I remember my first few classes of Spanish back in the day and thinking how cool I was when I could come home and say a few phrases in Spanish to confuse my family and friends.

I continued with Spanish through High School and have even taken a few classes in college and thought about a Spanish minor (decided against it since school was already taking way too long.

Still, it's fun to think back on the good ol' days of first learning a language and feeling so awesome...until presented with real language skills. I remember in my first year Spanish class the teacher had us watch a movie that was made in Spanish and none of us could understand anything. It was crazy.

Anyway, enjoy the video.

Pillage is one of those fun adventure fantasy books that young boys should enjoy. In a time when Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and others are stealing the show, it's fun to find a fantasy book of similar vein that is still very fresh and fun to read.

Pillage follows a young boy named Beck through his very troubled life. The initial chapter gives us insight into his devious streak as he carries out a plot that would result in having school closed for a few days. The plan falls apart and Beck quickly finds himself in more trouble than he was prepared for...something which will become a theme throughout the book.

The writing and pacing of the plot is quick. Within moments of the failed prank, we find that Beck's mom has died, the funeral takes place, and a lawyer informs Beck that, not only does he have family but he has a very rich uncle. With that, Beck is immediately shuttled onto a train en route to Kingsplot. Once there, he's quickly disillusioned as to his uncle's wealth and sanity as well as any hope of normalcy or happiness going forward.

The book progresses elegantly and quickly through many strange events that Beck and his friends work through and finally climaxes with the discovery of the dragons promised on the back of the book.

I really enjoyed the writing. The characters felt real and I grew attached to them. The plot was well crafted and moved along quickly enough for young readers to keep engaged while still maintaining enough depth to keep it interesting.

I've told both of my boys that they MUST read this book. I hope they do. I'm sure they'll enjoy it. The book didn't set itself up for a sequel and the author is doing well enough with his other series that he probably doesn't want to spread himself too thin, but I still think it would be interesting to learn more about the family of Pillage...perhaps a prequel to the current adventure?


4.5 stars out of 5

I've enjoyed Sherlock Holmes both generally and specifically since I was a young kid. I've had a ton of fun with the various movies and TV shows, both those based directly on Conan Doyle's work and the various spin-offs and parodies.

I stumbled across The Beekeeper's Apprentice in a bookstore and figured it would make a great gift for my mystery loving wife. She enjoyed the book thoroughly and has devoured the many books that follow in the series.

After being told again and again how good it was, I finally got around to reading Beekeeper over the past couple of weeks. I already had a general sense of what to expect and I've also had a few spoilers of events in future books that shed different light on some of the passages in this first book. Knowing those changes would be coming made me appreciate the way King has woven her tales together with minute allusions throughout.

The pace started out slowly and innocently enough with the introduction of Mary Russell and a now-retired Sherlock Holmes settled in a remote countryside estate. The initial conversation between the pair was humorous and did a good job of immediately giving us a lot of depth into Mary's personality.

The general flow of the novel was fluid and natural. As Sherlock took Mary into an unofficial apprenticeship, it was fun to read about her training and their interactions. I wasn't quite sure what would happen once Holmes decided she was "ready", but once again I was pleased with the way King handled the transition from apprentice to novice to partner.

The various initial "cases" that Mary and Sherlock embarked on together were interesting and I loved the way they grew in importance and complexity. I felt like King did a good job of explaining the in-depth analysis of the Consulting Detective and his apprentice. There were still moments when the minutia felt a little over the top and silly, but I felt the same about some of the explanations given in the Conan Doyle works.

Once Sherlock and Mary were involved in their major case for the last ~half of the book, things really took off and I was excited by the intensity of the case. I was a little saddened by the interlude while the two spent time in Jerusalem. It provided great moments for character development as well as opening up a few elements to be used later, but overall it felt to me as a pause in the action that was just a little too lengthy and almost made me want to skip ahead to their return to London. I'm glad I didn't as the narrative was very interesting, but still, it felt a little disjointed.

My other complaint (another very minor one) was Mary's age. I acknowledge that she is supposed to be very intelligent/wise and mature for her age, but too often she felt MUCH older than her teenage self (and even her early-twenty-year-old self). The book takes us through ~5-8 years (I forget exactly) and matures Mary from mid-teens to early-twenties. And yet, I didn't feel any real sense of aging in our protagonist. Perhaps that's to suggest that she already had her adult sensibilities in her early teens, but I still would have liked to have seen something a little more dramatic as she aged. At the same time, hormonal instability or teenage angst would have felt very out of place and been rather distracting, so it's better that she stayed constant.

