Product Description
Scott Freeman is a landscape photographer. This book presents a collection of over 100 of his finest photographs. They are all New Zealand landscapes, ranging from the coast and offshore islands, forest interiors, rivers, glaciers and mountains. Brian Turner, a well-known writer and poet, provides an inspired and passionate introduction to the book, commenting on his feeling about Scot Freeman's work, the value of landscape photography, and their shared and strong commitment to conservation. ... Read more

Product Description

SQL Server 2000 is the leading relational database in the Windows market. The increased manageability of SQL Server 2000 has also increased its popularity&emdash;anyone, not just database administrators, can use a SQL Server database.

This book recognizes that aspiring DBAs need more than just a basic knowledge of the available features in order to be considered "a safe pair of hands" for the database and the mission-critical data that is stored in it. Aspiring DBAs can benefit from the direction and advice of an expert mentor who not only understands the features available and how they should be used, but also knows what it takes to be a good and effective DBA. In essence, this book is that "mentor," which is what sets it apart from the other books on the market that only present feature overviews.

Database novices will learn the core job and roles involved in administering a SQL Server database. You'll follow the life cycle of the database from installation, design, and modeling; through to development, tuning, and securing; and on to growth and migration. This comprehensive guide provides practical advice, answers typical questions that you'll encounter from managers and developers, and offers practical steps to overcome issues with which new DBAs traditionally struggle.

At every stage of the life cycle, this book supplies a range of tried-and-tested practices and techniques that will help you to establish and maintain a healthy database system.

Customer Reviews (4)

A review
Warning! This might be a wonderful book except for the fact that the publishers decided to use much smaller print than is normally used for computer manuals. If staring at small print is not a problem for you then buy this book, otherwise you might be better off buying another book with normal sized print.

A very good book for SQL server self-learner
Excellent. It is a good reference for your SQL Server examination or self-learning. The examples are listed in details. If you follow them step by step, you can 100% learn the skills for your SQL server daily maintenance. I am not a professional in SQL Server, but after reading this book, I have much stronger confidence to use it.

IF THE AUTHOR CAN WRITE THE SAME KINDS/STYLE OF MATERIAL IN ORACLE FIELD, I THINK HE/SHE WILL FURTHER HELP A LOT OF LEARNERS OR USERS.

Not enough T-SQL
Overall, I would say this book is well put together and is an excellent resource.I personally was hoping for a bit more meat on the programming of the T-SQL commands and methods, but the lack of that information is not the fault of the author, merely my selection of the wrong book.

I picked up valuable knowledge about SQL Server that will serve me well, but DBAs in my company do a heck of a lot with T-SQL that apparently is not as common in other places.

Extensive coverage of what every SQL DBA should know
Packed with practical, real-world information for anyone involved with SQL Server Administration, "Beginning SQL Server 2000 DBA: From Novice to Professional" is one of the most complete administration books available.It is not without its problems but they are generally pretty minor and in fact somewhat humorous at times.For example, page 84 has a section titled "Upgrading to SQL Server 6.5" and page 90 a section titled "Upgrading to Earlier Versions of SQL Server".Obviously you don't upgrade to an earlier version nor do you upgrade from 2000 to 6.5.So, while there are errors, they are so obvious as to not be a big problem.When it comes to the technical details where accuracy is critical, I didn't find any obvious errors.

So what does the book cover?It starts with the different types of DBAs, the different versions of SQL Server 2000 available, installation methods and resolving installation problems.After getting everything installed and working correctly it moves on to working with the database with things like creating a database, basic considerations for databases (such as raid levels), and everyday administrative activities like making the database read-only, removing databases, adding databases, changing the path, creating and deleting tables.One of the things I liked about this section (and most of the sections of the book) was that it explained how to do each task by using the database manager and by using the Transact-SQL language.

