Diary of a Network Geek

I finished Vampire Zero by David Wellington Friday night.

Vampire Zero is the third, and apparently last, book in the vampire series by Wellington that started with Thirteen Bullets and was followed by Ninety-nine Coffins.  I’ve already reviewed those here and, if you read those reviews, you’ll know that I think David Wellington has done a great job reinventing the vampire genre with his vision of the vampire as monster.  But, to me, that’s worth repeating, because I really hate the humanization and romanticizing of vampires that’s gone on in modern literature.  Wellington’s vampires, though, are monsters.  They’re like bipedal sharks who live on blood and think as well as humans and have their own form of culture.  But, they are like sharks.  They’re predators and they hunt humans.

In Vampire Zero, Wellington presents us with the last vampire hunter, Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton, who’s trying to hunt down her old mentor, Jameson Arkeley.  In 99 Coffins, he took on the vampire curse to help Caxton lay the brood of Civil War era vampires to rest, because she just couldn’t quite manage it herself.  In that book, Arkeley claimed he would dispatch those beasties, and then turn himself in to Caxton for his own execution.  As you might imagine, he wasn’t quite able to pass that final test and retreated out into the world.  Naturally, Caxton is the only one really qualified to hunt and kill vampires, so she ends up trying to track Arkeley down before he gives into the bloodlust of the vampire curse and starts killing humans, or, worse, starts making more vampires.   Before he becomes “Vampire Zero”.  The term, of course, is derived from regular epidemiology, where “patient zero” is the first known case from which all other cases of a disease derived.  In this case, however, the disease is even more deadly than anything we’ve ever imagined.

Naturally, she doesn’t quite manage to stop Arkeley from making more than one new vampire, but it’s a long, twisty ride to that point.  Caxton stays hot on her former mentor’s trail, becoming more and more like him along the way.  She even becomes a Special Deputy U.S. Marshall, just like Arkeley was before he turned.  The difference, of course, is that Caxton can see what’s happening.  She can see how she’s becoming harder and colder and more driven, while caring less and less about other people’s feelings, as she gets closer to her mentor-turned-vampire, in more ways than one.  But, she also has to fight the system, the bureaucrats, the paper-work and the less motivated public servants.  It’s no easy job, even for someone far less human and caring than Laura Caxton.
It’s brilliant work.  Both Caxton’s and Wellington’s.  The writing and the story are both really, really engaging and compelling.  No less so for the fact that humanity’s future may well hang in the balance.  Something, incidentally, that Caxton is quite aware of pretty much all the time.  But, Wellington’s writing and Caxton’s awareness don’t distract from the action at all.

In short, this is a great ending to a great series.  Though, the way the book ends, there is room for a sequel.  At least one more.  I hope Wellington writes that eventually.  I do love his work and these books.
So, hopefully, I’ve given you enough warm, fuzzy feelings about a vampire book and series to get you to check out Vampire Zero, after hitting the other two books, of course.  It was a damn fine read.

Actual conversation before going to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine for the second time last night…

J: “So, uh, what’s the axe by the door for?”
Me: “In case of zombie attack.”
J: “Shouldn’t that be a shotgun then?”
Me: “Don’t want to run out of ammunition.”
J: “Aren’t you worried about getting, you know, swarmed by overwhelming numbers?”
Me: “Naw, the plan is to funnel them to the door and take ’em one or two at a time.”
J: “Won’t you get tired?”
Me: “Eventually, I guess, but by then, it’ll be a whole different problem, right?”
J: “Hmmm…”
Me: “So, do you want to do dinner before or after the movie?”
J: “After, I think.”
Me: “Okay, let’s roll then, eh?”
J: “‘Kay.”

Everybody talks that way, right?

Would you like to play a game?

Have you heard of these things? Giant games that take place at least partially in the real world, that are a total immersive experience? They’re the latest thing. Okay, not the latest thing, since they’ve been around for years and they’ve been used to market everything from the video game Halo to the Steven Spielberg movie, A.I., but they’ve recently gotten popular again, thanks to Nine Inch Nails and Wired magazine. If you, like me, have gotten curious about them, the fine folks at the mental_floss Blog have a primer on them called A Beginner’s Guide to Alternate Reality Games.

