Recently in Reviews Category

This is Rucka's latest book in the Atticus Kodiak story arc that started with Finder, and in my opinion it's the best of the series so far.

The book opens with Kodiak and Alena Ciskova, the assassin from Critical Space, living in hiding in Kobuleti, a small town on the Black Sea. When their neighbor's family is killed, and the neighbor's 14-year-old daughter abducted, Kodiak begins to try to figure out what happened to her.

Mayhem ensues, along with visits to Amsterdam, Turkey, and Las Vegas (among others).

Rucka isn't subtle. The theme of this book—the trafficking and sexual exploitation of young girls – makes for supremely unpleasant reading. Kodiak is forced to confront some despicable people, and this gives Rucka the opportunity to delve into some ends-justify-the-means internal dialogue that helped flesh out Kodiak's character beyond that of a bodyguard-turned-reluctant-assassin.

Highly recommended.

Given that I'm in Palo Alto, and that probably half of my coworkers use Macs, it's no surprise that I installed Snow Leopard today. I'm not going to review the OS, or even the Exchange capability, but here are a few notes based on my long-time Entourage use (and not a little time spent with Outlook 2010 over the past few months). Herewith my thoughts:

• The first thing I noticed: Mail.app is smokin' fast compared to Entourage EWS. I mean, we're talking lightning. EWS has much improved sync performance compared to DAV sync, but Mail.app leaves it in the dust when it comes to scrolling, searching, and message rendering. I haven't tried to compare the two programs' sync speed (and probably won't, since it's mostly relevant when you set up a new account).
• Speaking of setup: I was able to set up 4 Exchange accounts in about 10 seconds each: enter e-mail address and password, then let Autodiscover do the rest. EWS Autodiscover works well most of the time, but occasionally it will fail to detect an account.
• By default, Mail creates a single unified Inbox view-- exactly what I use in Entourage (and what I wish for in Outlook 2010). However, nowhere can I find where Mail tells me how many messages are in a folder, something I like to keep track of.
• I like it that Mail.app uses the same sounds for sent and received mail that the iPhone does. On the other hand, I dislike the fact that you can't change these sounds (on either platform). C'mon, Apple.
• Ironically, older versions of Mail would hide some Exchange folders when you connected because Mail couldn't handle them. Guess what? This version fails to hide some folders, such as "Conversation Action Settings" and "Quick Step Settings", that Outlook 2010 creates as ostensibly hidden folders in your mailbox root. Oops.
  
• Entourage seems to do a better job of masking temporary connectivity problems. When Mail.app decides that one of my servers is unreachable, it grays out that server's entire folder tree and puts the little tilde-looking icon next to the account name. By contrast, Entourage will discreetly add "(Not Connected)" to the account name and leave it at that.
• iCal… well, what can I say? I still don't like it after all these years. Yes, it syncs with my Exchange calendars now, but its visual display is ugly compared to Entourage (especially for overlapping events), it's lacking in features, and the task support appears to have been hastily bolted on.
• I've never been a user of the Address Book app. Given the way this version works, I'm not about to start. Too much wasted white space and too many missing features. For example, want to see someone's management chain? Too bad, Address Book doesn't show that. Feel like searching the GAL? Sorry, no can do (at least not that I can find.)

There are other problems, too-- no support for setting your out-of-office status, for example. In terms of fit and finish, there are lots of little grace notes that Entourage gets right but that Apple stumbled with. To show just one example, take a look at these two screen shots, one for each program.

  

IMHO, Entourage does a better job all around. It tells me that my machine and my appointment are in different time zones. It clearly shows the important data about when my test meeting's invitees are available. Once you type in an invitee's name, there's no way to delete the event in iCal unless you remove all invitees first. Attempting to close the window gives you a chance to edit or send the invite, but not get rid of it altogether. (Bonus: thought it was interesting that Entourage could get and display Atalla's status (OOF, in this case) but that iCal couldn't, even though I took the screen shots on the same machine and more or less at the same time.)

More broadly I don't like going back to the world of having three separate apps for PIM functions. It reminds me of Sidekick for DOS. I much prefer the Outlook/Entourage model of having several different (but related) data types in one place. What makes this worse is that there's relatively little integration among the Snow Leopard apps. For example, if you're looking at a contact in Address Book and want to send that person a mail message-- too bad. There's no way to do so. You can, however, right-click an e-mail address in Mail to open that address' contact card.

Still more broadly, these applications are not very flexible or customizable compared to Entourage. For example, let's say you want your message reading pane on the right. Too bad! There's no way in Mail.app to customize it; you need WideMail or something like it, of which there is no Snow Leopard version (yet).

So, Snow Leopard delivers what Apple promised: basic Exchange integration. There are so many things that they've left out, though, that I remain disappointed, and I'm thinking that the Microsoft Mac Business Unit has a huge lead already as they move into full-scale development of Outlook for Mac

This isn't exactly a horror novel, but it was horrifying. It scared the pants off me. I don't want to say too much about it to avoid spoiling any potential surprises. Carlson tells the story of a nanotech plague, and its few survivors, in a spare, fast style. There are plot twists aplenty, and neither the heroes nor villains are as simple as they might first appear. Strongly recommended if you like science fiction, apocalyptic fiction, or well-written and scary fiction.

Let me save you the effort of reading this cynical and depressing book: the good guys lose. All of them, in fact: the lawyers who go nearly half a million dollars in debt financing their client's suit against an egregious polluter, the plaintiff herself, a Mississippi Supreme Court justice running for re-election, and even the candidate who replaces her. The only winner is a slimy, money-grubbing billionaire. I don't expect every book I read to be Pollyanna, but I was surprised by the degree of cynical commentary that Grisham slipped in here. Not recommended.

As soon as I saw this book on the net, I knew I had to read it. Here's a capsule review. First, it has perhaps the most vulgar language of any book I have ever read. It made the worst cursing I heard in the Marines seem like a Sunday school lesson. If you are easily offended, definitely don't read it. (Even the table of contents would be enough to get the book an R rating if it were a movie!) There's a funny comment on Dobyns' blog in which an 11-year-old complains that his dad won't let him read the book, to which Dobyns responds "Your dad is correct. You can't read No Angel until you're 30."

Second, the author is clearly as crazy as an outhouse rat. Infiltrate the Hells Angels? Why not do something less crazy, like jumping off a bridge with an anvil duct-taped to your head?

Dobyns recounts his early career in the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, and Firearms and explains how his personality led him to seek risky undercover assignments. When he sees an opportunity to attack the Angels from within, he has a hard time convincing his superiors, but eventually wins them over through a combination of persistence, solid evidence gathering, and missteps by the Angels that make them seem like a bigger danger to public order than they might actually have been. If anything, I was surprised by how trusting the Angels leadership was, but that's as much a testament to Dobyns' skill as an undercover officer as it is to their desire to quickly expand throughout Arizona.

Dobyns (and his ghostwriter) tell a fascinating story in vivid detail. It's clear throughout that Dobyns respects many aspects of the Angels culture, like their sense of brotherhood and honor. That doesn't mean that he's willing to excuse their actual criminal behavior, and he makes that clear as well. The story itself is fascinating; Dobyns starts by creating a fake chapter of a Mexican motorcycle gang and uses it to establish credibility with Angels leaders, culminating in their invitation to "patch over" and join the Angels. Along the way, hijinks ensue: there are beatings, gun sales, boozy motorcycle rides, and testosterone galore. (I don't want to be more specific so I don't spoil any surprises!)

At the end of the book, I couldn't help wondering whether the sacrifices he and his family made were worth the eventual outcome of the case, in which internal squabbling amongst the prosecution team resulted in lower sentences and the dismissal of charges against a few key players. (As a bonus, now Dobyns has a lawsuit against the ATF claiming that they are failing to protect him and his family from reprisals.)

Highly recommended for those with thick skins and strong stomachs.

As I was scanning this morning's New York Times, I saw an obituary for Art Code. I'd never heard of him, but he was an instrumental player in the creation of the Hubble Space Telescope. That was only one of the many things I learned from reading Zimmerman's excellent book on the genesis, development, deployment, and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Zimmerman has written a fascinating account of the early genesis of the whole idea of space-based telescopes; much of this early work was done by Lyman Spitzer, another scientist you probably haven't heard of but who (IMHO) deserves wider recognition (and who was born in Toledo!)

Zimmerman clearly and engagingly chronicles the process by which we got the Hubble, including the (almost-incredible) bungles made by Perkin-Elmer in finishing the primary mirror, the drawn-out process of figuring out what the actual problem was, and the ingenious engineering solution (COSTAR) that fixed it. If anything, he provides too much detail of some of the bureaucratic wrangling. It's easy to get lost in his description of the wrangling that took place between various factions at different NASA centers and the Space Telescope Science Institute. However, he does a splendid job of articulating how revolutionary the HST was as a scientific instrument, and how much knowledge astronomers in different specialties were able to learn from it.

If you have even a passing interest in Big Science, this is a great read; likewise if you're an astronomy buff. Highly recommended.

It's hard for me to decide how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I appreciate its candor and clarity. Broughton spent years in the newspaper business, and he is an engaging writer with an excellent eye for scene-setting and description. His portraits of the characters in his Harvard Business School (HBS) class are sharply drawn, enough so that I felt I was there in the classroom with him at some points.

On the other hand, he essentially enrolled at HBS, going about $175,000 in debt, to see whether business school might afford him some other career opportunities. While most of his other classmates had clear goals (mostly involving the amassing of personal wealth, sadly but unsurprisingly), he seemed to be trying to decide what he wanted to do. In that respect, he was in HBS but not of it; to me that seems like quite a wasted opportunity.

Broughton makes some excellent points about the cultural impact of MBAs, writing that "MBAs determine the lives many of us will lead, the hours we work, the vacations we get, the culture we consume, the health care we receive, and the education provided to our children." Through that critical lens, he examines what he learned at HBS and finds it somewhat wanting. He cites Andrew Carnegie as an example; Carnegie was perhaps one of the least ethical, even rapacious, businessmen ever to walk the earth, yet he is chiefly remembered for his many good works later in life. Broughton asks the fair question of whether having more Carnegies is on balance a good thing for the US, and by extension the world.

From the perspective of a small business owner, I certainly enjoyed the descriptions of the various HBS classes. Some clearly would be of use to me, while others wouldn't. As an inducement to attend HBS (which it clearly isn't intended to be), the book falls short. As a lucid description of the experience, and a thought-provoking reflection on the effects of the business culture driven in large part by HBS graduates and marketing, it succeeds quite well. Highly recommended.

I love reading about science in all its forms, but I find many science articles in the mass media to be dumbed down or poorly written and thus uninteresting. During a recent trip to the library, I happened upon this collection and decided to give it a try. My experiment was well-rewarded, as this is a superb collection of fascinating and well-written stories. Some standouts in this collection include Atul Gawande's "The Score", which traces the industrialization of childbirth (though I would argue that improvements in anesthesiology have made almost as big an impact); Lawrence Altman's "The Man on the Table Devised the Surgery", about Michael E. DeBakey's very unusual surgery in 2006, and Jerome Groopman's "Being There". This last was especially poignant for me, as it discusses the pros and cons of allowing family members to be present during resuscitation attempts for trauma victims. I will carry to my grave the sounds and sights of Dad's visit to the Albany Medical Center emergency department, and I still am not able to decide if it was good or bad that I saw those things.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book, and I'll be on the hunt for the 2008 edition when it's published.

I'd never even heard of Cinerama before watching the Blu-Ray edition of How the West Was Won with John and Amy. Cinerama Adventure is a fascinating look at the then-revolutionary Cinerama system. Think of it as a predecessor to IMAX, except that it provided better peripheral views at the expense of requiring three separate cameras and projectors. If you're at all interested in 1950s pop culture, film and video technology, film-making, or flying a camera-equipped B-25 into an active volcano, you'll find plenty of things to interest you here. My favorite part might have been the discussion of how the movie industry targeted Cinerama to help counter the television-induced drop in movie theater attendance. I wonder if there's a parallel with the current theater industry... maybe they could try something innovative instead of whining so much.

I'd never even heard of Cinerama before watching the Blu-Ray edition of How the West Was Won with John and Amy. Cinerama Adventure is a fascinating look at the then-revolutionary Cinerama system. Think of it as a predecessor to IMAX, except that it provided better peripheral views at the expense of requiring three separate cameras and projectors. If you're at all interested in 1950s pop culture, film and video technology, film-making, or flying a camera-equipped B-25 into an active volcano, you'll find plenty of things to interest you here. My favorite part might have been the discussion of how the movie industry targeted Cinerama to help counter the television-induced drop in movie theater attendance. I wonder if there's a parallel with the current theater industry... maybe they could try something innovative instead of whining so much.

Sometimes I read a book on some topic that inspires me to think of myself doing something with that topic-- a book on aircraft design might make me wonder how I would fare as an aerospace engineer. Other books I read help me appreciate a topic or activity without necessarily wanting to do it myself (cf. A Blistered Kind of Love).

Winterdance did neither of these. It made me say, repeatedly and often aloud, that this guy is flat-out crazy. The Iditarod is one of the most grueling events in the world, and this guy wanted to run it. The story of his preparation for the races made me alternately wince (mostly for his wife, poor soul) and cringe. Imagine: sleeping with your dog team in its kennel, in your yard; letting fifteen sled dogs pull you on a bicycle then having to walk fifteen-plus miles home after they run off and leave you; getting sprayed by half a dozen skunks. The race itself is no better. I found myself unable to stop reading and concurrently wishing the book would end on the next page. I can't really recommend it, but it was definitely an experience that will alter how I see future books. In fact, perhaps that's the best summary I can come up with: the book is like the Iditarod in that respect.

Moskos has written a tough critique of US drug laws, but he's cleverly disguised the first two-thirds of the book as a cops-on-the-beat tale of his time spent on the streets of the Eastern District of Baltimore. If you've watched The Wire, much of what Moskos says will sound familiar: the current US war on drugs is a wasteful effort that does little to curb violence (mostly perpetrated by the sellers, not the users) while doing nothing to help the users kick their habits. The anecdotes are amusing; the sociological data Moskos includes are valuable, and his argument is strong. Well worth reading.

I was recently in Seattle for meetings with my partners (protip: the Bell Harbor Convention Center is an awesome meeting venue). During that time, my team landed a project that requires use of a Mac, so I made the (easy) decision to hand my first-generation MacBook Pro (2.16GHz, 2GB of RAM, plus a 250GB drive I added earlier this year) to Tim and replace it with a new machine. I used it all day yesterday and quite a bit last night, and now I'm using it on my flight home. Here are my first impressions:

• Despite its odd "chiclet" look, the keyboard has a great tactile feel-- it's much less mushy than my old MBP, and it compares favorably with Lenovo's keyboards (still the best IMHO). Apple has changed around the function key behavior, meaning that I finally have keyboard shortcuts for iTunes control. Interestingly, the cursor arrows still work as paging keys when you hold down "Fn" but they don't have the labels on them. I sort of miss the small "Enter" button to the right of the space bar, but I'm getting used to it.
• I love the new trackpad, except that it's a bit noisy. I already used tap-to-click on my prior machine, so the noise isn't a huge deal. I didn't have any trouble adapting to the click-and-drag behavior of clicking with my thumb on the pad's bottom edge and then dragging with a finger. The multitouch behavior is handy, when I actually remember that it exists and use it.
• Screen brightness and quality is outstanding. In my limited testing so far, I haven't had any problem with the glossy screen finish.
• Battery life is a HUGE improvement over my old machine. I will easily get 4 hours out of this battery on my default workload (mostly Word, some Ecto, and an occasional TV show in iTunes).
• The body structure is a major improvement over the old machine. The screen hinge isn't floppy, so the screen stays put even with my hardcore typing style, and the perimeter of the case on the bottom half has no flex or give.
• The Migration Assistant did a flawless job of moving about 85GB of data to the new machine over an Ethernet connection. John was quite envious of this feature.
• It's easier for me to open the lid since there is no longer a release button. (I still prefer Lenovo's slide-to-unlock mechanism, though)

I recently needed a case for my iPhone 3G. I had a CaseLogic slip case for my original iPhone, and it was a solid "OK": a little clunky, a little ugly, but enough to get the job done. I wanted something with less bulk. On the advice of a few iPhone-toting friends, I decided to try the Switcheasy Capsule Rebel. Verdict: I love it. It looks great, and it provides an excellent tactile feel. It doesn't feel slippery, slimy, or slick. Highly recommended.

I recently needed a case for my iPhone 3G. I had a CaseLogic slip case for my original iPhone, and it was a solid "OK": a little clunky, a little ugly, but enough to get the job done. I wanted something with less bulk. On the advice of a few iPhone-toting friends, I decided to try the Switcheasy Capsule Rebel. Verdict: I love it. It looks great, and it provides an excellent tactile feel. It doesn't feel slippery, slimy, or slick. Highly recommended.

A wonderful essay at a web site I'd never heard of, by a writer I don't know, about the grace that the Savior gives each of us every day. It was a real eye-opener for me to read this and recall how often I take His forgiveness for granted.

My friend Ben Schorr, an Outlook MVP who has the good fortune to live someplace nice, just mailed me to tell me that his new book is out. It's called The Lawyers' Guide to Outlook 2007, which is a wonderfully descriptive title. I haven't read it, but based on the table of contents alone I strongly recommend it-- the very fact that he has a section called "Why an Empty Inbox?" tells me everything I need to know to recommend it. If you're an attorney, or work with them, check it out.

Apple has been getting a ton of press about the launch of v2.0 of the iPhone software (along with the iPhone 3G, of course!) I've been using a pre-release version of the v2.0 firmware on my iPhone, but I didn't want to write about it until the release because I hoped that some of the glaring problems with Apple's implementation would be fixed in the RTM version. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case.

Apple has a page with lots of deeper information on the enterprise features of the v2 software. I haven't spent any time with the device management or provisioning bits, nor the VPN support. However, I have spent a lot of time with the Exchange-compatible features, and overall I'd have to say Apple isn't there yet. Windows Mobile still has some compelling features that the iPhone lacks. It's entirely possible that I've just missed some iPhone features; I'll update this post as I learn more (or am corrected).

Update 1: [0017 Monday 7/15] I should point out that Exchange ActiveSync is a protocol that supports lots of different content types and protocol option. Apple, like most other EAS licensees, has implemented a subset of EAS. I'm complaining about Apple's implementation here, not EAS itself.

About the author

Before I get into the meat of my piece, a few words about my qualifications. I've been a Mac user since 1984, an iPhone user since July 8th of last year, and an Exchange admin since 1995. I'm a Microsoft MVP for Exchange and Office Communications Server. My day job involves every possible sort of exploration into how Exchange works, with a heavy focus on mobility. I carry a Windows Mobile 6.1 device daily and rely on it to get my work done. I've been in love with the polish and responsiveness of the iPhone UI from day 1. It's an awesome device for most purposes. However, from my standpoint as an experienced Exchange administrator and WM device wrangler, there are still a lot of missing pieces (or things that are poorly implemented).

E-mail

Let's start with e-mail, which seems like an easy enough application to implement. Apple got the single biggest item right: push e-mail works properly. Mail arrives when it's supposed to, and replies are sent like they're supposed to be. HTML mail displays beautifully. In fact, the overall Mail experience is basically just like it was in v1, for better or worse.

We interrupt this review for a special gripe: Apple, why on earth do you expand the ENTIRE folder list when I want to navigate to a new folder or move a message? This is incredibly inefficient for large mailboxes. It would help a great deal if the Mail application would remember the most recently used folder and jump to it, or (even better) if the folder list were collapsible. Please fix this in the next point release. (Side gripe: why can't I flick left or right to change e-mail accounts, like I can with Safari's page selector?) We now resume our regular programming.

You might think that the iPhone would work well as an offline mail client. You might also think that you should be dating Danica Patrick and that gas should be $1.25/gallon. Bad news: the iPhone's offline story is poor. When the device radios are off, any attempt to move or delete messages results in an error dialog. How lame is that? Did anyone at Apple test a Windows Mobile device to see how it works in this situation? There are a few nice touches, though. For example, a small status line in the main mail view shows you how many messages are queued for sending. At least the software is smart enough to automatically attempt a sync as soon as the network comes back up.

There are a number of other Windows Mobile 6 features missing here: for instance, you cannot flag or unflag messages for follow-up; you can't set out of office messages or timings, and the device will frequently complain if you try to throw away a message that a client- or server-side junk filter has already moved elsewhere. The extremely convenient press-and-hold shortcuts that WM provides (like "d" to delete or "m" for move) are of course absent here, too.

Bottom line: mail is prettier on the iPhone. The devices are tied in terms of sync behavior and performance. My WM 6.1 device has a significant edge in usability speed because of one-handed message selection and movement, plus the press-and-hold keys. I realize that for novice users this speed differential might be much smaller... but I'm not a novice. (And, to forestall any flames: the iPhone keyboard is OK with me. Once I got used to it, it's as fast as a physical keyboard.)

Calendaring

OK, so let me get this out in the open: I can't stand iCal on the desktop. It's so lame compared to Entourage, Outlook, and OWA that I just flat don't use it. The fact that the iPhone's calendar app emulates iCal closely is not a good thing. Color coding of events on the iPhone is driven by where events appear in iCal, meaning that if you sync with Exchange (or Entourage, FTM), your events appear in one color. There's no support for Exchange categories, an obvious omission.