Each of the sections follows logically from the prior one.With all the database management section completed the next part covers doing queries, joins, creating indexes, and similar tasks, basic backing up and restoring databases, generating a database script, creating and adding jobs, working with security and authentication, user permissions, roles, application security, ODBC, ADO, performance monitoring, and other tasks.

Although it was mentioned in brief in an earlier chapter, chapter eight provides a thorough treatment of backup and recovery.This is a very important chapter, I have run across many, many SQL installations where people did not understand the correct backup and restore procedures for SQL and made a complete mess of their system using copy and paste techniques.The author does an excellent job here and it will keep you out of trouble if you follow his advice.

The remaining portion of the book covers replication (a particularly well-done chapter), writing Transact-SQL code, creating views, error handling, writing triggers, data warehousing, data analysis, and creating a data transformation package using the data transformation package editor.Due to the breadth of coverage "Beginning SQL Server 2000 DBA: From Novice to Professional" is exactly as advertised and useful to both the complete novice and the experienced professional.Note that although it covers some of the more common uses of T-SQL for administrative purposes it is not a book on programming, it is a book on administration and within that defined area it is excellent."Beginning SQL Server 2000 DBA" is a highly recommended read. ... Read more

Product Description
The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book features over 1,000 questions to test your knowledge of the King of Horror, along with dozens of special illustration-based questions from Cemetery Dance favorite artist Glenn Chadbourne! This is an amazing publication Stephen King fans won't want to miss!

Edited by Brian Freeman (founder of StephenKingNews.com) and Bev Vincent (author of The Road To The Dark Tower and the "News from the Dead Zone" column in Cemetery Dance magazine), The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book also features a special afterword by Michelle L. Revelle (Founder/Co-President of SKEMERs, the largest Stephen King fan group on the web).

The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book includes material right up through this year and no Stephen King collection will be complete without it! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Pure delight
Obviously for fans of the renowned author, this collection asks trivia questions involving King or his works, offers hints and ultimately the answers.His works are further broken down into separate chapters re the novels, novellas and short stories.Other chapters include his books written as Richard Bachman and the Dark Tower series.Finally, his movies, non-fiction endeavors and miscellaneous musings fill up three more segments of the lighthearted entertaining book.Fans of Mr. King will fully enjoy this seemingly complete trivia homage that digs as deep anything you can find; for instance asking which Red Sox player had his name misspelled in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon?.The illustrations add eerie depth as well as posing additional trivia questions associated with them.Clearly aimed at Kingophiles like the SKEMERS (Stephen King E-MailERs), whose founder Michelle L. Revelle, provides an afterward, casual fans of the author will also enjoy this fun book.Of course adding to the pleasure, this reviewer trounced her spouse.

Harriet Klausner
... Read more

Product Description
Focuses on the new JavaScript 1.2 & 1.3 features. Presents a complete resource for Web authors & developers who want to add special effects to their sites with as little effort & complexity as possible.Paper.CD-ROM included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

WORST OF THE CROP
This book fails to deliver as a reference and teaching aid. I found the examples to be lacking in details and ad hoc. The book does not cover DHTML throughly, and most of the information can be found on websites. It triesto do too much. The only redeeming value of the book seems to be the listof online indexes and references that are found in the introduction. Forweb developers, I would recommend the Core series or the O'ReillyJavascript and Dynamic Html: A definite guide. The information contained ismuch more complete.

Poorly written and not organized well.
The book is simply written poorly.There does not seem to be enough explanations for the scripts.The examples in the book and on the CD feature the problematic "program snippets" that are of no realvalue to an actual project.The level of reading in this book suggeststhat the reader really has a grasp on Javascript.In addition, this bookdeals with Netscape-comaptible Javascript.There are better books for themoney.