I have to admit, I’ve never played in one, per se, but the Guide has a description of one that is very familiar from high school and college. Of course, we called the Assassination Game then, and these folks have added a twist to it by vastly enlarging the scale, but, still, it brings back the memories. Sure, it’s a geeky thing to admit to, but I can see how it’d be fun. And, a challenge on either side of the fence. Running a network of websites that dole out clues and cross-reference phone numbers and text messages and e-mail lists and all that, too. Wow. Hmm, in a slow year, maybe this is a new hobby people can use to distract themselves….

Well, in any case, no matter how geeky it may be, I think it’s worth checking out the article. It could be the Next Big Thing!

StarTrek

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

Well, yeah, of course, I saw Star Trek this weekend.

Okay, first of all, if you’re an old-school, Trek purist, you will hate this movie. But, if you like fun, watchable, well-acted, well-directed science-fiction movies, and can accept that this movie isn’t the series and steps outside the established television canon, then you might just enjoy this film. Seriously, if you can set aside your ideas about what this movie should be because it’s a “Star Trek” movie, you’ll enjoy it a whole lot more. Personally, I liked the movie just fine.

So, this is a new origin. This movie throws out the old Trek history and writes it anew for a whole new audience. In fact, director and producer J. J. Abrams has basically said that this movie is for a new generation of potential Star Trek fans, and not really for the “old guard” at all. Now, the hard-core Trek nerds are all irritated by that, but, well, that’s tough. This movie is just what the franchise needed; a total reboot. Well, actually, it’s not a total reboot, since Leonard Nimoy does, in fact, show up as an old Spock, but, mostly, this is a fresh start. Obviously, box office receipts will determine if an sequels are made, but, from what I’ve seen so far, I can’t imagine that this will be the last we see of the Enterprise.

So, here’s where potential spoilers start. If you don’t want me to accidentally reveal anything really integral to the plot, stop reading now and skip down to the last paragraph for my final review summary.
Right, now that the pansies are all gone, here’s the dirt.
This movie breaks canon in a number of ways. For one, all the major characters get brought together in this first mission. And, when I mean all the major characters, I mean not just Kirk and Bones and Spock, but also Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, Chekhov, Nurse Chapel, and even Captain Pike. So, yeah, that’s totally not how the series went at all, but, you know what? It was done pretty well. I mean, I bought the whole thing. It worked. And, we got to see a little history for the two really big characters, Spock and Kirk. Again, different than the series, but very good. In many ways, it was more believable, to be honest, more adult in a way that I would hope to see in the movies.

In the series, Kirk was always portrayed as a bit of a lothario, but in the movie, we actually see him hitting on women. We get to meet Bones as he’s running away from his ex-wife and debts, even though he’s terrified of space. We get to see Spock as a troubled youngster and a stiff-necked Starfleet Academy instructor. In fact, he’s the one who programmed the infamous Kobyashi Maru scenario which no one was supposed to be able to beat, and just how Jim Kirk beat it. In fact, once they work through that little bit, it forms the basis of their friendship. It’s all done in such a way that the narrative flows well and everything makes sense, but in a cinematic way which is really better, I think, than the old series. And, yes, I did love the original Star Trek series, so if you’re holding on to that as “better” because it was the original, get over it.

Now, I’ll bet you’re wondering how Nimoy’s Spock gets worked into the movie, right? If you’re a real fan of the series, I’m sure you’ve already worked it out. Time Travel! And, yes, there is at least a brief discussion of the time travel paradox that always seems to get set up when that happens. Solved, as always, with that handy theoretical construct the alternate time-line, or parallel universe. So, what’s been set up here is a brand new Star Trek universe with the great characters that Gene Roddenberry created, but the possibility of new adventures done in surprising ways. Yay! Finally, a reboot of a classic setting done with something approaching brilliance! And, it’s all internally consistent with the original universe.

Now, I know this weekend was big for this film, but it remains to be seen how the fans will embrace it. Personally, I think if they’re fools if they don’t get behind this film. The series has been played out and run into the ground. The Star Trek franchise absolutely needs to have a complete reset like this and if we really want to see new movies, we need to get the old guard out to see this movie and enjoy it. Or, maybe not. Maybe the new fans will drive this film and all the great new Star Trek films it will produce. I hope so.

