle you, but then I contracted SARS over the weekend at the Red Sox game (they came back from 0-5 against Toronto to win 6-5 on a Nomar walk-off HR in the bottom of the ninth… WOW). Still feeling a little nasty today, but both Britney and I are very proud of you!

Go ahead, take a little time to enjoy Britney over at http://www.britneyspears.com/. You’ve EARNED it. What’s next? Lemme guess….

For those of you that are interested, I posted a few pictures of my new place in the articles section. Thanks to Lara for the images…

Especially for you, Mr. Danger, photoshop tennis. Seems to be over now, but a clever idea: one designer creates a photoshop layer, and a second designer returns “volley” by adding an additional layer, and so on…

This is the outside:

This is the kitchen area.

The U-shaped kitchen provides a lot of surface area for cooking, but not a significant amount of storage space. The Corian countertop was chosen to match the concrete surface at the left, and the red highlight on the edge was supposed to match the red accents on the Vulcan stove. The stove is a heavy-duty commercial-grade unit with four gigantic gas burners and an oven (no broiler, though… a minor bummer ). It’s not insulated, which is why you see the spacing between it and the cabinets and why there is a strip of concrete flooring under the stove and along the cabinets. The exhaust fan is a KitchenAid (I think). The refrigerator and dishwasher are from the GE Profile line. In the upper-right corner, you can see where the wall is open to the mechanical closet. None of the interior walls extend all the way to the ceiling.

This is the TV area.

It’s tough to tell with the shades drawn, but the windows are slightly below grade. They get a significant amount of direct sunlight, but you can’t see too much from them. In this picture, you can see the exposed rafters in the ceiling. There are numerous exposed pipes throughout the unit.

These are babies chilling at the domicile.

Right behind the couch, there is a square (2’X2′) brick column. There are four of these incorporated into the unit, but this is the only one that is free-standing. On top of the column, there is a huge wooden beam that supports the ceiling. On the right, the double doors lead to one of the two closets. This closet contains the water heater and the air heating unit.

This is where the “magic” happens.

Can’t see much in this picture, but the brick is another one of the columns in the unit. The big pipe that is next to it is a drain from the roof, and the tub/shower is half enclosed by the pillar.

I was listening to a show on NPR this morning about Americans and wealth. They talked to this one lady in New Jersey who’s husband makes 100k a year. They own their own house and cars. They have two kids who want for nothing. In fact, the kids go to four or five dance lessons a week. They go out whenever they want. Knowing that her income is in the top 20% in the US, she complains that she’s just barely getting by and considers herself middle class. WTH (what the heck)!

If you can’t save money making 100k a year then it’s your own damn fault.

Then there’s this lady who’s income is in the top .2% in the US. She doesn’t think she’s rich or wealthy because she knows people who make a bit more than herself and she doesn’t go flying around Europe all the time. She makes more than a mil a year and doesn’t think she’s rich because she isn’t a jet setter? We’re not talking pesos…we’re talking about dollars! I repeat. WTH!!!

Hey Isuru, do you have to pay for tickets to watch your Div 3 team play. I bet it’d be pretty sweet to get front row seats for one of their games.

Ben, a good offense will make up for poor defense. Just start asking your board tough questions about their mothers. Actually..It’s all about defense Benny. Good luck.

Hey Robin, I’m going to be in portland this Monday. Wanna give me driving lessons?

Have a good weekend yaww.

This is my review of Wizard’s First Rule and also a response to Mark’s review. First, to put things into perspective, I actually think there are many readers who would share Mark’s opinion of WFR. Readers who are very critical of the fiction they read will probably fall into Mark’s camp of thought. I tend to be moderaly critical of my fiction and when I become immersed in the book, I can be very forgiving.

Terry Goodkind does a great job with character development and the description of thier motivations and emotions. With ya on this one Mark. This is definitely one of the most important part of the novel for me. Since you get to know their thoughts, I often think that I come to know the the characters better then people, which leads me to become attached and emotionally invested. When that happens, you know that at least for you, it’s a worthy piece of fiction. For me, this ties into my love of long novels and movies.

In response to your assertion about the length of the novel, I actually thought that T.G. did a good job with the pace of the plot and kept things interesting. Part of the reason the characters are so well described is because of the many tough situations T.G. puts them through. IMO, authors should not have to cut out parts which they feel to be important just to keep the novel at a certain page limit. I feel similarly about movies. Many movies under two hours are too short…except for B moves staring Ben, in which case two hours is way too long.

Readers will probably make some intuitive leaps while reading WFR but I don’t think they are as clear cut as you make it out to be. There are quite a few plot twists but just in case there is someone viewing this blog that would like to read WFR untainted I won’t hash them out here. Here are a few things to know about WFR.

1. I’ve read quite a few fantasy series and most have plots that drag in places. IMO, T.G. does a masterful job in keeping the book suspenseful and high in energy. Of course one might complain about how many times the main character almost gets killed but you can’t have everything.

2. One of the reasons why I like WFR so much is because T.G. isn’t afraid to be graphic with his descriptions of emotions and scenes….although some may find this to be a bit too much.

3. Personally I found the plot twists surprising but admittedly I didn’t put down the book long enough to do any serious plot analysis. Some may complain that there are a few too many cliches but I didn’t mind it so much. The “intelligent” characters often act rashly but ususally the situations are pretty intense.

4. WFR and Stone of Tears, the second book in the series, “borrows” some elements from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. The later books have much more original work and they do get better but I don’t know if the changes are significant enought for me to recommend them to you Mark. For a mainstream fantasy novel with a huge following, I think the sword of truth series is pretty daring in many respects, especially when compared to Robert Jordan’s wheel of time and David Edding’s Belgariad.