One thing I do like: the default behavior when a new meeting invite appears is to play the calendar reminder sound and show an alert. This is useful because there's no other way to show that you have pending meeting invites. There's a host of weird behavior involving existing recurring events; after your first sync, most of them will show up as "maybe" (which in Apple-speak means "tentative"), even if you've previously accepted them.

Now, on to the really bad stuff. There are several common-- nay, fundamental-- things that you cannot do with the iPhone calendar application. You cannot:

• create a meeting request and invite other people to attend. Without this, the wireless calendar functionality is largely useless unless you're the Unabomber or some other kind of Luddite hermit who never works with others. (Oddly, you can view the attendee status of meetings you create on the desktop!)
• create a recurring meeting unless it is repeated daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or yearly. That's right-- no more "first Thursday of every month" or "every Monday, Wednesday, Friday" appointments. This is disgraceful. Even Palm managed to eventually get this right, for crying out loud.
• create a meeting in a time zone other than the one you are currently in. I guess you might be able to do this by changing the device time zone, but that doesn't seem like a very good idea to me, and I haven't tried it. I have tried (in vain) explaining why I created a meeting request for 4:30am Pacific time because I forgot my device was still on Eastern time, though.
• view suggested meeting times or free/busy times, either for your own calendar or for others'. That makes sense, given that you can't invite other people, but it's still super lame.
• move to an arbitrary date, in either the future or the past. Say you want to check your schedule for 331 days from now so you can grab some frequent-flyer tickets to Maui. Hit the "month" button, then flick until you get to June 2009. Let's hope you don't need to look at dates in the far future or you'll end up with a pulled tendon or something.

As with the offline mode behavior of the mail app, it's mind-boggling that Apple didn't get these right. We're not talking cutting-edge functionality here. The fourth one is especially egregious because it's been that way since the v1.0 release.

Special note to IMAP users: you can receive meeting invitations as .ics attachments, but you can't open them or add them to your calendar. This is apparently a feature, not a bug. You're welcome. (Special bonus: the Calendar app just died on me as I was looking at my list of pending invitations).

Tasks

The iPhone doesn't include a built-in tasks/to-do application. Windows Mobile 6 has task support baked in, so it has a clear advantage here. Apple missed the boat here, as this is a natural piece of functionality for a mobile device. There are a number of such programs at the iPhone App Store, but none of them seem to support wireless sync. My money is on OmniGroup's OmniFocus, which I've recently started using on the desktop. OK, I admit it; OmniFocus doesn't support sync yet either, but it's supposed to soon, and I trust them based on their track record.

Notes

The iPhone Notes application is anemic and, IMHO, basically useless. (No, I don't mean the iPhone version of Lotus Notes, because it doesn't exist; I mean the built-in Notes application). Given its overall level of uselessness, it's no surprise that it doesn't sync with Exchange-side note items. If server sync is important to you, get Evernote, which has clients for Mac OS X, iPhone, Windows, Windows Mobile, and IE/Firefox/Safari. (Ping me if you want an invite). [Update 2: I use OneNote on my Windows machines, and its sync behavior with Windows Mobile is brilliant: plug in your device, automatically get the client, and then sync "just works". It is not, however, wireless, which is what I need. Plus, there's no Mac client.]

Policy control and security

The first time I synced the iPhone with my home Exchange server, I didn't see two things that I expected. Windows Mobile correctly warns me that I'm using a potentially untrusted certificate, because it's issued by my self-signed root CA. Once the initial sync connection was made, I got a warning that I would have to accept the organization's EAS policy to let sync continue. The iPhone didn't show either of this warnings. I consider this a failure in both cases. Without a certificate validity warning, an attacker could easily mount a man-in-the-middle SSL attack. Accepting the server-side EAS policy without telling the user opens the risk that the user's device will be remotely wiped without her knowledge, or that other policy changes will unexpectedly remove device functionality. Because I'm on the road, I haven't actually tested any of the remote wipe or security policy options because I need the device to keep working until I return home. Look for a follow-up article (in which I will probably complain that the iPhone doesn't support the most interesting new EAS policies of Exchange 2007) later.

As a side note, I fixed the original WM certificate error by adding my domain root CA certificate to the device. There doesn't seem to be a way to do this on the iPhone, although I haven't tested the desktop provisioning utility.

Bugs!!!1!

Are there bugs? Yes, in fact there are. The most noticeable one for me is Apple's refusal to use IMAP EXPUNGE to properly remove items. This makes it very frustrating to use an iPhone for IMAP access to an account that you use with Outlook or Entourage elsewhere. There are other bugs, too. For example, when you "reply all" to a message, your sending address is included as a recipient. I already mentioned the way that previously-accepted repeating events act, but I am too busy/lazy to come up with a detailed repro case.

Where to learn more

Apple's got a decent "quick start" page explaining how to set up Exchange ActiveSync for use with the iPhone, and the Exchange team has a more detailed post on the Exchange team blog. I suspect the comments for this post will be a fertile ground for updates, too. [Update 3 @ 1944 7/15: my main main Omar has a wiki that chronicles bugs in the iPhone Exchange integration here.]

I'm teaching a developer-focused class, and the organizers put together a group dinner last night. It was catered by David Hayward from Carolina Smoke, and the food was fantastic! Rarely have I had better BBQ. I had a big plate of ribs, pork, salmon, baked beans, and brisket: all smoked, all delicious. I went back for more beans and a second piece of sweet cornbread. On top of the excellent food, David mingled with the crowd, telling jokes and both enduring and dispensing ragging about various styles of BBQ. (My favorite: the two guys from the UK at my table who'd never had Southern-style BBQ before!) I want to see if they can cater our next company outing-- that's how good it was.

I'm teaching a developer-focused class, and the organizers put together a group dinner last night. It was catered by David Hayward from Carolina Smoke, and the food was fantastic! Rarely have I had better BBQ. I had a big plate of ribs, pork, salmon, baked beans, and brisket: all smoked, all delicious. I went back for more beans and a second piece of sweet cornbread. On top of the excellent food, David mingled with the crowd, telling jokes and both enduring and dispensing ragging about various styles of BBQ. (My favorite: the two guys from the UK at my table who'd never had Southern-style BBQ before!) I want to see if they can cater our next company outing-- that's how good it was.

I've read a fair number of books about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some have been written by soldiers and Marines, others by analysts or journalists. Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives is the most important book I have yet read. Written by the Rocky Mountain News' Jim Sheeler, Final Salute is a book-length expansion of a newspaper series by the same name. The original series netted Pulitzer Prizes for Sheeler and Todd Heisler, the photographer, but I hadn't heard of it until recently.

Sheeler has written an incredibly powerful and moving book centering on perhaps the hardest job in the military: the casualty assistance calls officer whose job is to notify families that they have lost a loved one. Marine Major (now LtCol) Steve Beck had this role for Colorado and Wyoming, and the book chronicles his visits to a number of Marine and Navy corpsman families. Beck is totally committed to this job, and his dedication in support of the families is awe-inspiring.

We don't get much of a sense of Beck as a person (apart from his obvious integrity and devotion to the Marine Corps and his country), but the same cannot be said of the families Sheeler interviews. Their anguish comes through clearly, but so do their love and pride, and even their esprit de corps. From Indian reservations to Denver suburbs, the families span a wide range of backgrounds and situations.

I admire the deft way in which Sheeler elicits their feelings without seeming intrusive or angering them, and I very much appreciate his political neutrality. This isn't a book about leaders or government; it's a book about leadership, principle, and sacrifice. Sheeler writes economically, without a lot of needless embellishment or soppy sentimentality. He's not flowery, and that makes his prose hit all the harder. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried at several points during the book, but reading it simultaneously renewed my pride in the Marine Corps and in our remarkable nation.

Whatever your political affiliation, whatever your view on the war, I urge you to read this book to get an idea of the kinds of sacrifices that your fellow Americans are making on your behalf. Highly recommended.

I've read a fair number of books about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some have been written by soldiers and Marines, others by analysts or journalists. Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives is the most important book I have yet read. Written by the Rocky Mountain News' Jim Sheeler, Final Salute is a book-length expansion of a newspaper series by the same name. The original series netted Pulitzer Prizes for Sheeler and Todd Heisler, the photographer, but I hadn't heard of it until recently.

Sheeler has written an incredibly powerful and moving book centering on perhaps the hardest job in the military: the casualty assistance calls officer whose job is to notify families that they have lost a loved one. Marine Major (now LtCol) Steve Beck had this role for Colorado and Wyoming, and the book chronicles his visits to a number of Marine and Navy corpsman families. Beck is totally committed to this job, and his dedication in support of the families is awe-inspiring.

We don't get much of a sense of Beck as a person (apart from his obvious integrity and devotion to the Marine Corps and his country), but the same cannot be said of the families Sheeler interviews. Their anguish comes through clearly, but so do their love and pride, and even their esprit de corps. From Indian reservations to Denver suburbs, the families span a wide range of backgrounds and situations.

I admire the deft way in which Sheeler elicits their feelings without seeming intrusive or angering them, and I very much appreciate his political neutrality. This isn't a book about leaders or government; it's a book about leadership, principle, and sacrifice. Sheeler writes economically, without a lot of needless embellishment or soppy sentimentality. He's not flowery, and that makes his prose hit all the harder. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried at several points during the book, but reading it simultaneously renewed my pride in the Marine Corps and in our remarkable nation.

Whatever your political affiliation, whatever your view on the war, I urge you to read this book to get an idea of the kinds of sacrifices that your fellow Americans are making on your behalf. Highly recommended.

Here's how much I like the GN 9350 headset: after using a review unit for about two weeks, I ordered them for myself, my partners, and some of the people on my team.

The 9350 is a lightweight wireless headset that features two connections: a USB plug that enables it to work with Communicator or other computer applications, plus a conventional headset connector. Two buttons on the headset base let you switch back and forth between modes. This allows you to quickly switch between a regular desk phone and applications like Skype, Mac Messenger, or Office Communicator.

Audio quality is excellent, as is range. My base unit is on my desk, in the northeast corner of the second floor. I can talk on the phone from anywhere in the yard, or even in the southwest corner of the basement. I particularly like this feature for long phone calls, as it means I can grab a diet Coke when I need one. (Sadly, there's no mute button on the headset itself, so ix-nay on wearing it into the athroom-bay.) I easily get a full 9 hours of battery life, and the battery is replaceable so you can keep a spare on hand.

The 9350 features two headbands: one goes over the top of the head, and the other wraps around the back. I prefer the wraparound, but I appreciate that I got to make the choice. There's also an optional remote handset lifter, the RHL-1000. I haven't bought one because it's only useful if you're close enough to the phone to hear it ring, which generally I'm not.

At an MSRP of $299, this is an expensive piece of equipment (though you can find refurb units at Hello Direct for $199 or so). However, it's made a huge difference in my ability to talk for long periods on the phone, which has ultimately made me quite a bit more productive. I give it two thumbs up.

I'm inaugurating a new feature here: the Tech Toy of the Week. Heaven knows I have enough of them to post a short weely review of one of them.

This week: the Speck line of cases for laptops. In particular, the SeeThru cases, which are essentially plastic clamshells that snap around your laptop to protect the actual case from abrasions and dirt. I have the clear SeeThru for my MacBook Pro (see some example photos here) and it works very well. Minor annoyance: the clear color shows dirt. I should probably have gotten the red one instead; the colored ones look great with the monochrome silver color scheme of the MBP. Speck also makes lots of other cases for laptops (notably the Sony Vaio series), iPods, and iPhones. Check 'em out.

As good as Jumper and Reflex were-- that's how bad this book was. Instead of the sensitively drawn Davy Rice, hero of the first two books, we get a bumptious child named Griffin whose parents are killed when unknown attackers attempt to kidnap Griffin. The book follows Griffin's escape and subsequent life, through age 18 or so. The problem is that he never grows up! Rather than the nuanced portrayal of Davy's situation, we get an escapist sequence of chases, thefts, and narrow escapes that seems aimed right at the Alex Ryder demographic (although with a ton of bad language, so my kids won't be reading this!) In the preface to the book, Gould admits that there are some changes from the settings of the previous books and that he hopes readers will give the book a fair shake. I did, and I was still disappointed. Hopefully the movie version is better. Oh wait. That's why this book is so bad. Never mind.

Sometimes I run across books that get lots of critical praise but leave me wondering why. This was a textbook example. After the first 50 pages, I was ready to quit, but then when I looked at Amazon I saw tons of laudatory reviews and decided to press on, thinking maybe I was missing something. Now I wish I could have that time back.

Goonan writes mechanically well, but the story she tells doesn't make any sense. To summarize: Sam Dance, the protagonist, is accosted by a mysterious female physicist who gives him information about a device that can help reduce the human propensity for war, apparently by editing human DNA. Or something. After that, things get worse; there's a lot of pseudo-scientific mumbling about quantum physics and many-worlds theory. Worse still, Dance is a jazz musician, and that leads Goonan to a lot of elaborate descriptions of various jazz-y things. I loathe jazz, so that was a problem too. (Oh, I almost forgot: her dialogue is terrible-- stilted and fake-sounding.) So, not recommended.

This really isn't a review, because I haven't been able to use WorldMate enough to get a feel for it. The desktop software crashes every time I try to run it, and the handheld software is almost unusable for entering itineraries. It's a far cry from the usability of TravelTracker for the Palm OS. I'm sure the time clock, weather, and flight timetable features are useful for some people, but all I want is the ability to enter flight itineraries and have them end up on my calendar. No such luck.

Ever eat a whole bag of Doritos, then look at the bag in puzzlement? "How'd I do that?" you wonder. "I didn't mean to eat the whole bag, honest..."

That's how I felt after reading this book. I'm a huge Joe Haldeman fan, so I was excited to see The Accidental Time Machine at Amazon. I got it yesterday and settled down to read it (along with a bologna sandwich and a refreshing beverage.) I was immediately captivated, again, by Haldeman's imaginative mixture of science and fiction.

Matt's a slacker graduate student who accidentally invents (or, more properly, discovers) a time machine. It has two interesting properties: first, it only goes into the future; second, each time it's activated, it goes approximately 12 times farther uptime. Matt experiments with it and ends up in a variety of weird situations: arrested for murder, a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Theosophy, and so on. Throughout, Haldeman keeps his explanations logical and plausible. Matt isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, so it's easier to identify with him than the ubersmart superhero characters some SF writers use (yes, John Ringo and Michael Williamson, I'm looking at you). He's got ordinary problems: his girlfriend leaves him, he loses his job, and so on. However, he perserveres until a surprisingly good ending that neatly caps off Haldeman's plotting.

Highly recommended.

We recently stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn attached to Albany Medical Center. I felt it necessary to write a letter to Hilton Hospitality's CEO. See below.

Wow.

Just wow.

I'm not a good enough reviewer to list all the reasons why this is such a terrific book. McDonald has created a fantastically textured, deeply detailed vision of a future India, then populated it with vivid characters. The SF components of the book are very much secondary, and the plotting, dialogue, characterization, and descriptions are so rich that I found the book literally impossible to put down. I read the entire flight between Atlanta and Seattle, drove to my hotel, and read until I couldn't keep my eyes open. Fantastic, and very highly recommended.

I really wanted to like this book. Silver had a great idea: write a thriller set around the idea of a previously-undiscovered Ian Fleming manuscript. The manuscript turns out to reveal the existence of a Nazi traitor in the British royal family, and it becomes the property of an American professor whose father was Fleming's friend during World War II. As a literary device, this framing works well. Unfortunately, neither of the stories is particularly compelling. The professor is neither heroine nor anti-heroine, and her encounters with the people who are trying to reclaim and conceal the manuscript are unconvincing. The story told in the Fleming manuscript itself is slow-moving and turgid, full of anecdotes that will probably enthrall people with a good background knowledge of the British royals but which lack interest for the rest of us. A good first effort, but not particularly recommended.

I really wanted to like this book. It got good reviews, and it was written by a well-known author whose works I hadn't sampled before. Unfortunately, I found it turgid, slow-moving, and flat-out boring. Couldn't finish. Off to the donation pile it goes.

Not bad for an airplane book. Coban tells his story with great pacing and snappy dialogue, but there are too many coincidences and (never thought I'd say this) son gratuitious plot twists that are visible from about a mile away. I suspect his later Myron Bolitar books are probably better; next time I'm in an airport perhaps I'll find out.

Short book, thus a short review. This is a finely crafted story told by an extremely competent talespinner. Hugo Marder, a men's clothing salesman, has always wanted to be a Marine. When he buys a Silver Star on eBay and wears it, suddenly people start treating him like someone who matters. He plunges himself into Marine Corps lore in an attempt to match the background of a real Marine, and he faces some circumstances that help define who he really is. Lehrer takes a fresh look at what it means to be a hero and how our culture treats its heroes. It's a quick, but fun, read that leaves you with some substance once you're done. Semper fi.

Four years ago, I reviewed Ruhlman's Walk on Water. That year, Julie gave me this book. Until recently, it sat unread on my shelf. What a mistake! Ruhlman has written a superbly readable narrative of what it's like to study at the Culinary Institute of America, someplace I never imagined giving a hoot about. I am very much a meat-and-potatoes (or, more accurately, boudin-and-rice) kind of person. I'm not a foodie, and you never could have convinced me that I'd devour a book about cooking school-- but I did. Ruhlman writes with a keen eye for detail, a snappy sense of pacing, and a willingness to philosophize about himself and the culinary field that I found simultaneously refreshing and reflective. Highly recommended, even if you prefer Burger King to Bourdain.

Say you wanted to read an exciting techno-thriller, filled with interesting characters, cool gadgets, realistic scenarios, and a writer who knows how to join them all together. Sound good? Excellent. In that case, don't read this book.

I'm not sure how Richard A. Clarke got a rep as being a deep technical thinker. Maybe he is, but if so, this book certainly doesn't show it. Breakpoint centers on a shadowy conspiracy to screw the civilized world by destroying much of its information infrastructure. The book starts well enough, with an attack on the terminating points for transoceanic cables that link US internet traffic to the rest of the world. However, the continual pseudo-technical blathering ("server-motor-driven"? err, maybe you meant "servo"?) about "Sytho Routers" and "Living Software" (a spanking-new self-replicating software package that will simultaneously give us a cross between Kurzweil's Singularity and Skynet) quickly becomes intolerable.

The characters have little verve or dimensionality, the dialogue is bogus (particularly when 1337 h4xx0rs are speaking), and the whole thing left me shaking my head.

I haven't finished it yet. I keep hoping that it will get better, while simultaneously knowing that it won't. Don't bother.

Dear Avis Rent-a-Car:

Please accept my thanks for renting me a Chevy Uplander minivan instead of the car I actually reserved. Ordinarily I would have preferred to have a standard sedan. since I was traveling solo. However, I'm grateful for the opportunity you gave me to drive an Uplander during my recent trip to Seattle. Why? Because it helps me appreciate the engineering quality, driveability, ergonomics, and product quality of my Dodge Grand Caravan. In fact, I can say that the Uplander was inferior to every other car I've ever owned or even driven, including the 1972 VW Super Beetle.

I'm a big fan of Poyer's past work. In fact, except for his Civil War-era novels, I've read all of his books, and as different as they are (ranging from modern war-at-sea novels to a look back to rural Pennsylvania in the 1930s) they've all been excellent. Sadly, though, I don't think The Threat is up to his past standards.

Dan Lenson, the main character here, is probably the luckiest sailor alive. He's survived having his ship run over by an aircraft carrier, attempts on his life by angry crewmen, getting blown up by the Iranian Navy, becoming lost in the Canadian Yukon, being tortured by Saddam's Revolutionary Guard, and having a low-yield nuclear weapon detonated abeam the first ship he actually got to command. After all this excitement, being named to the National Security Council as the chief of the counterdrug office seems like it would be a letdown. Lenson quickly makes an impact in his new job, which results in him being shuffled off to join the rotation of military aides who carry the nuclear "football". Sinister forces are at work behind the assignment, though; the sitting President is a dishonest sleazebag who is loathed by the military-- some of whom may be plotting to assassinate him and pin the blame on a convenient target. Like, say, a decorated-but-unstable military officer whose wife just left him. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Poyer still has the exquisite eye for detail, and description that he has long had, but because he turns it to the political arena it doesn't have nearly the same impact as it does when he describes the high-speed chess of battles at sea, or even the quieter poetry of the sounds and sights of a ship under way. The plot development was regrettably predictable, and the good and bad guys are straight from Thriller 101. There are some memorable scenes (like when the President faces a hostile crowd of grunts at a field base in Africa), but overall this wasn't up to the standards of Poyer's previous books. You might still enjoy this, but if you're new to his series start with The Med or one of the Tiller Galloway series.

As much as I enjoyed Tidwell's Bayou Farewell, I expected to enjoy The Ravaging Tide too. However, I couldn't even finish it; the tone was just too preachy. Tidwell makes some important points about the importance of coastal cities (and wetlands) to the American economy, and he lays out a pretty good case for why all Americans should care. However, that wasn't enough to get me to finish. Maybe I'll give it another try at some future time.

