Planet TLLTS

Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My introduction to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser was back in my youthful Dungeons and Dragons days. Being a huge role player I picked up the City of Lankhmar boxed set and marveled at the misty city’s layout. Fafhrd and Grey Mouser were just bit players in my fantasy world relegated to nothing more than some stats on a sheet, never to be used in my campaigns. Lankhmar equally unused, but the boxed set was cool. Why it did not dawn on me at the time to seek them out I do not know.

The moment I picked up Swords and Deviltry I was hooked. Leiber’s writing style is phenomenal, so descriptive, like reading a painting. The world he imagined was equally as thrilling as the Hyborean world of Robert E. Howard I’ve spent so much time in.

Having the first two stories provide the necessary background for the series duo drew me to both characters so when they met again in Lankhmar I was thoroughly commited to the characters. I eagerly look forward to reading the entire series, that I do and will probably pick up more by Leiber.

I will admit I am merely two pages into the second book and it’s hard not to drop everything and devote my attentions to said masterpiece.



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After a week of taking apart and putting it back together again I think I finally have the dryer fixed. It was a making this ear splitting squeal during the first third and beyond of the drying cycle. Some initial research indicated this was either the belt or the tumbler joint assembly needed greasing/replacement. Well a handful of hours later and just under $55 I have it all fixed again.

I replaced the belt to start with and this seemed to quell it a bit, but not enough. So I ordered the joint assembly and got around to replacing it this evening as it arrived today. Both the belt and the joint assembly were purchased through http://appliancepartspros.com. I ordered the belt Sunday it arrived on Tuesday and the joint assembly on Wednesday and had it Friday. Great service and speedy delivery.

I also found the service manual for $10 in pdf format. That was handy to have. So all-in-all it was under $55 total parts to repair. Consider that amount alone would probably not even cover the cost of a repair person to come out and even look at it.

It’s not that difficult to take appliances apart. Like a computer or laptop just pay attention to what you are doing and you find you may be able to save yourself a ton on money in the long run. Oh and do disconnect the power before tinkering!

   As a full time Senior Linux System Administrator in real life I was quite interested to get my fingers on this book for a review. After all, the job of a smart sysadmin pretty much dictates scripting away as much of your work as possible. We are a lazy bunch and we call that being efficient

   This is the first book I have reviewed by Packt Publishing or the author, Sarath Lackshman, I wasn’t really sure what I was in for. In fact I was slightly put off by the price, which I initially thought overly hefty at $45 US. For that kind of scratch I am used to seeing a much more substantial sized book from the sort of publishers I normally review for. I started making my way through the book anyway, and I am glad I did.

   What makes this book really cool is the premise behind it. Inside, as a “cookbook” should, you have these “recipes” for scripts. These are not what I have normally seen in many scripting books before, which are generally theoretical and sometimes lengthy examples, but these recipes are pretty straight forward, real world examples of things you might want to do, and how to handle those efficiently. The recipes are also small enough that you could easily piece meal things out to compose another script and I am certain that would be a great help to novice scripters.

   As nice as I think this book would be for novice scripters, there is a lot of smart stuff in there, stuff that had never occurred to me through my years of command line use. I actually got really excited to try some of the examples in there and to put them into practice. I particularly liked the little tricks here and there, like the “subshell trick” and I was absolutely thrilled that this book used modern syntax and variable manipulation, dropping the deprecated stuff like putting commands into back ticks. Good form!

   This book is certainly a keeper and I would recommend it highly to anyone who wants to become proficient on the command line. Some days you actually *do* get what you pay for, and I believe people will find this book to be a good example of that. This book was truly fun for me to work my way through and I sure hope they have more like it in store for the future. Go buy yourself a copy. I know I will be hanging on to this one for a while

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fantastic book! This time around Dorthy and the Wizard return to Oz with some new friends: Zeb the coach boy, Jim his cab horse, and Eureka, Dorthy’s kitten. An earthquake swallows them up as Dorthy makes her way back to Kansas from her trip to Australia and what ensues is a romp through the Oz underworld. Fatastical creatures, new lands, and adventures galore in this book!



My daughter and I really enjoyed this one and looked forward to each chapter. Once again, we were eventually reunited with all the wonderful denizens of Oz we have met in the past: The Scarecrow, Tik-Tok, Nick Chopper, Wuggle Bug, Billina, and many more make their appearance towards the end.



I eagerly await the next installment!



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The Gunslinger by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For some reason I’ve had it in my head for a long time that Stephen King’s novels are not worth my time to read. Maybe it was the myriad of good and bad movie adaptions that have colored my opinion or maybe it was that I felt he was too mainstream horror. Whatever the case, I must say that I have yet to disappointed by any of the novels or short stories I have read by him. The Gunslinger falls suite for me.