Don't get me wrong, Mary did learn from Sherlock and improved in her deductive abilities and trusting her instincts. She had the inborn tendencies to follow in Sherlock's footsteps as evidenced in the first chapter. By the end of the book, she was certainly on par with the master who had taught her and her methods were refined.

The story was engaging and entertaining. The mystery was puzzling and fun, though it does sometimes annoy me me when the author doesn't give the reader enough information to solve the mystery without the help of the protagonists. Still, that's a difficult balance to maintain, since providing too many clues can make a mystery predictable and boring. Given the choice, I'd rather have the story end this way.

I really enjoyed this book, the story, the characters, the writing. It was a great read and I'll work my way through the rest of the series over time. Fans of mystery and/or Holmes, should certainly enjoy this.


4 out of 5 stars

View all my reviews

Each night my wife and I read with the kids before bedtime. Over the summer, the kids got this pair of books and we started reading them.

We unintentionally read them out of order, starting with Bullies. It didn't make a huge difference. There were a couple of references to the first book, but they were explained well enough that we didn't miss anything. And when we did go back and read Chickens, we already knew who the bullies were when they showed up at the 4th of July celebration.

The books were written simply enough that young kids could follow along with the story line easily enough. At the same time, there was vocabulary that would make kids stretch and there were some phrases and references that I felt would likely go over the heads of the kids. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as it provides co-reading adults with something more advanced to keep them occupied, but at the same time, these moments didn't seem necessary and felt more like an attempt to be 'literary' than an effort to actually add something to the story.

The characters in the book are enjoyable. We particularly get close to the young narrator and he is the most fleshed out of all the characters. His brothers and parents seemed a little flat at times, but Matthew really felt alive.

Both books were great portrayals of life in a large family, life in a semi-secluded farming community, and life in an LDS household. There were a number of "inside jokes" that will only be picked up by an LDS reader, but overall the books should be accessible to anyone and they certainly don't attempt to preach. They do provide morals at times in subtle ways (some of the lessons in Bullies aren't subtle at all but blatant talking points from a church teacher or parent).

My wife and I were taken a little aback by some of the behaviors and actions presented by the kids and in the family. While not awful and certainly not anything new, the mischievous activities of the kids are not wholly condemned or condoned but the narrative voice of Matthew often leaves things ambiguous on the side of giving permission for mischievous behavior. I think the author picked up on this to a degree as Bullies is a little more forthcoming in looking down on "wrong" behavior instead of saying nothing.

The activities and adventures of the Buckley family were entertaining. There were segments of each book that felt a little dry, like we were just passing time while waiting for the next point of action. These slow points provided background on the Buckley family and gave opportunities for interaction, but didn't do much to progress the story.

Overall, these books were alright and I don't mind that we read them as a family or that we have copies in our home. But they're not necessarily books that I'm going to rush out and recommend to others or try to pass my books around so others can read.

From a storytelling perspective, I enjoyed Chickens better than Bullies. I enjoyed the moral perspective of Bullies more than Chickens but it did feel a little heavy handed (especially the ending).

If you want to check them out, go for it...if not, don't.

It's been about 4 years since the last time we went to Yellowstone. I still remembered it as being gorgeous and relaxing, but until I got up there, I'd forgotten just how wonderful it was.



We left on Wednesday later in the morning and drove the ~300 miles to West Yellowstone, Montana. The kids were very well behaved considering it took us a just under 6 hours to get there due to the various bathroom and snack breaks.

We spent the first evening unpacking and wandering the town to give the kids a feel for what the area was like. We stopped in at the Museum and chatted with the guy at the desk for a few minutes where we learned that the coming weekend was the "free entry weekend" for Yellowstone. In addition to that, President Obama and his family were flying in for the weekend. That information was good to have so we could plan our Saturday and Sunday appropriately and try to avoid extra crowds. We got dinner at the Gusher (always recommended), bought a few postcards to write over the coming days and then settled down to get some rest and prep for the coming days.

Over the next few days, we saw as much as we could.


We did the "Upper Loop" first. We stopped just inside the park at a thermal pool between the west entrance and Madison junction. The kids loved watching the steaming water gurgle along. After turning towards Norris, we stopped at the Museum of the National Park Ranger, the Norris Geyser Basin and then continued on up the loop. Our next stop was to hike the Artist Paint Pot trail. This was a fairly easy little hike/walk up to a bunch of mud pots that the kids loved. They especially loved one up at the top that was spurting mud 10+ feet and even splattered a few drops on a fellow hiker.



