Author: Jeff Miles

Jeff is a husband, father and computer programmer who loves to read, work out, watch movies, and spend time with his family.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in this blog are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. For book reviews, in some cases I have received a free copy of the book so that I can read it and post a review on my website. The advertisements on this site are affiliate links which means if you click on the ad and purchase the item, I will receive a commission from that sale. I am disclosing this information in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Reviews

Book Review: Behemoth by Jonathan C. Leicht

behemothI wouldn’t say that I am necessarily a believer in young earth theory, there are certain aspects that make sense to me. As you obviously know, I am a believer and definitely a creationist so when I saw this book available I thought it might be a really good read. Before I get into the rest of the review, I want to point out that the author makes it very clear in what he is writing what his beliefs are and he definitely attacks the scientific community and their narrow minded views in this book so be warned if you are prone to get offended by this, this is not the book for you. That being said, I thought this was an extremely well written book

and would recommend it to any fiction fan. The author has definitely done his research and presents a very compelling story about the search for the lost Behemoth. The story follows two characters and their search

for what they believe are real live dinosaurs that are living in Africa and have remained hidden for centuries, one is Jim Thompson who runs the Masai Mara Game preserve in Kenya who starts his investigation when several of his elephants are gored to death. The second is Professor Stephen Gregory who after making known that he believes dinosaurs could still exist is relieved of his research position and given the opportunity to prove his theories are true.

As I said, I thought the book was a good read, even if it was a bit preachy at times. If you are looking for a little brain fodder on the creation/evolution debate you should definitely pick up Behemoth.

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Non-Fiction

Book Review: The Coming Revolution – Dr. Richard G. Lee

Given the current political climate in our country, especially at the begining of an election year, I thought it would be prudent to start sharpening my political focus, so I picked up The Coming Revolution: Signs from America’s Past that Signal Our Nation’s Future as my next book to review and make my readers aware of.

Lee has a very Republican/Conservative/anti-Obama viewpoint, so to many of my liberal friends he will be very hard to swallow. However, my conservative/Tea Party friends will find a lot of common ground with him.

One of the things I greatly appreciated about this book was how much historical perspective on our country was given. As we move

into the election season, I think this is a must read for conservatives who are not happy with the way our country is heading because I think he gives a lot of advice from history as to how to get where we need to be. One thing he makes extremely clear is that the founding fathers assumed the country woukd be run by men and women of faith, they knew that a republic/democracy would not survive if there were not men and women of faith to run it…human nature is just too selfish. Overall, I would definitely recommend The Coming Revolution to anyone who is not

happy with the current political environment or anyone who wants to read about how the faith of the nation’s founders affected how they structured our country.

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Books Fiction Fun Reviews

Book Review: Heart of Ice – A Triple Threat Novel by Liz Wiehl & April Henry

_225_350_Book.555.coverIn this book the Triple Threat club of Allison, Nic, & Cassidy are on the case of a very cunning killer with absolutely no moral conviction whatsoever.

Crime dramas like Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, NCIS, & CSI are some of my favorite types of TV shows so when it came time to pick another book to review Heart of Ice

was very appealing. I liked the idea of three friends who were in 3 different fields related to crime solving all working together to help solve a crime, Allison is a Federal Prosecutor, Nic is an FBI agent, & Cassidy is a crime reporter for a local TV station. I thought the authors did an excellent job laying out who the characters were and what their motivations were. The story wove together really nicely as well. I hope I can go back and read the two previous novels by these two authors because they were a great pair on this novel.

I also took a new approach for this book in that it is the first book I have ever read completely digitally. I read the book entirely on my phone using the Amazon Kindle app. I am happy to say that I really liked it, for my ongoing book reviews for Thomas Nelson, I will continue to download them to my phone (or if I get a tablet in the future, my tablet).

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Non-Fiction

Book Review: The Christian Zombie Killers Handbook – Slaying the Living Dead Within – Jeff Kinley

christian zombie killers handbookWhen I decided to read The Christian Zombie Killers Handbook by Jeff Kinley I didn’t know what I was getting into. The author takes an interesting path on how he wrote the book. This book is both fiction and non-fiction.

