Take a look at what this guy has had to go through.

Here’s a summary of Peter Jackson’s Return of the King for the non-humor impaired. Favorite line: “Bad steward. No cookie.”

This site went down some time today; I’m not sure when. I noticed it this evening about 8PM–I couldn’t access Movable Type, and the entire site appeared to be gone.

My web hosting service is DreamHost.com. I went right to their support page, and submitted a problem report.

Around 8:30 I checked my e-mail, hoping that I might at least have gotten some kind of automated message saying that they were going to look into my problem. Instead, I got an e-mail message from a real person saying that they had just fixed my problem. And indeed, they had.

Now, that’s service. 30 minutes from problem reported to problem solved, at 8PM at night–for a tiny little customer like me.

I signed up with Dreamhost three years ago; I heard about the company through a banner ad at Slashdot–the only time I’ve ever responded to a banner ad. I’ve never regretted choosing them.

When I first signed up with Dreamhost, they offered to host my domain for $9.95 a month–a price they promised would never increase. It hasn’t. For that price, they would host my domain, host a website at my domain, give me reasonable amounts of disk space and bandwidth, and redirect e-mail. Since that time, they’ve added many new services. I now have full shell access, CGI-scripting, MySQL databases, mailing list administration, and a bunch of other services I’ve not even used yet. And I’m still paying just $9.95 a month.

In all that time, I’ve only had my site go down twice (that I’m aware of). The second time was tonight; the first time was due to a credit-card/billing screwup which was entirely my fault. In both cases, the problem was resolved quickly and painlessly as soon as I noticed it.

Every so often I read about people having trouble with their ISPs or hosting services, and I just smile.

This is one of several books I read before Christmas that got put aside and
forgotten for a time. Mysteries are the type of book I read but don’t retain
well which means if they aren’t reviewed quickly, they get passed over for
more recent fare. This one, however, stuck.

It takes place in a small village in England. Years before the neighboring
village had been evacuated and abandoned because a dam had been built, after
much local political wrangling, and the village was on the site of the
reservoir below it. Just before the villagers leave, little girls begin
disappearing. The bodies are never found and the snatchings stop when the
village is drowned. The police, including a young Dalziel, never catch the
kidnapper though the main suspect is thought to be a slightly touched boy
from the village who also disappears after the village is flooded. Then,
after years of relative calm, the snatchings begin again. And an older,
wiser Dalziel and his partner, Pascoe, are brought in to try to figure out
who and why.

There were several things that interested me about the book. One was the
mystery within the mystery. In order to figure out the modern crimes,
Dalziel must recreate and solve the old crime. The major characters from the
previous crime scenes have either died or grown up or moved away and he is
working against time and lack of evidence to figure out the mystery. Not to
mention that the crime scenes have been under water for years.

The other is the use of diary entries by a young women from the village
interspersed into the narrative action. Her story becomes a secondary plot
line that weaves it’s way into the main criminal investigation. And in the
end, how she figures in the whole situation was a complete surprise to me. I
didn’t see it coming, at all.

It’s always a delight to find a new author who writes mysteries with the
emphasis on the detection and the puzzle and not on the gory details of the
crime. This is one of the latest ones Hill has written and I am doubly
delighted to have more to look forward to. I gather there is a long history
of cooperation and partnership between the two detectives, Dalziel and
Pascoe, that has developed as the books were published. Hopefully, they are
all still in print.

I didn’t really want to read this book, except that I wanted to read
Hogfather, and I needed to refresh my memory.

But first, some history. Way back when, in the fourth Discworld book,
Death took an apprentice named Mort, who eventually married Death’s
adopted daughter, Isabelle. (Trust me, it all made sense at the time.)

In this book, we meet Mort and Isabelle’s only daughter Susan. Susan’s a
strange child, as befits Death’s granddaughter. She has little patience
for fools (they suffer her, rather than vice versa), and she has a
tends to be hard to see when she wants to be left alone. And when Death
takes a holiday, as he is occasionally wont to do, it’s Susan who must
pick up the slack. Susan plays a major role in Hogfather,
which is why I needed to re-read this one first.

But that’s another review. So what’s this one about?

