Heading back to WDW for Labor Day Weekend

It’s been three years since our last Labor Day Weekend trip to Disney so we were excited to hit the road this evening after work and school and get over to Orlando to start our vacation.

We weren’t as lucky as in years past, however, and were delayed on I-4 due to an accident. Our attempt to take the back/side roads to circumvent the jam ended up in just more traffic so even with our early (before 5pm start) we weren’t checked into our hotel (Disney’s Boardwalk Villas) until around 7pm.

After getting settled, we walked over to Epcot and grabbed a light dinner in France. It was raining when we were done, so we fast-walked back to the Boardwalk, avoiding the raindrops as best we could. The weather eventually tapered off so we grabbed some warm drinks from the bakery and a funnel cake and watched what we could see of the Epcot (and Hollywood Studios) fireworks from the Boardwalk before turning in for the night. Extra Magic early morning hours at Hollywood Studios tomorrow morning!

WIJFR: Pirate Cinema

Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household’s access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal.

Ok, yeah, it’s another “young adult” novel like “Little Brother” but who cares? I just finished Cory Doctorow’s “Pirate Cinema,” which recently won a Promethus Award (along with Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon,” another personal favorite).

“Little Brother” tells the story of Trent McCauley, a British teenager whose obsession with making mash-ups using commercial movies gets his family cut off from the internet for a year. This turns out to be a bigger punishment than Trent anticipated, however, as his sister needs the internet for her school studies and his parents need it for work. The strain Trent has caused on his family is too much for him to bear so he runs away to live in London on his own.

What follows is a tale of being homeless, squatting in abandoned buildings, making new friends, showing movies in the sewers and cemeteries, politics, government, lawsuits, intellectual property, art, and copyright law. It’s a lot of heavy (and topical) subjects, but Doctorow does a good job of making the content accessible (and exciting) to younger (and, ahem, older) readers, all in a sort of Londoner writ and tone I haven’t seen him use in previous novels (the book definitely has its own “voice”).

If you’ve followed the news around SOPA and PIPA recently, or enjoy watching mash-ups on YouTube, you” probably enjoy “Pirate Cinema.”

WIJFR: Kill Decision

Linda McKinney is a myrmecologist, a scientist who studies the social structure of ants. Her academic career has left her entirely unprepared for the day her sophisticated research is conscripted by unknown forces to help run an unmanned – and thanks to her research, automated – drone army. Odin is the secretive Special Ops soldier with a unique insight into the faceless enemy who has begun to attack the American homeland with drones programmed to seek, identify, and execute targets without human intervention.

Together, McKinney and Odin must slow this advance long enough for the world to recognize its destructive power, because for thousands of years the “kill decision” during battle has remained in the hands of humans – and off-loading that responsibility to machines will bring unintended, possibly irreversible, consequences. But as forces even McKinney and Odin don’t understand begin to gather, and death rains down from above, it may already be too late to save humankind from destruction at the hands of our own technology.

Today I finished reading “Kill Decision” by Daniel Suarez, the author of “Daemon” and “FreedomTM.”

A series of terrorist bombings has put the United States on high alert. A secret Special Ops group knows, however, that the bombings are actually drone strikes, aimed at very specific human targets, and are desperately trying to find (and stop) the source of the drones. Professor Linda McKinney, an ant specialist who has developed a software model of how ant colonies swarm and attack, is suddenly swept up into the world of Special Ops as Odin and his crew rescue her from a drone strike and inform her that her software model is being used to control the behavior of autonomous killing machines.

What follows is a fast-paced, technological thriller on par with Suarez’s previous books. At one point, the swarm of thousands of drones intent on killing the team reminded me of scenes from “Matrix Revolutions” (think about the machines invading Zion, or the machine city near the end). As usual, Suarez is able to take real-world existing technology and push it just into the realm of science fiction (or is it?), but not enough to make it completely unbelievable, just scary.

In what seems to be a recent pattern, my reading has coincided with real world events, including a recent unmanned drone landing on a Navy aircraft carrier and a Colorado town passing a law to allow drone hunting!

Return to the Animal Kingdom

We spent this past weekend over at Disney as we continue to take full advantage of our annual passes this year. In our continued attempt to check out as many of the resorts as possible, this time we stayed at the Carribean Beach. It was a very nice hotel but due to our short stay and the bad weather we really didn’t get to take advantage of the various amenities (like the pools).

Continue reading ‘Return to the Animal Kingdom’ »

Independence Day Weekend in Cleveland (again!)

The summer vacations continue: although we just saw the Ohio family two weeks ago in Naples this past July 4th weekend we were back in Cleveland (like last year) for my niece’s baptism.

We flew up on the 4th and spent the afternoon picnicking with family before the evening’s fireworks festivities.

We spent Friday at Cedar Point, the best roller coaster amusement park in the world (in my opinion). I hadn’t been there in about 10 years and was looking forward to riding every coaster in the park with my daughter. It rained on and off most of the day, which put a damper (no pun intended) on most of our plans, but eventually the weather cleared up and we managed to hit every ride we wanted to. I had spent the extra cash on a FastLane pass to make sure my daughter and I could get on every coaster (expecting long lines due to the holiday weekend) but I really only had to use it for GateKeeper (the newest coaster at the park) and Top Thrill Dragster (which I went on by myself, and it was fantastic!).

On Saturday, we grabbed lunch at the West Side Market (great falafel from Maha’s) downtown before heading over to Progressive Jacob’s Field to watch the Indians lose (unfortunately) to the Detroit Tigers.

Sunday morning started with mass, followed by my niece’s baptism, and then a barbecue/picnic at a local park to celebrate. After bidding farewell to the family in the late afternoon, we had dinner and “play time” at Dave & Buster’s, someplace else we hadn’t been to in a long time. We had an early flight Monday morning and were back home in time for lunch, another fun holiday weekend in the books.