No GOOD!
Well I have read this book and I hardly even learned something, because it didn't explain very well. Example: It talked a little about a script, then it showed the html for it...not enough explanation...I didn't learn even one thing...I strongly encourage you not to buy this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Covers client-side JavaScript for non-programmers and system administrators, offering straightforward, step-by-step information that covers such topics as selection lists, pop-ups, scripting, math, and applets.(Intermediate). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

If your are the beginner, this is not your choice !!!!!!!
This is my textbook.but i don't like it very much.i am the beginner of the JavaScript, this book even doesn't help me at all.there are a lot of things had not talked about it before it pop up, it just suddenly appear before your eyes.I always get lost because of that.

Perfect
It is very user-friendly to read.
Extremely correct.
The SunSoft Press / Java Series !
The pace is middle/low.
Simply surprising good !!!

Good god
Definitely not for ANYONE. This book is the definition of redundancy. Repetitive examples, pages of unncessary code and TOO MANY SCREENSHOTS! Not only that, but even though it says "examples for UNIX, Win95 andMacintosh" the screenshots are 99% Macintosh. What gives?

Theinformation in this book is slightly useful *if you know what you arelooking for*. Even so, it is hard to find anything in this hefty tome thatcan't be found in a scripting tutorial. I expected more from the companythat co-developed this language with Netscape.

Very iffy...not for beginners
This is a boggling book for the beginner...

From the first page, it bombards the reader with a stream of terms and jargon, and only a vague explanation of what it all means, and how it fits into writing code.i.e: "The for...in statement is a special form of loop that loops throughthe properties of a particular object from first to last."Until thatpoint, I never heard of a loop, so I certainly harbor minimal interest inlearning about "special kinds" of loops.And what does it dowith the properties while it loops through them?

I like books thatstart you off quickly, but this just puts you in a cannon and fires youinto the fray without any help whatsoever.It's structured more like amystery novel than a reference guide.Don't let the cute froggies all overthe place fool you -- Avoid this book, unless you already have goodprogramming background.

Good for Reference, hard to learn from
This book was my first introduction to general scripting on the web as well as Javascript in particular.I found it hard to learn from specifically because much of the text is filled with long pages of codethat are redundant. The code is redundant mainly because the included cdromalready contains the html sourcecode.

However, the book is my bestresource for Javascript when I want to find syntax or forget the purpose /implementation of a method or object.It's the best reference forJavascript that I have, and I have used it regularly for over ayear.

This book is ideal for people who are already familiar withscripting (such as VBscript) and need to learn / use Javascriptspecifically. ... Read more

Product Description
GREAT stories and scripts by four award-winning writers! Horror, dark fantasy, and suspense from Richard Chizmar, Brian Freeman, Brian Keene, and Tom Monteleone. Chizmar contributes three long out of print classics; Freeman an original tale and two others; Keene and Monteleone are both represented by all-new material! With an Intro by John Skipp. ... Read more

Product Description
It's been twenty years since the friends known as the Lightning Five visited the Summer Place together. Twenty years spent living in the shadow of something they did in high school, an event that defined them forever in the minds of everyone in their small town. Now they're returning for what should be a relaxing weekend of hunting and fishing, a chance to reminisce about old times and forget their troubles... but mother nature has other plans in mind.

There's a storm brewing. A meteor shower is in the forecast, but it's going to be unlike any event in recorded history. This meteor shower is bringing change to the world, it's awakening the creatures of the forest from their quiet slumber... and before long, the Lightning Five are going to find themselves trapped on the roof of their cabin, with their numbers dwindling and supplies running low...

Trapped with no means of escape, the men will have to make some hard choices... like who gets to live and who has to die. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Fantastic horror
Blue November Storms
Brian Freeman
Cemetery Dance, 2005, $30.00
ISBN: 1587671107

In Beacon Point, Pennsylvania, the townsfolk named the high school football stars the "The Lightning Five" for their athletic exploits.Steven, Harry, Joe, Matt, and Adam were best friends and even built the Summer Place in the woods overlooking the nearby lake together.However, a girl died there, but instead of investigating what happened, the fearsome fivesome were treated like heroes.

