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Reviews of My Christmas Reading List

Posted in Agatha Christie, books, Christmas, holiday, pop culture, reviews with tags book review, Christmas on December 18, 2008 by Paxton

santa_reads1 Well, December is upon us. The year is almost over. So, even though stores started putting up Christmas decorations 2 days before Thanksgiving, I waited until December 1 to really start thinking about Christmas. A few weeks ago I decided to read nothing but Christmas books through the end of the year. I thought it might help “jump start” myself into Kris Kringle mode. I picked my festive list of books first before I started reading because I wanted to be prepared and not caught off guard by finishing a few and then having to scramble to find some more. Many are older classics that I never really got around to reading in the first place and one is one I re-read because it was short and I enjoyed it.

So, I finally finished my Xmas reading list and I thought I’d let you all know what I read and what I thought about them. It’s an eclectic list, and I didn’t enjoy everything I read, which is to be expected, I guess. But enough of my incessant babbling, here’s the list of reviews. Some of this stuff may put you in the Xmas mood, some of it may put you in the mood to punch some random Salvation Army Santa in the gut. Pick your poison, my friend.

The 13 Problems
A Christmas Tragedy by Agatha Christie – This is one of Agatha’s short stories found in The 13 Problems collection. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed. The events of this short story just happen to take place during a Christmas party, that’s pretty much the only tenuous connection to the holiday. The mystery is short and sweet, but not one of her best. I find that Agatha is best at the novel length stories where she can build character and suspense. When she writes short stories, there is no time to build the suspense then have a nice reveal. It’s too quick. So, this was only a so-so entry to my holiday reading list.

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Google Gmail: Now with ninjas!!

Posted in Gmail, Google, ninjas, reviews, technology with tags Gmail, Google, ninjas, technology on November 25, 2008 by Paxton

I joined Google’s Gmail service back in March of 2005. At that point, you could only join by invitation. I was able to find a guy that had a Gmail account on one of the tech websites I usually visit (PCMag.com) and got him to forward me an invitation. Once I was approved and given a log on, I tried it out. I was immediately in love. Google Gmail is simple, elegant, and has TONS of space to store all of your emails. It’s because Gmail started offering 2.5Gb of storage that Yahoo! Mail had to up their limit too. While Gmail’s form factor, or interface, is minimal (which is typical Google), the functionality is fantastic.

Gmail has many cool features that I enjoy. Instead of folders, it uses labels. You can affix multiple labels to a message and search on these labels. Makes finding emails easier. Also, Gmail will sort your emails into groups. Emails with the same subject get stacked on top of each other into a message thread called a “conversation”. This lets you see all the emails pertaining to a subject instead of having to search through 15 separate emails for a piece of info. It also lets you see each email within the context it was sent. This particular behavior takes some getting used to, but I love it now that I am.

For the first few years Google added small items of functionality to Gmail, but the online interface remained the same. When you logged on, this is pretty much what you saw.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2008!!! A Look Back at the Crestwood Monster books

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, books, Halloween, holiday, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2008, Book Report, book review, Halloween, holiday on October 30, 2008 by Paxton

Welcome to AWESOME-tober-fest Week 5!!! I revealed yesterday that there will be an article a day starting yesterday, so here’s today’s installment. FYI…I got sick yesterday afternoon. So I want you to know the Herculean effort it took to get this article out. That’s the kind of sacrifice I do for you, my readers.

Today, I want to talk about the the keystone topic I’ve wanted to talk about all month. It’s a series of books I remember vividly from elementary school. I finally acquired copies of the first six books in the series late last year. It was late enough that I didn’t really get a chance to talk about them last Halloween. However, now I’ve had a year to look at them so let’s take a stroll down memory lane at the Crestwood House Monster Series.

