Castellarenpositiu blog

Archive for March, 2010

Most of the time when I reach for a book that is earning high praise from critics and professional book reviewers I flinch a little inside and begin with not a small amount of trepidation. Why? Because most of the time the books fail to live up to the hype.

And so I put off reading The Help. I put it off for quite some time and honestly, I still would be putting it off if I hadn’t, on a whim, decided, what the hell, I might as well give it a shot.

The first page had me hooked and I’ve carried this book around with me all day long today, inhaling it like it was a huge box of chocolates and I couldn’t eat them fast enough.

I’m sure by now you know what this is a story about. 1960’s Mississippi dealing with segregation and the struggle to define a love/hate relationship between women and their “help” during that time period. The main three characters in this book nearly pop off the pages with their personalities and boy, the “villains”, those selfish, horrible women who have types that are still around today, they personify the worst of what any of us could be.

I cried and laughed and grieved my way through this novel. I was, in turn, horrified by the injustice of the acts being described and uplifted by the attitudes displayed. There are no saints here, there’s no need to be. Just pure, human emotions. Mistakes made, happy moments shared and throughout the entire book there is this gripping feeling of suspense that has you racing toward the end to learn the fates of the women you began to fall in love with at the beginning.

This is a story that will not disappoint you. If you are hesitant, like I was, take the leap. I’m glad I did.
Vivitar Series 1 High

Easy set up. Stretch gently while waiting for satellites to configure; best use of that 3 minutes. Accuracy is great!
The Voyages of Christopher

There is nothing that I can add that hasn’t already been said about this book. But it was an important book to me in my teen years. Feeling lost, this book made me feel as if someone out there understood me. And for that I will forever be grateful to JD Salinger. May he dance with angels.
Classic Straight USB Cable

This Hoover is simply great.
It’s light, easy to use, and better than any of the bag-less vacuums I’ve tried.
We’ve got 2 dogs and one sheds more than a sheep. This vacuum makes quick work of dog hair and normal household dirt.
It’s easy to change the bags and the attachments are accessible and also easy to use.
So far, this Hoover has performed much better than the more-expensive bag-less units we’ve used.
Five stars all the way.
The Lost Trailers E

My system is a 1.83 Mac Mini Core Duo with 1 GB RAM.

First…the picture that is shown for this product is NOT what you get. There isn’t a remote that is included with the tuner. As a matter of fact, if you plan on controlling this device, get yourself a wireless mouse because that is the ONLY way you will change channels. Universal remote? Nope. Apple Remote? Forget it!

Okay, plug it all up…CATV, check. Digital antenna, check, Power supply, check. USB, check. That wasn’t so bad. Let’s put the CD in.

Now, lets talk about the installation. Plugged it in, slipped in the disc and start the installation. Step 1, select your destination for recorded shows. Check. Step 2, select destination for exports. Umm…not sure what that is, but okay. Step 3, download guide…okay. Wait, did it? Not sure since there isn’t any confirmation. Step 4, scan for channels…go to lunch. 20 minutes later…I think it scanned…again, no confirmation. Step 5, finish installation and…WHAT THE??? “Unexpected error. Your system needs to reboot. Hold down the power button to restart.” This is the ONLY installation that has EVER crashed my system.

After the reboot, I finally tested the software. The guide could never download. The menu is clunky. Changing channels is a tedious activity. You scroll through the channels, then push the select button (I think that is what is called) to finally change the channel. Want to surf through the channels? I didn’t think so. Want Dolby Digital sound? Nah, I think you will prefer the choppy sounding audio that it does put out. HD, sure…looks like garbage. I didn’t even bother to record anything.

In closing, this thing is a huge pile of junk. If I could give it negative stars I would . Stick to EyeTV. The only reason I got this is because I can only do either CATV of ATSC OTA with the EyeTV. That is a small price to pay. EyeTV is much more polished solution for the Mac, regardless of the number of RF inputs
VisionTek TV Wonder HD

Ok, so one of my fav. bands releases a Live cd.

The question follows:what for?are they going to be singing new songs? are they reinventing some of their songs?will they show that they can “loose it” if they want to?

One of my first impressions on this Coldplay cd is that they believe in the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

I mean, Yellow has a new beginning, Clocks has a more definitive ending, but that’s about it. See you Soon is executed the same way as it has been for the past 4 years, In My Place is EXACTLY the same as the studio version. It is plain to see that songs like Everything’s not lost can last 9 minutes (like in this live version), but it is NECESSARY to improvise a little bit; otherwise the song is simply too long for nothing. A Rush of Blood to the Head starts with a Pink Floydish instrumentation, but soon every part of the band starts “copying” the original version.

There is one new song called Moses which is fairly good, but too U2 sounding. It is really catchy though, but we already know that Coldplay is about catchiness; it would be interesting to see if there’s more to them than that. Songs like Clocks or Daylight (which is not in this cd) certainly prove so.

See you soon is a very beautiful song and we can forgive them if they play it as originally invented. But One I love… what’s the point of excluding classics like Trouble and The Scientist and including that song?! I mean, imagine a medley that mixed the 2 aforementioned songs and tell me which of the options is more exciting…

I rate this 3 starts simply because the songs are absolutely mesmerizing. But that’s not merit of LIVE 2003 CD, but of PARACHUTES and A RUSH OF BLOOD TO THE HEAD.

Pd. Not to mention the fact that this cd was not necessary at this VERY early stage of their career, specially since they were not planning to do what I have suggested in the paragraphs above.
Coldplay Live 2003 DVD

I really like my Gopro Camera. A little upset that the unit itself was simply double sided sticky taped to the top of the display box. My unit arrived with that bond broken, and the item was shaking around like a single dice cube in the box. Didn’t seem to be broken. Needs to be better secured, hope it dosen’t break later on because of this. Also, it seems like you can’t simply take the SD card out of the unit and play that in your computer. You have to attach the cords to the camera and connect that to your computer. Bit of a pain. Love the idea of what it does. The feature I liked is that it will take a photo ever 2 – 5 seconds until the card was full. Really cool. I am going to use it on one of my kites for some amazing images. Look forward to giving it a full test when things get a little warmer.
GoPro Motorsports HERO Wide

It’s definitely NOT for everyone. I was raised Christian but somewhere along the way I started question and found that there was so much more that we didn’t know about. By the time I got to these books I was ready for them. Religions have put human emotions into an ALL LOVING God. God is only one thing and that is love. Where there is ONLY love there can be nothing else. Religions have put fear into us by having us believe that God is anything other than total LOVE. God does not judge nor does he condemn.

There are three books containing these conversations and I believe the author to be completely truthful in how these books came to be written. There are some who don’t and won’t believe the information in these books – which is fine as these conversations are not going to ring true for everyone. I’m only sharing my opinion here. The information in these books is definitely something I was ready for and happy to read.

I really hope there are many others who are also ready for the information contained in these conversations with God.
Advertisement for Columbus Buggy

this book was amazing! characters so absolutly real, you really do forget about the world around you. it feels like you literraly just got teletransported to jackson missisipi in the 60’s! it deserves its place in the number one best seller list for kindle books! if i were you, i wouldn’t wait another second to get your hands on this book!
Original Salsa Kings Volume

Like I said, at the beginning I hung in there. A really good book will have me page turning till the late hours of the night that wasn’t the case at first. As I approached midway through the book I was up late reading and I began taking the book to work to sneak it a few chapters. The author did a great job of researching the matter you can tell from the vivid writing and dialogue. Great read.
School Days Depression Years