Four Days to Veracruz : A Novel is one of the most vivid thrillers I've ever read-- and I read a lot of 'em.

The author, Owen West, is a serving Marine officer who's also an adventure racer (think Eco Challenge). He draws on both those skill sets for this book, which tells the story of a newlywed couple who accidentally trespass on a Mexican drug lord's estancia and are held hostage. They manage to escape, killing the drug lord in the process, but when they go to the local police their real problems start. Fortunately, the newlyweds are both adventure racers, and the husband is a Marine infantry officer (the husband and his best friend, Gavin Kelly, are both return characters from West's Sharkman Six).

West did a great job with pacing and plotting, and his descriptions of the physiology and psychology of adventure endurance racing are interesting in themselves. There are many minor implausibilities (not the least of which is the inclusion of an Aztec serial killer as a foil for the chase), but they're outweighed by West's skill at moving the story along. Highly recommended.

This is perhaps the most interesting book I've read in the last few years, right up there with Freakonomics. I've written briefly about Brian Wansink before, and I'm pleased to report that his book matches my initial impression of his work: it's a neat hack. Wansink's basic theorem is that, because there are so many environmental factors that influence how much people eat, you can manage your weight simply by juggling those factors to work in your favor. I tried using a smaller dinner plate for about a week and found that-- sure enough-- I did eat less, even though I didn't feel hungry or deprived.

There are a ton of interesting anecdotes in the book, but Wansink is careful to knit them together into a simple plan: slightly change your eating habits as he suggests, and you'll lose weight slowly (he proposes a simple estimate: cut N calories per day and you'll lose N/10 pounds in a year). His focus is on weight management through environmental and portion control, which I think is pretty sound. Interestingly, there's a good bit of overlap with The Hacker's Diet, at least in terms of Wansink's emphasis on gradual weight reduction instead of sudden changes in eating habits.

Wansink also engages in some pretty cool mythbusting; for example, he compares the number of calories people consumed with the number they thought they were eating at both Subway and McDonald's. Result: people who ate at Subway, which heavily promotes its food as healthy, underestimated the number of calories they actually ate by as much as 20%. Oops.

Highly recommended as a fun read; the more so if you're actually trying to control your weight.

The first book I read by Bing West was The March Up. It was excellent, if somewhat dry. This book is head and shoulders above West's previous book. In No True Glory, West gives a detailed, week-by-week account of the on-again, off-again US response to the Iraqi insurgency in the city of Fallujah. He does an excellent job of presenting both the high-level strategic considerations (and blunders) of the US and Iraqi governments and the nitty-gritty, house-by-house fighting that ensued.

West doesn't pull any punches. He clearly identifies the critical US mistakes (including the decision not to "finish the fight" with the insurgents in April 2004), and he names names. Paul Bremer and John Abizaid don't come off looking good by West's descriptions. By the same token, he does a fantastic job of portraying the life of a Marine infantryman in the First Marine Division. I don't think most Americans realized how brutal the fighting in Fallujah during the second assault was-- or the degree to which the battle was poorly reported, or misreported, by the US media.

In reading this, I gained a new appreciation for the valor, dedication, and perseverance of the US Marine Corps. I highly recommend this book to everyone-- including (or perhaps especially) people who normally avoid military history. Whether you support this war or not; whether you support President Bush or not; Americans should understand the sacrifices that our Marines have made on their behalf.

If you're at all interested in aviation, read this book! Joe Sutter has written a delightful account of his career at Boeing and his role in driving the creation of the 747 jumbo jet. The book is a fascinating look at the old-school culture of aerospace engineering (in that regard, it's not dissimilar from Skunk Works). It was a quick read, and there's not a ton of technical detail. However, there is enough detail to have kept the book interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and when David read it he loved it too. That's high praise indeed, given how much he reads :) Highly recommended for the aviation or biography buff; everyone else would probably be better off reading something else.

This is a terrific first effort-- one reviewer on Amazon called it "exciting and entertaining", and I agree. Schecter draws on his background as an international consultant, and a deep knowledge of Colombia, to lay out an interesting scenario: what if some smart terrorist (or government, in this case) decided to leverage an existing Colombian-controlled drug smuggling system to get fissile material into the US? Arrayed against the bad guys are a memorable cast of characters, including the president of Colombia (a former Miss Universe), the president of the US (a widowed Midwestern farm boy who gets quite an education), Fidel Castro, and a variety of lesser, but still well-characterized, lights. The local descriptions are superb, the overall plot is both plausible and quickly executed, and the pace is fast. My only complaint is that many of Schecter's characters sound alike-- not an uncommon problem for first novelists. I look forward to more of Schechter's books in the future. Highly recommended.

This is the only current book that covers Live Communications Server 2005. Fortunately, it's a good introduction. Joe Schurman has written a readable, useful book that covers much of what you need to know to install and manage LCS, even if you are fairly inexperienced. The book assumes medium familiarity with Active Directory, and it helps if you have some Windows admin background.

This was probably a great book-- after all, Mathews clearly knows how to write great thrillers. Sadly, I found it turgid, slow-moving, and dull. The characters were wooden (bad German? check. spunky American heroine? check. lily-livered French diplomats? check. You get the idea.) The big secret of the plot goes essentially nowhere. Reviews on Amazon praise the intricate detail that Mathews lavishes on describing 1940 Paris. If that's your thing, you might like this book, but I sure didn't.

Shachtman's book is based on an extensive set of interviews with Amish teens and adults from a variety of areas; the interviews were originally collected for a documentary called The Devil's Playground. The result is an affecting book that portrays Amish culture in a unique way.

This was perhaps one of the most enlightening books I've ever read, in two senses. The first is that it taught me a great deal about Amish culture. I'm probably not alone in that I knew very little about the Amish beyond what I saw in Witness. For example, I didn't know that there are multiple sects of the Amish faith-- each congregation can create its own ordnung, or set of rules, and different congregations have different rules about what kinds of interactions with the outside world are permitted, discouraged, or outright forbidden. (I also didn't know that bishops are chosen by lot from the congregations, and that they serve for life-- yikes!)

The second way this book enlightened me is to give me a further testimony of the importance of the family. Although Amish doctrine differs in many ways from LDS doctrines, one attitude shared by both is that moral standards aren't prison bars that keep people in-- they're more akin to a picket fence that helps separate what should be an enclave of love from negative influences in the outside world.

Shachtman is careful not to describe rumspringa as a period when teens are encouraged to go out and do things that violate the tenets of their faith, although many of them do. However, overall the Amish church has a very high retention rate-- north of 90% by most estimates. He includes interviews with a few people who've left the church; some are glad, and some are not. He also intersperses comments from scholars who study Amish culture, which provides a welcome third-party perspective. If this book has any flaw, it's that writing an entire book based on interviews leads to a disconnected prose style composed mostly of pasted-together quotes. Once I got used to it, though, I was fascinated by what I learned. Highly recommended.

As part of our trip to Niagara Falls (more on which later), we took the boys to see Cirque Niagara's presentation of "Avaia" tonight. I wanted to jot down a few thoughts before I forgot them (the incessant din will do that to me.)

In summary: great show, and well worth the money.

The show bills itself as a spectacle for all ages, and it really is. The show is somewhat similar to Cirque du Soleil in many respects: the loud music, the physical prowess of the atheletes, and the motif of two or three clowns who tell a story of their own that's basically orthogonal to the main story.

"Avaia" is unique because it incorporates horses, and lots of 'em (the brochure says 19, but I wasn't counting). The human acrobats are outstanding, but the men who do stunts while riding are really something to behold. There's knife throwing, a couple of sword fights, women balancing 20' in the air on long poles, a foam rubber shotgun, and more. The boys were completely enchanted, and I think this is something they'll remember for a long time. (They don't allow any photography, so you'll have to take my word for it.)

We sprang for seats in the "red zone"; we ended up in row 2 of the center stage section. These were fantastic seats, and I thought they were well worth the money. The Cirque promoters have plastered Niagara with signs offering free kids' tickets, but that offer only holds if you buy the $39 obstructed-view adult tickets. However, the arena is small enough that the view wouldn't be very obstructed so it might be a good gamble to take. Matt was awfully surprised when one of the clowns went running up the aisle right next to us; his facial expression was priceless! Speaking of which: kids 5 and under get in free if they'll sit on your lap. The 4 seats we bought were actually bench-style seats that were wide enough in total
to hold the five of us fairly comfortably, except that they have narrow pitch and little padding-- be forewarned.

All in all, this will probably be one of the highlights of our trip. I highly recommend it.

I remember one of the first truly scary movies I ever saw: The Andromeda Strain. This book follows the same template: a previously unknown virus emerges and starts killing people, spreading rapidly. Of course, Andromeda was science fiction, and SARS was all too real. Greenfield, the former head of TIME Asia, observed the epidemic's growth from his home in Hong Kong. He's written a compelling day-by-day narrative of the progress of the outbreak, beginning with its initial spread from restaurant workers in Shenzhen to the waning days of the epidemic. Along the way, he clearly explains the scientific and political obstacles faced by the scientists who were trying to pinpoint the etiology of SARS and how to treat it.

Greenfield's account gives a great deal of credit to some individual scientists, which IMHO is as it should be. He also lambasts the Chinese government for its obstructionist and deceitful response in the first two-thirds of the outbreak, which is also fitting, given how their delays and obfuscations needlessly killed their own citizens.

If I have any quibbles with the book, they're with Greenfield's somewhat breathless narrative style. I sometimes felt like I was reading a several-hundred-page-long magazine article. Greenfield nails the story, though, and his conclusion-- that the human race dodged a bullet-- is right on. Highly recommended. (However, don't read it while traveling unless you want to suffer panic attacks every time someone near you on the airplane coughs or sneezes.)

This is one of those books that sounds really interesting at first, but which eventually gets shuffled aside in favor of other, more immediately interesting titles. Frankel's book describes how a single 1933 "Double Eagle" $20 gold coin, taken surreptitiously from the US Mint in Philadelphia, became perhaps the world's most valuable, and sought-after, coin. I just didn't find the tale that compelling, laden as it is with lots of side discursions about coin collecting. Frankel says of one collector that "Either you have a passion for coins, or you don't." I guess I don't. In fairness, I didn't finish the book because the library was demanding its return; perhaps the last third is more interesting. I'll probably go back to it once my queue gets a little shorter.

I always thought it would be kind of cool to donate my body to science. After all, I won't need it, and the thought that I might help a medical student or research scientist in some way was appealing. Now, not so much.

Hands down, this is the most disturbing book I've ever read. Annie Cheney takes a detailed look at the thriving body-parts industry in the US, and it's not a pretty sight. There are federal regulations that control organ procurement organizations (OPOs), which coordinate the supply of transplantable organs. There's no such oversight for the provision of other kinds of body parts, including corneas, tendons, bones, and various other parts. One of the most upsetting images to me was Cheney's description of a visit to a surgical clinic in a swank Miami hotel; behind the doors of a meeting room, doctors learn and practice techniques for laparascopic kidney surgery on armless, legless, headless human torsos.

Cheney highlights a number of problems with the current state of the tissue industry, the biggest being that there are huge financial incentives for the sale of human tissue, and these incentives lead people to do unethical and illegal things, including harvesting tissue from deceased people without their families' consent and "parting out" bodies donated to medical schools for profit. (I was especially distressed to read that LSU and Tulane are both big players in this latter industry). The recent scandal surrounding Michael Mastromarino's company (which not only stole body parts without consent but sold diseased tissue that was implanted into otherwise healthy people) is only a visible sign of the rot at the heart of this industry.

I don't recommend reading this for enjoyment, but it was certainly an eye-opener.

David Marusek first came to my attention when I read his short story "We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy" in one of the Dozois "Year's Best" anthologies. It was a terrific story about a future America peopled with clones, AIs, and a variety of perfectly logical technological extrapolations of today's world (like "militia slugs"-- little autonomous biorobots that roam around taking DNA samples and looking for terrorists and other scofflaws). The story packed a wicked emotional punch, and Marusek's characters are among the most vividly imagined I've ever encountered in SF.

I was a little nervous when I started reading Counting Heads-- could Marusek sustain the emotional intensity and character strength of his shorter stories? Turns out I shouldn't have worried. He does so, and more. Counting Heads begins with a modified version of the events in "We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy", in which a young newly married couple gets a permit to have a baby (in a very unusual way, it must be said) just before disaster strikes their marriage. The remainder of the novel combines an ensemble cast of characters, including a cop who happens to be a clone, a 29-year-old who's decided to remain at a biological age of 11, a whole passel of AIs, and the original husband and wife-- whose daughter's head, severed and cryogenically preserved in a spacecraft crash, forms the titular head that's being counted, or (more accurately) hunted. The evolution of the various characters rings true and adds a nicely nuanced emotional depth to the action and gadgetry.

This New York Times book review dismisses it as a typical sci-fi geek book. Perhaps that's why I liked it so much. It's true that the ending is overly abrupt-- almost as though the book were arbitrarily cut in half, although the author says that's not the case-- but apart from that, if I could only recommend one science fiction book this year, Counting Heads would be it-- it's that good.

Throughout this book, I kept mentally shaking my head and saying "yeah, right"-- but I finished it anyway. This is Thor's fourth book, and I guess he got bored with conventional thriller plots like the President being kidnapped; instead, we get a secret bioweapon originally developed by Hannibal (yes, the one with the elephants) and dug up by some dastardly Muslims. I found the plot predictable, but even so it was still an enjoyable read. Worth a trip to the library.

Thanks to a confidential source at Verizon, I found out that Palm is preparing a revision of the Treo 700w for immediate release. Can't wait to get my hands on it! I can't say much about the details, but you can see a picture here.

Bob Thompson mentioned that he was looking for books for a young neighbor. Based on my own kids, I thought I'd write a few quick recommendations. David, my eldest, is 11, and loves to read more than anything (well, except for eating and playing the Xbox 360). He's read a few of the Heinlein juveniles, but they haven't really captured his interest, although I'm going to try again to get him to read Starship Troopers. These books, on the other hand, have been among his favorites:

• Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy (Uglies, Pretties, and the just-released Specials). Scene: future post-industrial world where cosmetic surgery is mandatory at age 16. This leads to very different social dynamics than we're used to, but something is rotten in Denmark. Lots of beauty-is-more-than-skin-deep and don't-judge-books-by-their-covers messaging, but it's fairly subtle. (n.b. for grownups, I strongly recommend Westerfeld's Risen Empire books-- outstanding in both characterization and execution!)
• Elizabeth Moon's Trading in Danger, Marque and Reprisal, and Engaging the Enemy(which just came out; I haven't read it yet). Kylara Vatta is expelled from her homeworld's military academy, so her dad assigns her to take a family freighter to the breakers' yard-- only a war interferes. Very strong female characters; they're starship captains and spymasters, for crying out loud! Moon is a former Marine, and her space battles (both infantry and naval) are invigorating.
• Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series. Not really SF; Rider is a 14-year-old boy who runs afoul of MI-6 after he discovers that his father was actually an agent. Six or seven books in the series; both my 11- and 8-year-olds love them. No particular redeeming quality other than being fast-paced.

  I particularly like these books because there's nothing I wouldn't want my kids to read: no sex, very little bad language, etc. I realize that some people aren't as concerned with what their kids read/see/watch, but I appreciate these authors' efforts to write YA fiction that I'm not embarrassed for them to read. Case in point: John Varley's Red Thunder was a great Heinlein-ish YA book, except that RAH would never have put Varley's raunchy language or explicit sex into a YA book. The same is true for Westerfeld's Peeps, although it's quite a bit milder than Varley.

Sewell has written an interesting conjectural account of how a rogue faction in the former USSR's government planned and executed an attempt to start a nuclear war between the US and China. The plan revolved around K-129, a Golf II-class ballistic missile sub. According to Sewell's theory, the sub was seized after sailing by a crew of osnaz (KGB special forces troops); the osnaz then moved the sub to within about 400nm of Pearl Harbor and attempted to launch one of the sub's 1MT warheads. The launch attempt triggered an anti-tampering device in the missile warhead; the resulting explosion and fire damaged the sub so severely that it sank with all hands.

Sewell cites lots of circumstancial evidence, and clearly he's done a great deal of research. He lays out a fairly convincing case-- at least as far as I read. His writing style is terribly repetitive, and I just couldn't take it any more. For all I know, the hard proof is included somewhere after page 200 or so, but I guess I'll never find out.

Yesterday was my first full day toting around a Verizion Treo 700w as my primary phone. A few quick thoughts:

• The screen is only 240 x 240. I don't know why Palm did this, given that the Treo 650 is 320 x 320. I really miss the extra 80 pixels from the MDA (240 x 320), particularly with PocketInformant.
• Verizon's network quality is waaaay better than T-Mobile's, at least in my area.
• The device I got from Verizon didn't include the MSFP update. However, after I downloaded it, Palm's packaged installer made it very easy to update the phone. Oddly, I was expecting to see the Starfield intermediate CA certificate after the installation, but I had to manually install it before DirectPush would work.
• Battery life seems to be slightly better than the MDA; from a full charge, overnight the device ran down to about 50%.
• I much prefer the 700w's full-length stylus to the little bitty collapsible pen that comes with the MDA.

Expect a more detailed review next week, once I get some more time logged with the 700w.

If you haven't read Francine Mathews' previous book, The Cutout, you won't be able to make any sense out of this book, so be forewarned. However, both books are excellent.

The plot of Blown follows linearly from the end of Cutout: Caroline Carmichael is a CIA analyst whose husband is implicated in the kidnapping and murder of the Vice President by 30 April, a neo-Nazi terrorist group. Carmichael returns to the US-- just in time for a series of attacks staged by 30 April in the US. That starts the hunt, involving Carmichael, her husband, and a cast of other characters first introduced in Cutout.

Like Greg Rucka, Mathews' characters don't have superhuman powers of deduction, intuition, or physical strength. That doesn't mean that they're ordinary in any way, merely that they're believable. In particular, Caroline Carmichael is a terrific heroine, combining a quick mind and temper (her husband's nickname for her is "Mad Dog") with an active interior life and an affecting set of emotional issues (to be expected after your husband comes back from the dead).

Highly recommended, but be sure to read Cutout first (it's just out in paperback, so this should be easy). Mathews' forthcoming The Alibi Club is already on my to-read list.

Like Daniel Silva and Barry Eisler, Greg Rucka is a must-read author by my lights. Any book he writes, I'll read; his Atticus Kodiak books remain among my favorite thrillers. This book is no exception to that general rule; it's a terrifc, gritty, dark tale of Tara Chace, a British MI-6 agent from Rucka's Queen and Country graphic novels. In this book, Chace is assigned to extract the son of the president of Uzbekistan to save his life after his sister mounts a coup attempt against their ailing father. The plot is too complicated for me to describe in detail without giving lots of goodies away; there are some very disturbing things that happen along the way, and to his credit Rucka portrays them not as exigencies-- as might Lee Child-- but as terrible but necessary steps taken in search of a higher goal. Of course, that leads you to wonder about whether the goal itself is worthwhile, which I think is Rucka's point.

Highly recommended.

What a pleasure this was to read! I grew up in the South, in the heart of SEC country, and I lived in Alabama, where Bear Bryant is still revered, from 1991 to 2002. Even with that background, I didn't really know much about Bryant or the many ways in which today's game of college football reflects his personality and career. He was an old-school coach who believed that desire was at least as important-- if not more so-- than pure talent, and both his coaching strategies and the teams he fielded reflected that. He was also a brilliant recruiter; this was probably his most outstanding characteristic.

Barra has written a wonderfully conversational biography, with lots of juicy quotes from Bryant, his peers, and his players. He doesn't shy away from pointing out some of the more controversial aspects of Bryant's career (including the issue of whether he could have done more to make the University of Alabama integrate its atheletic teams), but he does so in a fair-minded way. Ultimately, I found the book to be uplifting, not least because of Barra's inclusion of the devotional Bryant carried in his wallet:

This is the beginning of a new day.
God has given me this day to use as I will.
I can waste it or use it for good.
What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it.
When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever,
Leaving something in its place I have traded for it.
I want it to be a gain, not a loss--good, not evil.
Success, not failure in order that I shall not forget the price I paid for it.

Highly recommended, even if you're not much of a football fan.

I need to take the time to write up the next installment of our cruise experience, but I've just been too busy doing other stuff. To wit, this has been a big week for the ol' Xbox 360:

• NBA 2K 06: fun if you like sports games; I got bored with it pretty quickly. Great graphics (except for the player faces!)
• Fight Night Round 3: unbelievable. It's like watching ESPN. The body motion, voiceovers, and environmental effects are perfect. The only thing missing is the smell of liniment. I made a boxer named Smokey Boudin anhd had a great time getting pummeled, since I couldn't quite get the hang of the interface. I may pick this up when its price goes down some, but I'll definitely rent it again.
• Burnout Revenge: yep, it's a Burnout game. Lots of crashing, only now in high definition! The game's sense of speed is excellent-- far better than Need for Speed or even Project Gotham 3. When you're doing 200mph down a freeway, it feels like you're going that fast. Great fun.

