Reading Stephen King

My oh my. How time flies. My first Stephen King novel was the doorstopper Under the Dome, published in November 2009 and probably read shortly thereafter when the OCR'd copies were still pretty crappy.

Maybe that's what colored my perception of the book. But then I read other reviews on Goodreads, and I realize that it probably wasn't the quality of the OCR. The book could be divided into two parts. The first showed the characters reacting to the dome's appearance, while the second... I don't even want to think about the second part. It was just that bad. The ending... It was not well-written, and I feel like I was cheated by the lack of foreshadowing. Maybe there were some hints, but I doubt it.

FINAL GRADE: C-

Turning my attention to the present time, I managed to finish reading Bag of Bones from September 1998. My interest in this book was first sparked by the A&E miniseries of the same name, but the first copy I got was a whopping 1400 pages long. Yeah. That number does not inspire excitement towards reading the book. The next copy was a lot more manageable at 770 pages. In May, I started to read the book. And promptly forgot to finish it until about 3 days ago.

I think it was the beginning that got me for a while. It was slow, but I think that it was a good kind of slow, showing the difficulties of the main character that led him to return to his little cabin by the lake where all of the really good stuff happened. The book had a lot of twists and turns, and even though I ended up awake at 4 in the morning today (and had been awake for about 25 hours), I couldn't put it down. I had to see what happened to the characters. I feel like even though 11 years separated these two books, Bag of Bones stood out as being better written.

FINAL GRADE: A


Just curious, but have you guys read anything by Stephen King? And if so, what books and what did you think about them?

Images from Goodreads, with links to the books in question.

Haboobs, Monsoons, and New Pools

As many of you can guess, Phoenix, Arizona is hot in the summer. Temperatures will hover around 110 degrees, and even the shade provides little relief. Summer is a time to stay inside or find a place in the shade. Just yesterday I saw a woman park 30 feet further from the entrance of Wal-Mart just to get under a tree.

The summer months also mark the start of the monsoon season. The monsoon storms can be massive, dumping tons of rain in a relatively short time. The ground in Phoenix does not absorb this deluge very fast, so you can find yourself with a spiffy new, shallow pool in your back yard. It's not uncommon to find at least one depression called a wash in a subdivision.

Just this past week, one of these large storms struck Phoenix. In fact, the red (most severe) part of the radar images swept right over Gilbert. It was amazing watching the rain come off the roof. We ended up with a three-inch-deep flood in the back yard. Of course, the ground did eventually absorb all of this water over a few hours. A few trees, one probably 30 feet high, got torn down.

Haboobs are exciting and scary at the same time. These massive dust storms ride in from the desert and cake everything in a thin layer of brown. The sky becomes this strange orange-brown color, and the wind becomes horrendous.

It's also apparently why the Chase Field dome roof is a brownish color. It was originally painted white, but a large haboob on July 5 of last year rolled in before the paint could dry. Thus, a brown roof.


Images from:
AZ Department of Transportation
Virtual Bird's Eye

Finding Everett Ruess

I recently won a free copy of Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts. I can't say that I was all that impressed with it. I had read a bit about Everett Ruess, a young man who disappeared into the Southwestern wilderness in the early 20th century, in Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, so I was interested in a book about him.

The book's premise was interesting. What caused a young man to wander around the Southwest for years, and what happened to him? But I feel that the author dropped the ball on this one. I couldn't keep interested enough to finish the book. It's too bad though, because like I said, the idea was interesting.

Overall Grade: D

Image from Goodreads.

One Step Back for Astrobiology

Astrobiologists around the world are disappointed. The idea that bacteria could live on something other than phosphorus is exciting, and it would expand the possible environments where life could exist. A study published two years ago seemed to prove that arsenic could replace phosphorus (a major component in DNA).

Except... It turns out that the study was wrong.

Two new studies have found that while the study did find bacteria that were really resilient to arsenic in Mono Lake, the bacteria still required phosphorus to survive.

Thus, astrobiologists are completely heartbroken.

Birdman & Itsy Bitsy

Last week's Free Fridays special from Barnes & Noble was Mo Hayder's Birdman. Despite what my Goodreads account says, I haven't gotten around to reading The Map of Time by Felix Palma or Bag of Bones by Stephen King. Considering how my copy of Bag of Bones is over 750 pages long, I might not finish it...

Getting back to Birdman... This is a decidedly British book, and more than a couple of times, I wished I had even a rudimentary map of London and its surrounding environments.

The book itself was good, but incredibly... strange. I guess that would be a polite way of saying it. The book had some parts in it where I was screaming at my Nook to show me what the characters were looking at. I was surprised when the author showed who the killer was pretty quickly, and I was even more (pleasantly) surprised by the twists in the story. The author interwove seemingly random details about the characters that turned out to be important in the end, and, as fitting a series, some things about the main character, Detective Inspector Jack Caffery, were left unanswered.

All in all, the book had both good and bad sides.

