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Jun 30, 2011

My New Novel: Bill The Vampire


I am pleased to announce that my new horror/comedy novel, Bill The Vampire is now available!

It is currently available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook. Available soon in Apple iBooks and in paperback format.

**************

There are reasons we fear the night.
He isn't one of them.

Meet Bill Ryder: programmer, gamer geek, and hopeless dweeb when it comes to women. All he ever asked for out of life was to collect his paycheck, hang out with his buds, and eventually (someday) ask out the girl of his dreams.

However, then Bill met Sally. She was mysterious, aggressive, and best of all...smoking hot. Bill never stood a chance. Before he knew what was happening Sally had lead him to his death, and that was only the beginning of his troubles.

Now Bill awakes to find himself an undead predator of the night. The only problem is he's still at the bottom of the food chain.

He's in way over his head, surrounded by creatures more dangerous, better looking, and a whole lot cooler than he is. Worst of all is the dreaded Night Razor, a master vampire who just can't stand him. He gives Bill a 90 day deadline to either prove himself or meet a more permanent kind of death, and the deck is definitely stacked against him.

But Bill isn't exactly average. A vampire like him hasn't been seen in over five centuries. He's got a few tricks up his sleeve, unlikely allies to help him out, and an attitude problem that makes him just too damn obnoxious to quit. He may just pull it off...if he doesn't get his teeth kicked in first.

**************

Please follow any of the links above and download a sample chapter. If you like what you see, the full text is available for $2.99

Jun 20, 2011

Busy week

I realize it's been a while since I posted. Besides being a semi slow news week (at least for anything I felt like discussing), I've also been fairly busy with a new novel I've been writing. It's in the finishing stages (minus editing) and I imagine I'll be done in another week or two and be able to give this blog some TLC again.

Jun 8, 2011

Head in the Cloud(s)

A few weeks back I posted my thoughts on the Dropbox situation, and also stated a few of my thoughts on "The Cloud" in general. With the recent announcements by Apple as to IOS 5, this is even more relevant.

Now don't get me wrong. I am very excited about some of the features of IOS 5, some of the cloud functionality amongst the things I'm excited about. I love the idea of using the cloud to house my media (songs, photos, video) for playback regardless where I am. I also, to a degree, like the idea of doing the same with some of my documents. Notice how I said some. That's the kicker. Some information, I have no problem being out there hosted on some servers that I have no control over. However, some I very much do mind. Hopefully IOS 5 will be smart enough to allow me to pick and choose which information I want backed up, and which I do not.

Case in point: my resume: fly it away to the clouds, I say.
My taxes: No, so sorry. I'd prefer to be the sole non-government owner of that information.

My concerns here are both privacy and security minded. I believe what I've mentioned above should cover most of the privacy portion just fine. As for the rest, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out with regards to law enforcement. Personally I'm not worried about this one for myself, but certainly there will come a case where the police demand access to someone's slice of the cloud, whether or not justified. We should all be keeping an eye out to see what sort of precedents get set once that happens.

As for security, just to get it out of the way, let's not be silly. I have no delusions that whatever safeguards Apple will have in place won't look like Fort Knox compared to my tiny (but fairly solid) home network security. That being said, Apple is also a much larger target than myself.

I'm uneasy with the prospect of potentially sensitive information being stolen as part of a mass data breach. Obviously, if my home network is compromised the data is just as gone. However, as I just mentioned there's the concept of scope here. Outside of a virus or other malware that manages to slip through my scanners, someone targeting me would need to actually target me. That probably means that somewhere down the line I pissed off someone I shouldn't have. That's kind of on my head. Outside of that, I have some relative security through the obscurity of just being another pc in my neighborhood. In short, I don't stay up most nights worrying about hackers brute-force attacking me. Whatever encryption and other security Apple or other tenders of the Cloud have in place, they're going to be major targets and I for one would prefer to not have my deepest darkest secrets just lying around in the Cloud should another Sony PSN debacle come about.

Jun 7, 2011

How about just watching the movie you paid to see?

Reblogged from a link from gizmodo, comes this story. I love this. In this day and age we all know how important customer service is. However, having been there myself a few times, I can attest that the customer is not always right. This is especially true if accommodating one individual's inappropriateness comes at the cost of harming the whole. In other words, I love that this company not only sticks to its guns with regards to their policy, but isn't afraid to throw it back in your face if you feel entitled to violate it (and annoy the rest of the theater). Kudos to them, and here's hoping that the 'victim' of this maybe has a moment of introspection down the line and realizes the wrongness of their attitude. I doubt it'll happen, but one can always hope.