Nothing supersedes anything in my personal life like finding a good book.  Perhaps I should correct that; nothing supersedes anything in my personal life like Amber.

The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny; ten books, the master of plots and intrigue, vivid characters, and an engrossing storyline that doesn't let you go.  I first read the books some time in 1996 or '97--I forget the exact year.  I re-read the books last year because they are that good.  I judge everything by Zelazny's writing and story quality.  If you want to know what I prefer for reading material, look up Amber.

That being said, you can imagine I was more than a little delighted some months back when I heard some other author tried his hand at writing a novel or to of Amber.  Naturally, I was interested, but could not get any more details out of the person.  That faded into the background, lost in other matters--ConTrak, work, photography, and air hockey.

It was yesterday I went book shopping with my brother and found the third book this author, John Gregory Betancourt, created.  The search was on for the other two books, and concluded very quickly at the second book store I visited.  I am twenty pages away from finishing the first book, attention diverted to attending to my personal server until it finishes its task (so I can restart it).

What can I say?  Everything is on hold.  While the books are not as stellar as Zelazny's originals, they are nonetheless Amber canon.  ConTrak development will resume some time towards the end of this week, after I have finished all books (unless Betancourt's story goes stale, in which case I will alternate between development and reading).

Going a bit off topic here, I completed the first two "Convention Setup Wizard" screens in ConTrak and they pretty much look like I spec'ed them out.  Goody.  For my next post, expect me to mention some cool JavaScript animation I found on a web site supporting Ruby on Rails.  Though not quite a part of Rails, I can use the JavaScript to my own ends--ConTrak and work, namely, with the goal of learning how to do the Google/ig interface for a project at work.  I'm trying to figure out how (really, where) Google uses AJAX or JavaScript cookies to save changes users make to the page.  I suspect AJAX because Google touts that, once the page the way the user desires, as long as the user is logged into his or her Google account, the page will appear the way the user set it, no matter the computer.  In other news, I have to deal with recruiters once more.  Who knows what will become of that?