Category Archives: Random Ramblings

Random posts not falling under any particular category

My 11 Favorite Stranger Things

While my wife and I were waiting in the delivery room for our sixth child (yes, sixth) to be born, I was looking for some kind of distraction to pass the time until the little guy arrived. We had brought along our laptops and iPads just for this sort of situation. It seemed like this delivery was taking longer than we thought it would, and I was beginning to get anxious, so I turned to Netflix. I had finished most of the shows I had been watching, so I was looking for something new and good to watch. That’s when I turned to Stranger Things. I had heard people talk about it or read about it online, so I thought I would give it a try. After about five minutes I was hooked.

Continue reading →

Voltron: A Legend Reborn

Voltron was one of my favorite shows as a kid. There was just something about it that caught my attention and drew me in. I enjoyed most of the same things that most kids my age enjoyed, like He-Man or Ninja Turtles or ThunderCats, but somehow Voltron always felt like my special show. That sounds weird, so let me try to explain what I mean. Did you ever have something that you enjoyed as a family or with your siblings, that you just really loved, but it felt like no one else in the world knew anything about it? You find out years later that a lot of people actually loved it as well, but you just never knew those people existed. That was Voltron for me. I had friends and cousins who loved He-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe, ThunderCats, and Ninja Turtles, but I never really knew anyone else who liked Voltron. Part of this may have been because I was between two and three years old when it came out, so I didn’t really spend a lot of time hanging out with fellow geeks and talking about which Lion was our favorite.

Continue reading →

My 10 Favorite Books

My wife challenged me recently to come up with a list of my ten favorite books. This was a pretty big challenge. I don’t know that I could say that his list would be my definitive list, since I am continuing to read new books all the time, and meeting new favorites all the time. In other words, I feel like this might be my ten favorite books right now, but that could change in a month. As I put together my list, I thought about series, like Harry Potter or Wheel of Time. If I included all the books from those series, it would be impossible to keep it down to just ten. I decided I could only count one from any given series. I even tried to keep it to just one from each author (I also cheated on both of these rules). I also excluded any religious texts. Yes, I love the Book of Mormon, but I thought of this as more secular titles. So, all of that considered, here is my current, as of today, list of ten favorite books.

Continue reading →

Leaving Pendar Prologue

Some of you may not know this, but I enjoy writing. Not just on this blog or other blogs (totally available for guest posts for those that are interested), but I enjoy writing stories. Last November I did NaNoWriMo, and I made it to the 50,000 word count, enough to be a “winner.” Since then I have reworked that story a little bit, to the point that it is completely different. I thought it would be fun to publish a prologue to the story here. I have never shared my writing publicly like this,and honestly, I am terrified. That being said, I would love your feedback. I want to get better, and want to know if this story sounds at all interesting. Please let me know. The working title for the story is “Leaving Pendar,” but it might change somewhere along the way. In any case, here is the prologue. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Continue reading →

50 Good Books: Red Rising

Dystopian future books seem to be all the rage lately in YA fiction. Whether it’s Hunger Games or Maze Runner or the Divergent series, it seems like these books are a dime a dozen. When I first heard about Red Rising by Pierce Brown, I wasn’t all that interested. It seemed like it was probably going to be the same old story, and I fell like I am much more of an optimist, so I don’t always like these bleak future type books. I get their appeal. I understand why people like them, they just aren’t typically my cup of tea. Plus, I am still getting over the third book in the Hunger Games series. I still feel ripped off. As I read more about Red Rising, though, I found myself becoming more and more interested. I found myself wanting to read it. Let me tell you why.

Continue reading →

Where’s DC?

Like a lot of Americans, I sat down this last Sunday and watched the Super Bowl. Like a lot of Americans, I enjoyed a lot of the trailers we saw during the commercial breaks for the game. There was a trailer for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, featuring some great looks at Bee-Bop and Rocksteady and the Krang. There was a great Jason Bourne trailer, featuring Matt Damon’s return to the series. There was a Deadpool trailer featuring more reasons why I will not be seeing the film. And, of course, there was a Civil War trailer with more hero vs. hero goodness. There was even a Jungle Book trailer that looked pretty decent.  All of these were prominent, geek related titles that are coming out later this year. All of them made some part of the geek population somewhat excited.

Continue reading →

50 Good Books: Star Wars: Lords of the Sith

I am one that normally does not like the villains. I am not usually one that can cheer for the villains or see one of them as the main protagonist of the story. For that reason alone, I was unsure about wanting to read Star Wars: Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp. I didn’t want to spend my time trying to get into a story where Darth Vader was the main protagonist. It just didn’t interest me. The more I thought about it, though, the more I was intrigued and found myself curious to learn more about Darth Vader.

Continue reading →

50 Good Books: The Shadow Rising (Wheel of Time, Book 4)

One thing that seems to be becoming more and more unpopular is reading. I was at a get together a while back. My wife and I were sitting at one table with my brother and his wife. The four of us are pretty avid readers (although I am not as much as I would like to be), and we overheard another table talking about how they hate reading. They laughed about how they would much rather just wait for the movie to come out, and if they don’t make a movie about a book, then the book probably wasn’t that great. The four of us just looked at each other with wide eyes. We all felt pretty strongly that the other table simply had it wrong.

Continue reading →

Jake’s List of 10 Movies for 2016

2016 is here, and that means we have a whole new year’s worth of movies to look forward to. 2015 was all about The Force Awakens. What will be the big hit for 2016? So far it looks like Captain America: Civil War may be the king of the year, but it has plenty of competition. This is my list of 10 movies I am looking forward to in the upcoming year. It’s not a comprehensive list, because there are a ton of really cool movies coming out this year. My list may not be the same as yours, but these are the 10 movies I am looking forward to. They are listed in order of when they are coming out.

Continue reading →

So, Who are the Heroes, Anyway?

Hello. It’s me…I was wondering if after all these years, you’d like to meet…Sorry, it feels like it has been a lot of years since I was here on my blog writing regularly. I have been focused on NaNoWriMo for this past month, so most of my writing energy has been spent there. That’s over, at least for now. I will have to go back to what I’ve written and make it a lot less, well, not good. The nice thing, though, is that I won’t be under some crazy time crunch, like I was this whole month. In any case, I am back, and hopefully better than ever. Some of you may be thinking that won’t be too hard. To that, I say thank you. I like low expectations because they are easier to meet.

Continue reading →