Comment Re:I'm lazy (Score 1) 5
What's your favorite eBook format? What reader are you using?
Journal Journal: ePub Blues 5
I woke up early yesterday, and as I do on early days I turned on the TV news and opened Google News on the laptop. After I opened a dozen or so tabs, the notebook ground to a screeching halt. Obviously its 1 gig of memory was completely full. It took a full five minutes for task manager to come up.
Comment Re:Ain't (Score 1) 10
Fred Pohl. I didn't drop him, I just thought his last book was boring.
I made it about halfway through Tale of Two Cities, it started becoming a tedious read, but I don't think language had much to do with it, and neither would it be presented as a serial. His A Christmas Carol is still a favorite, though.
Comment Re:Where's a typo snob when you need one? (Score 1) 10
Indeed they are.
Journal Journal: Mars, Ho! Chapter Thirty Seven
Couch
I woke up about twenty after seven. I put on a robe and trudged bleary-eyed to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Destiny woke up just as I was going to the head. I still think that's a stupid name for a bathroom.
She had the robot make French toast and sausage and was in the living room drinking coffee and watching the news when I got dressed and went in there. "I wish we had some pork sausage," she said.
Comment Re:Where's a typo snob when you need one? (Score 1) 10
Well, anyone can make those errors when very sleepy or drunk, but some folks always do. The last data I saw said that only 3% of Americans read books regularly. So 97% of Americans are either illiterate (1% of the population) or aliterate. I'm pretty sure that's where the problem stems from.
Comment Re:I wroted a book ma! (Score 1) 10
No need to do so in every damned post, but yeah.
Journal Journal: Get off Wierd Al's Lawn! 10
Oops, that's "get off of Weird Al's lawn."
Comment Re:I admire your efforts (Score 1) 2
I still have paperbacks with prices printed on the covers of a dollar or less... but I'm getting pretty old. Books back then were more the size of Nobots than today's books. Of course, back then a gallon of gasoline was under fifty cents and a six pack of beer was about a dollar.
These days, judging by what I've seen, new paperbacks range from $6 to $10, so $7 doesn't seem too out of line.
The library here has a book sale every year, and I picked up a huge writer's guide for two bucks. Its copyright date was 1978 and it was completely obsolete. Along with talking about typewriters and carbon paper and estimating the number of words, it stated that publishers would rather publish two 40,000 word books than one 80,000 word book. When Twain was asked how many words should be in a book he said "as many as it takes to tell the story, and no more."
How times have changed!
Journal Journal: Nobots: now in paperback 2
It annoys the hell out of me that my books are so damned expensive, which is why I wanted Mars, Ho! to be 100,000 words. I'd hoped that possibly Baen might publish it so it would be, oddly, far cheaper. I can buy a copy of Andy Wier's excellent novel The Martian from Barnes and Noble or Amazon for less than I can get a copy of my own Paxil Diaries from my printer, and Wier's book is a lot longer.
Comment Re:Update cycles (Score 1) 391
That's how I always did it. But there's always the 'expensive cycle' where the architecture changes and you have to buy a new processor motherboard and RAM all at the same time. When we moved from AGP to PCIx video cards was a particularly expensive.I think that time even the power supply had to be replaced. I only kept the case and drives.
Too bad we can't do this as easily with cars.
Comment Re:Another Option (Score 1) 152
I hope so because that's what I stream.
Then again, I DVR most of it before I watch it so I can skip commercials... So it was streamed at one point, but I since I collect it, I'm not watching it streamed. What a crappy poll.
Maybe if we define streaming as 'Start watching something before you have all of it"
Comment Re:Huh? (Score 1) 8
It's been on TV network news, too.
Comment Huh? (Score 1) 8
Who cares what that idiot thinks? She is completely unimportant.
Journal Journal: Mars, Ho! Chapter Thirty Six
Drills
I got woke up early again, about five thirty this time. Fire in passengers quarters number forty seven. God damned drills, but I had to get up and inspect forty seven anyway. I put on a robe and trudged down there.
Yep, just a stupid drill. I noticed that Tammy was in the commons with the German woman as I walked past on my way back home. It was still early enough that I could still get another hour's sleep or so.