FINAL GRADE: A

If you really must get technical, I finished Itsy Bitsy before starting on Birdman. This short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist of Let the Right One In fame was decidedly weird, and I was left wondering what exactly I had read. I'm not completely sure if the main character was completely sane through the 30-some pages, and I felt like he was a little flat for my tastes. Then again, short stories don't have time for grandiose character development, so I won't begrudge Mr. Lindqvist.

FINAL GRADE: B

Another Check off the Bucket List

I got to see the transit of Venus on Tuesday. So happy that I kept the eclipse glasses from the solar eclipse. I didn't get any good pictures this time (since my camera's only got 4x zoom), but I did see it with my "naked" eye. The picture on the left is essentially what I saw.

Considering that a child born for the next 5-25 years (assuming they live to 80) won't see another transit, I'm excited. It's a good time to be alive.

Awesome Stuff on Mars

Last fall, I took a course called Fundamentals of Planetary Geology, taught by Dr. Ronald Greeley, whose death was actually the topic of one of my first posts. The majority of the grade came from a semester-long project focusing on some aspect of geology. I chose to do a review of the literature on potentially alluvial deltas in some craters on Mars. Not particularly exciting stuff, I'll admit.

Another student, Andrew Ryan, chose to study lava flows on Mars. He found strange spiral patterns in the flows. No one had ever seen these types of flows, called lava coils, before on another planet. They have been seen in Hawaii and near the Galapagos rift in the Pacific Ocean.

Ryan made his presentation, and some of the faculty helping to grade the presentations, since this was after Dr. Greeley's death, told him that he should polish up the report and send it into Science to try and get it published.

The SESE Source, a newsletter for the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU, announced that Ryan did indeed get published in Science on 27 April 2012. Here's a link to the article's abstract:
Coils and Polygonal Crust in the Athabasca Valles Region, Mars, as Evidence for a Volcanic History

That lucky bastard.

Bunionectomy Day 23: Camps, Aches, & Tests

It's been just over 3 weeks since I got my bunionectomy done, and I think I'm doing pretty good. I get to take my showers with my boot off, though I'm still sitting on the bath chair, and I'm hoping that I get to move out of the boot and into the walking shoe on Monday. The stitches are gone, but I'm peeling a bit around the cut. I do ache a bit.

The June Camp of NaNoWriMo starts in about 30 minutes, though I'm planning on be asleep by then. My novel this time is a romance. Not exactly my strongest genre, but I'm willing to give it a go. I'll probably try to put it up on my Figment account as I work on it.

I should really get to bed. I've got a physics test tomorrow morning. I'm hoping to do okay on it. Thankfully I don't think that there's going to be any error propagation questions. Hate that. Stupid lab.

Growing Up & School

A story on the local news has me bothered. At the end of the year, a teacher was giving out awards to students for various achievements. One student got the dubious award of "most excuses for not having homework done". Apparently the rest of the 4th-grade class found that funny. The mom did not. She says that the teacher was bullying her child.

Now, I don't know what elementary school is like nowadays, but quite frankly, the mom needs to grow up. One incident does not equal bullying, and who knows what awards other students got. Also, if it bothers the mom so much that her daughter got "most excuses for not having homework done", then maybe she should have paid more attention. Studies have found that children of parents who take an active role in their education do better.

Of course, the teacher's in trouble as well. There's no news whether or not the teacher will face some sort of disciplinary action, and I hope that if there is, it's mild. I'm not condoning the teacher's action, but is it really any different than the "most likely to..." voting in high school. This is just a bit of growing up, and everyone needs to calm down.

TV & My Favorite Dudes

My mom and I have identified a few people as our "favorite" people. Here's a list of our favorites:

Physicist/Scientist = Michio Kaku

This guy appears in a lot of the science-for-the-public shows that my mom and I watch. He does a good job to make it easy to understand what he's talking about.

Builder = Mike Holmes

Jokingly referred to as my boyfriend. I love watching his shows, and he does a good job at making people's lives better.

Gay Man = Anderson Cooper

Look at that hair! And those eyes! I don't care what he's talking about on CNN, I can just watch him forever. My mom and I firmly believe in the philosophy of look but don't touch. I don't care that he's gay. He's a good-looking man.

Ring of Fire

I went to see the solar eclipse today. It was absolutely awesome! My friend Penny and I went up to Flagstaff first. Our first stop was at the Lowell Observatory, but we literally were standing in line when the last solar glasses were sold. I bought myself a patch and a bookmark, and Penny got a couple of stickers, and then we hung out at Barnes & Noble for about an hour before heading up to Wupatki National Monument.

We stopped at the Sunset Crater Visitor Center to find out where we needed to go and buy our passes. It wasn't too expensive, which was nice. We then drove (the long way) to Wupatki. Penny didn't mind since she got to see the lava flows there. The Lowell Observatory had some people out there with some solar telescopes and I got to see some sun spots through them.

The eclipse started at about 5:30 PM. An older couple had an extra pair of solar glasses, so they gave them to us. I got to take a lot of pictures, and at about 6:30 PM, the eclipse reached its peak. Everyone started to cheer. It was amazing. I wanted to try to get a picture of it by projecting it through my dad's binoculars onto a sketchbook, but it didn't work. I did get a picture of it through the solar glasses, and thankfully it wasn't too blurry. We left a little bit after that.

