I just finished this new one from Baldacci and loved it.  Here is the 10 second preview from Baldacci’s website.

“John Puller is a combat veteran and the best military investigator in the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigative Division. Called to investigate a brutal crime in West Virginia coal country, he soon realizes that nothing he’s seen in this small town, and no one in it, are what they seem. Facing a potential conspiracy that reaches far beyond the coal country hills, he is one man on the hunt for justice against an overwhelming force.”

For those of you familiar with the Jack Reacher character in Lee Child’s books, Puller is Reacher with a real job but the roughly the same modus operandi.  It has an interesting end and see if you can catch the clue.  I did not.  Enjoy!!

Well, I have taken the plunge!  When I are acquired the MacBook Air I did it with the intention of using the MacBook Air as my primary computer. After doing the research and looking at the kind of things I would be doing it became crystal clear that I would have to run Windows on the Mac. There are some programs, plus a couple of add-ins for Microsoft Outlook, that either aren’t available in the Mac format or the implementation is different enough that I was uncomfortable with the Mac option. The primary example of the later is Quicken.  I went as far as purchasing Quicken for the Mac, installing it and converting the data file but in the end decided that it would not work and returned the Mac version. This was easy as Quicken for the Mac comes with a 60 day return option.

Having made the decision that it was necessary to run Windows on the Mac I had to determine which option would give me the flexibility that I wanted. While there are other options, the two that it came down to were; Boot Camp and Parallels. Boot Camp is free with the Mac operating system 10.6 or later, but has the disadvantage of requiring a re-boot to switch between the Mac operating system and Windows. Parallels, on the other hand, allows you to run Mac and Windows programs side-by-side and does not require a re-boot as you switch between programs in the two operating systems. This option also has the advantage of allowing you to drag and drop files between programs running in either Windows or Mac.

Once the decision on how to proceed was done, I settled down to the actual work of implementing the integration. I purchased a copy of Parallels at the Apple Store but as it turned out I could just as well have downloaded it from the net.  When I ran the Parallels disk a pop-up suggested that a later version was available and did I want to download it. So I could have eliminated the trip to the Apple store and would have ended up in the same place. Installing Parallels on the Mac girl was a nonevent and once Parallels was installed I purchased the necessary copy of Windows through the Parallels system. Didn’t save any money but didn’t have to run the run around to acquire a copy of Windows. As an aside, early on in the process I found out was that it wasn’t going to be cheap. Parallels is $80 and Windows is another $200 bringing the out-of-pocket to almost $300 when you throw in a little sales-tax. However running Boot Camp is only $80 less as you still have to buy a copy of Windows. While Installing Parallels and Windows proceeded quite smooth it did take a little time to work out the nuances of working with the two operating systems running side-by-side on one machine.  Having said that, all in all the entire process was pretty uneventful.

So far I have installed the Windows versions of; Microsoft Office, Evernote, Google Chrome, Skype, Dragon Naturally Speaking (by the way I am dictating this blog using Dragon Naturally Speaking on the Mac),Quicken and two Microsoft Outlook add-ins. One of the add-ins allows me to send e-mails to groups but they are individually addressed (I wrote about Send Individually in an earlier post) and the other, gSynict, synchronizes contacts and calendar entries between Outlook and Gmail . To this point, the only two issues that have poped up are (1) with the keyboard in Microsoft Outlook and (2) getting the print function working from the Windows side. In Outlook, the delete key does not delete the highlighted e-mail message and shift delete does not permanently the email. I haven’t taken the time yet to research if there is a way to reconfigure the keyboard but even if there isn’t the workaround is not a big issue. Printing across the network from the Windows side is an issue of getting the port issues straightened out.

It is important to remember that even though we are on a Mac we are in fact running Windows and therefore need to protect against viruses and malware.  As luck would have it, I had one license left on my three-pack from Norton and installed Norton 360.  I am a Norton fan but there are may other options including; McAfee, Kaspersky, AVG and many others.  The important thing is that when you are running Windows on a Mac that you have something running to protect your files.