Fritz Malone is a former cop and the illegitimate son of the former police commissioner of New York City. WIth that background, you'd expect him to be a super gumshoe; when he casually stops to watch a Thanksgiving parade and sees a gunman firing into a crowd, he gets dragged into a duel of wits (or wills, really) between someone calling himself Nightmare and the mayor of New York.

Malone is a likable character, in part because he's a sort of Everyman PI. He's not blessed with the physique of Lee Child's Reacher or Robert Parker's Hawk, and he makes some critical mistakes as he tries to get to the bottom of Nightmare's plan. The supporting characters (including Malone's girlfriend, his highly dysfunctional family, and a couple of NYPD beat cops) are well-enough drawn, and Hawke moves the plot along rapidly. Unfortunately, the denouement was unbelievable, at least to me; it wasn't plausible to me, and that undid a lot of the work that Hawke had done to build a credible story. Not a bad read, though.

(Note: this is billed as a "debut novel" but it's not. Richard Hawke is a pen name for Tim Cockey, an accomplished mystery writer. For that reason, I guess I expected a bit more.)

There's an interesting article in last week's InfoWorld that compares four Exchange management tools: the MS MOM Exchange management pack, DYS Analytics, Quest Spotlight on Exchange, and Zenprise. Zenprise came out on top because of its powerful troubleshooting engine, which is about to be expanded (look for an announcement later today).

Disclaimer: I'm on Zenprise's advisory board, though I don't claim (or deserve) any credit for their troubleshooting engine.

I really liked Old Man's War, so I was naturally predisposed to like the sequel... except that The Ghost Brigades (or just TGB) isn't really a sequel. It's set in the same universe as OMW, but it focuses instead on the Colonial Union's special forces, a race of human-derived troops who are essentially created to serve as a warrior caste. After Charles Boutin, a prominent scientist, turns traitor and disappears, the Union creates a clone of Boutin and attempts to imprint the traitor's consciousness on it-- but the result isn't what they expect, and neither are the consequences. The clone, Jared Dirac, has his own consciousness and ends up doing some things which neither Boutin nor Jared's bosses in Special Forces expect (including a terrific twist of an ending that, in retrospect, might have been predictable but wasn't.)

Scalzi's writing is still crisp and tight, which makes this a faster read than I expected. I started regularly reading his blog after reading OMW, and I definitely noticed some of the same stylings in both-- not a bad thing at all. If I were going to complain about this book, I'd have to say it was too short (not a criticism I often levy). I'm already looking forward to the third, and probably final, installment in this series. Highly recommended.

Update: If I'd known that Scalzi was going to see my review I would've, y'know, fawned a bit more over the book. Really.

Sega might just as well have called this game "Torque and Recoil", because that's what it's about. You drive a car as fast as you can, shooting up your opponents and all sorts of environmental objects (gas tankers, telephone poles, cafe tables, other cars). We're not exactly talking great strategy here, but it's fun enough in small doses. The computer opponents are fairly stupid, at least at lower levels. I've only played a couple of matches on Xbox Live; I can't say it was really compelling. I'm glad I rented this before buying; I'd pay $20 for it, but not $60, so back to Gamefly it goes.

Devin got a Qtek 9100 earlier this year, and he's been eagerly waiting for the Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP). Now he's got it, and I think he likes it. (Disclaimer: I lent John my Jasjar after he broke his HP 6315, so until I get it back I'll be MSFP-less.)

If you've read Evan Wright's Generation Kill, you'll already have a big part of the backstory of this book, which is mostly about the author's career as a Marine officer. Fick begins with a short chronicle of his time at Officer Candidate School and the Basic School, followed by the Marine infantry officers' course. This to me was the most interesting part of the book, since I served in an air wing unit and don't know much about the professional education required for infantry officers. Fick served as a platoon leader in Afghanistan after 9/11, followed by a tour as Recon platoon leader in Iraq. This is really where the book hits its stride. Fick writes with power and clarity, and he never descends into obfuscation. When he sees something wrong, he calls it-- a traitc common to, and welcome in, Marine officers. It's refreshing to see in a work that will be in print for a long time to come; in many ways, Fick reminds me of James Webb's body of work. I hope to see more from him in the future.

I love Popeye's. It's not just that their food is good; I've certainly eaten at better Cajun restaurants. No, a big part of Popeye's charm is that it's consistently good. I've never had a bad meal at a Popeye's, even in skanky locations like turnpike rest stops.

So it is with James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux books. They pretty much all taste the same: there's an Evil-with-a-capital-E bad guy, a host of amusingly named minor players, and at least one troubled woman who wants to jump in the sack with Dave. Either Dave or Clete Purcel beats the stuffing out of a few people; some of these beatdowns are deserved and some aren't. In the end, justice triumphs; the details aren't necessarily important. Along the way, Burke writes some masterful descriptions of the climate and rhythms of life in south Louisiana, and he usually teaches me a few new phrases of copspeak.

This book contains all those formulaic elements, in spades, and so I'm happy with it-- when I opened it, I knew what I was getting, and that's just what Burke delivered.

While searching the Interweb for something else, I found this review of Secure Messaging with Exchange Server 2003 by fellow MVP David Sengupta. Somehow I completely missed it when it was originally published. Duh. It was fun to look back (and, of course, if you haven't bought the book yet, you should read the review and then Make the Right Choice!)

Fun, breezy read covering Ben Rich's life as an engineer at the legendary Lockheed Skunk Works. Rich (and his ghostwriter, Leo Janos, who also helped out with Yeager) has a breezy, conversational prose style and a ton of great war stories. Kelly Johnson was who I wanted to be when I entered college; as Rich points out in the last two chapters, though, those days are gone-- that realization is part of what led me to stop pursuing a career in aerospace. Good thing I did, because the problems for aerospace companies that Rich pegged in the last chapters have all happened in the years since the book's published. As someone who built model SR-71s and U-2s as a kid, and who eagerly snapped up every tidbit of info on the F-117A as it gradually became public, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but admittedly it's not for those who aren't interested in aviation or aircraft design.

People who know me know that I have a special interest in the US military; in addition to my own service, I have many friends and acquaintances who served, or are serving, and I care deeply about how our military is equipped, trained, organized, and used as an instrument of US policy and power projection.

Kaplan has written a remarkable, and important, book about the US military around the world, but rather than focusing on three- and four-star generals (cf. Atkinson's biography of David Petraeus, or on the dry details of an individual campaign or battle (cf. The March Up), Kaplan writes about the troops he meets while deployed with the First Marine Division and various Special Forces units. Strictly speaking, this isn't a war book; it's a book about the remarkable ways in which individual US military members are forging US policy. My favorite example is probably Tom Wilhelm, one of the US military advisors to Mongolia; Kaplan's profile of himin the Atlantic was excerpted from the book, but there are many other examples from places like Basilan, Lamu Island (which I'd never heard of), Fallujah, and northern Afghanistan.

Kaplan puts the work done by these "iron grunts" in perspective. The US, he says, has already built an empire; like the last days of the British empire, it's one focused as much on imperial power projection through the distribution of information, technology, and ideas as on pure military force. Kaplan frequently cites precedent for US engagement in various places from our previous engagement in "small wars" like the US pacification of the Philippines, the settlement of the American West, and the US Marine involvement in Central America at the start of the 20th century. Kaplan puts these in the context of empire building by peoples as disparate as the Ethiopians, the Romans, and the series of Khans.

Kaplan writes with a vigorous style that does an excellent job of conveying the no-baloney straightforwardness of the people he meets and talks to. He is direct and clear, both in his explanations and his opinions. His writing is also suffused with a clear appreciation for the work done, and sacrifices made, by these soldiers and Marines for their country. He does this without shying away from pointing out what America has done wrong in the past, or could improve upon in the future, and that's part of what makes this such a remarkable book.

If I could give this book six stars, I would; I'm eagerly looking forward to the next volume.

Steve Riley is a security stud. Jesper Johansson is practically a legend. The two of them wrote a book, Protect Your Windows Network. Is it any good? Devin sure thought so; see his review.

As an adult convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I don't know much about church history, or about the men who served as presidents of the church before 1997. I've been trying to remedy that by studying the lives of the prophets, so when I was at Deseret Book in Seattle I grabbed this book, which chronicles the latter part of the life of Spencer W. Kimball. It's a companion volume to an earlier, more comprehensive biography whose title I can't remember.

Overall, I enjoyed this book more for the picture it gave of Kimball's tenure as president of the church than for any one insight or vignette. The tone of the book is relentlessly positive, but I think that's in large measure due to the nature of Kimball's presidency-- he presided during a time when the church was growing and stable, and when the 1978 revelation on granting the priesthood to all worthy men occurred, it represented a magnificent sea change that illuminated the church to a significant degree. If you're not Mormon, you might not find this book all that interesting because it focuses on a number of "inside baseball" issues that aren't very interesting to non-members. On the other hand, members-- especially those who weren't members during Kimball's presidency-- will find much to enjoy, even cherish, here.

(Orson Scott Card has a more detailed review of this book, in the guise of a comparison with Prince & Wright's biography of David O. McKay.)

I got my JasJar last week and was all set to take it on my trip to Redmond tomorrow. Unfortunately, I killed it while upgrading the firmware, so it won't be going with me. Too bad; it was beginning to grow on me despite its considerable heft. (in the meantime, see this review to tide you over.)

Johnson has written an interesting and engaging memoir that combines trivia and historical facts about Antartica with a series of vignettes of his own experiences as a contract garbageman (yes, a garbageman) for Raytheon Polar Services. Johnson doesn't have a lot of good things to say about the National Science Foundation or Raytheon, and he makes some fairly outrageous claims about how capricious Raytheon's management of the polar workers are. He intermingles lyrical descriptions of the natural beauty of the area away from the actual polar stations with vivid commentary on how dirty, ugly, and noisy the stations themselves are. Since I'm not likely to ever go to Antarctica, this book will have to tide me over; at the end, I felt like I'd learned something, but I wouldn't necessarily want to invite the author over for dinner.

Yawn. Yet Another Vietnam Memoir, this time by someone who commanded a radio intelligence detachment-- and not very well at that. Kidder's previous work, including the seminal Soul of a New Machine, was so good that I was willing to take a flyer on this book. Unfortunately, it's a dull book that primarily succeeds in painting a picture of Kidder as a self-involved son of the privileged classes who doesn't have the faintest clue, or even interest, in leading his men. He's opposed to the war and brags to his anti-war friends back home about what a tough hombre he is; meanwhile, he's cowed by the men he's ostensibly commanding. Kidder writes with humor and a seemingly authentic voice, but he surely doesn't paint a flattering or engaging picture of himself. Not recommended.

I remember the first time I started reading a book and then just couldn't make myself finish it-- I was in fourth grade. It seemed sacreligious to start a book but not finish it, but the book in question (whose title I mercifully forget) was just too bad to keep reading. So with Oltion's Anywhere but Here, a not-very-thinly disguised attack on The Evil American Empire and That Idiot In the White House. Oltion's characters are amiable enough, but despite the effort he takes to portray them as (somewhat bumptious) ordinary home folks, they come off as sock puppets. The initial third of the book is sloppily paced and just flat not very interesting. Perhaps the rest of the book's better; I wouldn't know because that's the point where I abandoned it. Very disappointing.

Clever, scary novel with a great premise: what if vampires are really people infected with a parasite? There's a lot of icky detail about various other kinds of parasites, which makes the book remarkably educational. It was fun to read a spec-fic novel that didn't have any lasers, robots, or aliens. A fun, quick read.

Another cool MS white paper, this one is an overview of site resilience solutions. The paper discusses inter-site replication, stretched clusters, and some other goodies, citing their pros and cons. (It also links to Microsoft's guidelines for deploying inter-site replication-- well worth reading too.)

Kyle Mills is usually an unorthodox writer. His books are usually thought-provoking-- for example, Smoke Screen posed the question of what might happen if a major tobacco company said "to heck with it" and shut its doors. However, Fade is a straightforward action novel, and IMHO not a particularly good one. The main character is a former Navy SEAL who is forced to retire after being wounded. He's bitter, understandably enough, because there's a bullet lodged near his spine that will inevitably paralyze him, and the government refused to help him get surgery while the problem was still fixable. Now the Department of Homeland Security is trying to recruit Fade to come back, and he doesn't want to. What follows is a pretty stock tale, uplifted by Mills' gift for witty dialogue. In the second half of the book, the characters suddenly develop; that's a weird way to put it, but it's almost like seeing a flat 2-D drawing morph into a fully rendered 3-D representation. That's not enough to save the book, though. The ending is predictable, and this just isn't up to Mills' usual standards.

Fun time-travel romp. The best part: Varley doesn't even try to explain how the time machine works, which saves a lot of tedious handwaving. Instead, we get extended descriptions of how a very focused (not to say monomaniacal) multi-billionaire locates a frozen mammoth that he wants to clone. He ends up with rather more than that, namely a live juvenile mammoth named Fuzzy, plus some adults. That's where the story really takes off. Were it not for an excess of bad language, this would be a great young adult book. As it is, this is a fun, if light, read even for non-SF fans.

Sometimes when I read a book that's part of a series, I get the feeling that I'm dropping into a long-running relationship between the author and his previous readers. For example, I don't think many people who pick up Reynolds' Absolution Gap will find that it's a satisfying read absent the knowledge of what happened in the first two books in that series.

Fortunately, Chuck Logan doesn't have that problem. In After the Rain, he continues the relationship between his two primary characters from other books. Nina Pryce is a US Army officer and a member of SFOD-Delta (that's just "Delta" to civilians), and her sometimes-estranged husband, Phil Broker, is an undercover cop. There's a lot of history between them, or so we understand from their interplay in this book (I haven't read any of Logan's earlier books). Pryce is trying to penetrate what appears to be a terrorist plot in-- get ready-- North Dakota, and when she uses their 7-year-old daughter as an actress, Broker comes to town to pick her up. Of course, Broker ends up involved in the plot, which is reasonably twisty and turny. In the end, the bad guys fail, although not without cost to the good guys.

Logan's strength in this book is its characterizations. Both Nina and Phil come off as real, multi-dimensional people: parents, lovers, and sheepdogs. Both of them have strengths and flaws in about equal measure, and the tumultuous nature of their relationships makes for some interesting interplay between them. I didn't think the primary villain was nearly as well-defined, though-- he was much more a cardboard bad guy from the psycho-killer bin at Characters-R-Us. The descriptions of the weather and terrain of a North Dakota summer are quite good, too, although not quite on a par with the lyricism of James Lee Burke or the noir of Barry Eisler.

Put it this way: I've already reserved Logan's earlier Nina-and-Phil books from the library. I may or may not read them all, but I'm willing to give them a try.

I've been fooling around with the MediaManager plugin for MoveableType. Its goal is to provide a structured system for creating and tracking entries about books, movies, CDs, and the like. For example, here's what my current media queue looks like:

It still has a few bugs; for example, even though I'm using the sample code from the product page in my page template, I only see one book I'm reading and zero that I've read. I also can't post reviews; I get a MySQL insertion error when I try. However, the overall premise is cool, and I think I'll be happy with the finished product.

"BULLETPROOF WIRELESS SECURITY : GSM, UMTS, 802.11, and Ad Hoc Security (Communications Engineering)" (Praphul Chandra) I asked for a review copy of this book because I understood it to be a guide to implementing security. The problem is that "implementing" is a loaded term. I wanted a book on how to set up and configure security, and Chandra's written a book about how to engineer products that implement these solutions. In that light, this is an interesting book because it covers GSM, UMTS, and 802.11 security. The writing style is clear and direct. However, there's a problem: for a book billed as comprehensive, there's not enough depth to actually help an implementer build an implementation of any of these protocols. For example, the first 60 pages or so explain some basic security concepts and algorithms, and the next 25 pages cover how security protocols are applied at various OSI layers. There's a chapter dedicated to GSM and UMTS security, and one on 802.11a/b/g security that (IMHO) pulls some punches about how bad WEP is. In a book targeted at implementation engineers, it would have been helpful for Chandra to go deeper into the reasons why we got stuck with such a crappy security implementation.

Overall, this book is probably most useful to those who need a quick survey-level introduction to wireless security because they're working in the wireless industry. It's pretty much useless for system administrators or developers (particularly because there's only vestigial coverage of code security/quality issues) except for folks who have a general interest in the topic.

"BULLETPROOF WIRELESS SECURITY : GSM, UMTS, 802.11, and Ad Hoc Security (Communications Engineering)" (Praphul Chandra) I asked for a review copy of this book because I understood it to be a guide to implementing security. The problem is that "implementing" is a loaded term. I wanted a book on how to set up and configure security, and Chandra's written a book about how to engineer products that implement these solutions. In that light, this is an interesting book because it covers GSM, UMTS, and 802.11 security. The writing style is clear and direct. However, there's a problem: for a book billed as comprehensive, there's not enough depth to actually help an implementer build an implementation of any of these protocols. For example, the first 60 pages or so explain some basic security concepts and algorithms, and the next 25 pages cover how security protocols are applied at various OSI layers. There's a chapter dedicated to GSM and UMTS security, and one on 802.11a/b/g security that (IMHO) pulls some punches about how bad WEP is. In a book targeted at implementation engineers, it would have been helpful for Chandra to go deeper into the reasons why we got stuck with such a crappy security implementation.

Overall, this book is probably most useful to those who need a quick survey-level introduction to wireless security because they're working in the wireless industry. It's pretty much useless for system administrators or developers (particularly because there's only vestigial coverage of code security/quality issues) except for folks who have a general interest in the topic.

So, the obvious first: no, John Rain doesn't get killed in this book, but not for lack of opportunities. As the book opens, Rain's in Manila to kill a bomb-maker at the behest of Israeli intelligence. With him is Dox, Rain's new partner. The hit misfires when Rain makes a spur-of-the-moment decision not to kill the target after seeing him with his family-- the target has a son about the same age that Rain was when his own father was killed. That brief moment of hesitation buys him a butt-load of trouble; while exfiltrating, Rain and Dox kill two people who are believed to be CIA agents. The Israelis are worried that Rain's attempt will be tracked back to them, so they put the word out: John Rain must die.

Trust is one of the central themes of this book. Rain somewhat reluctantly comes to trust Dox after the shootout that ends Rain Storm-- but as that trust blossoms, Rain comes to realize how much he's missed being able to trust people. This is certainly a common problem among contract assassins, but us ordinary Joes can get the idea. As Rain attempts to figure out whether the two dead agents were really CIA or not, and thus dissuade the Mossad from killing him, he's forced to make some hard decisions about who to trust, and how much.

Another key theme is redemption, for want of a better word. Rain begins to wonder if he's done any good by his long string of killings, and if perhaps his energies might be redirected to killing evil people instead of whomever he's paid to kill. Illustrating this, he considers the difference between the Japanese words roughly translating to "sword of justice" and "sword of oppression". Some reviewers on Amazon have dismissed this introspection as sap or fluff, but I think it adds a great deal of depth to Eisler's portrayal of Rain. Who among us has not looked back to consider whether his life has been well spent, and whether the remainder could be better spent?

As with preceding books, Eisler moves the action along at a racetrack pace. His descriptions of place are crisp and evocative (I particularly liked his description of Rain's trips to the rural Philippines), and there is less emphasis on the minutae of Rain's hand-to-hand fights with his opponents (more knife- and gunplay, though). Because I'm not a judoka, this made the book way more readable for me.

I can't say much about the denouement of the book except that it sets out very clearly what's going to happen in the next book, and that it contains a plot twist that I certainly didn't anticipate that sets things up neatly. I'm eagerly looking forward to the next book, but I only have to say one thing until then: jazz goes with New Orleans. Highly recommended.

Update: I found this essay by Eisler that describes the backstory behind Killing Rain. It's pretty darn interesting.

I was thinking the other day about my habit of posting book reviews. To the casual observer, it might seem that I like everything I read. This isn't strictly true. I generally review books here only if they were particularly good (Barry Eisler), particularly bad (Eric Nylund), or interesting for some other reason. There are sooo many other places to read book reviews that I don't want to waste time reviewing the mediocre (William Lashner's The Shadow Falls) books that I often end up with. Of course, I'm fairly selective about what I'll read in the first place, so perhaps that has something to do with it.

It's hard to imagine a less likely subject for a novel: Vince Camden is an ex-con in the Federal Witness Protection Program, With just 8 days before the 1980 presidential election, he's trying to decide how he should vote-- meanwhile, a hired killer is stalking him, his hooker girlfriend is trying to become a real estate agent, and his job making donuts is periodically interrupted by a hot blonde who's also stumping for a state legislature race.

Jess Waller has written one book that combines these plot threads (plus some others); it's simultaneously a mystery novel, a character study, an exploration of the political atmosphere in 1980, and a love story. It's impossible for me to characterize it, except to say that it's simultaneously hilarious, moving, thought-provoking, and sad. The dialogue is outstanding, both for its snap and its reality. Mafia dons don't talk like Oxford dons, and Waller knows that. The pacing and plotting is top-notch. Highly recommended, and now I'm going to go read Waller's other books-- there are only a few.

