Teyrnon

I'm thinking about removing the feedback form on my website. I'm getting nothing but spam which I have to go through on the off chance someone actually sent something that needs my attention. The majority of the spam this month, all 24 pieces if it was some clown trying to sell sunglasses. Morons! If I wanted sunglasses online I'd just go to Amazon and be done with it. I'm certainly not going to click on a link from some bozo who's filling my inbox with garbage. Particularly not the bozo who's sending me gibberish phrases repeated a gazillion times per message.

This is my post this week. I finally found some sweatpants at one and only one Wal-Mart near me. Tried other stores but had no luck. Compared prices at the store and what I saw on the website and learned that they were cheaper if ordered from Wal-Mart online. Bought a pair at the store I found them and resolved to order the rest online.

My oven died the other day. Looks like the bottom heating element burned out. That's the same failure the oven had five years ago, the heating element was replaced then and it looks like it'll be replaced yet again.

Other than that there isn't really anything new to report. I have a headache so I'll close here. Maybe next week I'll have more to say. Be well, all.

On the off chance anyone might be interested. As some may recall I made a post about considering going with something electronic to replace the latest paper notebook. I've been using hardbound blank books since the late 80s as a combination journal and notebooks. I have very nearly an entire shelf full of these that are filled with my scribblings. Unfortunately lately I've developed issues where handling paper makes me sick. It was the driving reason I started using ebooks and dedicated ebook readers about midway through the last year.

I still haven't gotten anything to use a PDA. The past month I've been considering the iPod Touch and it looks like a nice enough device. Not exactly impressed with it though. I've fiddled with one in a store recently and while it might be usable the on-screen keyboard seems rather awkward.

I'm thinking a small netbook would probably be the best thing at this point. An 8" model or something. I could even load it with a few of my favorite open source compilers and use the various utilities I've written over the years on it.

Anyone have any thoughts to add? I'm as undecided as ever.

I think I have a new pet peeve. As some of you know I've been researching ebook readers lately. I've read a few hundred user reviews across a dozen or so sites and one thing really stands out. More than half of the reviews are written by people who insert LOL or ROFL at seemingly random intervals throughout their writing. It makes for obnoxious reading and quite frankly my first thought when I see this kind of thing is to wonder what kind of idiot is this?

Second peeve are those who seem to feel a strange need to apologize for length when the sum total of their post is under 500 words. If it's under 500 words it's not long! Blazes, if it's under 1,000 words it's probably not over long. If it's worth writing someone somewhere will find it worth reading. Stop assuming your readers have the attention span of a 3 year old on a sugar high! If you have something to say then say it and use as few or as many words as you need.

Well, the leak has been found and fixed. I hope.

Now, I have to ask, does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with mold?

It's that time of year again. The air feels strangely damp and the temperatures from the beginning of the week vary from very warm to kind of chilly. One is never sure whether to flip the switch between the air conditioner and heater settings or to just suffer it out for the conditions to change. Though for me, I favor to air conditioner for getting some of the humidity out of the air.

The batteries for the UPS still haven't arrived. The power glitches weren't as bad this week as they were the previous week where some days the electricity seemed to go out for a few seconds every hour. I still don't trust running a computer without battery backup. I've lost more data to power outages and glitches this year than I have since 1994 or so when I got my first UPS. Fortunately I have my Compaq notebook for writing.

In my last post I asked for some reading recommendations and all I got were recommendations for Briggs and Hamilton books and maybe a sidewise recommendation for the Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher. Might be time I finally read some of those. Never have. Might be fun and lately I've been wanting to get into some stuff in the contemporary and urban fantasy vein. At the recommendation of an old acquaintance I recently read A Kiss of Shadows and while interesting I'm not sure I'd want to read the later books.

This week I've done a lot of stuff on the private wiki. I've been using it to gather my notes and thoughts for that game setting I've been building for the last decade and more with auld_hippie. As of last night I'm up to 120 articles. Not counting category pages, images, and the talk and user subpages I've been using for notes on the notes, so the speak.

Well, that's enough for now. Be well, folks.

As some of you know most of my UPSes[1] have been flaking out for the last several months. The one that serves as UPS and powerstrip. for the machine I do most of my internet stuff on, has completely flipped out today. It won't even let me power anything on and doesn't look like it's going to recover as it's been about 8 hours already. That means I don't have access to that machine until I can get either a new battery or an entirely new UPS. Until then I probably won't be able to read LJ, access Facebook (no great loss there), or be available on IM.

I will still be reachable through my gmail account.

[sigh] This is shaping up to be such a wonderful year.

1. What is the plural for UPS anyway?

Edit: Looks like it decided to work. The question is for how long?
Edit 2: Not for very long apparently.

I'm looking for some advice tonight. I've got a gray chair that I'm getting tired of seeing and smelling. How do I get rid of it? Anybody got any ideas? No, I can't lift it myself. It's been nagging at the back of my mind for years now and I'd like to get it out of here so I can maybe rearrange that room into a nicer configuration without it. It's making me angry that I can't seem to do anything about it. I'm also embarrassed of the blasted thing on the rare occasions I have guests in the house.

Ever notice that people seem to drop half their IQ when they get behind the wheel of a car? What's with that? Do they coat steering wheels with stupidity inducing chemicals or what?