separate

Cosco Designer Separate Car Seat Base, Black
$47.28
It was very sturdy and nice but unfortunately did not fit my car seat. Amazon was great about taking it back and refunding my money.

Extech MN26T Autoranging Multimeter with Capacitance, Frequency, and also Temperature Function including a Separate Temperature Probe
$42.99
I'm a HVAC tech and I use the meter several times a day for trouble shooting electronics. The big selling point for me was the included k-type thermocouple. The meter has performed well for the month I've been using it. I have had not trouble with it, even though I've used it in temps ranging from 4 degrees to 70 degrees. My only complaint is it is slow to react in the resistance mode.
I would recommend this for anyone who could use an inexpensive, easy to use meter

A Separate Peace
$19.99
This film adaptation of John Knowles' classic coming-of-age novel is extremely disappointing, to the point of being downright awful.

The central question of the book--was Gene responsible in any way for the accident in which Finny fell out of the tree and broke his leg--was left tantalizingly unanswered in the book. John Knowles meant to do that. The reader is thus left to scour the novel for ideas with which to develop an answer. After 30 years and more than that many readings, I have a sense of what I believe happened...and an awareness that not everyone agrees with me.

This film leaves no doubt as to what the director thinks happened. The famous "jounce" that caused Finny to fall from the tree appears premeditated, and his last conversation with Gene before his death includes his conclusion, "You really did it, didn't you?" That sentence is nowhere in the novel and is highly prejudicial to its interpretation. The filmmakers made up their minds, and spared no effort in clobbering us viewers over the head with their interpretation. Wrong wrong wrong...one of the inviting qualities of the novel is that Knowles deliberately left it up to the reader to decide whether or not Gene bears responsibility. He took his own answer to the grave and thus heightened his masterpiece's appeal by making the reader THINK. This film did not do that, and suffers because of it.

I also had a hard time believeing that Gene and Finny were "best friends" in this adaptation. It started off on the wrong foot by portraying Gene as a new student at the Devon School at the time of the 1942 summer session, instead of a continuing student, as he was in the book. Their friendship thus lacked any depth and plausibility. If you accept that Gene bore the requisite animosity toward Finny to cause the accident, how he have possibly developed that tension in just a few short weeks?

The portrayal of Finny must be one of the most difficult assignments for an actor and Toby Moore did a passable job, but he still didn't nail it. He was no further off the mark than John Heyl was in the 1972 adaptation, but neither was he any closer. Of all the main characters, I think Brinker Hadley seemed the truest to his print counterpart, but Gene seemed paper-thin, and Leper Lepellier was a caricature (the portrayal of Leper in the 1972 film was much closer to the spirit of the character in the novel).

And then there's the final "reconciliation" scene in the infirmary the day before Finny died. Flat, unemotional, no spirit. Along with Finny's blatantly unnecessary assertion that Gene "really did it," this pivotal scene was perhaps the most disappointing part of the entire film. In the book, you really get a sense that Gene and Finny have had a meeting of the minds are spiritually united. In this film, there is no such sense of closure.

The definitive filming of "A Separate Peace" has yet to be produced.

A Separate Country
$25.99
This book has some beautiful descriptive writing. The best characters are Yellow Jack (Yellow Fever) and the weather in New Orleans. What a horrible way to die, as Hood's wife, oldest daughter and Hood himself do at the beginning of the novel. Robert Hicks's riveting novel takes up Hood's life after the war. In New Orleans, he married Anna Marie Hennen, a Creole society girl. He fathered 11 children and ultimately failed in business. Like the Hood of history, the Hood of this novel is writing a self-serving memoir to redeem his horrible military reputation. Hicks's Hood, however, also has a second, secret memoir: Though filled with chilling adventure, it is really about the more important campaign for personal redemption.