Here in Perrysburg, we have an ice cream stand called Mr. Freeze. I bought one of their homemade ice cream bars once. It was nearly impenetrable; I almost broke a tooth trying to bite into it, and I ended up with a sore jaw by the time I finished it-- but the ice cream was good enough to make it worth the effort. That's how I feel about Alastair Reynolds, who has written some truly outstanding hard-SF space operas. Reynolds is the author most like Scott Westerfeld, but there's a difference: Westerfeld writes with a light, spare style that makes his books much easier to read than Reynolds. I'm reminded of Pascal's aphorism ("I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter."); Westerfeld evidently put a great deal of work into streamlining his writing.

The Risen Empire opens with a hostage crisis: the sister of the Emperor has been taken hostage by the Rix, a cult that worships machine intelligence; an Imperial warship has been dispatched to effect a rescue. The sister, the Emperor, and lots of other characters in this novel are elevated-- that is, they've been equipped with a symbiote that protects them against death. Invented by the Emperor himself 1600 years prior to the book's opening, the technology that assures eternal life has become an extremely powerful social influence in the Eighty Worlds, but not everyone thinks it's a good influence. The central tension in this novel, and its successor, is between "gray" (traditionalists, including the Risen dead)
and "pink" (what you might call dynamists; a faction that believes that Imperial society is dragged down by the grays' adherence to tradition and preservation), and that's the really interesting point on which the book turns.

Westerfeld has written some truly outstanding battle sequences, too; all of the technologies he describes are logical extensions of current ones, without any of the stupid hand-waving magic that a lesser author might have tried to pass off. Despite the fact that the characters are so far removed from us in time and space that they might come across as unsympathetic, it's easy to identify with both Laurent Zai ( the gray captain of the Lynx) and Nara Oxham, a pink Imperial senator and Zai's more-or-less accidental lover. (My favorite character was actually Marine private Bassiritz, who is more or less a good Southern boy who joins the Imperial Marines to see the world(s)).

The second book, The Killing of Worlds, picks up exactly where the first leaves off (modulo a bit of clumsy linkage that I suspect the publisher made Westerfeld add). An extended space battle is the centerpiece of the second book; the Lynx takes on a much larger, more powerful Rix battlecruiser in a surprising and suspenseful duel that's extremely well executed. The love story between Oxham and Zai continues to develop, with occasional flashbacks that further illuminate their individual lives. Once the starship battle is over, the center of mass switches to a political battleground where Oxham and her allies try to stop the Emperor from a planetary genocide-- and then things get really interesting.

I highly recommend these two books, but only if you read them both. Westerfeld calls these two the opening arc of the "Succession" series, and I'll eagerly look forward to the next books in the series.

June 14, 2005 Mr. Lee Cockerell Executive Vice President of Walt Disney World Operations 1375 Buena Vista Drive Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-1000 Dear Mr. Cockerell: My family and I just returned from a visit to Walt Disney World, and I wanted to write you a letter to give you our impressions. Last year, my wife was diagnosed with a disease called celiac sprue; in brief, she is allergic to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, and things made from them. This means that we have to be very careful about what she eats, so it was with some trepidation that I made dining plans for our vacation. I'd read that Disney World was usually able to accommodate requests for gluten-free meals, so we tried to plan ahead to ensure that my wife would be able to eat well. On the first day, we went to the Magic Kingdom. Lunch was turkey legs in Frontierland, which as always were excellent. Dinner was at the Crystal Palace, where our server, Pat, did a good job of keeping us in touch with the chef despite the fact that the restaurant was packed. The food and service were both quite good, and Arlene was easily able to find a variety of dishes. On the second day, we went to EPCOT. We made last-minute priority seating reservations for dinner at the Biergarten, but when I called to ask Chef Jonathan some questions about menu items, he never returned my call. Accordingly, we went to the Garden Grille, where the food and service were both excellent. Jose, our server, even managed to cheer up our sulky three-year-old-something we all appreciated. I particularly appreciated the staff's efforts to provide gluten-free bread for my wife while the rest of us were eating the excellent multi-grain breadsticks. For our third day, we had breakfast at Donald's Restaurantosaurus at Animal Kingdom. This is the real reason I'm writing this letter: Chef Thomas made my wife one of the best meals she's ever eaten, complete with rice-flour Mickey-ear pancakes and a huge (and very tasty) omelet. Her food was actually much better-tasting than what the rest of us had, which was a nice turnabout from the usual situation. Thomas really made her feel like a valued guest; he was extremely attentive and helpful. In short, he exemplified the spirit that Disney World is supposed to embody, and I hope that you will find a way to pass our thanks on to him. At lunch, we ate at MGM's 50s Prime Time Café, where the chef made a gluten-free chicken pot pie for my wife. The rest of us ate like kings too-another successful meal, with great service from Adriana, our "cousin". Dinner, alas, was slightly less successful; we ate at MGM's Sci-Fi Dine-In. The food quality, promptness of service, and service quality have all declined quite a bit since our last visit last year. I think we'll cut this from our must-visit list for our next visit; frankly, I expect better both for the expense and for Disney's reputation. One side note about MGM: we went there on a Friday knowing full well that "Star Wars Weekends" were in progress. My ten-year-old and I went to the Star Wars store next to the "Star Tours" ride. I have never had a worse shopping experience! With all of Disney's expertise in handling large crowds, we were a little surprised that simple measures, like adding cash registers, weren't taken to speed the movement of buyers through the store. Overall, we had a wonderful trip, in large part because my wife was able to enjoy dining with us. Please pass our thanks on to Chef Thomas, Jose, Adriana, and Pat, and the chefs not named. All of them were helpful and attentive, and I commend them for their efforts to help us have a great trip. Respectfully, Paul Robichaux

I'm making a video for an upcoming project, so I needed a couple of plugins for special effects. Man, those things are expensive! I found a good source of inexpensive plugins from c/fx, including their typewriter/computer plugin. It works well, but has one big limitation: you can't enter multiple lines of text. This makes it useless for my needs, even though it's otherwise quite nice (and only US$5.50!) Back to the drawing board...

A couple of weeks ago, AnandTech held a shootout comparing the Dell 2005FPW and the Apple 20" Cinema Display. The reviewer found that the two were largely identical, which isn't surprising since they use the same LCD panel. I don't have a Cinema (and never will, as long as it costs $790+), but I got a 2005FPW this week for about $400, and it rocks. 1680 x 1050 is nice enough, but the display is clear, crisp, sharp, and much brighter than my Samsung 170MP (which in turn was brighter than the old KDS monitor that I bought at Sams' Club back in 2000). Adding the two, my desktop is 2920 x 1024-- just enough for the profusion of windows I always have open.

Michael Murphy, a TechNet presenter for Microsoft, has been reading Secure Messaging with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. So far, I like his approach to reviewing the book; he's posted an article that describes his reaction to the first two chapters, including an explanation of what's in them. One of the best parts of writing a security-focused book was that I had the luxury of including background material to help Exchange admins get the right vocabulary and mindset to talk security with real security folks. This makes my book very different from other Exchange books, since they normally have to cover so many topics that they can't provide much depth in any one area. In fact, the first five chapters are broad enough to be of interest to admins running any messaging or collaboration software on Windows-- so all you Notes folks who secretly read my blog, go get a copy :)

Spellbinding. I couldn't put it down. Stop reading my blog and go read this instead.

What, you're still here? OK. Here's the deal. Nick Conover is the CEO of a large office-furniture company. Someone's stalking his family. He kills the stalker, more or less unintentionally, and suddenly finds himself pursued by a dogged homicide detective (who, in a welcome reversal, is a devout Christian and portrayed sympathetically as such), under attack by rivals at work, estranged from his teenage son, and involved with a, er, somewhat unstable woman-- the daughter of the man he killed. Finder's storytelling ability is amazing; his characters are richly drawn, and overall this was a terrific book. Highly recommended.

This book, subtitled Darkside to Baghdad, purports to be the story of Lt Col Bryan McCoy, USMC, and his troops: 3rd Bn, 4th Marines. Unfortunately, most of the book is about the author. That's all right; he paints an engaging portrait of life as an embedded journalist with a Marine unit. However, there's not much insight into the ostensible focus of the book, LtCol McCoyas other books. Compared to other similar books, like Atkinson's In the Company of Soldiers, Koopman's book comes off much more like an extended series of newspaper columns. One highlight: the interspersed emails from readers of his column who mailed him to talk or ask about their friends and family members in 3/4. Overall, this wasn't a bad read, but it is essentially little more than a memoir; it lacks the depth of characterization found in Atkinson's book or in Wright's Generation Kill, and it's no replacement for The March Up as a chronicle of 3/4's campaign.

Bottom line: this is the most impressive Windows Mobile device I've used, with great functionality and capability. Verizon's BroadbandAccess works great, and the built-in QWERTY keyboard is a terrific feature, but battery life could sure use some improvement.

First, the gross physical attributes. The converged-device market has started to coalesce into two form factors: sticks (like the SMT5600 and palmtop devices, which range from the small Treo to the big ol' HP 6315-- and this device. The XV6600 looks like a conventional PocketPC device, but when you slide it open that's when you really notice the difference. The screen is brilliant, large, and colorful; I think it's equal to the 6315's screen, although perhaps a little brighter in sunlight. Below the screen are the standard set of Pocket PC phone buttons: four hard buttons for Windows Mobile, plus red and green phone buttons.

The 6600's QWERTY keyboard slides out from beneath the screen. Greg Hughes called it a "pimple-style chicklet bubble layout", and sadly I have to agree-- the keys are little recessed circles, and there's very little tactile feedback when typing. The keyboard on the Treo is superior, although it's a good bit easier to enter text on the 6600 thanks to Windows Mobile's predictive-text engine. (There's also the fact that you can enter text using only the stylus on the 6600, which of course you can't do with the Treo).

Phone: the 6600 worked quite well as a cellphone. However, I had trouble making calls since there's no hard keyboard available for dialing-- unless you pull out the QWERTY, in which case there's no way to tell whether you're hitting the number keys or not. Many of the heavy Pocket PC phone users I know have Microsoft's Voice Command installed, and that's probably the best solution, but I didn't try it. Speaker and speakerphone volume were good.

Messaging: What can I say? It's Pocket Outlook, which worked fine over the air and when syncing with my desktop.

Synchronization: As with the SMT5600, I had a few minor problems with ActiveSync on the desktop, but those were easy to resolve. Over-the-air sync with EAS worked well, although I didn't use it much because of the phone's terrible battery life.

Bluetooth: This device has great Bluetooth support if you install the available update from Audiovox. I switched from the Jabra FreeSpeak 250 headset to the GN6210, which is essentially the same hardware; after installing the update, I was able to pair the headset and make and receive calls. Range wasn't that good; the manual suggests putting the phone on the same side of your body as the headset, and I found that if I didn't do that, I'd get some crackles and static.

Other: it's a darn good thing this unit has a replaceable battery, because the battery life is terrible. I got about a day per battery charge, and that's without using the device much as a phone at all. The ringer volume was too low; I missed several calls in airports, taxicabs, and other noisy environments. I never got used to the keyboard, which has basically no "feel" to it.

The one killer feature I haven't mentioned yet is Verizon's EVDO network, which offers up to 2Mbps of wireless service. It worked flawlessly in my tests in DC and Cincinnati (well, until my battery died). I didn't have the right cable to tether the 6600 and use it as a laptop data modem; if you've got Bluetooth in your laptop, the process is simpler-- in which case you'll find that Bluetooth is too slow to keep up with EVDO! (Instructions for tethering in USB and Bluetooth modes are here).

Bugs and annoyances: Verizon doesn't offer this phone with WiFi or a camera, even though other carriers (notably T-Mobile and Cingular) offer versions that have both. The phone would sometimes spontaneously reboot, and it kept bringing up a data connection even though I wasn't running any data applications (that I knew of, anyway).

Overall, I was impressed with the 6600. Even though it lacks WiFi, it's much better as a phone than the 6315, and it's more usable as a PDA than the 5600. However, the large size and poor battery life made it a poor fit for my use, and it's expensive to boot. However, the EVDO connectivity is a killer feature for mobile users, and once VZW and UTStarcom solve the battery life problem this will really be a contender.

Wow.

Star Wars Revelations is a fan movie, made without permission or assistance from George Lucas and his merry band. was a better Star Wars movie than the preceding two official movies put together. The technical quality of the movie is excellent, with brilliant special effects. The plot's a bit opaque, and the actors are clearly not Hollywood megastars. On the other hand, the acting here is no worse than that of The Phantom Menace. C | Net has a pretty good story that features some background on the larger phenom of fan-created works, but for now you should hop over to Panic Struck Productions' web site and grab the film for yourself. (Better yet, get the torrent).

First, let me say this: if you haven't read Gould's Jumper, you're missing one of the five best science fiction novels I've ever read. The protagonist of Jumper is a teenager, Davy Rice, who unexpectedly discovers that he can teleport himself. He discovers this as he's about to be beaten by his drunken, abusive father; the story of what happens next is naturally and wonderfully told. Reflex is the sequel to the 13-year-old Jumper, and it's every bit as good-- if not better.

Davy's married now and working occasionally for the National Security Agency. When he unexpectedly disappears, his wife Millie (whom you'll meet in the first novel) sets out to find him, aided by her unexpected discovery that somehow she's "caught" the ability to teleport from close contact with Davy. A nefarious group has kidnapped him and found an ingenious (and stomach-turning) way to control him (here's a hint). Of course, Davy's not inclined to go quietly, and Gould expertly cuts back and forth between his efforts to resist and his wife's efforts to locate him. Gould is so good at this milieu: his characters are rich and real, their dialogue is crisp and honest, and the technical details he includes are accurate-- but he's content to leave them out when doing so helps the story. This is strictly an action yarn, though; there's very little philosophical depth, which means Gould misses out on exploring some interesting themes (like whether Davy has a responsibility to use or explore his special ability more than he's done in the past). The ending is unsurprising; unfortunately, the book just sort of stops, clearly leaving room for a sequel. I just hope that it doesn't take Gould as long to write it.

Any time a book is advertised in the Wall Street Journal, I make an effort to check it out. This has led to some real treasures (including Finder's Paranoia, which I need to review on of these days) and this book, which as far as I can tell is Robotham's first novel. The protagonist is Joe O'Shaughnessy, a British psychiatrist with Parkinson's disease, a beautiful wife, an adoring daughter, and a problem: the police think he killed a former co-worker.

Robotham spins an extremely complicated plot, but does it so effortlessly that it seems very natural as circumstances unfold. Of course, O'Shaughnessy's not the real killer, but finding out who is-- in time to stay out of jail-- takes Joe through a very rapid series of plot twists and turns, including a couple of additional murders for which he's blamed too. The first third of the book moves slowly, but after that the pace picks up steadily. O'Shaughnessy is a smart and acerbic self-observer, which makes him far more interesting than the typical ordinary-guy-turned-detective. I'll be looking forward to Robotham's next book-- but this one is highly recommended.

Verizon loaned me an VX6600 to write about. I haven't used it much, but so far, a few first impressions:

• The ringer volume is way too low. Even at max, I can barely hear it.
• Verizon shipped me the device with an old firmware version on it. As shipped, the phone absolutely refused to recognize my GN6210 Bluetooth headset, either with hands-free or handset profiles; about 80% of the time, it refuses to launch the Bluetooth Manager applet.
• After I updated the firmware, I was able to pair with my 6210 and make and receive calls. I haven't tested this as much as I want to, but so far it seems to be working well.
• The built-in keyboard doesn't feel as good as the Treo 650, but it's better than nothing at all. I think I'll just have to get used to it.

I've been reading a lot lately. Herewith a few quick reviews of my latest.

• Lashner, Fatal Flaw. His other books were much better. Turgid, needlessly convoluted plot and unsympathetic characters. Don't bother.


• Turtledove, Days of Infamy. What if the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor had been followed up by an amphibious landing? That's the central premise of this book, which is well enough written that I slogged through the exceptionally slow first 2/3rds of it. I hope the next book in this series (because there will be one, no doubt) is a little snappier.


• Silva, Prince of Fire. Five stars and then some. Silva is, for my money, the best thriller writer in the business (with Barry Eisler a close second). Rich characters with complex motivations, rapid plotting, and a thorough mastery of both storytelling and the political and social forces that underlie the characters' actions. Highly recommended.


• Lefcourt, The Deal. I only read this because our library didn't have The Manhattan Beach Project yet. This was supposed to be a satire of 1990s Hollywood, but it felt contrived and lacked the edge that's so important to pulling off a satire. Maybe it would have been better in 1992 or so. Not especially recommended.


• Gaiman, American Gods. Why, oh why, did I wait so long to read this? Superb.

Somewhere, Robert Heinlein is smiling.

John Scalzi's Old Man's War (thanks for the suggestion, Devin!) is a terrific hybrid of military science fiction and a coming-of-age novel... except that the lead character, John Perry, has just turned 75 as the novel opens.

In Perry's world, humans have colonized a good portion of the universe, but there are lots of competing alien species that are ready to fight for the same limited set of colony worlds, so humans have built an off-planet military force to both protect and acquire colony planets. To build this army, the Colonial Defense Forces offer Earth dwellers a compelling deal: if you enlist at age 65 or older, when you turn 75 they whisk you off Earth and make you young again so you can serve your ten-year enlistment. If you survive, you get rejuvenated again and farmed off on your choice of colony worlds.

Perry takes this deal and gets a good deal more than he bargained for: his new body is green, has a built-in computer, and can do a variety of tricks that I won't describe here so as not to spoil the fun. Perry is very much a grown-up version of Heinlein's Juan Rico, or perhaps Haldeman's William Mandella without quite so much cynicism. The battle sequences are taut, the dialogue is crisp and believable, and the overall world Scalzi builds is very believable. It compares favorably with both Starship Troopers and The Forever War, although I don't think it has quite the ethical depth of the latter. Still, this is a terrific novel, if a bit short, and I look forward to reading more of Scalzi's work in the future. Highly recommended.

I'm sorry I wasted the time to read this; the mere appearance of Nylund's name on the cover should have warned me. Avoid.

I first saw Conquistador in an airport bookstore, but after reading Dies the Fire, I wasn't sure I'd like it enough to buy it in hardcover; instead, I put it on my to-read list. I'm glad I did, because it was a great read. The basic storyline is simple: a freshly returned World War II vet accidentally opens a gateway to an alternate Earth where Alexander the Great didn't die in 323. To sum up, this means that Europeans never colonized North America-- so the vet discovers a pristine, mostly uninhabited California, which he proceeds to colonize. Most of the story is set in 2009. Tom Christiansen, an agent for the California Department of Fish and Game, begins investigating some odd findings in a poaching investigation; that leads him, through a fairly interesting series of switchbacks, to the other side of the Gate. I don't want to reveal too many details of the story, becuase it's well-plotted enough that I don't want to spoil it. However, I will say that the characterizations are excellent; the dialogue realistic, and the overall story plausible. Assuming you accept the possibility of the Gate, the rest of the novel's developments flow logically from the characters and their actions. Highly recommended.

Wow. That's all I can say. Julie and Paul were kind enough to give me a pair of Etymotic earphones for Christmas (thank you very much!), and I fired them up on my most recent trip to Seattle. How'd they sound? Marvelous. They offer 41dB of noise reduction, well above what my old Sony folding active noise reduction (ANR) headset provides. They did a great job of blocking the (excessive) noise of Delta's CRJs on my trip, and they did it without giving me a headache like the Sonys do. That's partly because of the lower volume level, and partly because these are passive headphones.

The ER-4 comes in a nice box with a set of accessories that include some disposable foam earplugs, some really nice flanged silicone eartips (that are too small for my huge ear canals, sad to say), a zipper case, and a pack of replacement filters. Assembly was easy, and the cabling and drivers are well constructed and seem fairly sturdy.

On to the big question: how do they sound? The sound quality is astonishingly good. Put it this way: this week, as I've been working, I've had iTunes busy re-ripping a big stack of my CDs from MP3 at 128Kbps to AAC at 160Kbps. I've always scoffed at the hoity-toity audiophiles who claim that MP3/128 sounds crappy, because in a car, office, or any other semi-noisy environment they sound OK to me. (Of course, that may be due to a misspent youth passed in the company of Marine Corps helicopters and too much Led Zeppelin.) However, with these headphones, you know what? I really can hear the difference. Highly recommended if you're an audiophile or want to act like one.

Bottom line: the Treo 650 is a superb device for Palm OS users, period. However, since it's currently only available on Sprint, I'm holding off.

PalmOne has been working on the Treo line for a while. Their Treo 600 is arguably the most popular PalmOS-based smartphone, and the Treo 650 is evidently an attempt to improve on its strengths by adding features.

First, the gross physical attributes. The Treo 650 is about the same height as the SMT5600, but it's much wider and somewhat heavier (although lighter than the 7135). The screen is large, very bright, and very sharp-- the only better screen I've seen on a handheld is on the iPaq 6315. It's physically smaller than, but as bright and clear as, the excellent screen on the Tungsten series; the screen is clearly visible outdoors and in sunlight. Below the screen are the familiar four Palm application buttons and a five-way nav device, plus "home" and "menu" buttons; below the buttons is the Treo's QWERTY keyboard (more on that in a minute).