So, in short, I think the new Star Trek is a great movie. I would totally be willing to see this again, which, again, is good because I very well may be going with friends who couldn’t go when I saw it Friday. Also, I completely, whole-heartedly recommend this film to people who loved the old series and people who weren’t big fans, but love good science-fiction films.
It’s a great movie and I think everyone should get out and see it at least once, if not twice.

I find this story both beautiful and a little uncomfortable.

Imagine being a double amputee and stuck in a wheelchair since childhood. Imagine all the questions that you’d learned to deflect, perhaps with a little sarcasm, or, perhaps, with gentle humor. Well, one such person who told a kid who asked why she didn’t have all her legs that she was a former mermaid has gotten to realize a dream. The special effects wizards behind the Lord of the Rings movies have made her a mermaid suit, that works.

On the one hand, it’s cool that these guys are helping her out and that she’s not letting her disability keep her down.  On the other hand, I wonder how long it will be until they have a product and are marketing it to people who want to turn themselves into mer-people.

XMenOrigins-Wolverine

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

Right, so I saw Wolverine Friday night.

It was good, and I’m totally willing to see it again, which is good because I suspect that I will be, but, honestly, it wasn’t great. I mean, it was no Dark Knight or Iron Man, but it was still good.
Here’s the thing, to a fan, there’s nothing new here. Really, what they did was sort of take all the various alternate histories of Wolverine that we’ve seen in the comic books over the years and sort of munge them all into one. Well, except for leaving out all the time he spent in Japan. But, all the origin history, how he came to be alive, how he discovered his mutant powers, his association with the military and how he lost his memory are all in there. Like I said, though, no real mystery to any real fan of the comic books, though.

So, the movie starts with him as a sickly kid in a wealthy family, with a father who, it turns out, isn’t quite his father and a half-brother, who is the mutant Sabretooth. Then, we drift through a montage of history following the two brothers through various wars starting with about the American Civil War and ending up in Viet Nam, which is where the meat of the movie really starts.
Wolverine and his brother hook up with a bunch of U.S. government run mutant “special forces” who are little more than the assassin mercenaries of General William Stryker, who later is a baddie in the X-Men movies. This is just earlier in the timeline. Naturally, Wolverine gets fed up and bails out, retiring to the Canadian wilderness as a lumberjack with a girlfriend. After Sabretooth starts hunting down the old team, he kills the girlfriend to get Wolverine back in the game, so to speak. Also, this is what motivates him to volunteer to get the adamantium skeleton that he’s famous for having.
So, yeah, no point in telling the whole story. Either you’re a fan and know it already or I’d be spoiling the movie, so, might as well just let it go. Suffice it to say that the plot is a typical action movie filled with betrayal and comic book surprises.

The one real downside to the movie is the ending, which was pretty weak. It seemed like it was mainly a setup for a sequel or a spin-off or both. Personally, I’m betting on both based on the weekend’s box office returns for this one. These folks made some money. And, rightly so, since Wolverine is one of the most popular Marvel comic characters in a very popular franchise. I mean, really, this has been one of the most anticipated films of the past couple years. Right up there with Star Trek opening Friday.

So, all in all, a pretty good film. Not great, but good enough to pay full price. And, when a friend of mine wants to finally go see this after fulfilling some family obligations, I’ll be pleased to see it again and look for details I missed the first time.
Worth seeing, for sure, but not twice for most people. And watch for the next one or the spin-off!

Okay, I should probably save this, but I’m totally not going to.

Let’s not ask why I posted this when I should have been working out on a Sunday morning.  I’ll get to the workout in a minute, after I finish the post.  Let’s also not ask what I was searching on when I found the blog that linked to what I’m about to share.  And, let’s ignore the adult language, because, c’mon, people talk that way and it’s sort of integral to the bit.  But, most of all, let’s just skip right past the part where it’s not my first date we’re talking about.

Just click the link to the funny first date story found on Craigslist Portland.  The funny thing to me is that even after what happened, he still wanted to date her again!  The link, incidentally, loads a graphic on Picasa for you to read and loads in a new window.

That’s International Space Station for those of you who may not be aware.

Now that there’s a geek in the top office, maybe we’ll see more action in science and space spending. I hope so, since I think that our future really does rest in the stars. Literally, though, not in the sense of astrology.
I know I’ve been on a bit of a space kick this month, but, as a fan of NASA and space travel, when I saw Slashdot link to a series of video tours of the ISS, I had to share it.

Enjoy!