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The author first writes a chapter that tells a story of the life after the zombie apocalypse has begun, then follows it up with a chapter explaining how the chapter before relates to our Christian walk. While reading the book, I felt like it was too disjointed but after reflecting on the experience I realize that the author has a great talent tying together a story that he has made up with the ultimate story into a cohesive unit.  I actually finished this book quite a while ago, but have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what review to write. After considering, I have to say that the author has written a pretty good book. Like I said, it seemed disjointed at the time, but after reflecting, I realized how good of a book it really was. If you are into zombie fiction at all or how it can relate to your Christian walk, you should definitely pick up this book.

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Family

Extreme Makeover Caleb’s Room Edition

When we first moved into our house, we thought we hit the jackpot because in the room that became Carrie’s room the walls were yellow and there were beautiful murals of flowers and butterflies so she was set. Caleb’s room however was a chocolate brown color and we knew he didn’t like it, but we didn’t realize how bad he didn’t like it until he was showing someone around our house and told them about how he REALLY wanted a race car room. Now it was on…we decided that when his grandparents came up for Christmas that we would send Caleb and his sister to their Uncle Michael’s house where

 

Mama would watch them while we completely redid his room. So yesterday, at 8:30 we took the kids over to Michael’s house and then we got to work. We had pre-ordered all of the product we needed so we were ready to go. Uncle Michael came over and helped move furniture and paint and we got everything done except putting the room back together by 11:00 that night (we had to allow some time for paint to dry), then we got up and touched up the border and put the room back together in time for us to take a shower and pick Caleb and his sister up by 9:15 so that we could bring him back to unveil everything. Check out the video below for progress photos and the unveiling…

http://youtu.be/LSBEIkwYWOU
Categories
P90X

P90X Results – Round 1 – Started July 27, 2011

I finished a round of P90X…

For those of you who don’t know me well, let me explain why that is such a profound statement. It isn’t that I don’t like working out, it isn’t that I don’t like P90X, I love working out and I love P90X. What it means is that Mandy and I have been able to make enough changes in our lives that have allowed me to take the time to complete P90X.  I recently (June, 2011) started working at ConocoPhillips in their Bartlesville shared services location. Previously, I had owned my own company Two Miles Solutions, LLC and we lived in Madison, WI. While I still own my own company (I still do custom WordPress plugin and theme development, we have our first commercial theme releasing soon) I am no longer working 12 – 16 hour days like I was before. Previously when I had tried to start a round of P90X (I made 3 attempts prior to this) I would get about 30 days into it and then work deadlines would loom and I would have to stop because when it came to a decision of workout or sleep after/before working 12-16 hour days, sleep always won (as it probably should).  Anyway, that is all behind us and I have been able to focus on my health which is something that I have set out to do for this entire year.

First the numbers:

Note, that I had to take Day 93 measurements and pictures because we were travelling and the original pictures

didn’t turn out (too dark, taken in a basement)

Weight Weight from Fat Waist Bicep Thigh
Day 1 334.4 136.4 50.0 15.75 25.75
Day 93 317.6 110.5 46.0 16.00 26.5
Difference – 16.8 – 25.9 – 4.0 + 0.25 + 0.75

Now for where the money is, here are my pictures…

P90X - Back Pictures Day 0 - Day 93

P90X - Back Flexed Pictures - Day 0 - Day 93

P90X - Front Pictures - Day 0 - Day 93

P90X - Front Flexed Pictures - Day 0 - Day 93

P90X - Side Pictures - Day 0 - Day 93

And here is one that combines all angles from Day 0 and Day 93…

P90X - Composite - Day 0 - Day 93

Overall, it was a great round. I was still finishing up some work for previous customers so there were days where I had to skip workouts, but I really enjoyed the workouts and the transformation  I am starting to see in my body. I took a week off and just did Cardio X for 3 of the days, then I started a new round on November 1, 2011 and am continuing the journey. I’ll keep you up to date with my progress.

