Dean Koontz is a great storyteller. I was instroduced to him by a friend (it was her favorite author) a long time ago but did not pick it up until recently and now two of his books occupy spots in my top 5. I never thought that he could top Intensity in my book, but Watchers is a book that to me is a masterpiece of modern literature.

The book explores humanity in a way I have not seen in many books. It uses situations to not only illustrate characters personalities but also mirror them. I am also sure that this book like great songs can have different meaning to different people.

I believe that change is the center theme of the book. The characters transform their inner core value and ways of looking at the world. At times these aspect of the book seems more fictional that the actual genetic manipulation plot. It is scary at times to even consider that our lives are not being life to the fullest and that there is no one else to blame but ourselves.

The love story in the book is not only beautiful but also patient. In a time where dating seems like a romanticized idea from long ago, it makes courtship seem appealing once again. In the time of hook ups and my space it brings a nice to the word relationship.

Another impressive facet of the book is the strong African American character in the book. I was very please with the way his character was explored. It was amazing how accurate the sense of almost innate desperation to prove yourself because of the color or your skin was portrayed. I was also glad that everyone in the end realized that family in the end is the most important thing in life.

Koontz explored God in this book in a subtle way. It was more of a theological discussion about human responsibility than an actual religions statement. It is probably the only thing in the book that kind of let me wanting a little more. I personally believe that responsibility when it comes to research should be looked at from many angles. There is no clear answer to all the moral and ethical questions that genetic research raises.

The characters were all very likeable, the flow of the book was excellent, and I believe that everyone can take a little piece of self-improvement from the change in all of the characters. I believe everyone should read this book, just be warned that by the end of it you might want a brand new puppy.

Koontz, Watchers, Review, Loyalty, Friendship, Relationship, Love, Race, Murder, Suspense, Change, Fiction.

Say what you want about religion, say what you want about Christianity… the reality of the situation when it comes to faith for me is that I believe that Jesus was a pretty important person in Human history and that his message of love is one that should be followed. I want to start an online bible study of sorts… while it would be centered around the bible persay (a passage every Saturday) I want to approach it from an intellectual, practical and debate level rather than theological… so without any more talk, lets enter into the first Bible Saturday. The bible was chosen not to isolate any other religions, but as the book that I grew up reading for spiritual guidence as a child it is the one I am most familiar way. I am open to sugestions if you want to participate and give us other topics, they will be welcomed!

“My message shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the light rain upon the tender grass, and as the showers upon the herb. ”
-Passage Deuteronomy 32:2

The Bible is a powerful book, it is the biggest seller in history. It is refered to as the message, the word. What makes you think that a book can hold this much power?

Personally I have found the bible to be a great resource for confort. When I have had difficult times in my life I have been able to open a bible up and just read it to find wisdom. The cool thing for me is that it allows me to interpret the message in a very personal way. Can you think of any other object that can bring this kind of confort guidence and reassurance?

Here is another edition of the Friday Feast!

Appetizer
How old were you when you got your first credit card?
During college I was about 19 when I got my Discover card… man if I knew then what I know now about credit cards. Credit cards are the devil.

Soup
When was the last time you felt out of place?
When I moved to Michigan… it took me a while to feel confortable here. Now that I am confortable I am leaving… surprisingly enough the place I am going it starting to feel like home

Salad
Did you have a curfew when you were a teenager? If so, what time did you have to be home?
I don’t think I really did as a teenager, it was more self imposed than anything else… I remember I was home at 9 unless I was working about 90% of the time.

Main Course
Name a person from history with whom you feel you have something in common.
Wow, this is a hard question… The obvious answer is my Grandfather, I feel like I have a lot in common with him when it comes to personality and such and not just because we were related; but I think that the question wants something else… I share two initials with JFK…

Dessert
When you read a newspaper, which section do you go for first?
The comics of course!

Dan said it better than I could…

Are you a blogger? Do you read blogs? Are you interested in blogging and would like to meet some of the faces behind some local blogs? If you have answered yes to any of those questions then head out to the Midland Area Bloggers Meet Up on June 2, 2006 at 7:00 pm at Coffee Chaos. Leave a comment if you know you are coming and even if you don’t just show up and meet some new people.

So come and join us for some coffee and some talking…

I hinted towards Friday being an important day, and well it was. I was interviewing with another company that day and yesterday I accepted their offer and resigned at my current position. I have chosen to not blog much about my job, partly because most of the issues I’ve had there have been in a personal level and to discuss those without both sides its kind of unfair. At the same time this place has been my outlet for a lot of the frustrations that I’ve had in my life.

The past is better left there… so instead of talking about the bad things that eventually let me to be persuaded by another company I will concentrate on the future. I do want to say that when I do work for a company I feel completely committed to them, sadly the company I was with I never felt that commitment reciprocated.

So where is Logtar going? What is going to happen? Is the blog going to change at all? Has he already giving as clues as to where he is going?

I am not sure yet, but what I can say for now is that I will be traveling a lot more. I will be moving to a new city and I cannot wait to start this new chapter of my life.

Have you ever considered the fact that blind people might be reading your blog? What about the fact that if you have some of the spam authorization modules that require you to look at a picture and type what you see would stop any blind reader from ever commenting on your site?

I have resisted the urge to implement spam protection on my site. Even thought I get thousands of spam comments a week, I have been able to use some of the wordpress pluggins to prevent or at least minimize the nuisance of dealing with spam comments.

Word verification spam filter have always annoyed me. To be honest until I read an article about how blind readers are pretty much left without a means to comment on the blogs I had never considered that side of things. As the ones of you that have been reading for a while know I took an ASL class and I am very interested on the hearing impaired world… when I started my podcast, it was one of the things I considered… I never want to alienate any of my readers. However I never even thought of the visually impaired.

Most people with disabilities do not feel sorry for themselves and I believe we should not either. However, I believe that being considerate has nothing to do with pity. I think that we should all be aware of what readers we do have and make sure we are not alienating any of them.

blind, readers, blog, impaired, visual, hearing, deaf, ASL, spam, wordpress, verification

Friday has to be kept a little secret for now, but believe me I will talk about it in the near future

Saturday was a very busy day, I was dead tired from Friday, but a lot needed to be done.  A group of people from the place I work at participated on the Cancer fundraiser, Relay for life.  Our team theme was fishing for a cure, and well I volunteered to get the fish… I just did not remember that this was also the weekend that tons of other things were going on.

My Great Uncle and his wife had driven all the way from Chicago to see me!  He called me when he was on the driveway.  It was an awesome suprise and they got to spend Saturday night and Sunday here!