Phone: the Treo 650 worked flawlessly as a cellphone. I was easily able to make and receive calls, and the integration between the built-in address book and the Phone applet is excellent. I had a little trouble using the keyboard to dial, just because the number keys are much smaller than the ones on the SMT5600 or 7135. For the first time, I actually found myself waiting to make phone calls in the car until I could pull over or stop and actually see what I was dialing! Speaker and speakerphone volume were both quite good. There have been reports on Slashdot, and elsewhere, of poor audio and voice quality on the Treo 650 but I didn't have that problem at any time during my tests.

Messaging: PalmOne includes two messaging apps: one for SMS messages and VersaMail for email. I was most interested in Exchange ActiveSync, so I spent a good bit of time with VersaMail. Overall, I found it inferior to Pocket Outlook in both ease of use and stability, although VersaMail does a better job of handling multiple email accounts and letting you quickly switch between them. When you configure a mail account with EAS (you can only have one at a time), the device warns you that it's going to erase all of your stored messages and calendar data, then resync. I lost my calendar data by accepting this warning, then forgetting to configure my desktop conduit to skip calendar sync-- be careful! (To be fair, this was entirely my fault, not the Treo's.) Once set up, Exchange ActiveSync worked fine, although there are no sync logs kept on the device. This would be a helpful troubleshooting feature, and I hope Palm will add it in th next release (along with sync for contacts and additional mailbox folders).

Synchronization: I had a few minor problems with ActiveSync on the desktop, but those were easy to resolve. Over-the-air sync with EAS worked well, and I like the ability to choose what gets synced over the air and what gets synced over the wire-- the Treo 650 forces you to sync mail and calendar data or nothing at all. I also tried using PocketMac Phone Edition to sync the 5600 to my Mac OS X desktop running Entourage. BIG mistake. PocketMac is unstable and buggy; their technical support is slow (when they respond at all), and the software doesn't do what it claims. Avoid.

Bluetooth: I tried to use a Jabra FreeSpeak 250 headset with this phone. The headset is listed as compatible with the Treo 650 as a headset device. This is odd, since it worked fine with the SMT5600 as a handsfree device. One annoyance that the manual didn't mention is that with a headset-only device, you have to push the headset button to transfer a call from the handset to the headset-- this contradicts the manual's assurance that when you have an active headset, calls are automatically routed to it. Fortunately, PalmOne has a KB article that explains how this really works.

Other: the Treo 650 has an integrated camera that is reputed to be quite good. My device was a preproduction test unit and didn't have a camera, so I can't say whether it's any good or not (but these side-by-side comparisons make the Treo 650 look pretty good). Battery life has been excellent, and the addition of a replaceable battery is quite welcome. The internal speaker sounds great when you play MP3s through it, which surprised me a little bit. The addition of a sliding "mute" switch on top of the phone was a very useful touch; it's trivial to make sure the phone is muted before you walk into an important meeting, or church, or wherever.

Bugs and annoyances: most of the annoyances I had with the Treo 650 centered around Sprint's service in my area; I had trouble making and receiving calls in and around my house, and for a whole day I couldn't get my voicemail. This is not to say that Verizon or T-Mobile has great coverage in my neighborhood either. I had a little trouble getting used to the keyboard, which is awfully small. I already mentioned its effect on dialing; another minor niggle was that I never did figure out how to use keyboard shortcuts for menu commands. However, with a keyboard-aware app like DateBk5, it's possible to work without using the stylus at all-- an impressive accomplishment.

In all, this is a terrific device, although at $369 for new subscribers it's fairly expensive (although, interestingly, cheaper than the Kyocera 7135 from Verizon!) I'm waiting for either a GSM or Verizon version before I take the plunge, but the screen quality, speed, and utility of the 650 make this a very strong contender as my next device.

I gave careful thought to whether the SMT5600 should have a permanent place on my belt, but in the end it wasn't quite the right device for me. I posted a more detailed review at e2ksecurity.

Bottom line: the SMT5600 is a great device, but it's not exactly a replacement for a full-function PDA, so I'm sending it back.

There are already lots of reviews of what the phone looks like and how it works, so this won't necessarily be a complete review of every aspect of the SMT5600. Instead, it'll hit what I think are the high and low points. Microsoft has been positioning Windows Mobile smartphones as "phone-plus" devices that combine solid phone functionality with mobile messaging and the ability to run various applications (both productivity apps like Outlook and line-of-business applications).

First, the gross physical attributes. The case feels solid, with no flex. The phone is relatively small and light (I'll post a picture of it next to the Treo 650 and my trusty Kyocera 7135), and it fits comfortably in a shirt or trousers pocket. One of the first things people say when they see the 5600 for the first time is "wow, what a great screen!" The screen is large, clear, and very sharp. The keypad has a nice crisp feel. I never really got used to the 5-way rocker pad; I found it too easy to accidentally press it to the left when I was trying to click it down.

Phone: the SMT5600 worked very well as a phone. Audio was clear and crisp, and the speakerphone had adequate volume for use around my (noisy, child-filled) house. Address book/phone integration is good; the 5600 includes a Photo Contacts app that lets you take or import pictures and add them to the contact so they'll be displayed for incoming calls. This was a nice touch. One useful feature: as you dial, the phone app will display contacts whose phone numbers match what you're typing-- if you type "800 325" it'll jump to the first contact with those numbers (in my case, Delta Airlines). While you're in a call, you can easily switch to other apps, and there are dedicated buttons for viewing your calendar or the contact data for the person you're talking to.

Windows Mobile: this was my first real experience with a Windows Mobile device. I was very impressed; it was stable and easy to use (not to mention being very familiar-looking). The bundled applications all worked well, and I found Windows Media 10 Mobile Edition to be a very nice addition. If I didn't already use an iPod, this would be a neat way to listen to music, and with WMP10 on the desktop you can transcode video to watch on the phone. This is a great app for commuters and others who have disposable time to watch mobile video.

Messaging: what can I say? I had no trouble using OMA or Exchange ActiveSync with this phone, and this was one of its best features. When Always-Up-To-Date is properly configured, you have essentially always-on email in what looks like an ordinary cell phone. The included MSN Messenger client was also very useful, although pecking in a complex Passport password on the keypad gets old pretty fast. In fact, I quickly found that the utility of always having my mail was diminished by having to use a 0-9 keypad to answer it. The SMT5600 includes the Tegic T9 text input system, which worked pretty well, but it's no substitute for either a QWERTY keyboard or pen text input.

Synchronization: I had a few minor problems with ActiveSync on the desktop, but those were easy to resolve. Over-the-air sync with EAS worked well, and I like the ability to choose what gets synced over the air and what gets synced over the wire-- the Treo 650 forces you to sync mail and calendar data or nothing at all. I also tried using PocketMac Phone Edition to sync the 5600 to my Mac OS X desktop running Entourage. BIG mistake. PocketMac is unstable and buggy; their technical support is slow (when they respond at all), and the software doesn't do what it claims. Avoid.

Bluetooth: I used a Jabra FreeSpeak 250 headset, which I quickly grew to love. The SMT5600 paired with it immediately, and I could initiate and answer calls with it (although I never got voice tag recording to work properly). I didn't test using the phone as a laptop modem via Bluetooth, nor did I test other Bluetooth devices like the Pharos GPS module that i use with Streets and Trips. (I did put Pocket Streets and Trips on it-- pretty darn cool!)

Other: the included camera is nothing to write home about; it does a serviceable job, and the included camcorder app works well enough for casual use. Battery life has been excellent, although I haven't spent that much time talking on it.

Bugs and annoyances: sure, there were a few, but nothing major. Frequently, the SMT5600 would decide that an appointment was an all-day event, so it would start alarming me at 0830. If you use the keylock function (which you really need, since this isn't a clamshell phone), you can't answer or make calls with a Bluetooth headset. For some reason, the phone wouldn't auto-set the time from the AT&T network. The phone app doesn't like dialing numbers with slashes (425/818-0484 would only dial "425"), so I had to go through and reformat most of my phone numbers. These are all minor problems, though; overall, the device was as stable and reliable as other phone-only devices I've used.

One odd note: several other people I know who have the SMT5600 complained about radio interference. My old Motorola GSM phone would buzz my desktop speakers whenever it communicated with the cell, and its successor did the same thing in the car. However, the SMT5600 sits right between my desktop speakers and hasn't generated a grain of noise since I got it, and it's been silent in the car, too. Maybe I got a newer rev or something. (The 650, OTOH, buzzes the baby monitor all the time-- I can always predict incoming calls!)

In all, this is a very impressive device that delivers on its promises of high functionality in a small package. You can only get it for AT&T's network in the US, although if you unlock it it will work fine on T-Mobile. Cingular doesn't sell the phone in its retail stores, but Amazon still has it for a net price of $-25 for new subscribers.

Update: added some notes on the SMT5600's phone functionality that I forgot in the first draft.

Update: Cingular is selling the phone; in fact, you can get it for free from Buy.com until 31 December (if, that is, you activate a new Cingular number with it).

Subtitled "Tales of CEOs Gone Wild", this book should really have had a different subtitle-- maybe "Poorly Written Character Assassination" would have better captured the flavor. Bryon proposes to relate the career and personal mishaps of Jack Welch (GE), Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco), Al Dunlap (Sunbeam, among others), and Ron Perelman (Revlon and others). Unfortunately, he wastes most of the book on unsupported pop-psych theories (Welch was an aggressive CEO because his mom called him a "punk"), with the underlying theme being that an excess of testosterone caused all four of these men to eventually self-destruct. No one's portrayed in a flattering light here, but Welch comes in for special treatment, despite the fact that he was the only one of these CEOs to actually accomplish any meaningful creation of lasting value. Byron's writing is annoying as all get-out, too; he uses footnotes to excess to explain simple things (who's Lilith?) that I suspect most readers would already know and makes sloppy errors (like talking about Welch's "neck waddle") that bespeak a lack of editing-- which in turn makes me doubt the veracity of some of what he reports.

Not only do I not recommend this book, I'm sorry my local library spent the money to buy it. Awful.

I've spent a short while playing with the DCT-6412 since I got it. Here are a few random observations; I can't really say this is a review, because it isn't (and isn't meant to be) comprehensive.

• It does what it claims: provide DVR/PVR functionality for HDTV cable signals. On that grounds alone, I'm happy to pay the extra $5/month (which means that, after 200 months, I'd come out ahead buying an HDTiVo).
• The iGuide interface is reasonably functional for watching live TV. It's much faster, and better-looking, than the interface on the older DCT-6100 series boxes. As a bonus, you can choose a color scheme from a list of eight or so predefined sets.
• In general, the TiVo interface makes it much easier to perform common tasks with fewer button presses.
• There's a popup "quick menu" that lets you quickly select from the most common functions; this appears as a thin strip at the bottom of the display superimposed over whatever you're watching. Combine this with the "favorite channel" list and you have an easy way to jump between HDTV programs.
• The program status bar (or what Moto calls the flip bar; it shows recording status, time remaining, whether the program is paused, etc) is remarkably ugly.
• You can toggle the front-panel display between a channel display and a clock. This is a great feature, since the clock is bright and easy to read. However, when the unit is recording, or when you pause live or recorded TV, the display changes to "rEC" or "PAU" respectively.
• Speaking of pause: if you pause a program, the 6412 will happily sit there paused forever. It still seems to record OK while paused, but it doesn't jump back to live TV after a preset interval like the TiVo does.
• The interface for choosing programs to record is fairly terrible. It's easy to record a show you're watching (just press the remote Record button) or one you see in the guide (press Select when it's highlighted, then Select twice more to schedule and confirm the recording). However, the "search by name" function is buried, and it has a bizarre multiple-choice selection metaphor that I've had trouble getting used to.
• There doesn't seem to be an easy way to schedule a recording for a particular time and channel (e.g. Sunday, 8-9pm, channel 650). This is such an obvious feature that I just must not have found it yet.
• No Season Pass feature, nor anything like unto it. However, there is a nice listing of HDTV programs.
• The 6412 has a 14-day guide, but at least in some cases it's missing programs. Example: yesterday (10 November) I wanted to record a program that airs on 22 November. It wasn't in the guide yet. I haven't reproduced this so I don't know what's causing it yet.

I'll post more details and impressions once I've had a chance to use the unit more. So far, I haven't spent a lot of time watching recorded programs because of Halo 2 work.

Ever read a book where you are simultaneously unable to put it down and aggravated by it? That's exactly the situation I found with S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire, which I can best described as an extended wank. The central plot device is a machina ex deus: all high-energy-density technologies just quit. No gunpowder; no explosives; no internal combustion; no batteries, or anything else electrical. We see "the Change" through two primary characters: a strapping outdoorsman/ex-Marine and (get ready) a guitar-playing Wiccan bar musician. By novel's end, these two folks have assembled large fighting forces, battled all manner of evil, and joined forces for what I assume will be a long series of novels exploring this world; at the end of the book, there's a major bad guy still running Portland, and he has dreams of expanding eastward...

It's well enough written for the most part, but there are several things that really bugged me. First, describing the characters as cardboard is doing a disservice to all the folks who toil at the corrugating machines. In particular, it's very, very hard to swallow the sudden transformation of a peace-loving, tofu-eating witch with apparently no useful skills into the self-actualized leader of a community of 200. Second, the plot is obvious. There are no twists; the fate of every character Stirling introduces is pretty much clear from the outset. Third, there are so many fortunate coincidences that suspending your disbelief gets pretty hard-- the good guys just accidentally happen to end up with bowmakers, doctors, and horse trainers; given how scarce those occupations are in real life it's hard to imagine that the odds against finding all of them are that high. Fourth, it's a religion thing. The few Christians in the book are all portrayed as hateful, intolerant, and bigoted, while the Wiccans are just precious. Their rituals (which may or not be authentic; beats me) are portrayed in some detail, and that becomes boring and repetitive fairly quickly.

The biggest problem I had, though, is the smarmy tone as we're told, again and again, that the only survivors are people who spent time before the Change learning how to fight with swords and make their own chain mail, e.g. SCA members and other such. Imagine being locked in an elevator with the avid SCA members you knew in college, and you'll get the idea.

The shame of it is, I'll probably read the next book in the series to see how it turns out, but I'll probably fume all the way through it. Not especially recommended.

One of the few complaints I have with the Year's Best Science Fiction is that editor Gardner Dozois overuses the adjective "pyrotechnic" for stories. However, I can't find another word that accurately captures these two books (Altered Carbon and Broken Angels) by Richard K. Morgan. Rarely have I read such a rich combination of technology, action, and introspection.

The central character of both books is Takeshi Kovacs, a native of Harlan's World (settled by Japanese companies who hired cheap Eastern European labor). Kovacs is a former UN Envoy, meaning that he's undergone an extensive set of psychological and physical modifications to his body. Of course, the physical mods are secondary, because in Morgan's future world, most folks are fitted with "cortical stacks" that act sort of like flight data recorders for the human brain. By putting your stack in a new body (or "sleeve"), you can easily be resurrected-- as long as your stack isn't damaged or lost.That opens up a wealth of possibilities, including bodiless business travel (check in in LA, have your stack contents broadcast to Osaka, and get a new sleeve for your 8am meeting),and virtual reality environments for police interrogation, psychotherapy, torture, and integration of stacks with military campaigns. One jarring note to this world is that life is extremely cheap; mass murder is fairly commonplace, and this is offputting. To say that Kovacs is cynical would be extreme understatement; on the other hand, when you end up a mercenary who can be resurrected time after time by resleeving, it's hard to imagine turning out any other way. However, his cynicism is tempered by a fine eye for the good qualities in his fellow beings (although given who he works for, and with, these are depressingly few) and a sharp wit.

The actual plots of the books are relatively unimportant (although they are both well-plotted and engaging). The first book is a straightforward murder mystery; the second is a more complicated tale of the hunt for an artifact of great value. Both have a large number of plot twists and reversals that Morgan choreographs expertly. The only real moment of disbelief I had was when Kovacs ends up in Bay City, nee San Francisco; the odds that the city will still exist in 500 years defies probability.

To me, what made these books so fascinating was the density of well-realized future concepts that X throws off. Among his ideas: power knuckles (a cross between brass knucks and a cattle prod), an AI-operated Haight Ashbury hotel in San Fransciso named the Hendrix, street broadcasters who transmit direct-to-brain commercials (which, fortunately, can be filtered by vehicles), Catholics who shun resleeving technology for religious reasons, sleeve leases, custom-built genotypes for various tasks (i.e. a radiation-resistant sleeve based on Maori genes), criminals whose stacks are stored (effectively incarcerating them, unaware, without the consequences of traditional prisons)liquid spacesuits that harden into impermeable, self-healing units when activated, and-- oh yes-- Martians, who have all gone *somewhere* but not before leaving behind a variety of artifacts (including maps to several terrestroid planets and faster-than-light communications equipment). Morgan tosses these out like confetti; it's not so much that he explains them in depth as that he very deftly sketches the implications of technical developments today in a way that makes it clear where we're headed.

I suppose the best recommendation I can give thse books is this: I haven't felt the same sense of mingled possibility (O brave new world, that has such wonders in it!) and dread (imagine if things *do* turn out this way in 500 years). These two are on my end-of-year "10 Best" list.

I really enjoyed the first two John Rain novels (reviews here and here), so I had high expectations for Rain Storm, the third Barry Eisler book featuring John Rain. In this book, we find Rain in Macau, where he's trying to kill an arms dealer on behalf of the CIA. Of course, the backstory is that Rain left Japan on the run and moved to Brazil, the better to live longer. His new identity is compromised, though, and so he takes on what he hopes will be one last job. Without giving away too many of the details, let's just say that the best-laid plans gang aft agley.

Eisler does a superb job of setting locales here, perhaps more so than the preceding two books. The descriptions of Rio, Macau, and even suburban Virginia all gave me a strong and immediate feeling of being there, something that I didn't get from the Tokyo scenes in this book. There's less of the jazz-and-single-malt navel-gazing, which I found welcome (since I don't drink and don't know anything about jazz). This is not to say that there's less introspection on Rain's part; there's more, and that's one of the most charming features of the book. Despite what he does for a living, Rain is likable! This might seem odd, since assassins aren't generally seen as sympathetic or likable in most contexts. However, like several of my friends with Special Forces experience (Todd and Ned immediately come to mind), once you get to know him, he's a more sympathetic guy. Eisler gives Rain a great deal of emotional depth that I found quite resonant. Sure, the action scenes are great, and the weapons and gadgets are impressive. There are beautiful women, casinos, and all the other trappings we expect. What ultimately made this book work for me, though, were the scenes in which Rain evaluated who he was and what he wanted to be: a depth that's missing from other thrillers.

I can't wait for the next Rain book, due next summer. In the meantime, this one is highly recommended. (Bonus: don't miss the FAQ at Eisler's site). And, since I know he occasionally Googles for reviews: Barry, if you ever want to send Rain to south Louisiana or Ohio, let me know and I'll hook you up!

Col. John Boyd, USAF, is one of the greatest military minds you've never heard of. Coram has written a supremely readable hybrid: it's a biography and an entry-level introduction to Boyd's two most seminal innovations: the energy-maneuverability theory (which quantified the previously ad-hoc business of air combat maneuvering) and the OODA loop, the first real practical explanation of the theory of maneuver warfare. Boyd's theories-- and his hard-fought efforts to publicize and prove them-- gave us the F-15, the F-16, and the Marine Corps' amphibious feint in the first Gulf War. As a man, Boyd was unyielding, incredibly stubborn, uncouth, profane, and more than a bit eccentric. He was a poor officer in most respects; he hated (and that's not too strong a word) anyone who he perceived as having put expediency over accuracy, and he was more or less forced out of the Air Force as the result of the cumulative effect of all the impolitic things he said and did (and there were plenty!) At least the way Coram tells it, Boyd was also a terrible husband and father. In fact, the accounts of how indifferent this otherwise brilliant man was toward his wife and children to my mind diminished his stature considerably. A little more consideration and interpersonal skill could have made his life and career much more pleasant for everyone involved. However, that lack doesn't reduce the scope of what Boyd did, and Coram tells the story with flair. There's enough detail on E-M theory and the OODA loop to introduce them without overwhelming people who aren't fighter pilots or military strategists; Coram also suggests several follow-up references that I'm digging into as time allows. Highly recommended. One final note: Boyd was also a Georgia Tech graduate. Go Jackets!

Evan Wright must have been crazy: he went into Iraq with the First Recon Battalion of the US Marine Corps' First Marine Division, then wrote a book about his experience. Wright does a terrific job of portraying the men in the unit: although they are highly skilled, they are also (for the most part) young, and they have a wide range of opinions about where they are and what they're doing. Wright finds the same Marine Corps archetypes in First Recon that most of us are familiar with: the steely-eyed stone killer; the rebel who joins the military one step ahead of the law; the pretty-boy whose physical beauty belies his killer instinct; the dumb officer. He does a marvelous job of portraying both the terror of combat and its aftermath, particularly in his exposition of the few occasions when the team he was with accidentally killed noncombatants. My primary complaint about the book is that Wright portrays the battalion commander, and most of his subordinate officers, as buffoons (which is why two of them, "Captain America" and "Encino Man" get nicknames). To be sure, this is a welcome contrast to Atkinson's book, but it's hard to believe that the officers of such an elite unit are really such rockheads. Nonetheless, I recommend this book highly.