I suppose the question is what were the deciders between Boot Camp and Parallels? If one is only going to use a Windows program once in a while, Boot Camp is probably the way to go. This option has the advantage of saving the $80 cost for Parallels. However if, like me, you want the flexibility to move between programs in the two operating systems without having to reboot the computer, and be able to drag-and-drop files between the two operating systems, the additional $80 for Parallels is pretty easy to justify. Would I go out and buy a Mac so that I could run Windows on it – No.  However, faced with deciding between a MacBook Air and one of the new ultralight Windows computer, the MacBook Air was one of the easiest decisions that I have made. The Windows computers might catch up but for right now the MacBook Air in my opinion is the way to go even with the proviso that I was going to have to run Windows in addition to the Mac operating system.  This coming from someone that got his first PC the day the IBM PC came out in 1981 and has used a PC since.

The next project is to move data to the Cloud – probably iCloud. I want to be able to access the current version of all files from whatever machine I am using and not have to mess with making transfers, carrying USB drives or any of the other ways of keeping files current.

Check out the new Experts Exchange and win a free tee shirt at @ExpertsExchange

Do you sometimes send an email to a number of people but would like to have each of your recipients only see their name, and not have to use bcc?  Do you sometimes send an email to more recipients at one time than your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will allow and have to break the group up into multiple emails? Would you like to send sensitive emails out but not have to disclose the email addresses of all recipients?  Do you use the PC version of Microsoft Outlook?

If you answered yes to any of the first three questions and yes to the fourth there is a solution.  That solution is Send Individually by Sperry Software.  I have been using the product now for about one year and have been totally satisfied.  In addition to solving the above mentioned issues, there are other features that you might find helpful, such as being able to insert; first and last name, company name and it has a columns function. The product cost $49.95 but Sperry offers a 14 day free trial and can be found at http://www.sperrysoftware.com/Outlook/Send-Individually.asp?gclid=CPyCjrf-pKwCFQRShwod8VlA_A. So if you would like to have more control over how you send emails, you might want to give Send Individually a try.  By the way, Sperry has a number of other add-ins for Microsoft Outlook that you might find helpful and are detailed on their website.

Can You Spend 100% of Your Time Seeking A New Full Time Job While Keeping and Getting Paid By Your Current Full Time Job?  Sounds Ridiculous doesn’t it.  But that is just what politicians do all of the time. And this is not one party or the other, they all do it.  Think about the last presidential campaign – both McCain and Obama were sitting senators but spent virtually 100% of their time campaigning for the presidency.  Further good news, the loser got to keep his current high paying job. Depending on the cycle the candidates for either or both of the major parties, and in some cases for minor parties, who are sitting politicians will be running for president or senator or representative while holding another public office without resigning from their current post. Particularly with the presidency or a U. S. Senate seat the demands of seeking that office are such that the candidates have no option but to spend 100% – actually more time than most spend on a full-time job – of their time on the stump.

Just another example of the “exalted” class.  They get better health care, better pensions, regularly exempt themselves from many of the rules we have to abide by and actually think they deserve it. What ever happened to public service being something one did for a short period of time and then returned to private life?

In an earlier post I made the statement that banks and credit card companies do not absorb or pay for bad debt – that amount that is not paid by their borrowers and cardholders.  And that bad debt is actually paid for by us – those of us that pay our obligations. Now President Obama has increased another segment for us to handle in addition to the bad debt at banks and credit card companies.  The new student loan program that he announced reduces the minimum payment from 15% to10% of the student loan borrower’s discretionary income and the maximum amount of time the borrower must make those payments from 25 years to 20 years.  It does not take a mathematician to figure out that the unpaid balances on these student loans will go up, probably a lot. One guess as to who gets to absorb the rest.  If you guessed us, you and me, those that pay taxes, you win or maybe it is you lose.  Any way you look at it we lose.

I looked-up the definition of discretionary and this is how it is defined. Discretionary income is money you have after you’ve paid off all of your bills. Discretionary income is income after subtracting taxes and normal expenses (such as rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance, medical, transportation, property maintenance, child support, inflation, food and sundries, &c.) to maintain a certain standard of living. It is the amount of an individual’s income available for spending after the essentials (such as food, clothing, and shelter) have been taken care of. I suspect that in a lot of cases 10% of that amount might not be a large number.

