Category: FWIW

. . .because I did it to myself. I bought the thing knowing what I’d find.

David Weber has a series of goat-gaggers–the Safehold series–from TOR that I find interesting but have had the same issues with from the very first book, Off Armageddon Reef (2008). Other issues have presented in the six books that have followed, but, as I said, I knew what I was getting when I bought it.

Weber still pretty consistently misuses some words. An example: he pretty consistently uses “less” when “fewer” is correct. But every time he misuses a word it does throw me out of the story.

Weber also really overuses banter in dialog. Meetings about serious matters are consistently trivialized by light-hearted banter. Some is healthy, but Weber has a tendency in everything he writes to overdo it. His Honorverse books feature too much if it for me, but not nearly as much as the Safehold books. The Safehold series doesn’t seem to have any editor handy to tell Weber, “Stop already! That’s too much!” *heh*

And then there’s the extremely irritating treatment of proper names. *gagamaggot* Zhaspahr Clyntahn? Rhobair Duchairn? It goes on and on and on. Sure, Weber “named” his Safehold characters into a corner in the first book, and there was no easy way out, especially after book 2. . . or three, four, five and six. *sigh* And this book includes a cast of characters sixty-six pages long with such names.

But still, I’ve bought every one of ’em. These last two have been ebooks, but the others, hardcopy, all but one hardback. Why?

Well, I bought and read the first one because Weber. Yes, his Honorverse books have some of the same issues (though apparently the editors at Baen are better than the ones at TOR *heh*), but they’ve still been worth my time for more than a few reasons. So, I knew it’d be readable and would at least tell an interesting story. But. . . issues. (“Lords secular and temporal”–*feh* Weber! You use that ALL the time and ALWAYS wrongly! Well, at least he didn’t include that abortion of sense in this book as he has in every other book i the series, IIRC, as well as in several of the Honorverse books.)

The rest? Well, interesting story, despite the aforementioned issues and a few others. Fun stuff on “rediscovering” technologies. Interesting low-tech milfic as well.

So. . . I buy ’em, even though I know the negatives will irk me.

The suboptimal (non)replacement TV sent us by Westinghouse Digital evidenced yet another deficiency yesterday. *sigh* Of course. Absolutely nothing the company has done to this point has evidenced any reasonable actions toward making us whole.

OK, sure, they FINALLY sent this TV that lacks features the TV we returned under warranty had, but only after I informed representatives of the company, very honestly, that my next step was legal action. So what? They send a substandard non-replacement.

Yesterday? A brief power outage wiped the TV setup. All scanned channels and other info, wiped. Not only that, but it took THREE channel scans to find the channels available to us and make tuning them possible at all. THREE, each taking THIRTY MINUTES (the TV this is supposedly a “replacement” for took no more than 10 minutes, max, to do this, and this has consistently taken multiple attempts lasting 30 minutes. . . or longer). Now, power outages are not that uncommon in America’s Third World County™ so I suppose we’ll have this to go through every time, now. (Well, maybe not every time. Additional expense to avoid it, though: add a UPS.)

Westinghouse Digital’s solution? Send THIS TV back for “replacement”. After the previous experience getting ANY kind of response from Westinghouse Digital, that’s a non-starter.

Fortunately, next month our extended service plan with a SEPARATE company takes effect. . .

No, it’s not your eyes, and no, it’s not the camera, and nor is it my pathetic photog “skilz” (though pathetic is an accurate term *heh*). Caught this guy moving in for yet another head-butt. He’s the head-buttingest cat I’ve ever known.

A better pose (on the back of my Wonder Woman’s chair):

And another, same chair:

Annnnd. . . in the bay window. No, the basket’s not really too small for him. He just seems to prefer crowding himself up into as small a ball as possible.