In the spirit of the new movie, I, Robot, I am posting this link. If I had seen this at the right moment in my life, I am sure I would be doing robotics work now instead of programming. Of course, you can’t really have robotics without programming so maybe there’s still a chance! (Image: Picture Lloyd Christmas saying to Mary Swanson: “Sooooo you’re telling me there’s a chance!!!”) Be sure to check out the videos of the robot throwing a soccer ball - pretty cool!

The theme used for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is called Royale. It’s a very attractive and elegant theme. I now use it on all of my workstations. You can see screenshots here, here, and here. You can download it from here. Once you unzip it, put the DLL in the c:windowsresourcesthemes directory and double-click the Royal.msstyle file to install it.

Since Ahu and I moved to West Dundee, my commute has been about 45 minutes in the morning and around 60 to 75 minutes in the evening. I listen to the radio in the car but I do not listen to the brainless talk radio stations. I usually listen to NPR (WBEZ in Chicago) or news radio WBBM 780. 780 gets old quickly because of the frequent commercials and repeating news stories.

This is one of the best Prey novels that I’ve read. It’s very different from the others in that Lucas Davenport isn’t solving a murder mystery but is rather attempting to stop a crazy escaped convict from taking revenge for his recently killed wife and sister. The escaped convict, Dick LaChaise, bands together with some buddies, each unique and scary, to pursue and punish the police officers responsible. These characters are described in such a way as to invoke comparison with some of the “hoods” I knew back in junior high school.

For some reason, I seem to have doubled up the images in the garden galleries below. I’ll fix them later. Right now, I have a date with my wife!!! See ya!!! All better now!

I’ve read a number of other Patterson novels. This is an older one, written in 1989, and was somewhat inspired by the 1987 stock market crash. The premise is a weird merging of Viet Nam tragedy and betrayal and Wall Street high finance. The plot was average but some of the characters were memorable. In particular, the characters of Hudson and Arch Carroll were interesting. This novel was of the standard paperback length of around 400+ pages but easily could have been longer with a little more background on the above characters.

Coming back from lunch today I somewhat witnessed an accident between a semi and a maroon passenger car on Lake Cook Road and I-294. I was in front of the maroon car and there was one other car between us. The semi crashed right into the back of the maroon car. We were stopped at a light at the time. The semi driver apparently hadn’t noticed in time that the traffic had stopped.

This is a new type of crime novel for me - one where the main character is a woman instead of a man. I read about Lucas Davenport in the Prey series and Elvis Cole in Crais’ detective novels, but Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum is something else. Whereas the male characters mentioned above are seasoned pros, One for the Money details the start of Plum’s new career as a bounty hunter.

I have now finished the 7th novel in the Prey series by John Sandford. This one was pretty dark. I find it hard to review these books because of their severe content. Let’s just say that the characters in the book pull no punches. Sandford does a good job of describing difficult scenes in the way that the original Psycho movie let the viewer know another murder was taking place. You never actually saw the murder but you could infer that it was happening from the music and the indirect visuals.

I can’t say enough about this movie. I loved it. It really demonstrated a group of people who have the same values and beliefs that I do. I can’t remember the last movie made in English that exemplified the Bushido philosophy so accurately. The cast was great. Tom Cruise was okay as Captain Nathan Algren but the really excellent cast members were the Japanese actors. Ken Watanabe was perfect as Katsumoto.