Last week, I gave my 2007 MacBook Pro laptop a makeover before upgrading to Leopard, aka OS X 10.5.

A couple of months ago, I bought 4GB RAM for less than $100, to replace the 2GB that it came with.

I wanted to upgrade the drive too, as I repeatedly came close to filling the original 160GB drive. It was no problem to get a 5400 RPM drive that had more than 300GB, but the 7200 RPM notebook drives were topping out at 200GB. Two weeks, I spotted a Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200 RPM SATA drive on NewEgg for $180. Sold!

I installed it the night it arrived, and it was quite …continue.

The Old Races—­gar­goyles, dragons, vampires, and more—are still around, though few ordinary humans are aware of them, since they can all assume human form.

Margrit Knight, a feisty Legal Aid lawyer in New York City, defends Alban, a gargoyle falsely accused of murdering women in Central Park. She finds herself drawn into murky struggles between different factions and she becomes in­creas­ing­ly attracted to the statuesque Alban, who has long been in self-imposed exile.

Gargoyles are a novel twist in the in­creas­ing­ly popular urban fantasy genre. En­ter­tain­ing and fast-paced.

Three very different young men graduate from the Los Angeles Police Academy in 1960. Wambaugh’s classic first novel follows them for five years until they meet again under fire in the Watts Riots.

In a series of vignettes, Wambaugh shows how they become hardened and cynical on the streets. Some will absorb the racist attitudes of their fellow officers. All will see horrifying things as they serve as patrol officers, vice cops, or juvenile officers.

Grim but en­thralling.

Timothy Cranmer is a former spy handler, put out to pasture at the end of the Cold War. Larry Pettifer, left-wing academic and Byronic espouser of lost causes, was not only Cranmer’s best double agent but a friend and rival since childhood.

Now Larry has gone missing, as has 37 million pounds and Cranmer’s young mistress, Emma. Cranmer is thought to be an accomplice. Cranmer must find Larry. The trail will take him deep in the Caucasus.

The book moves slowly through the first half, until Cranmer finally decides to take action and leads British …continue.

Molly Murphy, an early twentieth-century private detective, returns from New York to her native Ireland, in order to track down her client’s long-lost sister. Along the way, she encounters a dead body in her cabin, rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in Dublin, and (briefly) James Joyce.

Molly is engaging and quick-witted, with a contrarian streak that gets her into trouble. Bowen evokes the early 20th century from bustling New York to the social strat­i­fi­ca­tions of a liner, to British-occupied Dublin.

The book is marred by some elementary ge­o­graph­i­cal errors: the River Liffey, not Liffy; Dublin is …continue.

Judge is the sixth and final book in the Wess’har Series, and the sequel to Ally.

For the first time, focus shifts to 25th-century Earth, as the eco­log­i­cal­ly radical Eqbas arrive to clean up the mess. Once again, the central themes are ethics and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ism, and the moral quandaries posed by the existence of c’naatat, a parasite that confers im­mor­tal­i­ty upon its host. The series draws to a close, resolving the fates of the central characters: the ruthlessly principled former cop, Shan Frankland; her two husbands, the gentle marine, Ade Bennett, and the alien war …continue.

Two scientists are re­search­ing Near-Death Ex­pe­ri­ences, to learn what causes them and what happens during them. This is partly a detective story, partly a story about doing science. The two main characters are likeable and there’s a memorable cast of supporting characters: the garrulous WWII veteran; the ma­nip­u­la­tive but charming nine-year-old girl; the horrible psychic fraud; the hardboiled ER nurse; the former English teacher with Alzheimer’s; and his caretaker niece.

En­ter­tain­ing, but too long.

Bloomsday is around the corner. As ever, we at the Wild Geese Players of Seattle are staging a reading from James Joyce’s Ulysses, at the Elliott Bay Bookstore, 101 S. Main St, on Sat 14th June 2008 at 4:30pm.

In the Oxen of the Sun, Leopold Bloom visits the Holles Street Maternity Hospital and falls in with Stephen Dedalus and a crowd of drunken medical students, in a chapter that not only re­ca­pit­u­lates the forty weeks of pregnancy, it also con­sti­tutes a tour through the de­vel­op­ment of the English language.

I play Stephen Dedalus, the second most important character of the book. In this chapter, it is neither a large nor a small role.

Behind the scenes, I …continue.

Mercy Thompson, coyote shape shifter, mechanic, and heroine of Blood Bound and Moon Called, is asked to in­ves­ti­gate the murder of some fae. The fae (faery) are creatures from the old tales, barely as­sim­i­lat­ed into modern society, and far more dangerous than Disney tales suggest. One of their own, Mercy’s mentor, is falsely accused of the murder. Most of the fae would rather see him go down so that the whole thing will blow over quickly. Mercy is determined to get him off, and that doesn’t sit well with the fae. Not to …continue.

Two separate police in­ves­ti­ga­tions take place in Portsmouth at the same time. DI Joe Faraday is called over to the Isle of Wight to in­ves­ti­gate the headless body found washed up at the base of a cliff. Suspicion falls on an ex-soldier who runs a nursing home, a man with a dangerous reputation.

DC Paul Winter becomes involved with a callgirl who has ties to a prominent busi­ness­man, who won’t take no for an answer. Winter’s poor judgement may be due to the crippling headaches he’s developed of late.

Hurley has …continue.