After the paint pots, we continued on to Mammoth where we stopped for lunch and wandered around a little bit. Mammoth is home to the old Fort Yellowstone, so there are some cool exhibits showing how the old soldiers used to live. By now the kids were working on their Junior Ranger booklets so we spent some time searching the exhibits for answers to some of the questions.


After Mammoth we continued driving along the loop to Tower Falls. There were some great overlooks along the way and some gorgeous back country. At one point, traffic came to a dead stop. We'd already been stopped for construction earlier and had slowed way down due to animal sightings (we'd seen some elk and bison), but there was no indication of construction at this part of the park. As we slowly crept forward, we saw people looking around and decided it must be animals so we kept our eyes peeled.

A few minutes later, we saw movement off in the tall grass and strained to see what it was. We quickly determined it was a bear. A few minutes later we saw a smaller bear tagging along. We got some pictures and video, but we were far enough away that it's hard to distinguish since they kept to the tall grass. Everybody was very excited. In all the years we've been going (and including the few years Lynette lived up there), none of us had ever seen a bear in the wild, so it was pretty cool.

Once we finally made it past the onlookers, we continued to Tower and went to the overlook. The waterfall is amazing. There was a sign saying that the trail was damaged so we couldn't go all the way to the waterfall, but the boys and I went down, hoping we could get close enough to get some cool pictures. Unfortunately, they should add to the sign something that says "not only can you not get to the base of the falls...you can't get far enough to even see the falls." We did get some good views of the river. The boys wanted to slide down the extra ~hundred feet and go wading, but I was a little worried they'd go in too far. Plus the girls were waiting for us at the top. The hike up was a little strenuous on Jason's asthma but we finally made it, though he vowed no more hikes.

Past Tower, we continued through the gorgeous backcountry road to Canyon village where we got everybody a snack. It was nearly dinnertime and we didn't really want to do dinner at Canyon, so we planned to work our way back out. First we drove down the road a bit more to get a look at the canyon. We circled down past the falls and walked up to Artist Point where we found an amazing overlook to view the Lower Falls and the canyon. It was awe inspiring.

From there, we went back to town for dinner and to prep the next day.

We started along the lower loop, stopping to look at the Fountain Paint Pot trail to look at the gorgeous pools and pots between Madison and Old Faithful. I love the Celestine Pool and Leather Pool here. The fountain paint pot was cool, but not as active as the one we saw on the Artist Paint Pot trail earlier, so the kids weren't quite as impressed. The Spasm Geyser, true to its name, was spurting and splashing like crazy and a lot of fun to watch.

We made it to Old Faithful Lodge about 20 minutes before it was anticipated to 'go off', so we did a bathroom and gift shop break and then got a little lunch to eat while we waited. Old Faithful erupted just as we were finishing lunch and everybody rushed to the deck to watch it stream high into the air. We heard later that weekend that when President Obama went through, people were mad because Secret Service blocked off the area for security such that the President had nearly a private viewing and the other guests had to wait another 90 minutes for the next eruption. Made me glad we heard about his visit earlier and planned to avoid him.

After Old Faithful, we started the drive through the Tetons to Jackson Hole. There was a lengthy section of construction that slowed things down a little bit, but overall it wasn't bad. The kids were a little bored with the drive but the scenery was gorgeous. Lewis Lake was beautiful to drive beside and after that, we had amazing views of the majestic Teton peaks.

The drive to Jackson took longer than we anticipated and the kids were a little cranky after being in the car so long. We parked the car and then walked along the downtown strip. Our primary goal was to get an old time photo of the family as has been our tradition whenever we go to Jackson. We got dudded up in cowboy gear and got some great shots. The kids loved it. The price was more than Lagoon's Pioneer Village (where we get pix in non-Yellowstone years), but I always like the Jackson pictures better.

After pictures, we wandered a little more and enjoyed the town, getting the obligatory picture by the antler arch. We found a stagecoach and the kids wanted to go for a ride, so we hopped aboard and took a stagecoach ride around town, which was way cool.

For dinner, we stopped at a mexican restaurant called "The Merry Piglets." The art on the walls and the menus was hilarious. It had great ambiance. We got settled and ordered. Lynette wanted to share a margarita, so she ordered a virgin margarita. The waitress explained all the different flavors and mixes available. I told her we'd just do the regular lime. Unfortunately, this confused her enough that she forgot the "virgin" bit...so when the drink came, the first swallow burned its way down Lynette's unsuspecting throat. We got it squared away, but the shock swore her off tequila...if she'd ever had the inkling to try it anyway.

