I had high expectations for this book going into it because I had heard decent things from a number of people about it. I hate to say it, but I think most of them were wrong.This book reminds me of a cheese-ball action flick from the eighties for numerous reasons.

1. 2012 Chaos Report
2. Standish Chaos Report 2018 Pdf

The hero (untrained in the use of the specific firearm he picks up) manages numerous head shots on trained soldiers firing back at him from some cover while he stands in an open field and they miss every round. A little reality here, please. Some of the action just really felt like a bad Dolph Lundgren film to me.Another problem I had is that much of the action was worded in a way that left me hard to visualize it.

One part had a guy tackling a zombie to the ground and stomping its head at the same time. This left me picturing some ridiculous World Wrestling Federation slam leaving the attacker in a crab walk position over his victim. Did anyone go back and check some of these sections to see if they made any sense to them?The next issue (I'm far from finished yet) I came across was the story of the character's fiance.

2012 Chaos Report

His learning the truth behind her death was laid out in a really silly and far-fetched manner. It was very laughable and Saturday morning cartoon like to me.

On the other hand, it was annoying.The next irritating part was the sex. The sex in this novel made me wonder if the author has ever actually had any or simply learned everything he knows about it from adult films, books, and magazines. Let's picture this scenario: A man and woman kill some zombies and have to vomit from the stench of the corpses.

They suddenly, in the same stench-filled room, decide to have spontaneous sexual intercourse. Kick in some disco music, please.

The protagonist of the book is a mythical stud, bedding one woman several times in the course of one day and attracting another hottie before the book ends. All sex scenes involve the hero going through a variety of positions and the women putting on high heels for their part. Again, more disco music. I always picture women slapping on high heels and getting sexied up in the midst of a world wide zombie out break. Utterly ridiculous.There were too many things going on at times for me. I'm not sure if the author wanted the reader to feel like they were in the chaos themselves, but that's what it achieved for me.Lastly, I found his portrayal of the military borderline offensive.

The thought of the majority of our soldiers raping teenage girls and women and becoming completely barbaric and brutal a few days into an outbreak was complete crap. I spent nine years in the military and part of that was in a hostile environment. I didn't notice any soldiers running off to rape, plunder, and pillage.

Perhaps Hagar the Horrible and the United States armed forces are the same thing to this author.Now that I've bashed the hell out of the book, I'll put out some good points.1. It seems the author had some creative and good ideas on where he wanted the story to go.2. The ending wasn't bad either. I rather enjoyed the ending.Over all, I felt this would have been better as a much shorter story. I feel this author has potential, but lacked maturity in this book. I will read the sequel since it was given to me as a gift, but I probably would not have purchased it otherwise. 'Down the Road' is a fun zombie story, with enough gore and violence to satisfy most readers for this type of read.George is a high school teacher in San Antonio, Texas when the outbreak begins, and decides to journey to his small Texas hometown to find his family and shore up against the undead masses.

For a public school teacher, George is the mac daddy of the apocalypse. On his initial excursion from the city, he deliberately runs over two police officers in his slick black Chevy Cavalier. He's good with guns, the ladies love him, and he's an all around rebel with a cause. George is, in short, a male fantasy action hero. But he's fun, and I liked him.Kudos to the author for the ending of the story. It takes balls to do something like that.

Thank you for realism there, at least. So it wasn't terrible. But it wasn't great. I could tell far before i read the 'authors commentary' that this book was very autobiographical, in a way.

Being that the settings and the protagonists were based on, yes, his home area and HIS vocation. (the protagonist is a school teacher in texas, so is the author) WHile i understand this - hell, i do it - write-what-you-know thing. You have to hide the fact that you are doing it from us within the text of your book. It was just really obvious that he wrote a story about kinda what he hoped he would do. Make us relate to it man! We're not living your life.

Paint a picture with the words!That brings me to the main problem i had with this book - the action scenes and prose in general came off like a coroners report: emotionless and boring. 'the zombie ripped off his arm. Another zombie pulled out his guts.

He screamed and John Doe came in and shot both zombies in the head' Just a series of short sentences simplistically describing what happens.Now, i'm not saying the story couldn't be good - because it could be, for sure. It just READS like a first draft to me. As has been mentioned before, the school teacher has conveniently mastered martial arts somehow and he's not even a PE teacher) and can score multiple headshots against trained military with a weapon he has never used before.

So thats a bit of a stretch. And, as also mentioned.

The sex scenes are ridiculous. Just blandly describing a bunch of sexual positions that all make the protagonist feel like a porn star.Anyway. This is first-draft material that could have potentially been really good. It's more believable than morningstar strain - if that counts for anything, though.also. He used the phrase 'balls-out' to describe actions not ONCE. But TWICE in this book. Pretty much this book starts out as most zombie stories.

There is an unknown plague which animates the dead. A bite or scratch spreads the infection. In this story it is mostly told from George's POV. He sees what is coming and decides to try to reach his hometown where his mother and uncle still live.

The government has taken over and put people in FEMA camps for 'their own good'. There is also a ban on living in private homes and owning weapons, even for safety. As things progress from bad to worse, many of the soldiers abandon posts and who is left are the corrupt and power hungry. FEMA camps become a war zone within itself where you not only have to worry about the guards, but the inmates as well.As we follow George, we start to see the real monsters and they aren't the ones devouring the flesh of the living. As chaos reigns, gangs try to rule the weak. There are pockets of people sharing and holding out, but they too have to fight the rouge gangs and the government run FEMA soldiers as well. It is a story of true horror in a world we have already seen can happen.

What is interesting is that we find that this book was written pre-Katrina and no one believed that anything FEMA run would be that incompetent. Now with this new edition, we find that what he had eerily predicted could come true if a zombie infestation would break out in the US.shivers.I give this book 3 stars. This is definitely an adult book. Not only is there violence but sex as well. If you like a good horror book and don't mind quite a bit of blood and guts then this book is for you! Just check your door before reading and make sure all windows are secure. Just in case.;).

Share. LinkedIn. Facebook. Twitter4The Standish (Chaos) report has been published for a number of years now and it is always a sobering read for those involved in project management and in particular, projects involving computer technology. Of particular note is that there has been no significant change in the statistics quoted below since the mid 90's.For those who just want the headlines, the 1994 report indicated that ' a staggering 31.1% of projects will be cancelled before they ever get completed. Further results indicate 52.7% of projects will cost 189% of their original estimates. The cost of these failures and overruns are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Standish Chaos Report 2018 Pdf

The lost opportunity costs are not measurable, but could easily be in the trillions of dollars. One just has to look to the City of Denver to realise the extent of this problem.

The failure to produce reliable software to handle baggage at the new Denver airport was costing the city $1.1 million per day. Based on this research, The Standish Group estimates that in (1995) American companies and government agencies would spend $81 billion for cancelled software projects. These same organisations would pay an additional $59 billion for software projects that will be completed but will exceed their original time estimates. Risks are always a factor when pushing the technology envelope, but many of these projects were as mundane as a driver's license database, a new accounting package, or an order entry system. On the success side, the average is only 16.2% for software projects that are completed on- time and on-budget.'