I enjoyed this read, it was quick, but not necessarily easy to follow. That may have been because the I converted the ePub I had to mobi format to read on my Kindle and some of the formatting was off. There was a bit of jumping around making it difficult to keep track of where I was in the story’s timeline. Couple that with a bunch of character names popping up and no further development of those names to any characters I felt I was missing something. It was not until the end that some of this was resolved.



As an introduction to Roland, the novel was fitting. I am eager to read more about him and his quest and the world he lives in (and those he will be venturing to). The man in black is intriguing, that he is. The fate of Jake was rather jarring in a almost non-plussed manner and left me disliking the character of Roland a bit. I wonder if he will return in a future book?



I look forward to reading more of the series as time goes on.



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A friend asked me for a quick primer on how to set up a windows accessible share under RHEL 5, so I thought I would include it here for the benefit of anyone interested.

• sudo yum -y install samba
• sudo vim /etc/samba/smb.conf
• replace the file with something like so:

[global]
workgroup = SOMEWORKGROUPNAME
server string = SERVERHOSTNAME Samba Server Version %v
security = user
netbios name = CALLMESOMETHING
[data]
comment = my data share
path = /data
read only = no
writable = yes
guest ok = no
available = yes
valid users = USERNAME

• add a local user to the box: sudo useradd USERNAME
• add the local user to samba and give password: sudo smbpaswd -a USERNAME
• restart samba service: sudo service smb restart
• make sure samba starts at boot: sudo chkconfig smb on
• adjust your firewall settings if necessary

At this point you should be able to access the share at //servername/data.
Have fun!

Disallow: /4sanl/

No Strings Attached by Lester del Rey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was compelled to read this short story to get a better feel for the recent podiobook we reviewed for Hacker Public Radio by Lester Del Rey called Bandge of Infamy. I was curious if some of the themes in that story repeated themselves in any other works by del Rey. I do believe there is an interesting hostility towards woman, particularly wives over time.



The story’s conclusion was not novel to me at this period, there have been so many similar works since that making the ending somewhat predictable. What I did find unique was the presentation of witchcraft and demons in a more scientific light. That magic was a way of breaching the vibrational barriers between dimensions was very refreshing.



This was a quick read and very enjoyable. I plan to read a lot more by del Rey.



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The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip G. Zimbardo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was initially draw to this book by the title, particularly the tag line on how "Good People Turn Evil." I was not prepared for such a thought provoking read and a re-kindling of my interest in psychology, particularly situational psychology.



Zimbardo takes use through a thorough presentation of the entire Stanford Prison Experiment and then applies the lessons learned there to historical and current events to provide another side of the story on how people can commit horrific atrocities often untold. While media more often presents the "Bad Apple" excuse, Zimbardo thoroughly details how more to the point situational factors exercise a more potent influence than our Western Society likes to admit.



The reader is challenged to cast aside tendencies to promotes one’s self in a more powerful and heroic light and honestly reflect on the situations detailed and consider how he or she would act or be influenced. Could you stand for what you believe is right at the risk of social stigmatization, occupational detriment, familial threat, or even threat to one’s mortality? Would you be able to avoid the influence of leaders, higher ups, friends and family urging you to do something against your morals? Against society morals?



Zimbardo show time and again how good people fall prey to these influences through both historical examples and well documented and repeated psychological experiments. He then applies all this to the most poignant example of how situational factors impacted on "good soldiers" encouraging them commit atrocities by describing the recent blight on the United States’s debacle at Abu Ghraib. Zimbardo puts the entire system on trial utilizing journalist reports, interviews with personnel at all levels, and his personal observations.



Zimbardo makes it a point to not excuse personal responsibility by the perpetrators of these acts, but provides a clear case that the finger cannot be pointed solely at the individual but must be widened to include the situational factors too.



The final chapters is a helpful primer on to stand up to situational factors and an urging for more research to be done on the more positive aspects of humanity. Zimbardo posits that the same situational forces are instrumental in influencing people towards malicious acts could be as powerful in influencing people to heroic acts.



I strongly recommend this book to anyone interesting in human behavior, society, politics, and history.



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Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Oz series is turning out to be such a fantastic read. This book alone ranks up there as probably my favorite so far. The questing, the challenges all of it was great. I love how the characters keep returning and new staples sure to be prevalent in future volumes are introduced.



Avery is eager to listen to the tales each and every night and is quite disappointed if we cannot read at least two chapters.



Baum is doing a wonderful job expanding the borders of Oz and taking us to different lands. Bit characters return here and there to add a wonderful continuity.



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