Wow...this summer has flown by. Sadly I didn't accomplish a lot of what I had hoped I would, but that's the way life goes.

I'm not terribly excited for another semester of school. After ~13+ years of college, I am sooo ready to be done. You'd think I'd have a doctorate by now, but alas, I'm still plodding along towards my Bachelors.

I have one class this fall (an advanced study into American literature focusing on Jazz Age America) and then I need one more class in the spring and I can finally get that English Degree to hang on my wall.

In order to take that degree and go teach with it, I either need another ~year+ of classes (probably more like 2 years with my current schedule) plus student teaching...or I find a school/district that does an "alternative licensure program" wherein I get hired for the job and then take a few specific classes (as dictated by the school/district) to fulfill my license requirements in the first year or two after I'm hired. Right now the plan is to look for the second option since I'm not relishing the idea of another 2 years of child psych classes followed by a full year of quitting my day job to go student teach to finish the licensing that way.

Still, I'm excited to get back to school and read through the variety of books from the 20s-30s, many of which I've never read or even heard of and then having in-depth discussions about them and writing various papers dissecting them. Ah, the joys to come.

Wish me luck. :)

Over the next few days, I'll hopefully post a recap of the vacation. For now, I'll just say that spending the last week in Yellowstone/Tetons/Jackson/Bountiful just relaxing and having fun with the family was GREAT!!! My only regret is that I had to go back to work after it was all done.

I'm not a fan of eBooks and eReaders generally. I have some installed on my iPod and I've downloaded a handful to thumb through on my computer. But generally, I prefer the heft, feel and convenience of a physical book.

However, for those who don't mind eBooks, go check out the Suvudu Free Library to download a selection of popular Sci-Fi/Fantasy books in pdf format. The idea is that they provide the first novel in a popular series, or some other book representative of a popular author. They give you the eBook for free, assuming that you'll enjoy the book and then go out and purchase it.

I already own a handful of the books they offer for free and I can say from those books (and what I know of some of the others) that this is a pretty good selection. I just don't know that I feel like reading them on a computer and I know that printing them out will take enough ink that I may as well buy the book.

A cool video worth checking out, even if you don't like Coldplay. And if you do like Coldplay, you'll like the music too. ;)

Not that I watch a ton of music videos, but this is one of the coolest music videos I've seen in a long time.

This article was sent to me a few days ago.

It's a good example of why there needs to be good discussion between stakeholders, developers, testers and other members of a product team with regards to bugs/enhancements/features/issues.

I've been on a number of projects where, by the end of the project, the stakeholders/PMs are largely hands-off and just lets the final cycles be "development by bugs." This is great and all, especially as I try to push for high quality. But in terms of making sure the right priorities are met, it doesn't work so well.

After a release like that, I often end up having the stakeholder come to me a day or two later with a "critical bug" that must be fixed asap. The bug is generally something that the dev team and I see as trivial such as a scrollbar where there doesn't need to be one or a missing border around a frame or some other aesthetic issue that does make the project cleaner, but not any more usable. The bug is usually in the database but was prioritized away by the test and/or dev team as being insignificant, especially when compared with data integrity or software functionality.

I try to push for regular bug triage meetings with the stakeholders, especially near the end of a project. But most of the time, the stakeholders are far too involved with trying to negotiate the endgame with the customer (who is usually driving us towards an unrealistic product deadline) and as a result, they don't want to take the 'downtime' to fully understand each bug. Instead, they have me go to them with a list of bugs titles sorted based on the priority set by myself and the developer and in 2 minutes, we scan the list.

I'm not saying I don't strive for aesthetic quality or that I don't fully understand the desires of the stakeholders. However, the stakeholders are more directly involved with the client and thus they have a better feel for what can "make or break" the deal. I, on the other hand, am striving mainly for functional quality and aesthetic acceptability and adherence to form.

To project managers and other stakeholders...please get involved with the defect tracking process and provide input on the issues to be fixed. To test and dev teams, look for input from your stakeholders to make sure you're getting the important things fixed. Otherwise, you'll find yourselves scrambling in the week following a release.

Yikes...

This is just a little freaky.

I haven't seen the movie yet...and I really want to.

In the meantime, here's a fun little video that made me giggle a little.