Of the several books I've read on the Iraq war, I'd have to say this one is the best pure military history. The authors have an extensive military background (both were infantry officers in Vietnam; Smith retired from the Marine Corps as a major general, and West is a former assistant secretary of defense whose son Owen is a Force Recon officer). Their plan was fairly simple: they showed up in Kuwait and wangled permission to ride north with 1st Marine Division units, then they wrote about what they saw. This includes the good (the capture of the critical Az Zubayr pumping station on D+1 by two squads of riflemen) and the bad (Col Joe Dowdy's indecisive use of RCT1, which eventually led to his relief). Along the way, West and Smith do an excellent job of outlining the tactical actions taken by 1st MARDIV units. This is something that was completely missing from Atkinson's otherwise excellent book. As you might expect, the authors also do an impressive job of characterizing the ordinary Marines they come into contact with, but they do spent a fair amount of time with Major General James Mattis, the 1st Division commander. Their focus on him, though, revolves much more around his tactical and strategic decisions, without much of the touchy-feely philosophizing that characterizes some of Atkinson's writing about Petraeus. One complaint I have about The March Up is that it skips over some critical details-- the battle for An Nasiriyah gets short shrift, and there have been several complaints from participants in the battle (notably this one) that West and Smith got some critical details wrong. That isn't surprising, given that this book was published very soon after Baghdad fell. It's an interesting and engaging read (and the excellent color photos in the center are an extremely nice addition).

(Bonus Marine joke here.)

Wonderful! Clean, pleasant hotel with a friendly, attentive staff. Great pillows and a curved shower-curtain rod round out the experience (and the free in-room wireless didn't hurt any either). I've stayed at $200/night hotels that weren't this nice (like the Sheraton Four Seasons in Newark, bah!) Highly recommended.

Rick Atkinson has written a solid book based on his experience as an embedded reporter with the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army during the Iraq war. As a number of Amazon reviewers pointed out, this isn't the same kind of book as The March Up (which I've also read); Atkinson's book is mostly about Major General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st. Petraeus comes across as a complicated and nuanced figure, and there's no question that Atkinson has painted a rich picture of what it's like to be responsible for 17,000 troops and several billion dollars of equipment in combat. However, ultimately I found the book unfulfilling. There's little discussion of tactics, and the lowest- ranking person Atkinson seems to have talked to is a major. The grunts who make up the 101st are given short shrift, and that's too bad. If you want to see Atkinson at his best, read his Pulitzer Prize winner, An Army at Dawn, instead.

Chris Whitcomb's first book, Cold Zero, was a memoir of (part of) his time on the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. I found it fascinating, and part of that was because of Whitcomb's clear, direct prose style. Now his first novel, Black, is out. Frankly, the nonfiction book was better. In Black, Whitcomb's protagonist is Jeremy Waller, a young FBI agent who joins HRT and ends up involved in a bizarre antiterrorist mission that is much different than it seems. Along with Waller, we have a risk-loving corporate executive who may or may not be a CIA operative, a megalomaniac multibillionaire who may or may not be a traitor, and a wealth of technical detail that may or may not be accurate (in fairness, Whitcomb does a pretty good job with the technology). There are a couple of last-minute plot twists that are regrettably predictable, and the ending is anticlimactic. I think Whitcomb can do better.

This is by far the catchiest message song I've ever heard. Check the lyrics:

Whether long range weapon or suicide bomber
Wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction
Whether you're soar away sun or BBC 1
Misinformation is a weapon of mass destruc
You could a Caucasian or a poor Asian
Racism is a weapon of mass destruction
Whether inflation or globalization
Fear is a weapon of mass destruction

Welcome /. readers! I added a section on customization because I somehow forgot to mention that in the original article.

Summary: "It's pretty good except for a few bugs, right, Dad?" -- David, my 9-year-old son

Connected Home asked me to write an article on Microsoft's Windows Media Center Edition (MCE). Through the generous help of the MCE PR team (thanks, Tom!) I recently spent a month with a Gateway 610XL, a nifty all-in-one PC with a 17" widescreen LCD display, 802.11g, and a DVD burner. This unit took the place of my bedroom TiVo, the trusty Sony SVR-2000 I've had for about four years now. It's been hackedenhanced with a larger drive, TiVoWeb, and TyTools. I'd been reading a lot about MCE, and wanted to see how it stacked up for casual consumer use. Unfortunately, Connected Home is cutting back their publication schedule, so they don't want my article. Instead, this is a more informal version of my thoughts after using MCE for a month. I've had a TiVo since 2000 (and that's after writing an early review of the units right after they shipped), so I can't help viewing MCE in comparison with TiVo.

First, a note on the hardware: MCE is sold only with computers from selected OEMs. This is to provide an Apple-like experience: the hardware and software should Just Work™ without any descents into driver or DLL hell. Gateway did a great job stuffing lots of functionality into the 610XL, and I was generally pleased with it. Except as noted, all of my comments would pertain equally to MCE machines from any other vendor.

Setup
Setup was very painless. I'm accustomed to the lengthy TiVo process of running their Guided Setup utility; this requires a long phone call and an even longer (nay, interminable) pause while the TiVo digests the initial set of program guide data. With MCE, the process was trivial: set it up on my wireless LAN, then click the button to download program guide data. I did hit a snag with setting up the 610XL to control my Philips DSX-5000 satellite box, but it was easy to work around (and, as it turns out, the MCE remote did the trick just fine). It was easy to make the Media Center machine see pictures and music from my home network, although the MCE machine can't be joined to an Active Directory domain [ed: I got this wrong. MCE 2003 couldn't domain join; MCE 2004 and later can]

Interface
Microsoft refers to the MCE interface as their "10'" interface, because it was designed to be usable from that distance. The interface is clean and well-designed. It doesn't have as much background motion as TiVo's interface, which I consider to be a plus. One of the coolest interface features is that every element can be operated via keyboard, mouse, or remote, so you can do things like remove redeye from digital photos using only the remote (more on that in a minute). In addition, third-party programs like Sonic Primetime and Napster can use the same interface. Other developers have created add-ons, too, including the elusive "MyWeather" that provides local weather data with the cool 10' look. Since the first thing my wife usually asks me in the morning is what the forecast is, this would be a valuable thing to have.

The MCE remote worked well enough; it features separate buttons for live and recorded TV, stored photos, and music. It lacks the brilliant industrial design of the TiVo "peanut" remote, though (but who cares; so does my Sony unit.) The Gateway's remote sensor had a pretty narrow receive angle, which was a little frustrating but not MCE's fault.

Plumbing
The TiVo can record from two sources: cable/antenna and S-Video. This means I can use one unit to record cable and satellite channels. Unfortunately, MCE can't yet do this. The 610XL has digital audio inputs and outputs, but I didn't test them; my satellite receiver doesn't decode Dolby Digital, so I also didn't test MCE's surround sound functionality. As with TiVo units, the inputs and outputs you get may vary according to what kind of MCE hardware you buy.

Live TV and guide
We didn't watch much live TV on this unit, for two reasons: a) it was in the bedroom and b) we have a TiVo so we don't have to watch live TV. However, the MCE unit handled this quite well. I prefer the MCE program guide format to TiVo's; it's much easier to read from across the room. As with the TiVo, the MCE box would occasionally misfire when changing channels on the satellite box. This is an unfortunate consequence of the IR dongle used to send channel-change commands, but it can be minimized with careful positioning of the IR blaster "eyelet".

Recorded TV
It's easy to find programs to record by title, time, or category, and it's easy to set up recurring recordings to get all episodes of, say, "I Spy". When I set up conflicting recordings, MCE let me know and asked me how I wanted to handle the conflict. Oddly, all recordings defaulted to starting five minutes before the scheduled time. I was able to adjust this easily.

I did experience two problems with recorded TV. One was a consistent bug: hitting the fast-forward button while replaying live TV would cause the image to freeze. Audio worked fine, but the only way to unstick the image was to go back to the recorded TV list and hit play. Fortunately, the MCE remote has a "skip" button that skips ahead 30sec. This is just the thing for skipping commercials. You can activate a similar feature on the TiVo, but I don't usually bother because TiVo's "overshoot" correction is so good. The other was inconsistent: sometimes recorded programs would end earlier than I expected. This only happened twice, but both times it was during a movie I'd recorded to watch with my wife... not so good for the WAF.

Scheduling, season pass, and suggestion functionality
TiVo put a lot of effort into the three "S"s: scheduling recordings, their Season Pass feature, and recording suggestions. The MCE did a competent job of scheduling, including notifying me of conflicts. It's more difficult to skip individual recordings in a series than it is with TiVo, and there aren't as many options for choosing which episodes to record, which ones to keep, and how long to keep them for. In addition, there's nothing like the TiVo Season Pass Manager for reprioritizing conflicting recordings. MCE also doesn't record suggestions based on your input. Some people dismiss this as useless, but it's found a lot of interesting stuff for us in the past. I'd have to say that overall this is MCE's weakest area compared to TiVo.

Video extraction/DVD burning
One area where MCE really shines is in taking programming to watch on other machines. I want to be able to watch recorded programs while I'm on the treadmill, on my Tablet PC while stuffed into an airplane, or in a hotel room in Redmond. MCE makes that much easier than TiVo. As a bonus, my test unit came with Sonic Primetime, an extremely easy-to-use program that burns recorded MCE shows to DVD. This worked about 80% of the time in my tests-- way better than TyTools or TyStudio on my TiVo. Being able to quickly burn educational shows to DVD for use in the minivan was a huge WAF bonus. (To add insult to injury, when TiVo does eventually ship this feature, which they're calling TiVo To Go, it won't work on either of the TiVos I actually own!) The MCE can also spit out video that can be synced to Portable Media Center devices or even to Windows smartphones. I don't currently use either of these, but I'd certainly consider buying a PMC to provide easier access to recorded content when I'm on the road.

Music
One really cool feature of MCE was its ability to play music. If you had an MCE as part of your home theater, this would be a nice addition, provided your music was ripped at a reasonable quality. The 610XL has decent built-in speakers (plus a subwoofer). One thing I particularly liked was that Windows Media Player was smart enough to go out and fetch album art for songs I had in my library that didn't already have it. TiVo offers some roughly similar functionality as part of its Home Media Option (HMO), but I can't use HMO on my bedroom TiVo (it's a Series 1) or the one in the living room (it's a DirecTiVo). Advantage: MCE.

Photos
MCE's ability to capture, display, and edit digital photos was a surprise bonus. I know people who use MCE to provide background photo/music shows at parties; since our unit was in the bedroom that wasn't something I tested, but all three of my kids loved watching slideshows of family photos. The slideshow component includes a cool Ken Burns-like pan/zoom effect that adds motion to the pictures. You can easily resize, flip, and de-redeye pictures; with a compatible printer, you could also print instant snapshots. We've done this before using Arlene's camera and its printer dock, but MCE offers a way to let more people see the pictures in the process. Advantage here: MCE.

Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF)
As almost any home theater enthusiast will tell you, the WAF is a critical part of building a usable home theater. (I'm sure there are female home theater nuts too; I've just never actually met any. My mom, aunt, and sister are all TiVo fans, so maybe that counts.) The MCE was more stable in everyday operation than my hacked-up TiVo (which is in the basement, driven by an X10 Powermid that sometimes flakes out), and it offered a great deal of extra functionality that my wife liked. However, the fast-forward problem cost some WAF points. Would an MCE device make it in the living room? At my house, probably, especially since I have an MX500 remote that can use macros to automate most complex tasks.

Customization and expandability
MCE wins big-time here. There are a wide variety of commercial and free add-ons that do things like make MCE act as a DVD jukebox (rip your DVDs once and play them any time), alarm clock, streaming audio server, and so forth. Because you can run any Windows program, the MCE is hugely flexible. With different hardware (e.g. the kind with slots and a case) you can do all kinds of cool things-- for example, Omar has a custom front-panel display. You could fairly easily write your own plugins for the main MCE screen to display important email, stock quotes, etc. In fact, the fine folks at NewsGator have a Media Center version of their RSS aggregator-- it's very slick. Of course, as you start adding stuff to an MCE or TiVo box, you run the risk of reducing its stability.

Other stuff
The MCE box is a general-purpose WIndows XP machine, so you can use it as a web browser, email terminal, and game machine. However, I got a better experience from sitting with my Tablet PC instead of trying to read the 17" from across the room. Don't discount this feature if you're using MCE with a larger screen, though. Of course, the downside of this is that you have to keep your MCE up to date on patches and fixes-- something that might be an unwanted hassle for people who don't live patch management every day.

Futures
TiVo has clearly placed their bets on consumer electronics companies. It's unclear what the future of their relationship with DirecTV will be, and it's uncertain how their recent pricing model changes will affect the availability of future services. On the other hand, they have a good track record of shipping stable products (including their recent HD-capable unit), and they have an extremely active and dedicated evangelist community. In the other corner, MS is backing MCE big-time, and they have a long history of improving functionality over time. They have some heavy OEMs backing their platform, but it's actually the smaller guys that are doing the coolest stuff. The MCE future that I'm most excited about is the concept of a set-top (or Xbox) that can remotely stream MCE content: the Media Center Extender. This looks like it would give me what I want: a centralized store for all digital content that can be streamed or played on any TV anywhere in the house.

The bottom line
Microsoft positions MCE as a home entertainment hub that can deliver all kinds of digital content to your TV, stereo, projector, or whatever. In that role, it did a solid job for our family; admittedly, I didn't test it with a fancy plasma screen or high-end stereo equipment, and I didn't use it extensively as a hub. The extra functionality comes at a cost, though: MCE machines are much more expensive than TiVo units. The ultimate test is whether I'd buy one with my own money. The answer, for now, is no, but it's also true that I'm not buying the HDTiVo I've been lusting after until I see how Microsoft plans to support HDTV-- that's because the MCE platform displays a great deal of expandability and potential that I think will make it more interesting as time goes on.

I've got to draw a bunch of diagrams for a document I'm working on. Normally, I'd use Visio, but the machine I normally use for Windows Office stuff is down, and RDP'ing to my laptop is deathly slow for some reason. I thought I'd try ConceptDraw on the Mac, since it claims to be able to import and export Visio drawings. My experience so far has been mixed: the one diagram I drew with ConceptDraw looks fine when I export it to a PNG, but it's in grayscale when I use their converter to turn it into a Visio file. That won't do; as an extra penalty, the objects are slightly different sizes. I've observed the same problem when converting Visio drawings to ConceptDraw, so I guess this may not be as seamless a solution as I'd hoped.

Update: another problem: ConceptDraw won't export a graphics file to an SMB volume, meaning I can't put the PNG-format file I need for Word into the share where all the rest of my files are. That's also not good.

I found this book quite by accident while scanning the shelves at the local library. I confess that the title made me pick it up; only when I did so did I see the subtitle: "One Couple's Trial By Trail". The basic idea: take two novice hikers and see if they still love each other after hiking from Mexico to Canada along the 2600+-mile Pacific Crest Trail. Will they survive? Will they still love each other? Will they make it to the end of the trail?

The two of them alternate chapters in the book, which is a nice change of pace. Duffy tends to be pretty hard-hearted, while Angela unfortunately comes across as a bit whiny and clingy at times. The descriptions of the trail itself are wonderful, and the narrative is entertaining; I just didn't get the sense that either one of them would be great friend material. I confess that the book did make me interested in hiking the PCT, even though the ending (Hey! We made it to Canada! We got married! Book's over!) was somewhat anticlimactic. On reflection, I guess that's how they really felt after their huge accomplishment-- after finishing the trail, they returned to their normal lives in Philadelphia. Not bad, but you might prefer it in paperback.

How could I resist any book that had the seal of the CIA with a pair of hot-red lips superimposed? Claire Berlinski's Loose Lips is the story of Selena Keller, a Sanskrit scholar who-- failing to find a real job-- ends up as a CIA case officer. Berlinski makes Selena likable and engaging enough, and the dialogue is pleasing, but the book just sort of meanders along until the end. Speaking of which: the end is terribly ambiguous, and leaves no sense of completion. I don't know if Berlinski did it on purpose or not, but I was unsatisfied by the loose ends she left flapping in the breeze. Not a bad library read; just don't expect Vince Flynn or Barry Eisler.

It's all WRC racing. I saw that RalliSport Challenge 2 was getting buzz in a variety of places (including here). OXM rated it a 9.0, so I decided to pick it up. So far, I'm very impressed: the single-player mode is extremely well executed, with a co-driver who tells you what's coming up on road rally sections and brilliant graphics. (side note: the word "stunning" is often overused when it comes to Xbox game graphics, but I can fairly say that it applies here-- the terrain and lighting effects are the best I've ever seen. Driving at night in the snow is an extremely tense experience). The kids and I had a great time racing Saturday night, even though driving a rally car is much more difficult than most of the cars in PGR2. I haven't had a chance to try racing on Xbox Live yet, but that's on my agenda for the week.

We used three guidebooks for our Disney visit: Fodor's, the Birnbaum guide (which is actually published by Disney), and The Luxury Guide to Disney. The Birnbaum guide is relentlessly upbeat, never mentioning a flaw or blemish, but it's quite detailed and includes lots of information on nearby hotels and resorts. The Fodor's guide has a good sense of humor and points out which rides and attractions aren't really worth going to (hint: Spaceship Earth) but doesn't include as much detail since it also covers Universal, Sea World, and other area attractions. The "Luxury Guide" was pretty worthless, since we didn't do lots of shopping. If I could only pick one, I think I'd go with the Birnbaum.

I saw this book before its predecessor, and it looked intriguing enough that I wanted to read them in sequence-- I'm glad I did. Like Rain Fall, Hard Rain features the half-Japanese, half-American John Rain, a Vietnam veteran turned assassin-for-hire. As the novel opens, Rain is trying to determine what to do after having his identity-- and career-- exposed to the Japanese equivalent of the FBI and the CIA. Before he can get out of town, he's compelled to infiltrate a school for training assassins run, more or less, by an opposition political party. Mayhem ensues. All die. (Well, not all, but most). As with the first book, Rain is a somewhat unlikely protagonist: he is exceptionally ruthless, but that ruthlessness (which in a lesser book would be slathered with smart-mouth quips at every opportunity; cf. Robert Parker) is tempered by Eisler's ability to show us Rain as a human who loves jazz, knows where all the good whisky bars in Tokyo are, and can recognize the possibility of changing his life for the better. The descriptions of Tokyo are again outstanding, as are the descriptions of Rain's many fights with various mobsters, killers, and assorted undesirables. The book ends on an uncertain, yet hopeful, note that's left me eager to read the next installment. (The first chapter's posted at Eisler's web site, too). I'm inclined to like it even better since Eisler dropped by here the other day :)

Brian Haig has quickly become one of my favorite thriller authors. His books, featuring an incorrigible smart-mouth Army JAG officer named Drummond, are quickly paced, witty, and suspenseful; this latest, in which Drummond is seconded to a white-shoe law firm, where he quickly makes himself unwelcome after a close friend is murdered by what appears to be a serial killer. Haig keeps the plot moving briskly, with plenty of amusing asides about the world of corporate law. A good read; recommended.

How could I resist a book with a giant moose on the cover? Flynn's book is an entertaining chronicle of his year in Alaska as an Air Force officer. He has a pleasant writing style, and the book is really a collection of short essays or columns, so it goes by pretty fast. If you're looking for deep social thought or self-examination, look elsewhere-- this is cotton candy, but nonetheless entertaining.

If you've never heard of Barry Eisler, and you like thrillers, you're missing out. His first book, Rain Fall is the story of John Rain, a half-American/half-Japanese assassin living in Tokyo. The plot details, although interesting, are secondary to Eisler's outstanding scene descriptions, characterizations, and dialogue. His descriptions of Tokyo by night are superbly evocative, right up there with James Lee Burke's descriptions of bayou thunderstorms. Rain is a complicated character; it was initially tempting to write him off as a cardboard killer-with-a-heart-of-gold, but as the novel develops, his character is more fully revealed. Highly recommended; if you're not convinced, Eisler's web site has the first chapter available-- a move which I heartily applaud.

A disappointment. When I found this, I was hoping that Swanwick had extended the punch and range of his short story "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur" to a novel. Wrong. Oh, don't get me wrong; it's an interesting story, full of time travel and a great deal (too much, in fact) detail about dinosaurs of various kinds. Swanwick tells it well, but the fact that his main character is the biggest narcissist since Narcissus makes it hard to swallow. Recommended only if you have a dinosaur fetish or are stuck in an airport.

Arlene got me a SPOT watch for Christmas, and I picked it up yesterday at CompUSA. Here are some of my impressions from a day's use-- but first, a primer on SPOT technology. Microsoft's trying to build objects like watches, alarm clock, etc. that deliver useful information at the point of use. This watch is a good example: it can give me local weather information for wherever I am, along with other preprogrammed channels. You can send calendar events from Outlook to it, and MSN Messenger users can send messages to it.

The watch was $129, plus $59/year for the MSN Direct service. There are other, more expensive, watches from Fossil and Suunto, but they don't add any functionality, just nicer cases and bands. The watch itself is relatively large, but it feels lighter than my Citizen Titanium even though it's quite a bit bigger. Included in the box is a little inductive charging stand; you put the watch on it every few days to charge its battery. This is a little weird, since most of us don't have to recharge watches, but I'll just set up the charger next to my cellphone charger and start a volt farm.

