Reading here and there

I recently finished the The Genesis of Shannara prequels by Terry Brooks. Fun reads if you've slogged through the rest of the Terry Brooks universe. He included alot of flashbacks for character development that were tiresome at points. His style of splitting up the main characters into competing quests and then rotating through them round robin keeps the flow of the books exciting, though it becomes an expected aspect of his writing. I also just read through My Word is my Bond by Roger Moore. It was a fun book detailing the experiences of an English actor.
I'm planning on reading Westward Ho! a novel from 1855 by Charles Kingsley. Which isn't about manifest destiny, but rather about Spanish Conquistadors, English Privateers, etc. I also am looking to read through the short story the The Corsican Brothers by Alexandre Dumas.

smartphone

Melissa bought me a wonderful gift: an iPhone from craigslist. Needless to say, I am super-mega-excited to have a smartphone! Thanks love!

Anniversary

Melissa and I just celebrated our first anniversary of being married. I am so happy and blessed to be married to such a wonderful person. It has been an exciting year filled with adventures and growth. I've heard people say that their love for someone grows more and more each day; and I thought that was kind of a silly thing. But now I know it's true!

hettinger.cc changes to hettinger.us

I've noticed that performance at Dreamhost fell off the charts lately, so I've been looking around for a decent VPS provider. Some of the better ones looked like Slicehost, and VPS village, and Rapidxen. I eventually ended up going with RapidXen. The uptime looks way better already. Dreamhost was giving me whole days of subversion like webpages that had nothing to do with my websites.
Along with the different web host, I am changing the domain for the website. The old domain name should forward to the new one for a while.

Echo Rock Hot Spring

Melissa and I recently headed off to Owyhee reservoir in Oregon to visit Echo Rock Hot Springs. We went with some friends, Tony and Janat. We hiked the majority of the way, on the bottom of the nearly empty reservoir. A six mile round trip hike, the hot springs was worth the exercise. The pool was cement lined and had an intake and outlet valve. Pretty nice for being out in the middle of the Oregon wilderness.

Books and stuff 10-28-2008

I found some cheap Oxford World Classics and have added them to my reading list. The first was Melmoth the wanderer, by Charles Maturin and the second was Scenes of Clerical Life, by George Eliot. I've also checked out the first volume of the Genesis of Shannara trilogy from the library: Armageddon's Children. I see that the whole trilogy has already been released, so I won't have to wait for the books to be released. I saw some news that Shannara movies are in the works. I also am wanting to read The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard.

I've also finished the memoirs of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Very interesting reads; which were insightful into the relationship of the British Monarchy with the commonwealth governments. It was fun to read about the details of the short and turbulent reign of Edward VIII.

Our house has recently become the recipient of a water softener, which should hopefully fix our super-mega-hard water issues. As well, we also recently signed up for HD dish network and I am learning how to use a DVR.

Goldbug Hot Springs

I recently visited Goldbug Hot Springs near Salmon, Idaho. The hot spring lies high up on the hillside; a two mile hike uphill. Once you arrive, there are several pools ranging from 110° to 75°. There are several waterfalls and some of the pools are three to four feet deep with gravel bottoms. It was a fun trip, and a nice hot spring.