Death, and Rock-and-Roll. You can be the greatest musician in the world,
one that they’ll talk about forever, but there’s a price–you have to
live fast, and die young….

So why didn’t I want to read it again at the moment?

The wonder of the Discworld is that it’s a whole world; Pratchett can
satirize anything he likes, and make it work on the Discworld. But
Rock-and-Roll just doesn’t seem to fit quite right, just as Hollywood
didn’t seem to fit quite right in the earlier Discworld book
Moving Pictures. Also, there’s a bunch of foolishness with
the faculty of Unseen University that seems to be neither here nor there
so far as the plot is concerned. It’s filler.

But hey, I enjoyed the book anyway.

As Ian Hamet told us last month, he’s embarked on an incredible adventure: he’s moved to Shanghai. If you want to know why he’s done such a thing, just go to his blog and start scrolling.

I still think he’s Looney Tunes–but then, I like Looney Tunes. The question is, is he Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck?

This, finally, is the ninth and latest volume in the story of Vlad
Taltos, and it’s a doozy. During the previous books we’ve occasionally
heard about a mysterious race called the Jenoine who seem to have had
something to do with the creation of the Dragaeran Empire. Apparently
they are really bad news–in fact, Morrolan and Aliera have gone missing,
and Sethra Lavode believes they’ve been captured by the Jenoine. Vlad,
she thinks, might be able to find them.

I don’t want to say too much about this one, as I don’t want to spoil it;
suffice it to say that the Issola of the title is Lady Teldra, Morrolan’s
hostess, and that we finally find out what she’s really like.

Theoretically there should be nine more of these books, one for each of
the remaining houses of the Dragaeran Empire. I’m looking forward to
them, because I have absolutely no idea where Vlad goes from here.

Andrea Harris has a wonderful review of The Return of the King in which she hits all of the things I disliked–and, even-handedly, also hits all of things that I did like but had forgotten about. Many spoilers, so be warned.

In this, the eighth book of the tale of Vlad Taltos, Brust once more
steps back from the main narrative to fill in some of Vlad’s history.
Ever since Jhereg we’ve been hearing bits and pieces about the
Battle at the Wall of Barrett’s Tomb. We’ve also been told that Dragons
are natural military commanders, though it’s not always been clear who
the enemies are supposed to be. In this book we find out about both of
these things.

Barrett e’Lanya, a great and respected Dragonlord, dies suddenly,
leaving behind a large collection of weapons. Our old friend Morrolan
e’Drien is given the honor of safeguarding Barrett’s estate, but another
Dragonlord conspires to steal one of the weapons. This touches
Morrolan’s honor, of course, and the only thing that will do is a
carefully planned and fought war–held away from settled lands, of course, so
as not to be too destructive. Vlad comes along for the ride, mostly
because Morrolan’s opponent insults him grievously and he wants revenge.
And thus, he finds out first hand what it’s like to fight in a Dragon
army. Just what he always wanted.

This is a fun book, having more of the happy-go-lucky flavor of
Jhereg and Yendi, and yet it serves a serious
purpose–it’s providing background we need for the following volume,
Issola, which will continue with Vlad’s main narrative. To
wit: where do Great Weapons like Morrolan’s Blackwand and Aliera’s
Pathfinder come from? And what’s with the golden chain, Spellbreaker,
that Vlad’s been carrying around for the whole series?

You won’t find these things out from me, of course.

Mitford stories are always great fun. I always feel just happy after
finishing one and I’ve looked forward to a quiet afternoon to read this book
for a time.

This time around, it’s October and Father Tim has come across a dilapidated
old plaster nativity scene that the antiques store owner has brought back
from England with him. He’s bored with retirement and his book of essays is
not going well. The crèche reminds him of his childhood Christmases and, on
the spur of the moment, he decides to buy it and fix it up for Cynthia as a
Christmas gift. The book is the story of how he goes about it, how the
townsfolk help and hinder him and how he keeps the secret from Cynthia.

It’s a good story though perhaps not as tight as some others she has
written. It could have been either a well-written short story with some of
the extras cut out or a more developed novel with a bit more tension and
detail but on the whole I enjoyed it. It’s always fun to go back to Mitford,
visit some of the old haunts and find out what everyone is doing lately. She
does hint of the next book and where that one may take place too.