Two decades later, Adam, who the others thought was dead as he seemingly vanished, calls his friends to ask them to meet him at Summer Place.Adam never truly overcame the tragedy that haunts him still, much more so than his buddies.Excited over the prospect of seeing him for the first time in years, Steven, Harry, Joe, and Matt agree to a twenty year reunion at The Summer Place.

The five meet filled with nostalgia and excitement, but also lingering is the one dark episode.,However, a meteor shower suddenly attacks from the sky with unnatural blue stones hitting near where the quintet reunite.Not long afterwards the woodland animals go berserker trying to kill the trapped humans forced to retreat onto the roof of The Summer Place, an eerie reminder of the tragic pivotal moment in their lives with each remembering while wondering if they like the critters could turn into sociopath killers.

BLUE NOVEMBER STORMS starts off as a deep psychological thriller in which the audience wonders what happened twenty years ago and why suddenly Adam reappears; however Brian Freeman sets the reader up as the tale digs inside the psyche and soul of the lead five, it twists into an old fashion B-movie horror tale (cross between King's Maximum Overdrive and the Ninja Turtles) yet retains that soul deep look at the ensemble as each wonders if the others will turn lethal.Brian Freeman provides a solid tale that fans will enjoy.

Harriet Klausner

Blue November Storms
How many times have you read a book and thought: "This book could have been a lot better if it were shorter and the writer had picked up the pace". Well, Blue November Storms is a very quick read (97 pages) and the pace is excellent. This book could have been a lot longer. The writer gives us a quick glance at these characters and then leaves us asking for more...
Anyway this is a great plot and a great little story.

In a world gone mad, five friends are trapped with little hope to escape
I loved that the characters are given real histories with each other and they're not just cardboard cut outs used to hold a place so the story can be told.I also loved the slow build, the way Freeman takes his time introducing the key plays before the storm comes.There's an underlying mystery to this horror story, and I liked how it that was built, too.All in all, I highly recommend this book.

Fun Read But Nothing New
I kept having flashbacks of scenes in Stephen King's Dreamcatcher as I read this.No, it's not the same thing, but it was obviously inspired by King's book.This is the first book I've read by Brian Freeman and although I enjoy his storytelling, his writing feels a bit pedestrian and the flow was uneven at times.He would spend time on details and then, without warning, brush swiftly over more important actions.I understand he is a young writer and I'm sure he will improve with experience.That being said, since he's not a veteran writer with a large body of work, I find it strange that he has written under the pseudonym of James Kidman as well as his real name, Brian Freeman.I'm not sure there's enough in this book to recommend it, but Freeman is certainly someone to keep your eye on. ... Read more

Product Description
This exclusive chapbook featured original excerpts from: The Cage by Brian Keene Hell Hollow by Ronald Kelly Invisible Fences by Norman Prentiss (unannounced) The Painted Darkness by Brian Freeman (unannounced) "Certain Spirits" from Halloween: New Poems edited by Al SarrantonioDesigned by Keith Minnion. Cover artwork by Alan M. Clark. ... Read more

Product Description

The one book medical students must readbefore they choose their specialty

Here is the first medical-specialty selection guidewritten by a resident for students. Readers willfind an inside look at the issues surrounding medicalspecialty selection, blending firsthand knowledge withuseful facts and statistics. The author includes invaluableinsights from his personal experience, candidreports from current residents, and a wealth ofresearch.

This unique resource is divided into two sections, thefirst of which delves into the art of choosing the rightspecialty and covers personality assessment, considerationsfor women and couples who are matching,specialty overviews, and the ins and outs of the residencyapplication and match process. The secondsection comprises 19 chapters, each written by a residentin a particular specialty. These chapters include“The Inside Scoop”—revealing specialty lifestyles,training requirements, and predominant personalitytypes.