Right, so this weekend I upgraded my laptop’s internal hard drive.

My trusty Toshiba Satellite, which I used all through my chemotherapy treatments almost two years ago, came with an 80 GB hard drive and was starting to fill up. All the pictures I take add up, I guess, especially when I shoot in RAW format. So, I decided that with drives being as cheap as they were, it was time for an upgrade. As I wrote Monday, I scooted over to MicroCenter and picked up a 500 GB Seagate 2.5inch, mobile, SATA drive on Saturday. They were on sale for $115, which is, I think, a pretty damn good price. I got a couple other things, too, since the drive upgrade and a previous memory upgrade makes my laptop the most capable machine in my house, outside of the servers upstairs. (Why are so many non-tech people surprised when I mention that I ran cable and have a server room, with servers?) Oh, and before I get too far, let me mention that you can click on any of the pictures here for larger versions if you want a closer look than the thumbnail. Just click back when you’re done admiring my work.

The other essential piece of hardware to start out with is an external USB drive adapter of some kind. I bought the Kingwin EZ-Connect, pictured here. I got that at an earlier trip to MicroCenter, with whom I do NOT have an endorsement deal, by the way. I just love their store. In any case, I got this particular one for two reasons. First, it was under $30. Second, it could handle the three major types of drives that I’m likely to encounter on a regular basis.

What you get in the box, as you can see, is a USB cable, a drive adapter, a power adapter and a power supply. Oh, you also get a small CD that has some drivers, which you don’t actually need if you’re using Windows XP, and some simple backup software. I didn’t actually use this software, but, rather, I went to Seagate’s website and downloaded their free utility called DiskWizard. There were a number of reasons why this made sense for this situation. For one thing, I didn’t want to just back up the drive, but I wanted to make a bit-for-bit mirror copy of the drive so that I can replace the old one and still have a bootable, working computer. For another, I’m familiar with Seagate’s utility and have successfully used it before.

So, after installing DiskWizard following the default prompts, I hooked up my new drive via the USB adapter.

I did install the included software and the drive was immediately recognized. Then, again, I simply followed the DiskWizard prompts with a single false step when I had to go back and change an option in the cloning configuration to make sure the new drive was set to be bootable. I cannot stress that enough! When doing this, you absolutely must make sure that the new drive is being configured to be bootable, system drive. If you don’t do that, your machine will not boot when you change out the drive. If you use DiskWizard, it will require a reboot. In fact, after setting your configuration, the software will prompt you to reboot and, after the software reboots your machine, it will automatically launch and start the cloning process. The actual drive cloning took about an hour or two. I was running around doing other things, so I didn’t get a good time on it. Best just to allow several hours and, like I did, do other things to amuse yourself while you wait.

Now, it’s important to remember to both unplug your laptop and disconnect the battery. Just unplugging won’t be enough to make your laptop safe to work on. As long as that battery is in there, you could suddenly have a jolt of electricity jump through the circuits and make any planned upgrades pretty much useless. Also? A little jolt of juice can bite you pretty hard, especially when you’re not expecting it!

The next step, obviously, is to remove the old drive.

In my case, it was pretty easy. In the past, on some laptops, getting the drive out required taking the whole machine almost totally apart. I’ll never forget having to take a laptop’s entire keyboard off the top of the case to get to drive bay! I had to take the screen off at the hinge and everything! It was a dangerous, delicate mess! But, on today’s laptops, you mostly just have to take off a single panel, as you can see in the picture. The drive was in there really snugly, thanks, in part, to the rubber, anti-vibration sleeves meant to keep the drive quieter in a laptop. What I found interesting, however, is that there were no screws holding the drive itself in. No cages or straps or anything outside of the SATA connections and the tightness of the fit. Because, the drive bay door fit very snugly and I had to apply pressure to get it in place correctly and screwed shut again.

On the right, you can see the drive bay still open with the new, freshly cloned drive in it and the old, small drive laying next to it.

This was actually a pretty simple upgrade to make. It was what I generally refer to as a “one screwdriver job”. By that I mean that I could mainly have done it with the tiny pocket tool I carry with me in my pocket. Though, in this case, I used the old, cheap red-handled screwdriver in the picture. It’s a freebie that is often used as a giveaway by tool companies. I’ve had that one since my first IT job, back when I worked for Hyatt Hotels. It’s a little beat up now, but it can still handle a nice, easy job like this.