Is college too expensive – no doubt.  But rather than letting those that incurred the debt off the hook, and placing the burden on the rest of us, maybe we should look at making higher education less expensive. While we have in place things like tenure and allowing professors to work ridiculously few hours per week there is little hope. Have you ever wondered why the cost of private colleges and universities is three, four and sometimes more times as expensive than the cost at public institutions?  I think that working on this end of the problem would be more productive that the one the President proposes. Let me have your thoughts on this issue.

Here is the third and probably final chapter in this series.  As before, the individual items are in no particular order.

The Alex Cross, I should say Dr. Alex Cross, series by James Patterson is one that is well worth reading.  Cross is a psychologist who becomes a Washington DC homicide police detective, moves on to the FBI and ultimately becomes a consultant to both.  Cross while reasonably well off continues to live in the Southeast DC area, one that is particularly crime ridden. Patterson surrounds him with a well developed cast of characters.  From his partner, John Sampson, through to Nana Mama, his grandmother, who raised him and on to the bad guys, particularly Gary Soneji, that he pursues, the collection makes for engrossing reading. By the way the newest book in the series, Kill Alex Cross, is due out next month but on Amazon you can download the first 27 chapters free.  I have and intend to start reading those chapters today. What do you think the odds are that after reading the first 27 chapters that I will not pay to download the rest of the book? Talk about an inventive marketing ploy! By the way, in addition to the Kindle, the Kindle reader is available for all computers and most smartphones at http://www.amazon.com.

The Camel Club series by David Baldacci takes a very different story line than we see in the Cross series by Patterson. Here we have Oliver Stone (an alias for John Carr a former assassin for the CIA), the man from nowhere, who hides out as a crypt keeper at a cemetery, and whose “Club”, an eclectic group, are political watch-dogs who are looking for conspiracies within the government. Besides Stone the Club includes, a computer genius, a blue-collar laborer, and a Library of Congress reference specialist.  In addition we sometimes see a con-artist, an FBI agent and a homeless person.  As I said an eclectic group. In one novel, along with the con-artist one Annabelle Conroy, they work to bilk millions of dollars from a crooked Atlantic City casion owner.  Fast moving and well written with solid character development.

Lescroart’s primary protagnanist is Dismas Hardy, a San Francisco defense attorney. Abe Glitske, a police lieutenant, and Wyatt Hunt, a private investigator, show up regularly in the Dismas Hardy series and Lescroart sometimes makes the two of them the primary character in other books.  Dismas, in case you didn’t catch it is the name of the good thief crucified with Christ. With Hardy as a criminal defense attorney and Glitske a police lieutenant who are good friends and whose families are together often, we sometimes see tension as the two do their jobs. Throughout the series Hardy, as you might imagine, finds an interesting and sometimes very conflicted clients.

Another attorney, Paul Mandriani is the central character  in books by Steve Martini.  If you haven’t guessed, I like legal mysteries. In my opinion the author, who is a lawyer, does a good job of keeping the courtroom and other legal issues true to life and does not fall in the trap that many of the TV legal shows do. The early books in the series are based in Sacramento California but Mandriani moves to San Diego following his wife’s death from cancer. The books in the series, and there are twelve of them, are courtroom and before court preparation focused but the later ones have more out-of-the-courtroom action.

Steve Berry’s character, Cotton Malone, takes us on a much different story line. Malone is a former Justice Department Agent who after retirement moved to Denmark and bought an antique bookstore from a Danish billionaire Henrik Thorvaldsen. Cassiopeia Vitt, Thorvaldsen’s beautiful assistant and an adventurer, figures in many of the books.  Berry takes Malone on a number of different adventures through his novels.  From attempting to determine what happened to his father, a submarine captain who was lost in the Arctic, to the Terra Cotta warriors in China and throughout Europe, Malone and a rotating cast of characters help to avoid catastrophes.  Always entertaining and engaging reads.