Family vacation in Naples

It’s summer, and that means summer vacation! We just spent the last week with my immediate family in beautiful Naples, FL.

Everyone started flying in on Tuesday and we drove down from the Tampa Bay Area to Naples that evening. My brother had procured a four bedroom vacation home on a golf course (a perk of his company) where we were all staying together. We spent the first day relaxing around the house, bike riding, barbecuing, swimming in the pool, and we also got to meet my new niece for the first time.

We didn’t spend the entire vacation in the house (although we could have!). We spent one morning at Barefoot Beach, played Safari Mini Golf in Bonita Springs, had dinner at Cafe Luna in downtown Naples and checked out Thursdays on Third, went shopping for souvenirs at Tin City, drove to Miami for a day, and even saw dolphins at the Naples Pier (although sunset was a bust).

Overall, it was a nice, relaxing vacation week with family … and we’re going to see everyone again up in Ohio in two weeks.

WIJFR: The Mongoliad: Book Three

The shadow of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II hangs over the shattered Holy Roman Church as the cardinals remain deadlocked, unable to choose a new pope. Only the Binders and a mad priest have a hope of uniting the Church against the invading Mongol host. An untested band of young warriors stands against the dissolute Khan, fighting for glory and freedom in the Khan’s sadistic circus of swords, and the brave band of Shield-Brethren who set out to stop the Mongol threat single-handedly race against their nemesis before he can raise the entire empire against them. Veteran knight Feronantus, haunted by his life in exile, leads the dwindling company of Shield-Brethren to their final battle, molding them into a team that will outlast him. No good hero lives forever. Or fights alone.

I’ve finally finished “The Mongoliad: Book Three“, the collaborative effort by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo, and Cooper Moo, and (what I thought was) the last book of the Foreworld Saga. At the end of my last post I was hoping that the myriad of storylines of “The Mongoliad” would start to come together. In some ways I was rewarded, but in others left wanting.

Continue reading ‘WIJFR: The Mongoliad: Book Three’ »

Star Wars Weekend at Disney 2013

The last time we went over to Disney’s Hollywood Studios for Star Wars Weekends it was the 30th anniversary of “The Empire Strikes Back.” How appropriate, then, that we were back among the Star Wars faithful this Saturday (also Geek Pride Day and Towel Day) celebrating the 30th anniversary of “Return of the Jedi” (which was released on May 25, 1983).

The park was packed, which we expected, but it’s always fun to see all the Star Wars t-shirts and costumes people wear for the festival weekends. With the acquisition of LucasFilm by Disney last year (and the planned new movies), I expected a lot more “Disneyfication” of the franchise and thus wasn’t surprised at the sheer amount of merchandise and Disney/Star Wars swag available at Darth’s Mall and around the entire park.

The parade/motorcade was pretty much exactly the same: a long phalanx of characters from all of the movies with a health sprinkling of their Disney counterparts (Jedi Mickey, Darth Goofy, Chip & Dale as “chipwoks,” etc.). The special guests were Warwick Davis (Wicket the Ewok), Ray Park (Darth Maul), James Arnold Taylor (the voice of Obi Wan in Clone Wars), Ashley Eckstein (the voice of Ahsoka Tano in Clone Wars), and Jim Cummings (voice of Hondo Ohnaka in Clone Wars). We didn’t see nearly as many wandering characters as last time but my daughter did get to give a Wookie a high-five after the motorcade.

Of course we rode the new Star Tours, which had a relatively short standby line (we got through in 15 minutes!). We missed out on a photo opportunity with R2D2 and C3PO again (they were hidden in Darth’s Mall and by the time we got there we had little time before we had to leave and the line was very long) but did wait in line for a photo opp with a clone trooper and Darth Goofy with storm trooper Donald. In Darth’s Mall they had a LEGO-by-numbers exhibit where you could put together a tiny square of colored LEGOs and then add it to the larger mosaic creating the different “Return of the Jedi” movie posters … pretty cool.

Release of the Raring Ringtail

Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) was officially released today, although I was able to download and upgrade my server from Quantal last night, avoiding the rush.

Upgrading to the latest Ubuntu server release is really becoming a non-event for me, which is great news especially since support for non-LTS releases has been cut to 9 months. Starting with 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) I have had pretty much no issues to deal with after an upgrade. Just run ‘do-release-upgrade -d’ from the command-line and sit back and wait. Then clean up a few config files to re-apply customizations, reboot, and you’re done.

Since I run just the basic server software (no GUI) I can’t comment on the latest Ubuntu as a client desktop, but check out this article on PCWorld.com for more details.

Next up in October: Saucy Salamander. Saucy!

WIJFR: The Mongoliad: Book Two

The Shield Brethren, an order of warrior monks, search for a way to overthrow the horde, even as the invaders take its members hostage. Forced to fight in the Mongols’ Circus of Swords, Haakon must prove his mettle or lose his life in the ring. His bravery may impress the enemy, but freedom remains a distant dream. Father Rodrigo receives a prophecy from God and believes it’s his mission to deliver the message to Rome. Though a peaceful man, he resigns himself to take up arms in the name of his Lord. Joining his fight to save Christendom are the hunter Ferenc, orphan Ocyrhoe, healer Raphael, and alchemist Yasper, each searching for his place in history.

Today I finished “The Mongoliad: Book Two“, a collaborative effort by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo, and Cooper Moo. This second part of the Foreworld Saga picks up immediately from Book One (which makes sense since it was originally one long online serial story that was later split into three parts for publication).

Continue reading ‘WIJFR: The Mongoliad: Book Two’ »