I have a very vivid memory of checking these books out from the HW Gwin Elementary school library. The vibrant orange color of the cover and the cool monster subjects made them a popular choice amongst my friends. Each book focused on a monster or creature from a movie or series of movies. The first six books included Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, King Kong, Godzilla and Mad Scientists. Most were published in the late ’70s and early ’80s. As you can see, they are also the inspiration for my blog header this Halloween.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2008: Remembering Cracked Monster Party

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, Cracked magazine, Halloween, holiday, Monster Party, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2008, Cracked, Halloween, holiday, pop culture on October 22, 2008 by Paxton

Welcome to AWESOME-tober-fest Week 4. For those that are just joining us, AWESOME-tober-fest is my countdown to Halloween which includes spooky articles each week covering things like scary books/movies, candy, etc. I’ll discuss these things each week until we finally reach “H-Day” as I like to call it (or Halloween, for the layman). Since we are celebrating in October, and this is the Cavalcade of Awesome, the name of this countdown is AWESOME-tober-fest. If you missed any of the first three weeks, here’s a handy dandy list:

Week 1: I review gallons of Halloween sodas
Week 2: Some of my favorite scary movies
Week 3: I Survive Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights

All caught up? Good, let’s get started with today’s topic; Cracked Magazine’s Monster Party.

I was going through an old chest of mine in the garage a week or so ago and found my old stash of Mad Magazines. Along with all my Mad mags, there was also a huge stash of Cracked magazines. Talk about hitting the mother lode. I loved reading Mad and Cracked magazine when I was a kid. I would wait each month to buy the copy and read it endlessly until the new issues came out. I even bought the Super Specials and Collector’s Editions which only reprinted material I already owned, but I didn’t care. I loved the spoofs, parodies and humor of my Mad and Cracked magazines. I saved every issue I bought of these magazines and stored them carefully in this chest when I was about 13 and it was left there until I opened it a few weeks ago. I had found my own personal Arc of the Covenant.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2008!!! I survive Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights!!

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, Florida, Halloween, Halloween Horror Nights, holiday, Orlando, reviews, roadtrip, Universal Studios with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2008, Florida, Halloween, Halloween Horror Nights, holiday, Orlando, travel, Universal Studios on October 15, 2008 by Paxton

Welcome to Week 3 of AWESOME-tober-fest!!! Hope you’ve enjoyed the first two weeks so far. I started off week 1 talking about creepy Halloween sodas. Then, on week 2, I discussed a few of my favorite scary movies. What’s on deck for this week? Well, as teased to you at the end of last week’s article, Steph and I took the plunge and went to our first Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights this past weekend. Universal Studios theme parks hold this event annually and this year marked the 18th year they have done it. I’ve been wanting to go since we moved down to Jacksonville but we never did and thanks to some cheap, discounted tickets at work, we were able to do it this year. In case you didn’t know, ever since around 1990, during the Halloween season, Universal Studios closes its doors (along with Islands of Adventure) around 5:30 – 6pm and clears out all the people. Universal then sets up the scare zones and haunted houses and opens the doors again for people who bought Halloween Horror Nights tickets (yes, it’s a separate ticket). There are as many as 8 haunted houses that are setup in various parts of the park as well as what are called scare zones. In these scare zones are park employees who dress up in scary costumes and follow around patrons trying to creep them out or scare them. Like the haunted houses, each scare zone has a different theme, usually based around what haunted house is near it. Halloween Horror Nights usually has an overall theme each year, too. Last year, with Freddy, Jason and Leatherface it was called the Carnival of Carnage. The year before that they did a “best of” theme with all the best haunted houses and scare zones from the years prior. This year, the overall theme was Bloody Mary; which included famous myths, legends and fairy tales. Bloody Mary is the spririt that would appear to you in a mirror if you said her name 3 times. She’s in the picture below on the right.

It’s a pretty cool theme if you ask me and I was very excited to see what Universal did with it. So, after work on Friday, the wife and I took off for Orlando and our scary Halloween adventure. Continue reading →

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