The watch display is clear and bright, but there's an included backlight for low-light situations. This is one of the things I missed most on my previous watch; since it was unlit, it was impossible to tell the time in a darkened area. There are five buttons: two small ones on the left side for activating various modes, and two small ones and a large one on the right side.

The service itself works very well. The watch has multiple "channels": one for the time, one for news, one for stock information, and so on. You go to the MSN Direct website to customize which channels your individual watch gets; this includes telling MSN where you live so that you can get local weather information, You can also specify a list of cities (in the US and worldwide) to get weather information for them. After I activated the watch, it only took an hour or so to get a full load of channels. When the watch is on the "glance" channel, it sequences through content from all the channels you get, including stocks, headlines, and weather. A travel feature allows you to specify where you're going to be, and when; this is required so that your personal information (like IMs and calendar events) can be broadcast only in the area where you are. There are still some things I have to check out, like whether I can send calendar events from more than one Outlook profile and whether there's any way to develop my own custom channels. Overall, though, it's a neat gadget, and I'm excited about its future potential and about its current capability.

I accidentally discovered Lee Child when I bought Echo Burning at Sam's, and since then I've been a big fan. Without Fail is another of Child's Jack Reacher mysteries. Reacher is much like Robert Parker's Hawk: a man of few words, great physical power, and a supremely calm and confident demeanor. In this installment, Reacher is hired to help the Secret Service figure out how to protect the Vice President-elect after he starts getting death threats. I can't say much about the plot lest I spoil it; one thing I can say is that I don't think the villians would have had the necessary technical skills to pull off their crimes in the manner Child depicts. Apart from that, though, this is a quick read-- I powered through it on the flight between Cincinatti and Seattle and still had time for a (bad) dinner and a (good, but short) nap. Recommended.

Lately I've been reading a lot of military history, and when I saw this book I decided to give it a try. I'm really glad I did. As a Marine, I was familiar with the outline of what happened on Wake in December 1941, but I had no idea how tenacious and brave the defenders were, what kind of odds they faced, or what kind of obstacles they had to overcome. Sloan's account is riveting; unlike Bradley's Flags of Our Fathers, there's more emphasis on the actual battle than on the personalities involved. Having said that, it's clear that Sloan spent a great deal of time interviewing survivors, because the book's liberally sprinkled with quotes and anecdotes that help drive home just how bravely the Marines, sailors, and civilians (!) who were on Wake fought. Stirring and highly recommended.

Stunning. We watched this on the projector, so that may have had something to do with it. The cinematography is beautiful; we were all wondering how the photographers were able to get close enough to get some of the shots they got. We see migratory birds in coastland, desert, Arctic, and estuarine environments, along with villages and a nasty-looking Eastern European factory of some kind. Incidental characters include some goose hunters, a French Navy frigate, penguins, an an old lady with a pot of corn. This was great family fare, and I'm glad we bought it-- we'll be watching it again. Highly recommended.

Typhoon is ty-riffic; it's the kind of book that Tom Clancy used to write before he began having delusions of self-importance. Basic ingredients: the Russians are selling a Typhoon SSBN to the Chinese. Unfortunately, there are two minor problems: a) the Typhoon has all of its ICBMs aboard and b) the US has already paid Russia to scrap it. This obviously requires that the Typhoon be handed over without detection by the US, and that's where the crew of the USS Portland comes in. Of course, the captain turns out to be crazy, and the presence of a female Navy linguist doesn't help matters much. Tense, realistic, and fast-paced. You might be better off to wait for the paperback, though, as this is a quick read.

Think of a doctor. No, a surgeon. Make that a heart surgeon. Better yet, a heart surgeon who specializes exclusively in fixing congenital heart defects in newborns. Now, imagine what that person would be like, and I bet it's nothing like Roger Mee, the world-renowned surgeon profiled in this book. Michael Ruhlman convinced Dr Mee, and his surgical team at the Cleveland Clinic, to give him an all-access pass; after, of course, some initial reluctance. The result is a sensitive and nuanced profile of how one small corner of a complex and difficult medical specialty works. Mee and his team do several operations a day, almost every day. Remarkably, the vast majority of their patients live-- Mee's surgical mortality hovers in the 2% range, and the story of how Mee works his magic (one grandmother says, without any apparent irony, "They say Dr Mee has the hands of God" while Mee describes himself as "a regular bloke").

Ruhlman writes with a great deal of sensitivity and skill (as you'd expect, given that all of his books focus on craftsmen of various stripes). I was impressed with his ability to convey the pathos of the Cleveland pediatric ICU without being saccharine or phony. In fact, I was in tears several times while reading accounts of the trials faced by various patients (and there are lots more of them at the Congenital Heart Information Network). Reading this has certainly helped renew my appreciation and thankfulness for my three wonderful, healthy sons, and it taught me a great deal about a fascinating medical subspeciality of which I was heretofore ignorant. I'll be looking for Ruhlman's other books. This will be on my year-end top-10 list.

OK, so it's an old album. It still rocks. Great work music.

I've always liked reading biographies of discoverers, a trait I think I inherited from my father. When I saw Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World mentioned in the WSJ, I quickly added it to my book queue. I was not disappointed. Jonnes has written a highly readable account of the early development of the electrical industry in America. Two of the principal players are immediately familiar: Edison, the folksy, somewhat egotistical inventor legendary for the incandescent bulb, the phonograph, and moving pictures (he still holds the individual record for most US patents issued) and Tesla, the weird Serbian who gave us Tesla coils and the now-indispensible AC induction motor. George Westinghouse, the third key figure, isn't nearly as well-known, even though he arguably did more to get electricity deployed than the other two. Westinghouse was a savvy businessman, and I enjoyed the descriptions of his work with his employees-- he sounds like a good boss.

Jonnes doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time on explaining electrical technology, but she does a good job of focusing on the revolutionary aspect of electricity and the business battles between the key players (including the famous ploy by Edison and his supporters to put Westinghouse out of the electrical business by emphasizing the dangerous nature of AC systems.)

Jonnes excels at dropping in little details. For example, in the early 1900s, more than 95% of residents of Muncie, Indiana had electricity in their homes, even though at the same time more than two thirds of them still had outhouses. That's the mark of a revolution. This book is highly readable, and highly recommended.

Update: Amazon recommended Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair. I'll have to add that to my queue.

I admit to some bias; having grown up in south Louisiana, and with a name like Robichaux, I expected this book (subtitled "Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast") to be patronizing and smug. It was neither. Instead, Tidwell has written a powerful narrative that clearly explains the beauty and wonder of the Louisiana coastal ecosystem, the rich life of the Cajuns who live there, and the impending threat to both caused by the artificial levees built to provide flood control along the lower Mississippi. Along the way, I learned about the BTNEP project to document land loss and the support three amendments that will help clear the path for obtaining funding for the TDCC.

Tidwell makes another, really telling, point: the fact that Louisiana is losing thousands of acres of wetlands each year is largely unknown in most of the environmental community. He's too polite to say so, but it helps reinforce my suspicion that many "environmentalists" are really just "NIMBY-ists" trying to dress themselves up in more appropriate clothing. His book has done a great deal to get the word out, though, and it's a fine read besides. Highly recommended.

Great show. We had good seats, in row U on the right-hand section, no more than 100' from the stage. The lawn section was packed; given the amount of beer, the number of teenage couples, and the presence of country music, I suspect a mini-baby boom in 9 months.

Rachel Proctor opened; I'm normally willing to skip opening bands that I've never heard of, but she put on an enjoyable show, playing most of the songs off her only album. Her set was pretty quick-- call it maybe 35 minutes. After that, we got an extended Merle Haggard set (with "From Graceland to the Promised Land" repeated probably 15 times, thanks to an inattentive sound guy) before Randy came on stage. He brought his whole band-- all 8 of them-- and they put on a terrific show. I didn't keep a detailed set list, but he played most of his #1 hits (including "Three Wooden Crosses", "Digging Up Bones", "I'm Gonna Love You Forever", "I Told You So", and "Deeper than the Holler".) I don't remember the first encore; the second was "America Will Always Stand", which I hadn't heard before (see, I told you I don't listen to country music much).

Between songs, he was relaxed and talkative, and he seemed genuinely surprised at the volume and level of crowd reaction. He spent a good ten minutes accepting roses (mostly from women of a certain age) and signing autographs during the two encores, which I thought was a classy touch. (personal to Betty: he's going to be in Gulfport at the casino on 10/24-- you should go!)

This was a country concert; according to the master tour dates list, he also playes "inspirational concerts", mostly at Baptist megachurches. I might have to dust off my missionary nametag and go to one of 'em.

Getting to and from the venue was a hassle, thanks to construction on I-75 in both directions and a complete lack of parking control at the amphitheater-- once the show was over, the parking lot became a huge free-for-all. There were staff on hand to direct traffic, but none of them did. It took us about 2 hrs up and almost 3 coming back, all for a distance of about 100mi each way. Overall, it was quite an enjoyable experience, and well worth even Ticketmaster's bloated prices ($31 for the ticket, plus another $9/ticket of fees).

Julie wanted to know which Muppet most closely resembles Randy. Judge for yourself...

It's entirely possible that everyone in the SF world already knew about this, but it was news to me: Robert Heinlein, dead these sixteen years, has a new book forthcoming: For Us, The Living. The full story of its emergence is here. You can order a copy from Amazon (via a link that benefits the Heinlein Society). I've ordered mine. (Hat tip: my sharp-eyed and well-connected brother Tim).

Somewhere, Robert A. Heinlein is smiling. John Varley, whom many of the current generation of sci-fi readers probably don't know about, has returned with a pitch-perfect Heinlein juvenile, Red Thunder. Calling it a "juvenile" isn't a slam; it's a reminder of the time years ago when authors like Heinlein wrote books that were nominally "young adult" in scope but had enough sophistication for adults. (Stephen Barnes is still doing it, bless his heart!) The plot of Red Thunder is simple: idiot-savant Cajun inventor discovers a new physical principle that can be turned into a high-acceleration space drive. A group of plucky mixed-race kidscreative young adults pair up with a disgraced former astronaut, and the team is off to Mars to rescue the American crew of the Ares (and, not incidentally, to beat the Chinese to Mars' surface). In large measure, the book is predictable, but Varley's such a good writer, and obviously takes such joy in his stories and characters, that it's never boring.

If RAH were still alive, this is very well a book he might have written, with a few caveats. Varley is known for larding his work with lots of bad language and graphic sex. I was disappointed to find that in what would otherwise have been a terrific book for young adults; I thoroughly enjoyed it, and when David's older he'll probably enjoy it too. (Bonus: there are tons of in-jokes and references to Heinlein's books... the protagonist is named Manny, for instance.)

Dad's boat had a radio; I say "had" because someone stole it over the winter, while the boat was in dry storage. This is a little surprising for two reasons: it wasn't a very good radio, and the thief didn't take the sleeve that it fits into. For Dad's birthday, I wanted to get him a replacement, so I went shopping from the comfort of my recliner. First stop was West Marine, where I found a tiny assortment of overpriced, junky-looking radio. Next, I plugged "marine radio" into Google and found Rock the Boat. THis is what I love about the Internet-- a niche-focused retailer that concentrates only on one small area and does it really well. They had the radio I wanted, so I ordered it. When I arrived, I found that it was black, despite the website picture that showed a white radio (which was what I wanted, as the boat's dash is a dazzlingly white expanse of fiberglass). I mailed the Rock the Boat folks, and they quickly dispatched UPS to pick up the black unit while simultaneously sending out the correct unit. It arrived in plenty of time for Dad's birthday, and they could not have been more friendly or courteous. I would be very happy to do business with them again (as long as it's not the result of someone stealing this radio...)

Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters is subtitled "What I Learned in Ten Years As a Microsoft Programmer". If only that were true! Instead, we get about 145 pages of what it's like to work on MS software projects, followed by another 100+ pages of apologia for various Microsoft-related issues, including out-of-date explanations of the MS antitrust trial and other competitive issues (see for yourself at the author's site). I really wanted to like Barr's book, and parts of it (like the list of ancient dialects of BASIC-- I remember most of those, dang it!) brought back happy memories of my own time in the early PC world. Ultimately, though, the book doesn't live up to its billing; Barr spends almost no time talking about the actual experience of being a developer at MS (except to rant about the breaking-the-build process), which is why I wanted to read the book in the first place.

Some good did come of it: I found the Old Computer Museum and went on a nostalgia tear. Final score: not recommended, unless you can find it in a library.

Thomas Ricks wrote one of my favorite-ever books, an account of Marine Corps recruit training titled Making the Corps. When I learned that he'd written a novel, A Soldier's Duty, I was excited to read it; now that I've read it, I think my excitement was mostly justified. Ricks' book delves into a knotty question, shining a sly, knowing light on the modern military as he does so.

The two primary characters are both Army majors, Buddy Lewis and Cindy Sherman. Each is an aide to a four-star Army general, but the two generals (Shillingsworth, somewhat of a plodder and the Army Chief of Staff, and Ames, a conniving, charismatic, and amoral rival) have very, very different views on the necessity of following the orders of their political leadership. After a debacle in which US troops needlessly die on a pointless mission, the stage is set for the central plot to unfold. Ames directs the actions of a shadowy group known as the Sons of Liberty; their actions skate right along the border between free speech (protected) and violating military orders (illegal)... until they cross that line.

The key to this book for me was that Ames' portrayal was semi-sympathetic. He doesn't want to be the President, but he feels an obligation to ensure that the political leadership is not wasting the lives of US troops. I find this attitude to be exactly what one would expect in a senior military leader, but it is unfortunately absent in some notable cases (where is William Westmoreland when you need him? Oh, that's right; he's in Hell.) On the other hand, military officers take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and that's the pivotal question here: do members of the military lose their right to political dissent? What separates legal dissent from illegal failure to obey orders, and what obligation do military members have to follow orders that are not clearly illegal but nonetheless immoral? It's a thought-provoking question; it doesn't have an easy answer, and Ricks doesn't pretend so. There are certainly signs of this being a freshman novel, but they're relatively minor. Recommended.

I've been using Chapura's PocketMirror to sync my Palm with Outlook for a while. It has worked well without being obtrusive. Last year I added their KeyContacts application, which replaces the Palm address book with an Outlook-compatible application that understands (and can use) all of the Outlook fields. It's worked well also, even though the current version doesn't support direct dialing on the Kyocera 7135.

A couple of weeks ago I got mail from Chapura: as a purchaser of both PocketMirror and KeyContacts, I was eligible to get a free copy of their new KeySuite, which has Outlook-compatible task, calendar, and notes/memo-pad modules. I downloaded it and installed it to give it a try; I've been using Pimlico Software's insanely great DateBk application for a long time. This isn't a full review; consider it to be my impressions after using KeySuite for a week or so.

First, a warning: KeySuite doesn't work right with the beta versions of Outlook 2003. They know about the problem and have promised to fix it, but that's no consolation for me; instead of using my spiffy laptop with a USB cable, I'm stuck with a serial cradle, which is slower than dirt. Bah.

Next, let me briefly mention the look and feel: Chapura has deliberately made these apps resemble the default appearance of Outlook XP. If you like the yellow calendar background, you're in luck. Fortunately you can customize the color settings, which I'm still in the process of experimenting with.

Synchronization "just works". I've been very pleased with how seamless it is, and by how faithful KeySuite is at swapping even obscure Outlook fields between Outlook and the handheld.

I've spent most of my time using KeyDates, so most of my comments concern it:

1. If you change a recurring appointment in DateBk5, you can choose whether the change applies to all instances of the event, only the current instance, or only future instances. This is very useful. KeyDates only allows you the Outlook-style choices: change the current instance or all instances in the series.

2. The KeySuite applications don't allow you to set the default category for newly created items. If most of the items you create are in one category, get used to tapping the selector to set them.

3. KeyDates doesn't support time zones, at least as far as I can tell. Since many of my appointments are meetings or concalls with people in other time zones, this is a mildly serious omission, especially in light of DateBk5's ability to show the event time in both my time zone and the other one simultaneously.

4. DateBk5 has a very useful two-column view that condenses two work weeks of events into a single screen. KeyDates doesn't.

5. KeyDates has a spiffy Options | Font command. Unfortunately, all of the standard and tiny fonts have the same 11-point size, so I can't actually use the smaller fonts. The Large and Large Bold fonts are larger, but that's the opposite of what I actually want. It's possible that this is because of some quirk of the 7135.

6. You can't turn off delete confirmation dialogs. Maybe Chapura thinks this is a feature.
   

Tim recommended this book, and I heartily second his recommendation. Ringo paints a largely believable scenario (well, believable for people who regularly read SF): an alien confederation is embroiled in an ongoing interstellar battle, and they're getting their butts kicked because the two major races are both cowards (think Niven's puppeteers). They reluctantly partner with humans; the deal is that we get some advanced technology that we can use to defend Earth in return for providing infantry. Anyone who's ever been in the military will appreciate Ringo's characters and dialogue; he gets the small details right, which makes it a lot easier to suspend disbelief on the big things. I'm looking forward to later installments (in fact, the Borders at CVG had the third book, but I'm resolved to read them in order, so I had to pass it by. Pity.)

I first saw Derailed at Sam's, but it didn't look quite good enough to merit buying, so I waited until the library had it. Boy, was I wrong. Siegel has produced a sucker-punch of a novel. Charlie Schine is a Manhattan adman with a strained marriage and a diabetic teenage daughter. In a slow progression of bad judgment, he flirts with, then has an affair with, a beautiful woman he meets on the commuter train, but when their liason is interrupted by an armed rapist-turned-blackmailer, his life goes to hell at amazing speed. Pretty soon, he's separated from his wife, estranged from his daughter, broke, and unemployed, but then things start looking up again. This book surprised me at several key plot points, even though I'm an inveterate thriller reader and am rarely surprised. The only real quibble I have is with a blatant deus ex machina escape about three quarters of the way through the book, but all in all, I'm able to forgive Siegel this flaw because of the velocity and force of the rest of the book. Highly recommended.

Area 7 might quite possibly be the perfect thriller. It has all the elements. Secret underground military facilities? Check. Cool, collected Marine hero protagonist? Check. Secret genetically-engineered Chinese bioweapons? Check. Not one, but two teams of stupendous badass commandos from unlikely places (the USAF and South Africa)? Check. Let's not forget exotic weapons, jet-powered trains, the Chinese space shuttle, Komodo dragons, escaped serial killers.. I mean, Reilly has shoehorned every thriller staple (or cliche) into this book and glued them together with a variety of plot twists ranging from the hackneyed (HEY! Look behind you!) to the clever. Despite his gleeful ignorance about most aspects of the military (sample: did you know that the VH-60 Presidential helicopter has a one-man escape capsule in it? Me neither), this is a firecracker of a book. Reilly sets a blistering pace in the first dozen pages and keeps it up for the next 480+ pages. Publishers' Weekly called it "inelegant yet oddly invigorating" and I couldn't agree more.

So, I got some email from Mary Roach, who used to write a very funny column for Salon (a few favorites: here, here, and here). She was plugging her new book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. I immediately ordered it, but it hasn't arrived yet. Anyway, she's new to the world of blogging, so give her a big welcome by visiting her book site.

I have probably 25 read-but-unreviewed books in various piles around my house. I'm trying to do at least short reviews of each of them; to that end I've added a new category for reiews, and I'll post the reviews both in my database and as entries in that category.

This was one of the worst SF books I've ever read; it was equal parts cardboard character, pseudo-scientific handwaving, and hackneyed adventure plot (rogue hacker, sinister government agents, beautiful but untrustworthy assassin from the other side who turns out to have a heart of gold). You get the idea. Put it this way: my brother loaned me the sequel, and I'm not going to read it.

I eagerly awaited this book's arrival, since I enjoyed its predecessor, Cosmonaut Keep, so much. Unfortuntely, this wasn't quite worth the wait. Don't get me wrong; MacLeod's B-list work is still better than most SF authors' top-shelf writing. However, this story is mostly a continuation of the storyline from Cosmonaut Keep, with a little local intrigue thrown in. The crew from Mingulay inaugurates free(r) trade, spreads a little socialist pollen, and generally has a grand old time. I didn't find this book as provocative or as engaging as any of MacLeod's earlier work; I hope the forthcoming Engine City is better.

Lowachee won the Warner Aspect competition with this, her first novel. Warchild is the story of Jos Musey, an eight-year-old orphaned when space pirates attack his merchant ship. He's the prisoner of a notorious pirate for a while, then is captured again and taken to the homeworld of the alien "strits", at which Earth (and most of humanity, save the pirates and a few sympathizers). Lowachee mostly deserves the acclaim she received for this novel; it's a successful exercise in character development, world-building (even if strit society does seem awfully like feudal Japan), and moral ambiguity. There's no "good" side in the war; both the humans and aliens bear responsibility for its current state. Jos comes off as a troubled but real character, even though he's so stand-offish that it's hard to feel a positive emotional bond to him. I'm looking forward to Lowachee's sophmore effort to see if she continues with the intriguing world she built here, or whether she'll start afresh.