One of my favorite types of books is sci-fi/fantasy, especially if the book is by a Christian author. I have read a few of Sigmund Brouwer’s other novels, but this was the first that was classified as Young Adult fiction. I decided to try it since the premise of the book is in Medieval times and I generally like stories in that era.

The Orphan King is the story of a young man named Thomas, raised behind the walls of a monastery by Sarah, his mother. Sarah died when Thomas was young but she had been preparing him for the future. Now an orphan behind the walls of the monastery, Thomas prepares to leave to fulfill his destiny that his mother prepared him for. After helping a former knight, a child pickpocket and a silent woman from being hanged, he has to put his trust in them to accomplish his task: conquering Magnus, the kingdom that was taken from his parents.

Along the way Thomas has to put his trust in the 3 people that he helped rescue from death by hanging. He makes some mistakes along the way but uses those as lessons that prepare him for the upcoming battle. He also struggles with an internal battle: believing in God. He questions how he can believe in a God that has caused him so much pain in his life. Only after meeting a young woman so scarred that she has to wear bandages over her face that he begins to see God differently. God uses this scarred woman to show him that he is part of a greater plan that only God knows.

I don’t want to say more as I do not want to give the entire story away. Overall I really enjoyed this story. It had all the elements of a great saga. After all this is only Book One in a series called Merlin’s Immortals. I look forward to reading the next book.

I found this book on Netgalley and the description intrigued me. I had never heard of the author or the publisher but that did not stop me from giving it a shot. I was not disappointed.

14 is a story about a group of tenants that live in an old apartment building in Los Angeles. The story centers around a young man named Nate. He was looking for a place to live when this apartment building was mentioned to him. Low rent that included all utilities! For some one with a dead end job that does not pay well this was a great opportunity.

After Nate moves in, he discovers some interesting and weird things about the apartment building. Rooms padlocked and painted shut. Every room that was not locked or chained was completely different, not designed as most apartment buildings would be. Nate discovers that most of his neighbors have noticed as well.

They team up to unravel the mystery of the building only to discover a deep, dark secret that not only affect their own lives but could affect the entire world!

This was one of those books that I did not want to put down. Hidden rooms, mysterious padlocked and chained doors, the thrill of discovering the unknown. All of it kept me intrigued all the way to the end of the book.

This is the first non Christian novel I have reviewed so I will caution my blog readers that there is some profanity in the book as well as a few sexual encounters, though they were not very graphic.

Bottom line on this book: if you enjoy a mystery with the unknown and a Sci-Fi twist, this book is for you!

Countdown to Cowboys Classic

I wanted to make some changes to my web site.  I installed a new theme which I am sure you can see.  I also defaulted my home page to only be posts that relate to my passion for virtualization and Information Technology.  All the book reviews that I post will only show up under the Book Reviews section.  All the posts I deem as personal will be under the Personal Blog section.

The main reason for the re-org is because I really want to expand my presence in the IT community so I want that material to be up front when you come to my page.  I am hoping to do some blog posts for products and vendors at VMworld this year.  I also plan to blog on SRM 5.x and how to setup VM Replication as that is an upcoming project on my plate anyway.  Helping the IT community is very important to me as I get a ton of help from all of my fellow IT bloggers and Twitterers.  Returning the favor is the best thing I know to do.

Enjoy your day/evening!

This is my first review of a non-fiction book and I believe I chose correctly!  This story truly shows how faith in God works!  This book is 2 stories that meld into one!  One of the stories is about the author of the book, Joe Kissack.  He was a successful Hollywood producer with such successful shows as Married… with Children, Mad About You, Walker Texas Ranger and Seinfeld.  By today’s standards, he had everything, but he was missing something in his life.  He filled that hole in his life with work, drugs and alcohol.  Intertwined in his story is the 2nd story of the book.  It is the story of 3 fishermen from Mexico.  They set out on a fishing trip only to be stranded at sea after a huge storm destroyed their fishing gear and motor.  They were at the mercy of the ocean currents.  Only a few things were not lost to the sea an done of those things was a Bible.  They were lost at sea for over nine months.  They beat starvation, storms and death by relying on their faith that God would get them through.

Have you figured it out yet?  These 2 stories fit together like a puzzle.  Joe finally figures out that God is what was missing in his life.  Once he finally got to the rock bottom God was there and Joe accepted Him into his life.  All his struggles with addiction are essentially the same as the physical struggles that these fisherman went through.  But that is not where this story ends.  Once Joe hears of the story of these fishermen, he feels God prompting him to go and interview these men and tell the truth about what really happened to them while they wee lost at sea.