Customer Reviews (14)

Keep a few things in mind when you read this book
It is an informative book.Students will learn a lot from reading this book. But the authors for each specialty are merely telling you the positive aspects of their specialty.Students still should seek more information about some of the issues why you may not want to choose a specific specialty.For an example, in Ob/Gyn the author for that section addresses males in the specialty as 'still having a role' in ob/gyn.True.But, in many, many metropolitan areas males ob/gyns struggle to find jobs.You'll not find information like that in this book.Pathology section doesn't mention how for the past 10 year or so the job market has really suffered.Because the duration of residency has decreased from 5 years to 4 years many residents are not equipped to function fully as an attending.Hence many employers seek out applicants with a fellowship in a subspecialty.This has created a huge demand for fellowship training which is very limited in number in comparison to the number of residents seeking fellowships.It, as I've been told, is one of the few physician specialty where you are not really guaranteed a position after residency.But the book doesn't tell you things like that.Anesthesiology section doesn't paint the real picture of the power struggle between CRNAs taking over MD anesthesiologists' jobs.Rather it more or less states how they all need to work together.In the meanwhile Colorado has just become the 16th state to allow CRNAs to practice without the supervision of an MD.So, use this book as a book that tends to advertise each specialty without informing you on issues that may cause you not to choose a certain specialty.

Great book
This book is good read. Valuable info on choosing a specialty, esp for those who are lost (which are most!). Book was in perfect condition.

Best book of it's kind!
I read this book when I started medical school and then reviewed it throughout school. The book is written by a physician who had recently been in residency training in anesthesia and it seems like he found doctors he knew from medical school and residency to write each chapter about each different specialty. This approach works well b/c then you get to hear all of the Pros and Cons from and actual physician in that specialty. The book has lots of basic info on how to select a specialty as well as info on the match and the competitiveness of different specialties.
Each specialty chapter gives background info on the specialty. It also gives info like average salary, average work week, competitiveness, ave USMLE score (for some chapters), fellowship opportunities, personality type of the specialty. This is a very helpful resource which is good to own or check out from your medical school library.

MUST BUY
Of all the books I've read in medical school this is the most important.Most other books about residency have one page summaries of the specialties and talk mainly about interviewing and applying.This book has 20 pages per specialty written by a resident in the field with personality profiles, pay scales, ways to pad your CV, honest info on the dark sides of certain specialties, etc.Also there are several chapters at the beginning explaining the way the computer algorithm works for the match and how the match came to be out of recent history.It is a must read for every medical student during the third year.I recommend reading it over Christmas so you can finalize your decision by March and set up fourth year accordingly.

A Great Reference for 95% of US Medical Students
If you're having trouble deciding what particular path of medicine to follow, this guide could be very beneficial.With all of the studying/reading/slaving one does as a medical student, it's easy to forget that you quickly need to decide what you want to be when you grow up.Written by a collection of very talented people who seemingly all studying or trained in Chicago, this book delves into all major specialties, the application basics, and even how personality might play a role.

For 95% or more of all US medical students this is something they SHOULD peruse through if they have the slightest hesitation about what specialty to choose.However, my minor critiques are for the small margins the book glosses over.The author mentions how the possibilities are nearly endless with an medical degree, but it leaves it at that.A few examples of a MD/JD lawyer or MD/MBA executive would help.Also some of the very small niche residencies are completely omitted (e.g. prevmed and occhealth).Also, despite the OB/GYN chapter being written by a Navy physician, he completely forgot to mention the possibilities the military can present.[He mentions the public health service but not the military?]Hopefully these holes can be filled in for the next edition. ... Read more

Product Description
This book presents an anatomical overview of the changing form and structure of the human body. Although biomechanical embryology can be traced back to the 19th century, up until recently the most commonly accepted framework for the study of human ontogeny (development of the individual) was molecular biology, which all too frequently relied on findings from animal experiments that remained untested for humans. German embryologist and anatomist Erich Blechschmidt's research concentrates on the evidence presented by the human embryo itself. He offers a new approach to the study of early human growth as a way to shed light on the development of body build, instincts, gestures, language, mathematics, tools, and dress. ... Read more