Another author that I just started reading is Kathy Reichs. Reichs, a forensic anthropologist, is the Producer of the Bones TV series and the title character, Temperance Brennan, is based on her work. While the story lines in the books follow the types of things one sees in the TV series, the main Character, Temperance Brennan, is different in many ways and there is no Seeley Booth. The books unlike the TV series are not based in the Washington DC area but move around from South Carolina to Canada, Hawaii and other locations. The locations are based on places Reichs has worked. More good news is that the story lines are based on situations that come from Reichs’ personal experience. I have totally enjoyed the four books that I have read so far and you might want to give this author a try.

If you haven’t read the Stieg Larrson trilogy do it. The three books; The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest should be read in that order to fully enjoy the series. The two main characters are Mikael Blomkvist; journalist, publisher and amateur sleuth and Lisbeth Salander who while antisocial is an extremely gifted hacker and researcher who possesses a photographic memory (Think Pippi Longstocking). Just writing about this series makes me want to reread them, something I rarely do.

Jeffrey Deaver has written a wide range of novels, some of them quite dark, but the books in the Lincoln Rhyme series are the ones I have enjoyed the most. Lincoln Rhyme, a brilliant criminologist and genius in the field of forensics, became a quadriplegic in an accident but continues to solve crimes from his New York Brownstone. Police Detective Amelia Sachs, a tall red head that loves fast muscle cars, serves as Rhyme’s eyes on crime scenes and later in the nine book series becomes his love interest. Extremely well developed characters and fascinating in how Rhyme uses sometimes almost insignificant clues, or the combination of clues, as the key to solving crimes.

In this series I have discussed seventeen authors who between them have written well over a hundred, maybe two hundred novels (I didn’t take the time to count them).There are many more that I have enjoyed; Nelson DeMille, Harlan Coban, James Lee Burke (I particularly liked his development of Dave Robicheaux, a conflicted sometimes alcoholic police detective in New Orleans), Greg Iles and too many more to detail here.

As you may have guessed I enjoy reading, given the choice between watching a movie or reading a book – the book wins every time. One of my joys is discovering new authors so if you have one that you think I might enjoy, please let me know. As a result of these posts one of my friends has already made that offer and I intend to take him up on the offer.

Thanks for taking the time to read these posts and I hope what you have read here will inspire you to try one of the featured authors.

Let me first confess that I am a dedicated e-book reader.  My only regret is that when I was traveling a lot that they were not available.  I can remember carrying more than one book, both usually hard-copy, when traveling or worse paying full bore retail for a book in the airport. Now when I do travel, which is not nearly as often, I take an e-reader – we will get to the choices in a minute – and can take as many books as I want or if need be purchase one on-line in about a minute and at a discounted price.

While one can read a book on any computer – Kindle and other e-book readers are available for computers – I do not find that very satisfying.  However, I have both a Kindle and my iPad and both are excellent e-readers.  The questions is how do I choose between the two?  Generally at home, with both units available, I use the Kindle.  What is interesting about this is that I do not recall making an actual decision to do that.  As I reflect on the issue it actually becomes quite obvious.  The Kindle is smaller, lighter and the screen is readable in any reasonable light.  On the other hand if I am reading away from home, even if it is at the doctors office while waiting for the doctor (anybody familiar with that?) I invariably use the iPad.  Again, I think the reason is quite obvious – the iPad is much more versatile being both an e-reader and a computer and I can find no reason to carry two devices.  This decision here was a much more conscious one than choosing the Kindle while reading at home.  The iPad has one more advantage, and impacts usage both at home and away, that is reading newspapers and magazines.  As more publications make full representations of their product available for the iPad this advantage increases.  To the point that in some cases I have cancelled the print version.  As an aside if you have an iPad you should take a look at Flipboard (It is available in the App Store).  It is an accumulation of news in various categories, from various sources, and is fully customize-able.

I suspect the question is would I have a Kindle if I had not owned one prior to acquiring the iPad and the answer is more than likely no.  While the Kindle is nice for straight book reading the advantage is not enough to cause me to purchase one if I already had the iPad.

Here is the second installment of Authors That You Might Want to Check Out.  Once again they are in no particular order.

