Country: 205.251.139.10, North America, US

City: -95.4172 Texas, United States

I confess: I am a first-contact junkie. I will read just about any novel that gets the science reasonably right and provides me with a vicarious experience of what it might be like to meet an alien species. I'm happy to report that this book, although flawed, delivers that experience. The writing could be greatly improved by a study of the basics (example: using a strong verb is always better than throwing an adverb at a weak one), but good writing is, sadly, a rarity in current science fiction, and this book is at least above average for the genre. And the science is pretty solid, with reasonable extrapolations of how what we know today might evolve in the future. In terms of the story line, the book is at its best when it sticks to its main theme, which is how to make contact with the alien entity and secure its cooperation in solving an epic problem. I wasn't crazy about the some of the prolonged shoot-em-up scenes, and the sex scenes and fantasizing seemed pretty gratuitous. I had the uncomfortable feeling that the author was following one of those how-to-write-a-best-seller formulas, throwing in a little sex and violence to "spice up" the story. I think the story was just fine without adding anything extra.

I have been a Quicken user for close to 15 years now, and this is by far the worse update that has been produced. Not because of the features, they're very similar to the 2013 version, but because of the instability of the program, the problems with synching, and the inability of Intuit to correct them. So far I have spent over 10 hours on the telephone with their technical support who have no clue as to why I am having problems either synching with the bank (currently the desktop downloads the transactions no problem, but when it tries to synch them to the mobile app, it tells me that it either can't connect to the bank or it crashes Quicken and it has to be restarted.) The program also just seems to shut down at any given point without you actually having to do anything. For example, earlier to day, I went to go to get a drink, everything was fine when I left, when I got back, the screen told me that "Quicken had encountered a serious problem and needed to close." It wanted to send a report, which I did, unfortunately, that is the 4th report in 2 days that I have had to send that way. That doesn't include the 4 or 5 other times that it just closed unexpectedly with no notice or error message.

Have been using this anti virus software on all my computers for several years now, & you can either use default settings or customize it to suit you. Have never had a virus since I've been using it.

After had to drop out if the army because of a lesion I had the opinion that my life was projecting itself to be boring, because for me the army was my life, now I have found myself into the Photography world and I thank specially to this digital video recorder because it has given me the best pictures I have ever taken. From all the Cameras I own now this is the one I use the most because the resolution is awesome, is lighter than other cameras so I don’t feel pain on the wrist, which was quite affected in the incident, and Video speed recording helps me with the HD Videos I like to take. Every single color looks brighter on its screen. I guess buying at that bazar where I got it was a great idea.

I really enjoy hearing all of the nominees for the year. I even pur5chased it for gifts because it suits a lot of musical tastes. It is better than buying a lot of individual CD's when just the prime song is the gal.