This book showed me how all of us can be lost in life, spiritually or physically, and that all we have to do is surrender it all to God and He will find us and get us back on track!

FirestormLisa Tawn Bergren; WaterBrook Press 2001WorldCat•Read Online•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder 

First off, I normally do not read Christian romance novels so I was not sure how I would like this book. Also, with this being Book 6 in a series, I was worried that not reading the other 5 would hurt the reading experience. Needless to say, this book surprised me as I really enjoyed it.

Firestorm is about a smoke jumper named Reyne Oldre. If you are not sure what a smoke jumper is, it is a firefighter that parachutes into a remote area to fight wildfires. Reyne was a leader of a smoke jumper team that got caught in a wildfire and they had to ride it out under their fire tents. Some of her crew perished in the fire. 2 years after this incident, Reyne has moved into a job that keeps her out of the fires but still keeps her involved by coordinating teams that are fighting the fires. Reyne always has that incident in the back of her mind and the fear from it has been holding her hostage. A smoke jumper named Logan McCabe arrives on the scene and he is determined to make Reyne fall in love with him. Reyne has a hard time making relationships with men, or so I learned from reading the book (not reading the other 5 books may have hampered learning why). But Reyne, a firm believer in God, does not know is that Logan is a believer as well. As Logan begins to win her heart, she is hesitant to fully commit because the fire incident from 2 years ago has her scared for Logan’s life. She is scared to fall in love with a smoke jumper that may lose his life just like some of her team did.

Reyne has to learn to give all of that fear up to God to be able to fully give her love to Logan, which she is finally able to do by the end of the book.

What I take away from this book is to give everything we have to God and allow Him to heal you and soothe your pain. All of us have tons of things to deal with in this life here on Earth. If we allow those things to eat away at our souls, we will be miserable. Only by giving it up to our Heavenly Father can we make it through the fires unscathed.

This past week I was at EMC World in Las Vegas.  Every time this conference and VMworld come around, I know it is going to be EPIC!  EMC World did not disappoint.  EMC released a TON of product updates and releases.  There were TONS of sessions to learn stuff.  The bloggers lounge was awesome, as always.  The Solutions Exchange was HUGE with tons of products and solutions to gain info on.  So where was my focus?  As usual, my focus was on making connections and meeting people.  I LOVE social media so I made sure to meet those that I had not already met on Twitter.  I did the usual hanging with Luigi Danakos (@Nerdblurt), Matthew Brender (@mjbrender), Sean Thulin (@sthulin) and Henri Hämäläinen (@henriwithani).  I met some new people such as Liz O’Neal (@LizONeal), Mark Browne (@MabroIRL), Nuzhat M. Karim (@NuzhatMK), Ian Anderson (@ionthegeek), Julia Mak (@Juliamak) and Scott Boss (@the_sboss).  I cannot leave out Damian Karlson (@sixfoo0tdad) and Melissa Karlson (@melissakarlson) as they are just 2 great people!  Thanks for letting me hang with you on my last day in Vegas, Melissa!  Meeting people and sharing stories is what I always love about conferences such as EMC World.  Thank you to EVERYONE that I mentioned as I consider you all my friends.  Even though most of us are far apart (except Henri and Scott who live in the ATL) we will always remain connected and will continue to chat via Twitter and Facebook.  I hope to see most of you at VMworld this year in San Fran!

So how has this week back on East Coast time been?  I definitely struggled for a few days getting adjusted back to my time zone but overall is has been well.  My weight is back down to 257 and I really need to push through to get to 250, my first goal weight!  I hope to get there VERY soon.  Not hitting the gym for a week has killed me but I will def get back in the groove this week.  You will see more post from me soon.  I joined a site called Blogging for Books which is a Christian site that will send you free Christian books in return for a book review.  So expect some book reviews very soon!   I also plan to blog of my upgrade of vSphere 4.1 to 5.0, ESXi 4.1 to 5.0 and View 4.1 to 5.1.  That should be CRAZY FUN!  :-)

I am not referring to the community in which I live it, though it is a great thing to help! I am referring to the community of all my techie friends such as the VMware community, bloggers, etc. I realize that I have been reading things in the community but not contributing back. I hope to start changing that. It may not result in more blog posts here, but it will involve responding to help in forums, being more proactive in my local VMUG, all those things that are important to helping the community grow. I have met so many people via Twitter that have helped me over the years and I need to give back. With that said, I hope to see you out there and I hope that any advice or help I can give is helpful. I will see some of you at EMC World in late May! Until then, keep blogging, posting and being an advocate for all of us!