Transnational Studies

Archive for June, 2010

The nice thing about this book is that its full of humour and action, but not the standard knights in shining armor on a battlefield kind of action as it is with most fantasy books. While the latter is fun to read as well, it is nice to get a break from those epic type fantasies, and that is exactly what Artemis Fowl delivers, albiet in a more teen friendly way.

An interesting storyline combined with good humor and a very interesting main character makes this a great read for teens.
Sports Participation in Series

This mount doesn’t leave a tell tale sign that there is a GPS in the vehicle. With a suction mount there is a tell tale mark on your windshield that advertizes that a GPS is onboard. Of course, you could clean your windshield everytime you remove the suction mount!!!!
Footprints DVD And Audio

Wii is so much fun for all ages & great way to not be a couch potato….love it. Now we have even more in common with the grandkids when they come over for a visit….bring your remote!!!
Applications of Neural Networks

Open source is the wave of the future, and James Kretchmar’s “Open Source Network Administration” (OSNA) catches that wave in fine form. Although the book is only 238 pages, it contains several gems. I read the book specifically for its coverage of the Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG), OSU’s Flow Tools, and Sysmon. By following Kretchmar’s instructions, I easily installed these three applications.

I was able to accomplish these tasks because OSNA is a “cross platform” book. The author doesn’t limit himself to discussing how to run the tool. He gives guidance on how to configure Cisco routers to export NetFlow records or enable SNMP reporting. Sometimes these simple steps are buried in Cisco’s Web site, so I appreciated getting straight to business. I literally had these tools running in a matter of minutes thanks to Kretchmar’s instructions and the FreeBSD package system (e.g. “pkg_add -r “).

On the down side I thought coverage of old stand-bys like tcpdump, traceroute, and netstat was unnecessary. I would have liked reading about more “niche” tools like MTR. If you like this book, keep an eye out for my “Tao of Network Security Monitoring” in the summer. I’ll take a similar approach in several chapters by discussing security-related network monitoring tools.
Open Source Network Administration

This book is about a boy genius in search of riches who holds a fairy from a fairy community for hostage to gain magical items. All of this was done just because he found a magical book for fairies.

I think this book was good only in the first half and then it went downhill from there. In the beginning the book caught your attention with interesting phrases, good word choice, comedy, and colorful descriptive words. But in the second half the book was just about how the fairies tried to get the hostage back from him. The author could have kept the whole book interesting to make it better. — Nicholas

RAM Mounting Systems RAM

We love Undsrjams for Girls! Our child’s needs extend beyond bedwetting due to a specific condition, and she felt very self-conscious and “like a baby” at school wearing Goodnites. Goodnites are great for overnight, but hard to miss under school clothes. Underjams not only fit like underwear, they can be worn underneath regular panties. A bonus is that the packaging features older girls. That really puts a positive spin on a difficult situation.
Pampers UnderJams Night Wear

I enjoyed this first book in a Harry Potter-sortof way. It’s good, fun escapism. What I like is how the tempo of the book changes from criminal drama to comedy to fantasy to spy novel, etc, etc… Initially, you aren’t really sure what is going on, but eventually the young anti-hero idea catches on and becomes a very entertaining narrative. Nathaniel Parker provides a fantastic narration, reminiscent of Jim Dale’s excellent characterization for the Potter audio books.
Having finished the first couple books, I’m led to think of the first two books almost as a continuous story, with many of the same characters recurring.
Worth checking out.
BakeMax BMSTM02 18 Immersion

Anyone into gaming on tv will like the Wii. I do recommend getting a HD cable if your tv is HD capable. Makes the picture a whole lot better.
Kun Mini Collapsible Violin

I received this product and installed it. I am used to the old Microsoft Word, this take a lot of getting used to, but has more options then I am used to, but the more I use it the better I like it.
Tripp Lite OMNIVS800 Omni

This is the best pedometer I’ve ever owned. Most I have abandoned because they’re too complicated to program. This one is a breeze to set up and it’s extremely accurate when tested against a known distance as on a track. Best of all, it really does work just as well when carried in a pants pocket as it does when clipped on a belt. I also own an Omron blood pressure monitor which I love. This company makes quality products.

Finally, I couldn’t imagine how 57 people out of the thousands who have reviewed the product could possibly give it only one star, so I reviewed their comments. Perhaps 5 or 6 actually got a defective pedometer — not a bad percentage of any product. As far as the rest of them go, well…I’ll try to be nice and just say it takes all kinds of people to make up our world. It really helps to read the simple, brief instructions before using the device.
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