The ride home wasn't too bad, though we didn't get home until about 11:00 PM.

Mehnu Mehnu Mehnu

Please ignore the title. My brain's having a bit of trouble recently...

I've gotten stuck on my novel, which isn't so bad considering I'm only on the "first" draft, but when you consider that I really don't know where the heck I'm going with it, this draft might never be finished.... It sort of sucks actually. As much as I hate the thought of it, I might have to take a break from writing and just work on some basic outlining. Maybe I'll be able to untangle this mess and figure out where to go next.

CampWriMo 2012

On June 1st, the first Camp of the year begins. It's a spin-off of the National Novel Writing Month, created to give people a chance to participate in the NNWM experience during the summer. I actually participated last year, though that was a pain in and of itself.

This year, they split up the months to June and August, as opposed to both July and August. It'll be nice to have a month to "relax" between the Camps.

I started planning my June Camp today. I've got a few characters starting to shape up, thanks to my Pinterest boards, and I'm working on the plot (very, very slowly). I think it's going to be connected to the story that I'm writing right now, but I don't know if any old characters are going to be popping up very often.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do in August.

For more info, go to:
CampWriMo
NaNoWriMo

Bunionectomy 2: Day 4

I went to the doctor this morning for my first follow-up appointment. They changed the bandages around the incision. I forgot just how nasty it looks (though it's completely understandable). The bruise covers about all of the top of my foot from my heel down to my toes. Only my pinky toe doesn't have a bruise growing on it. The redness made the doctor give me a week's worth of antibiotics, just in case. Other than that, my foot's looking good.

Bunionectomy 2: Day 2

Yesterday was not the best day for me. I got about 13 hours of sleep in about 45 minute bursts, and let me tell you that I apparently have some weird-ass dreams while stoned on hydrocodone. I also got some lovely bouts of nausea, though thankfully nothing worse than that.

I managed to bleed through the bandage on Tuesday, but it stopped later that day. The doctor had the bandage a little tight so my mom helped me loosen it. Got the first follow-up appointment on Friday.

Now the pain is coming in, and my legs itch like the dickens. I took my painkiller for tonight so I'll see how I sleep this time around.

Bunionectomy Take 2

I got my second bunionectomy today, and I don't expect to see my foot more than a quick check-up for another three or so weeks. At the minimum. The pain isn't too bad so far, since I'm keeping ahead of it for now.

The doctor put a pin in my foot this time, though I'm not really sure why. Maybe this doctor just wanted that extra support or whatever.

Hopefully I'll recover just as fast as I did last time.

Prototype 2 Review

I finished Prototype 2 about 45 minutes ago. I enjoyed the game a lot, especially the storyline and characters. I liked how some of the "bad guys" were not really bad guys. James Heller's evolution from a man bent on revenge to a man hunting for what's left of his family was well-done.

The only problems that I had with the game were the lack of variation for the devastator attack and the ease with which it was to get power-ups. I had gotten all of the evolution upgrades available through the missions and hunting, and I had only a few stat upgrades left through the level-ups.

I wish that they had kept the upgrade style from the first game. I liked the ability to buy numerous skills for each power, not the simplistic way they made Prototype 2's upgrades.

The web of intrigue was also one aspect that I liked from Prototype 1. It made the first game deeper, more engaging, but the hunting skill in Prototype 2 was a boost as well.


Final Grade: B

Summer's Here

The semester has finally come to an end, and I'm now waiting for my grades to start trickling in.

The temperature's starting to rise down here in Phoenix. It's definitely the start of summer, or as I like to call it, Hell. It's already in the 90s, and I can't wait to spend the next four or five months sweating horribly.

I hate living down here sometimes.

Ring

Ring by Koji Suzuki is a trip through the disturbing. It is not true horror like I had thought, and I think the movie was a bit different from the book (at least from what I remember from my teen years). I was never really scared, per say, but the book was just that level of... unnerving to be more terrifying than most. It was a little like the beginning of Salem's Lot by Stephen King. Creepy, but not scary.

The characters are good, but my favorite has to be Sadako, a character you never actually meet. I want to learn more about what her deal is, and I'm going to spending a bit of time to find the next book in the series, Spiral.


Final Grade: A

Z is for Zero

April is closing in less than 10 hours (for me), and that marks the end of a lot of things.

Script Frenzy ends at midnight tonight, and I'm proud to say that I pounded out 141 pages at the time of I'm writing this, and I hope to have another 9 pages written before the end.

Another end in writing comes tonight as well. I created a spreadsheet at the beginning of the year to track how much I've written, and the first trimester of the year ends tonight. At the start of this month, I had a goal of writing 20,000 words for this month and 92,750 for the trimester, and I've managed to write over 30,000 and 98,000 for each respectively.

The semester ends tomorrow. I know, it's cheating, but still... I just need to wait for my grades to start trickling in. I hopefully haven't done too badly this semester, but you never know.

I'm looking forward to continuing to write this blog, and I think I'll start doing another A-Z challenge in the next couple of months or something. If anything, I'm going to be doing another book review shortly, so keep an eye out for that.