Fantasy

As most of my friend's know, I am seriously into reading fantasy novels. Among my favorites are "Wizard's First Rule" by Terry Goodkind, "The Wheel of Time Series" by Robert Jordan, and most recently the "Mistborn Trilogy" by Brandon Sanderson. Why mention this? Simply put, I want to share some random thoughts about the a fore mentioned books. If you're not a fan of these books you might want to skip to the next post to avoid being bored.

"Wizard's First Rule" is actually the first book in a long series called "The Sword of Truth". Unfortunately, the series as a whole gets relatively repetitive with the author's themes being so closely related between books. He gets on his soap box and never dismounts leaving us to have to skip several pages (sometimes chapters) in numerous places in each book simply to avoid having to read the same thing over and over again. However, if your looking for a good book that stands on its own, "Wizard's First Rule" does exactly that. The rest of the series is good, but not worth wading through the muddy swamp of opinion the author lays out for you.

I mention this because they have recently turned the first book in to a TV series called "Legend of the Seeker". I always have reservations when it comes to putting the written word of fantasy into a movie/TV form. Sometimes it can be done mostly right ("Lord of the Rings") and sometimes can be done not so well ("The Golden Compass"). So far they have only aired 7 episodes. Of course since I don't watch TV anymore because of the commercials I watched them at www.hulu.com (I think all 7 episodes are still up). My first impression is that they made a terrible mistake in casting the character of Zedd. For one thing he is way too tall. For another, he doesn't speak with the same inflection in his voice as he does in the books. And his accent doesn't make any sense. On the other hand, Kahlan is a perfect match! She is poised and confident and lonely as in the books. I only wish her hair were a little longer. I'm a little distressed that they did away with the cultural reference of the length of your hair being a symbol of your the level of your station in the Midlands. It was one of the many details that made the world so unique. As far as Richard is concerned, I'm on the fence. At times I am convinced but then the actor makes some bad choices and shows you how truly green he is as an actor proving he is a little too inexperienced to handle such an important role. Who knows, if the series is allowed to hang on for a little longer he might grow into the role. Although, I'm not hooked on the show, I am curious to see if they get a large enough fan base to keep it going. http://www.legendoftheseeker.com/

"The Wheel of Time" series has been and probably always will be my favorite series of books. They are the books that I discovered the joy of reading and the joy of exploring a new world. I hope no one EVER puts these books onto any kind of screen. It belongs in the imagination of the reader. Since Robert Jordan passed away in September of 2007, the completion of the series has been passed on to the little known writer Brandon Sanderson. Seeing how he was chosen to complete my favorite series ever, I decided to try out his books. "Elantris" and the "Mistborn" series are the most well know of his bare handful of published books. I won't talk about them individually but I thought it might be prudent to mention a few things about his last released novel the final volume of the Mistborn series "Hero of Ages." There are two things I'd like to say. The first is that when I finished the book, initially I was a little upset by the ending. That is, until I realized it couldn't really end in any other way. It was the right ending for the story. The other thing I wanted to mention was how impressed I was by the linear thought patterns of the characters. Each character figures out what they need to figure without it needing to be a stretch or a too obvious. One epiphany led to the next in a very logical manner. This is not easy to do folks! I certainly have read my fair share of books that did not have believable thought processes in its characters. (The most obvious of which was Grand Admiral Thrawn in the only Star Wars Trilogy worth reading by Timothy Zahn.) I can't wait until the last Wheel of Time book is published next year. I have a feeling I will be taking two days off of work to read it. :)

School and the Christmas Season

I don't even want to know when the last "real" post is dated. I've actually secretly been avoiding writing anything because of the massive amounts of things that I've thought about putting up but haven't done. With school now a week behind me, I guess my batteries have recharged enough to make some mention as to what has been happening in my everyday events. That being said, I will separate the topics into different posts since if I did every thing in one post you all would get bored.

Every year I hear people around me complain when people put up their Christmas decorations mid-way through November. People claim that it is too early and that Thanksgiving gets buried in the enormous corporate puppet show we call Christmas. But for me, Christmas is a week long activity that seems to go by way too fast. Why do I say this? Because I am so busy from mid-November to the end of finals doing semester projects (and Senior Design) and studying for finals and trying not to make "To-Do" lists to keep myself sane and responsible at the same time that I completely loose track of what time of year it is. It could be mid-July outside with beautiful weather and a tropical breeze in Colorado and I still wouldn't notice! So when school ends abruptly every semester I can't go even one day without becoming incredibly bored since every minute of my life for the last two months has been planned and active. The sudden existence of free-time is more than my brain can handle and it compensates by sleeping for 10 hours a day fro the next week. But back to my point, I'm so busy with school that purposely forget that its Christmas until the end of my last final in order to keep focused. This year my last final happened to be exactly one week before Christmas. Therefore, my Christmas season only lasted one week. I only got to enjoy my mini Christmas tree for two days before I left to travel home for Christmas. (I'll post pictures when I get back to Boulder since I forgot my cord to plug in my camera) All of my shopping had to be done in one week and I had to soak in the "Christmas Spirit" in no time. I guess you could call it Christmas on steroids. So when I hear people around me complain that the Christmas season is too long, I'm a little jealous that they have the time to notice.

Speaking of semester projects, one of my professors insisted on creating a webpage as the method of turning in our project. The address for this project if your bored (and since you're taking the time to read my blog thats a given :) )is:
http://ccar.colorado.edu/asen5050/projects/projects_2008/ogilvie_project/index.htm

As stated before, I'm participating in a Senior Design project this year. Our website is:
http://arcticproject.org/default.aspx

Crazy Eights

Crazy Eights

RULES:
1. Post rules on your Blog.
2. Answer the six "8" items.
3. Tag 8 other people. (this one I'm ignoring, as always.. feel free to participate if your it's your little heart's desire) :)

8 FAVORITE SHOWS: (in no particular order)
1. Journeyman
2. SG1
3. Firefly
4. Farscape
6. Heroes
7. House
8. Tru Calling

8 THINGS I DID YESTERDAY
1. Rode the bus
2. Did a presentation on the Trident Missile in Naval Weapons
3. Finished a composite lay-up for Senior Design
4. Practiced our CDR presentation with ARCTIC for our presentation on Tuesday
5. Sat through a bunch of presentations in Materials class
6. Finished reading "Mistborn 3: The Hero of Ages"
7. Went to Target for some Khaki's
8. Watched the movie "Hancock" (and almost cried)

8 THINGS I LOOK FORWARD TO
1. Sleeping
2. Graduating
3. Getting a job
4. Meeting my new nephew/niece to-be
5. Seeing the Savior
6. Winter Break
7. Summer
8. Getting married (someday)

8 FAVORITE RESTAURANTS
1. Chipotle
2. Panda Express
3. Daphne's
4. Einstein's Bagels
5. Noodles and Company
6. Sol Azteca
7. Il Vicino
8. La Baguette

8 THINGS ON MY WISH LIST
1. More time to do all the stuff I want to do!
2. A laptop with Finale Allegro, MATLAB, Solidworks, and Mathematica
3. A job
4. A Waffle Iron
5. A better wardrobe (goes hand-and-hand with a job)
6. My own apartment
7. Milk (I need to go to the store)
8. A new(ish) car

8 THINGS ON MY DESK THAT DON'T BELONG (only 8?)
1. My deodorant
2. My face lotion
3. My bike chain lubricant
4. A bicycle lock
5. 3-lbs weights
6. A pile of blank thank you cards
7. My netflix movie
8. Sunscreen