John Sandford, a pseudonym for John Camp a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, writes about two different, but related characters, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers. Davenport is an independently wealthy former computer game developer that across the Prey series is Chief of Detectives with the Minneapolis MN police department and moves to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.  His charm is his willingness to cut a few corners in the process of solving crimes and his association with interesting characters, not the least of which is a Catholic nun.  Over the years Davenport fathers a child out of wedlock, has his life saved by a surgeon whom he marries, has two more children and adopts another. Virgil Flowers is a three-time divorced detective with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and reports to Davenport.  Flowers usually is working cases in out-state Minnesota and is more than a bit unconventional.  He does not like to carry his gun, usually trailers his fishing boat with him as he moves about the state and often ignores what Davenport says.  The last Flowers Book, Shock Wave, was just released and concerns the attempts to stop a “Big Box” store from coming to a small town and in addition to being a solid mystery, explores the issues when large retailers move into rural America.  Earlier Sandford wrote a short series of books featuring Kidd, an artist, computer wizard and professional criminal.  The books are fast paced and enjoyable, but as they were written a few years ago, the technology is out-of date.

A part native american former law enforcement officer, Cork O’Conner, is the protagnanist in the books by William Kent Krueger.  The books are set in northern Minnesota – on the Iron Range – and Krueger weaves O’Conner’s native american heritage, personal life, his time as a law enforcement office and out of that position throughout the series.  At least once in every novel O’Conner visits Henry Meloux, the Ojibwe medicine man and Cork’s spiritual adviser, and we are treated to a little Native American lore.  Krueger’s character development is superb as he deals with the sometimes tension between the Native American population and the non-native group and mixes very different personalities in each book.  I read his latest book, Northwest Angle, yesterday and once again Krueger did not disappoint.

Another prolific writer with an interesting mix of character that serve as the centerpieces of his books is Stuart Woods.  They range from Stone Barrington, an ex New York policeman turned lawer whose friend is Dino Bacchetti, a New York Police Lieutenant, on to Holly Baker and Ed Eagle .  Barrington pilots his own plane, drives a armored Mercedes, has terrible luck with women – his latest is killed a few days after they married – and Bacchetti’s ex father-in-law is reputed to have mob ties. And that’s just the beginning. With Holly Baker, a beautiful ex Major in the Army, small town police chief and on to an elite group within the FBI, we have her Doberman Pincer – Daisy – her father Ham, ex-military and a crack shot, that mix in with rotating cast of characters.  Native American Lawyer, Ed Eagle one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the country as you might expect repeatedly gets involved in cases where his client is not guilty. In each of these series, while not necessary to read the Barrington, Baker and Eagle books in the order they were written and published, there is carry-through which makes reading them in order a more satisfying experience.  An interesting aside, the author, Stuart Woods, is a pilot and the planes that Stone Barrington flies in the books parallel the planes that Woods actually owns or owned and flew.

Over the years I have read and completely enjoyed Michael Connolly’s books.  Rather than go through all of them I will talk here about the last three that I’ve read.  The lastest one, The Fifth Witness, features Mickey Haller, a defense lawyer’s defense of an accused killer.  Well written and I guarantee that you will not see the ending coming.  Prior to that I read The Reversal where Defense attorney Mickey Haller changes sides to prosecute the high-profile retrial of a child murderer, with LAPD Detective Bosch as lead investigator. Third I read Nine Dragons a somewhat dark novel where Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch is on a mission to rescue his daughter from the back-streets of Hong Kong.  Don’t get me wrong, while Nine Dragons is a little dark it is a great read. Haller and Bosch are recurring protagonists in Connolly’s novels but are not the only ones.  I think I have read everything Connolly has written and find his writing as good as it gets.  A new Harry Bosch novel, The Drop, is due out November 28th and I have it pre-ordered to my Kindle.

I would be remiss if I did not talk about Tony Hillerman.  Hillerman passed away in 2008 but left an amazing legacy of novels about two Navajo policemen, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.  The Leaphorn/Chee books, and there are 18 of them, are sited in the Four Corners area in Northern Arizona. In addition to the police work aspects of the books Hillerman explores Navajo heritage and beliefs. Particularlly with Chee, Hillerman explores the areas of Traditional Singers and other beliefs including the Sweat Lodge.  If you have not tried Hillerman you owe it yourself to give one a try.

That’s it for today.  There are others and there might be a Chapter 3 to this saga.