Ever since our kids were toddlers, my wife and I have tried to read to them every day. Unless we're getting to bed late or just having a bad night, we end the day with a bedtime story for each of the kids. This has created a great love of books and reading in our kids and we absolutely love that since both Lynette and I love books and we always hoped to instill that same love in our kids.

The only real problem this has caused is that sometimes our kids will come up to us with a book and beg us to read to them at a time that isn't really convenient (while we're doing a time-sensitive task like cooking or on a conference call or some other endeavor). Since my two oldest can read for themselves now, this has been less frequent. But for my youngest (who does know her ABCs and can spot a few words), it's just so sad to see her face droop as she walks away with book in hand.

Enter DigiTells.

I grew up with a number of Read-a-Long records (yes, records) that I loved to throw on my Fisher Price record player and follow along. When I found out about DigiTells, I was intrigued. This product allows you to create your own audio-book, complete with sound effects and page-turn-notification. I loved the concept and saw lots of possibilities for it. Not only would it be fun to record a few of my kids favorite books for them, but we could also record books for nieces, nephews and more.

When the box arrived, I was immediately impressed by the professional presentation. The DigiTells website is vibrant and looks great. The packaging follows the same style and is just smooth and inviting. I pulled the Installation Disk from the top of the box and started the install process while looking at the other materials.

The 'Premium Package' includes a USB headset/microphone unit along with the software. I plugged the headset in and it was immediately recognized and ready to go with my Windows XP machine (I was glad I didn't have to deal with driver installation, but even if I had, it likely would have been included in the package). The installation process was slower than I would have liked as it extracted and validated all the files, but overall it was alright.

Once I activated (via a serial # in the manual) the product and launched into DigiTells, I was greeted by the same friendly voice from the website presentations. I was impressed by the audio instructions on each page of the program and the tutorial videos outlining all of the major processes. I watched a handful of the tutorials and then decided to get down to business making my first book.

I pulled out a book that the kids request frequently, a Sweet Pickles book about a Very Worried Walrus. I thumbed through the ~30 pages and came up with a narration plan. I listened to some of the pre-loaded sound effects that come with DigiTells and then hopped online and downloaded a few other sounds to enhance the experience.

I then jumped right into the recording process. Page-by-page, I made the words come alive. Sometimes I would break a single page into a couple of recordings with sound effects interjected between them. I reached the end of the book with a "The End" and clicked to continue on to Phase 2 where I would finalize the project....and (much like poor Walrus on his bicycle), the program Crashed!

I relaunched and opened my project. To my relief, it loaded back up. I continued on and crashed again. Confused, I stepped back for a breather. I wasn't willing to admit defeat so I tried a few more things, changed my methods a few times, and eventually managed to figure out what I was doing wrong and work around the error.

While I was initially frustrated that I had crashed (I'm in contact with the developer to isolate the problem and get it fixed), I was still very excited about DigiTells. I take some responsibility for some of the errors encountered, due to my now instinctual software usage methods after more than a dozen years in the Software QA world (where it's my job to find errors). Still, there are definitely some things to fix and may be some usability discussions as well.

I am very impressed with DigiTells. The software is easy to install and get started and the presentation value is very warm and welcoming to a new user. Friendly and powerful tutorial videos really help a novice user get started with their audio book project. DigiTells is a powerful tool for recording and editing an audio book. I can see it being a great tool for teachers, parents, grandparents and more to create very personalized audio books for the children in their lives. And children will love listening to a book personalized by someone they love.

My two complaints with the product are:

1. That the process is very specific and not terribly flexible. While this is a powerful tool (especially for the cost), there are a number of areas where I would love to see more robust options or more flexible processes.
2. The headset itself is great (especially as part of the package) but it was a bit snug for my slightly larger than average head and by the end of the recording, I felt a bit of a pinch on my scalp. The recording from the headset did have a small hum, but again, for the price of the product, the sound quality was actually very good.

I know there are other tools out there that can do more, but you'll pay a ton for them and have a much steeper learning curve. I know there are also free packages out there, but they either don't do as much or else require you to be very tech savvy to get them configured properly and to use them to their full potential.

I can definitely recommend the DigiTells product. It's clean, professional, and powerful. It is easy to jump right in and use, though I would definitely recommend watching at least a few of the tutorial videos to help streamline your efforts and to understand some of the powerful features in the product. Now that I have the process down, I look forward to making a handful of audio books. I'm hoping to make a few gifts for nieces and nephews as well as my own kids.

Go try out DigiTells. I'd love to hear what you think.

4 out of 5 stars