Author: Joe

Categories
Books

The Twelve

The TwelveAfter finishing up The Passage I was most eager to continue the story through the second book in the series. The super cool library made sure to point out that it was in when I had missed it or perhaps it was just returned while I was there too.

I have to admit that early on I was a bit confused even though I had just went from one book to the other. As if there weren’t enough characters by the end of the first book, this one introduced even more! It was almost Game of Thrones like with so many characters to manage at times.

Ultimately all the new characters did do a good job of building up to something meaningful for the most part. I did enjoy the stories of how some of the survivors escaped in near present day. Then you learned how they were connected and or ancestors of some or the main characters was cool.

While I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as the first book, it was still a very good book. It’s tough being the second book in a trilogy.

Very good, and now I guess I just have to wait a bit to see how this one ends.

Categories
Sports

Played Dodgeball With my Right Arm

I know this might not be a big deal to most, but last night was my return to dodgeball using my reconstructed right elbow!

Not only was I able to throw for the first time in 6 months, but I threw pretty damn well all things considering.

All my throws were tight and low, with many having some late movement on them. None were caught and a couple resulted in the few pegs. I’m not sure it could have gone much better for my first attempt at returning.

I only played in 2 matches to ease my arm back into form. Even though it was only 2 matches, both involved a lot of throwing and wow am I sore as a result. Last night I was a bit concerned that the soreness could be something more serious, but while still very sore I think it’s gone down a bit today. Hopefully it’s just soreness and I’ll be fine in a day or so.

The only real drawback on the night was that we lost the game! But, we did play a lot better than the previous week, so I’m hoping we can get some wins soon!

I still don’t think we’re playing up to our potential as a team just yet.

Categories
Sports

Dodgeball Winter 2013 Week 1

One of my favorite days of the year, the first week of a SJSL season! It’s great to see all the familiar faces, say hello, etc. It reminds me of the first day of grade school when you see all the kids who you were friends with but didn’t see much over the summer.

This season we had almost all of our players returning as well as the addition of 3 new additions (technically 4, but one didn’t show last night). One is my friend since 1st grade, so I knew Wes would fit right in a be a fine addition to the squad. And I must say I’m very much impressed by Megan and Chris as well. Both not only were fine participants, but picked up the rules right away and got along great with everyone. Should be a fun season.

The only negative on the  night was our opponent, 3-time champion The Ghostbusters. Not only are they very, very good, but we were playing with brand new dodgeballs last night. Brand new dodgeballs means a faster ball with more movement. This would wind up making shot work of many Honey Badgers on the night.

It really hard to say much about the game, we were pretty much dominated from start to finish. Our guys did win 1 match and it was pretty great. With our reaction you’d of thought we won the entire league.

Once everyone settles down, I do think we should have a pretty solid team. Our girls are all pretty athletic and if they play a bit more aggressively I do believe they can beat any girl squad. I just need them to be more aggressive in going for catches, so many of them are great at catching but they still seem committed to dodging all the time.

Our guys are looking ok too. We just drew a really tough match-up for our first game. But like I told everyone, the game will seem much slower playing the other teams now.

Despite the loss, I’m really impressed with our potential and know it will be fun.

Categories
Video Games

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

Paper Mario: Sticker StarEvery Christmas I usually end up playing some video game as a last resort means of escape from holiday craziness and such. This year I went with Paper Mario: Sticker Star on the 3DS since it’s Mario and who doesn’t like Mario and being on the 3DS it gave me more options to retreat with it as holiday craziness escalates.

I’ve enjoyed the previous Paper Mario games over the years, so I had some high expectations for this sticker fun. Once again I thoroughly enjoyed this Paper Mario fun. It was good stuff.

I thought the whole sticker system was pretty cool and a creative idea. Everything was pretty much sticker based, battles, secrets, etc.

However, my only complaint was that some parts were just difficult to figure out at times. Like when to use certain stickers to unlock things and collecting the Wobbler parts was kinda tough to figure out. Luckily the internet exists and got me through these few tough spots after numerous tries. Or maybe it isn’t hard to figure out, but I’m just too old for these games anymore.

Categories
Development

WordPress 3.5 Add Media button fix

I recently upgraded to WordPress 3.5 and just noticed that the Add Media button was no longer working with my Posts. This isn’t very cool, so I began to look into how to possibly fix and or work around this one.

First I disabled all my plugins, and still the issue was there.

Trusty Google did help me find some people with similar issues.

It seems that my host and how the javascript files are being delivered could be the culprit in this one.

So if you’re hosting your site with Dreamhost and are running WordPress 3.5 and your Add Media button is no longer working you may want to try the following:

Add

define(‘CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS’, false );

in my wp-config.php file just before

require_once(ABSPATH . ‘wp-settings.php’);

That did the trick for me.

Categories
Books

The Passage

The PassageI was about to walk out with another random book when the really cool librarian just randomly suggested The Passage. She went on to describe it, but realistically any suggestion was a good one to me. Plus she’s a librarian, so she’s a pro and I’d trust any suggestion.

I was very glad to find out that the all powerful librarian was indeed correct, I really enjoyed this book.

While there’s been a lot of post apocalyptic, vampire or zombie material out recently, I thoroughly enjoyed this take on it.

The early government stuff that leads to the whole epidemic was pretty cool. Then the transition to about 100 years later and how much the world has changed as a result made for some fine reading.

Very good stuff and eager to read the sequel, The Twelve.