Misinformed is what I meant, of course. But malaprops are pretty funny.

when you said “malinformed” did you mean “misinformed” or “malformed”? I thought it was kinda funny, imagining this web designer with some hideous mutation, hard-coding text font and cackling to himself….

anyhow, sorry that link got you ticked 🙂

Okay George,

I finally read a book of yours.

Overall, Wizard’s First Rule was pretty good, and Goodkind does a great job describing emotions and motivations, but the same well-emoted characters were rather stupid. Actually, I suppose it was more a combination of two things: 1. the book was twice as long as it needed to be, 2. I could immediately see solutions the author obviously never thought of. These two things made the characters appear more stupid than they should’ve since over the span of *chapters* I already knew how they could end their suffering and was incredulous that they couldn’t see the same solutions.

Here’s a list:

1. It was obvious from the get-go that Michael was Rahl’s ally.

2. When Rahl told Richard near the end that a spell had been cast on him which made him appear the enemy to his friends, it was obvious what the witch Shota’s prophecies were about.

3. One of the main obstacles of the book was that the Confessor would not be able to truly have a lover since she would inadvertantly use her power on him when she relaxed in love-throes, which prevented Kahlan and Richard from being together. In fact, the book almost hinged on this fact, as when I said the author did a great job of describing emotions, one of those emotions was love (the others being hate, rage, fear…) But another item of note was that each time a Confessor used her power on someone it took a while for her power to regenerate. Furthermore, the power could be used on animals, too, though it had little effect. Well, obviously the solution was for a Confessor to touch an animal before going to bed with her lover. Duh.

4. Another weird turn of events towards the end of the book detailed how Richard was tortured by Mistress Denna and how he wished he could kill himself but had no power to do so. Well, he still had the night stone and if he had been as smart a character as the author intended, he would’ve used it.

5. The Bird Man could not teach Richard how to use the bird whistle. Well, duh, try letting Kahlan learn how to use it instead.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be reading the rest of the series unless you say they get better, G.

Before this I read 2.5 books of the Manifest series by Stephen Baxter. Partway through the last book, though, I realized that the problems of the first two books, namely that he has some great ideas but isn’t a good enough author or thinker to think them through to their logical conclusions, was also in this last one, so I put the book down.

On to David Eddings. He’s a Reedie. Let’s hope that doesn’t mean the books will be drawn-out and esoteric.

On her first night in town, Chris was trapped at a meeting, so Katie met Lara at a coffeeshop in Davis Square. They went back to my place, and then I met the ladies at Christopher’s in Porter Square (editor’s note: the review is spot-on). I had a chimichanga and one beer, but this picture makes me look like I had 3 beers.

So, the thing about Lara’s camera is that it is about the size of a Bic lighter and takes video and all that. It’s what you would call “super sweet.” The best part is that it is metallic orange. The worst part, is that the red-eye reducing flash blinds you and then takes your picture. Katie can take it, but I can’t handle it…

Wow. Words cannot describe the retinal damage I was acting like I could have received (editor’s note: ?????).

Anyway the next day, Lara had the big interview in Sturbridge, and I had a big midterm that night. Needless to say, we were both pretty tired and brain dead, so it was definitely time to drink more beer and eat more food. We met Mark and Anitha at Grendel’s in Harvard Square. They have a food “happy hour” after 9:00 pm (editor’s note: half-price bizzatch), which is pretty cool. I had two Guinness’ and some linguini with shellfish.

Anitha is on the left, Mark is in the middle, and “two-beer” Melmack is on the right. Here’s the deal with Mark: his eyes are never open when you take a picture of him. I don’t know if he’s trying to protect his soul or what. The other thing is that he hasn’t updated his website since before that whole Y2K thing.

They were playing Soul Coughing’s Ruby Vroom in the bar, which was cool because I hadn’t heard it in a while. For this picture, Lara got in the mix, but Anitha’s unsteady hand made things look pretty blurry. I bet if we had a tripod, you would see that Mark’s eyes are, in fact, not open.

BTW: Still don’t know how I did on that test, and Lara starts her new job on May 1st.

One of the biggest gripes I have is against web designers who do not understand that the web should be a free resource of information. The greatest purpose the web can have is to share information equally, giving anyone the power to educate and inform themselves. With that goal in mind, making the web as accessible as possible, obviously within reason comparing things like cost-effectiveness and demographics of your audience, should be one of the highest goals of any web designer.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to say this, as going to that NBA quotes page reminded me of it. Hard-coding the size of your font for bodies of text is one of the most common mistakes a malinformed web designer can make. Most do it as a way to ensure proper layout of a page, and under certain circumstances, like for menu items, it is understandable, but for a common news-type template where it is applied to the actual main article, it’s inexcusable. Go to that site which Ben linked to and look at it.

Now look at what I had to do to read it the way I wanted to:

“We designed it that way because we want to control how people look at our content” is probably the biggest reason you will find. “Would you like how I take your content out of context and read it that way?” is my answer.

Most of the time it doesn’t bother me this much, but I just felt like sitting back and relaxing today rather than sitting up attentively as I normally do…

This is what happens when you ask NBA players a bunch of questions. Sports interviews are so banal. But the quotes are funny. My favorite quote has to be when someone asked Yao Ming at one of his tri-weekly press conferences what his favorite English words were…and he answered “Last question”. Hhahaha… but a close second is this gem by Charles Oakley that I just found:

Charles Oakley, F, Washington Wizards: