Gray Wolf Blog

Lucas hits the fashion scene and tries to manage three women vying for his attention. Mike Hammer never had it so good.

Easy Prey

Interesting case studies from ten different companies ranging from the Grateful Dead to EMC. Some decent food for thought. Boston Beer story was illuminating. I never knew Sam Adams was made in contract batches at other breweries.

Radical Marketing: From Harvard to Harley, Lessons from Ten That Broke the Rules and Made It Big

This is a useful function for downloading files. I use it a lot when downloading files from protected directories.

1. Public Shared Function DownloadFile( _
2. ByVal Server As HttpServerUtility, _
3. ByVal Response As HttpResponse, _
4. ByVal strFileName As String) As Boolean
5.  
6. Const adTypeBinary = 1
7. Dim strSql As String
8. Dim strFilePath, strFileSize, strDownloadFileName, strFileType As String
9. Dim objFileInfo As FileInfo
10.  
11. Download this code: Download.txt

RegEx can be a bit complex, but it sure can do a lot with just a few params. This function will strip all html tags in a string and return the enclosed data. | is the default delimiter.

1. Public Shared Function RemoveHTMLTags( _
2. ByVal strText As String, _
3. Optional ByVal strDelimiter As String = "|") _
4. As String
5.  
6. Return Regex.Replace(strText, "<(.|\n)+?>", strDelimiter)
7. End Function
8.  
9. strData = RemoveHTMLTags("<td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td>")
10.  
11. strData equals "1|2|3"
12. Download this code: RemoveHTMLTags.txt

Lucas keeps on going. Sandford manages to give glimpses of Davenport’s more human side without making that the focus of the book. There is something to Sandford’s cadence and pace that makes these books hard to put down (IMHO).

Sudden Prey

Secret Prey (Prey Series)

Sandford doesn’t hold back and this book can make you flinch at times. Looking forward to reading all I can get my hands on. This guy can write.

Mind Prey

One of the most difficult things about Holocaust literature is that the experiences are so brutal as to convey a sense of disbelief. Oswald Rufeisen was a Jewish boy who was able to pass as a Christian and to survive through a combination of luck and smarts. Because he could speak fluent German, he ended up working as an interpreter for the German police and the Belorussian collaborators in 1942 in the city of Mir.

He used his position to help notify nearby villages that they were targeted for liquidation. When he helped orchestrate the escape of over 300 people from the Mir ghetto, his cover was blown. He managed to escape and ended up hiding in the monastery that was right next to the police station. He was then forced to flee into the forests where he was almost executed by the partisans, until people he saved came forward to vouch for him.

By this time he had converted to Christianity. After the war, he became a monk, moved to Haifa and met with the pope. Really interesting discussions on how his conversion was received by others in his family and on his thoughts regarding the evolution of Christianity and its alignment with the Roman Empire.

In the Lion’s Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen

Detailed account of OSS activities directed towards infiltrating agents into Germany. Efforts had mixed results. Greatest success appeared to come from one German civilian who had access to secret documents and provided them to the OSS. Interesting discussion on the counterfeiting and forging process as well as the plane based radio communication with agents on the ground.

Piercing the Reich: The penetration of Nazi Germany by American secret agents during World War II

I found the “No Comments” link on my WordPress site to be a bit annoying. Disabling comments is easy enough under Options / Discussion, but I wanted to remove the actual links from the page.

This proved pretty easy. You just need to edit comments.php and index .php and comment out the following line:

comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »');


Third in the Davenport series. A few surprises, not all of them pleasant. Updated intro by author which sheds some light on his writing habits. Some of the drug descriptions go a little overboard, but I didn’t find myself skimming.

Eyes of Prey

Pulled this off the library bookshelf and the first couple pages hooked me. Deviates from standard cop/murder genre by opening with the murder from the omniscient narrator’s perspective. Sandford doesn’t seem to get hung up on his success and need to prove just how clever he is. Looking forward to reading the entire Davenport series.

Certain Prey

Very well written and researched. Reads like a Greek tragedy. Provides clear and concise detail on how the war in Laos evolved from a handful of CIA operatives into massive air bombardment and chaos. Highlights the lack of willingness of the various military departments to coordinate operations.

Back Fire

The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer-they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

Cannell definitely has a way with words. The books move at a fast pace. Great for some recreational reading or helping you switch to another track in the evening. A guilty pleasure like having another handful of potato chips.

Hollywood Tough (Shane Scully Novels)

Vertical Coffin: A Shane Scully Novel (Shane Scully Novels)

I enjoyed the first half of this book which deals with the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse. The remainder was a bit disjointed, as was the campaign itself. A lot of digression to provide the history behind the different leaders. Decent maps.

Lee’s last campaign;: The story of Lee and his men against Grant–1864

Very well written. Provides insight into the characters and a lot of the story lines, especially when there were odd things going on with Schultz.

Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography

I’ve read four of the Joe Pickett novels. Usually breaks down to three sections: Joe and his search for the killer, Joe and his family and Joe and the bureaucrats. I wouldn’t call the writing gripping, but it isn’t offensive. Easy to skim the parts you are not interested in. Good for a night when you just rather stay home.

Winterkill (Joe Pickett Novels)

A series of presentations from the Gettysburg conference for Lincoln’s 175th birthday. Many topics and contributors. A bit too academic in places.

The Historian’s Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History

A disappointing sophomore effort. Overall premise is weak with Reacher getting caught up in a kidnap of an FBI agent. Half the book deals with the FBI investigation effort to find the missing agent. Boring! On the plus side, it allowed for easy skimming.

I really was hoping that Lee Child would be different from the other “best seller” formulas of wowing the reader with an inundation of technical detail on weapons systems and “secret” practices. No luck. Last book I read by this author.

Die Trying

Money isn’t a sure bet, but it’s the closest to God that I’ve ever seen in the world.

Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins Mysteries)