Categories
Non-Fiction

Book Review – Christian Encounters – J.R.R. Tolkien by Mark Horne

jrrtolkienBeing a lover of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, when given the opportunity to read a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, I was excited. The man gave direction to the entire genre of fantasy fiction, I wanted to know what made him tick.

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In this book, Mark Horne does a

great job of explaining how the events of his life affected how and what he wrote about. It has always amazed me how men and women could have the creativity to come up with the worlds that they create through fiction. In his thorough and well researched book, Mark Horne does a great job opening up the world of J.R.R. Tolkien to the reader. One of my favorite parts of the Tolkien story was his relationship with fellow author C.S. Lewis who says that J.R.R. Tolkien was instrumental in his coming to faith. If you are a lover of Tolkien’s work or the fantasy genre in general, you should definitely read this book.

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Books Fun Functions Non-Fiction Reviews

Book Review: The Art of Deception – Kevin Mitnik

41a1QKf5hbL._SL160_You know a book about hacking and methods to protect your company from social engineering attacks written by a guy who is such a great hacker that part of his sentence is that he is never allowed to surf the internet by himself (he has someone else check his email for him) is going to be a great read on how Hackers (or social engineers as they are called in the book – he explains why) infiltrate your company to steal your sensitive information. The typical business owner would do everything they could to beef up the security infrastructure within their business, often deploying the most state of the art (at the time) gadgets that money can buy, then they would rest on their laurels because they knew they were secure…As Mitnik goes on to explain, no, no they are definitely not secure, they have neglected the weakest point in any security infrastructure…the people.

In a very engaging read, The Art of Deception explains the very real threat from social engineers and how to best combat it as someone responsible for protecting your companies assets. I would recommend this very well written book for any person in any company…seriously…Mitnik explains how everyone in your organization is part of the security infrastructure and how they need to be properly educated on the security protocols (that should be, but in most places aren’t) in place at any company. I really can’t say it enough, if you employed at any company with trade secrets (or really any company for that matter) you need to read The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnik. No really, go, I don’t want to see you around here till you have read it (just kidding, but really if you can’t afford it, go check it out from the library)…

Categories
Non-Fiction

Book Review: Doing Virtuous Business – Theodore Malloch

_225_350_Book.361.coverGeneral Reaction: Great book on how businesses should be run.

Star rating: 3.5 out of 5

General Plot Synopsis: In this book, Malloch investigates the Spiritual Capital built by companies and how that capital helps them become and stay great enterprises.

Extended Reaction: When picking out this book, I was greatly intrigued by the fact that the book had been featured on PBS (my son has become hooked onto the PBS show Word World in recent months). I thought this was a great book. When you have books like Jim Collins’ Good to Great and Built to Last that take a look at the organizational structure it is highly enlightening to see the spiritual aspect to what makes companies great and where others fall short. If you are looking for a book that focuses on how Christian businesses work, this is not the book for you. The author’s main aim was to define the term Spiritual Capital (and that Spiritual Capital doesn’t mean that it is primarily Spiritual Capital, he looks at companies that range the spectrum of religious belief) and show how it affects the success and impact of the businesses that employ it.

Categories
Non-Fiction

Book Review: Max on Life – Max Lucado

_225_350_Book.340.coverGut Reaction: Not quite the book that I was expecting, but a good book overall.

Rating: 3 out of 5

General Plot Synopsis: The trick about giving a general plot synopsis for a book like this is that the book really doesn’t have a plot. This book is similar to Now, That’s a Good Question by R. C. Sproul. This is basically a question and answer book where Max Lucado takes letters and other questions that he has received over the years and puts his answers in book form.

Extended Reaction: Before grabbing this book, I probably should have done a little research. If I had, I probably would have had a better gut reaction to this book. I was expecting typical Max Lucado style like He Still Moves Stones or He Chose the Nails. I was pleasantly surprised though at how much I enjoyed the book. While I don’t agree with Max theologically on every issue, it was an interesting look into Max’s mind where you could really see his heart for the people he has been leading for so many years. If you are a pastor or someone who regularly gets questions about what the Bible says about different everyday life issues, this would be a good book to add to your library.