As you can see, the formatted drive is a little smaller than advertised. Also, they tend to round up a little and bytes and megabytes and gigabytes aren’t round numbers, so the math gets a little funky. Oh, and there was a special 251Meg partition that couldn’t be clearly identified by DiskWizard, even though it cloned the partition just fine. So, when you factor in all those things, you can see the nice, big partition, which is mostly empty and waiting for me to fill it up with great pictures!
Well, that’s the plan at least.

In any case, now you have some idea how to change out a laptop hard drive if you should ever want to upgrade for yourself. I really left out a lot of the nitty-gritty detail that I felt was either self-explanatory or that you should really know how to do before attempting this in the first place. Perhaps not the best tutorial, but at least a good step-by-step overview of how to get it done!

Of course, that could describe almost any week or weekend for me.

So, Saturday, I got up early to run out and get a few parts to upgrade my laptop, braving the near cataclysmic, torrential downpour.  Naturally, I was far from the only geek hard core enough to weather the storm to spend some quality time at MicroCenter.  Though I have to admit, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as I thought it would be, even with the flooding.  I know that Fry’s Home Electronics is more popular with some geeks, but I think MicroCenter’s prices are competitive and I think I get better, less aggressive, more knowledgeable, service there.  Though, in this case, I knew just what I wanted.  My main purpose was to get a bigger internal drive for my laptop, because all the pictures that I take suck up drive space like a drunk soaking up free booze and I was starting to feel the pinch.  But, I also wanted to get a wireless, “laptop” mouse that I can throw in my bag when I hit the road, since my laptop is quickly becoming my creative workstation.  I also grabbed a bunch of magazines that I usually don’t find in my usual haunts.  Mainly Photoshop stuff, but some others that I wouldn’t normally get like Practical Web Design and Giant Robot.  The particular issue of Practical Web Design has an article about time-sensitive, dynamic stylesheets that seemed pretty cool.

In any case, after that, I ran home to start cloning my laptop drive…  In fact, I’ll have a better, detailed post on that later this week.  Once I got the cloning process started, I ran over to some friends’ house with the intention of all of us going to the Friends of the Houston Library book sale.  However, after having my car almost get caught in water far deeper than it seemed, which was made worse by a jackass in a pickup cutting me off and throwing up a wave of water almost over the hood of my car, we thought better of making the attempt.  So, instead, I did a little work on her laptop, getting it on their wireless network and running some antispyware on it.  (Though, it sounds like it already could use another cleaning, so I’ll probably be back.)

After that it was church and dinner.

Sunday, I got up early to get in a good workout.  I’ve been getting into a bad pattern of exercising late, staying up late and dragging all day long without enough sleep.  After watching another friend at dinner who’s burning her candle at both ends, I made up my mind to not let that happen this week.  So, I got my lazy bones out of bed and got breakfast and coffee and got my behind in gear for a good, longer, workout before 10:00AM.

After that I was editing some photos for a project a friend of mine in New York is putting together.  Naturally, I hooked up my new wireless mouse to get better control of my editing tools.  I got a Logitech “laptop” mouse and it works great.  It’s a little smaller than a regular mouse, but not uncomfortably so.  What’s cool about it, though, is that it has a little USB dongle that links the mouse to the computer.  When it’s not in use, it fits on the bottom of the mouse and, when you slide it on and off, it automatically turns the mouse on and off to save battery life.  That may seem like a little detail, but it’s a great feature that helps not waste batteries when you’re on the road.  That can be a big deal sometimes.  In any case, that probably took longer than it should but my graphic editing skills are weak, weak, weak.  So, the practice no doubt did me good.  Also, it was flattering to have her invite me to submit some of my photos for her project.

I also managed to get in a little reading and some photography, too.  Not much, but, still, every bit counts!  Obviously, when I get through with the book I’m reading, I’ll review it.  And, sadly, I still didn’t get any work done on the WordPress themes I want to build or the creative website either.  As busy as I get, I’m not sure how I’ll manage time to work on that as regularly as I’d like.  I am trying to leverage Google Alerts to get some of that work done, but, there’s still a component of it that requires quite a bit of work from me, so…  Well, I’ll get there somehow.  (And, yes, I count the new site as part of the “coolness to come”, along with the step-by-step post on upgrading a laptop hard drive.)