Classic Ripoffs #1,387

So, we received a notice from our local “baling wire and chewing gum” POTS carrier. In June, the basic residential phone charge will increase by 40%. Yep. 40%. Of course, that’s accompanied by the elimination of a service that has cost that same amount to have added on (which is why we never added it on), but–mirabile dictu!–the add-onservice that is being eliminated is now included in ALL customers’ basic phone charges.

In other words, the company has decided that everyone needs to pay that added charge, so they are simply adding the “service” to everyone’s account and charging every customer, instead of just the smaller number who wanted it before.

Of course the local “baling wire and chewing gum” phone company has to do this if the owners want to maintain their standard of living, since more and more folks in the area have ditched ’em for cell phone only services. In fact, we may just do the same, given this high-handed scam.

Why I Like eBooks

. . .let me count the ways. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Of course, one very big reason I appreciate eBooks is storage. With thousands of volumes of hardcopy books clogging our home, storing electronic copies of text is a BIG advantage for us. Sure, I miss the tactile sensations of reading hardcopy when reading eBooks, but the text’s the thing, you know.

Then there’s the thing with aging eyes. With eBooks, I can select from a wide range of text sizes and even, in some formats, toggle between serif and non-serif fonts to ease my eyes. Very nice.

Portability is a big plus, too. When I go out with my Kindle Fire, I carry several hundred eBooks with me, some of them as yet unread and others re-readable. Very nice!

Oh, there are other reasons I like eBooks (less expensive, overall, than hardcopy, easier to shop for, immediate lookup of etymologies, historical references, artwork, etc.) but The Big Reason I really appreciate eBooks hails back to a habit I’ve had for years, one that has grown ever more “necessary” for me to engage in as time has gone on, and a habit that is a real no-no to give expression when reading library books: I edit my books to be more as they would have been had the writers had literate editors in the publication loop. *heh* Marking up books–lining through a “dele” (from “deleatur”–editorial deletions), correcting a spelling, grammar or word usage error, cleaning up an awkward descriptive narrative here, an amphibolous phrase there and the odd “WTF?!?” in between are all serious “Bad Dog”s *heh* when applied to library books. My own copies? Full of such things.

And then there are the other notes, usually underlined or starred and noted by page number on the end pages of books, adding background or commentary correcting language or historical problems or simply reminders to look further into something mentioned in th text. And example from a recent read is where a character–a Roman Catholic priest, no less!–translated “Sic transit gloria mundi” as “the glory of man is fleeting”. *feh* Any even semi-literate person knows better. “Sic transit gloria mundi” is more properly, “Thus passes the glory of the world,” or more casually, “the world’s glory is fleeting, transient, impermanent.” No reference to man in the phrase at all, except that man is a part of temporal existence.

Things like that irritate me, so correcting them scratches an itch.

[The observant reader of this blog might at this point–or perhaps at an even earlier point *heh*–say, “Yeh, if you’re so smart, why is your blog filled with all kinds of convoluted constructions, obscurantist phraseology, and even the occasional misspelled word and lousy grammatical construction?” Fair question. This blog is written as dialog, spoken word, and I cut myself slack here as much as I do authors when they are writing dialog. *shrugs* And who says I have to be consistent anyway? *heh*Nevertheless, I cut myself no slack and am abashed when I re-read an old post and find a misused word or obvious grammar error that cannot be legitimately placed at the feet of casual speech.]

I like the annotation features offered in my Kindle Fire for making snarky corrections to text. In fact, since the silly onscreen keyboard is a bit irksome to use, the very fact that it slows down my reading is often a plus (I do tend to read things too quickly.). But for annotations, nothing beats reading an eBook in html format in a browser on a plain ole everyday computer. Open the html-formatted book in the browser, open each chapter in a text editor and switch back and forth between them for inserting comments, corrections and amendments in the text: fun for me.


Note: my notations do include interesting tidbits to explore further, as I said above, and also amusing lil things, like a character with only one eye appearing described as looking on a dangerous ally, “The big one. . . seemed ambivalent but kept a real close eye on her.” *heh* “Eye”. Funny.

More. . .

One small distraction when inserting notes into eBooks formatted as html files is the really, really sloppy html I see a lot of. *sigh* It’s almost as though many of them were formatted in a WYSIWYG editor like FrontPage that inserts all sorts of extraneous, useless, completely unnecessary crap. Oh, I don’t mind deprecated html tags that’ve been replaced with more “acceptable” markup lingo so much, but so much of the garbage markup is simply unnecessary.

So, Who Really Cares That There’s Nothing Worth Watching on Any Channel?

Checked the listings for Thursday. Yep. The best the lineup has to offer is “Battle: Los Angeles”–aliens invade LA. It seems the only likely responses from the rest of the country should that actually recur (OK, the first alien invasion was obviously just from south of the border, I guess this one’s talking about “aliens from another planet) would be,

“How can one tell it’s been invaded by aliens from another planet?” or

“DGARA.”

Fortunately, even if I didn’t have some good books to read, there’s always Amazon Prime. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Kindle Fire Usability Fun

I’ve made no secret of the fact that my first gen Kindle Fire is just fine and dandy for the uses I have for it. One thing that did stand out, though, as a usability PITA from the beginning was the onscreen keyboard. For typing, not much fun. So, one of the first things I did was to locate some conductive foam in my stash of junk, urm, parts and equipment and make some styli. They worked and were a help, making “typing” on the Fire almost Good Enough, and easily OK for typing brief notes in books.

But actually buying a stylus? Fuggedaboutit. All of ’em I found on the web were too much money, once I’d made some from castoff junk, urm, parts and equipment for essentially nothing.

Page forward to today when I was standing at the checkout at our local “fell off the back of a truck” store and saw mini-styli (with handy lil 2.5mm/3.5mm plugin tethers) for a buck apiece. Since my home made styli have long since become well-worn, I picked up a couple. They work quite well, but “mini-styli” means using something about the size of a pencil nub, so. . .

At the same “fell off the back of a truck” I buy a particular ball point pen that has a Parker-compatible refill. A buck apiece. Cheap and useful, since I have more than a few Parker (and Parker compatible) ballpoint pens. While the barrels of these cheapies are fairly nice bamboo tubes, I junk the barrels and keep the refills handy. (Where “junk the barrels” means “put ’em in my stash of someday useful stuff” *heh*).

Do you see a convergence coming up here? Right. I just mated one of the mini-styli to one of those spare bamboo tubes (with a handy pocket clip already installed!) and have a pen-sized stylus that works a charm and even clips nicely to the leather case my Fire regularly occupies.

The smaller surface contact area of a stylus really makes a difference when using the onscreen keyboard, and the more normal pen size of the bamboo barreled (with the conductive part protruding for index finger contact) stylus is just right.


Rabbit trail: it’s also a wee tad easier using TeamViewer on the Fire with a stylus, well, for most things. Pinch-n-zoom isn’t all that improved. *heh* I do kinda enjoy accessing the Win8 Media Center compy with TeamViewer on my Fire. Comes in handy sometimes.

The “Joys” of Aging #1 Out of #5,728 and Counting. . .

I deal with the pain in joints. Sure it hurts. Yeh, unless I really concentrate on moving beyond the pain, my grip is weaker, for example. Big deal. It’s the worsening tinnitus that ranks right up there at the top.

I’ve fairly well (roughly) isolated the frequencies that result in the most pain/inducement of harmonic disturbances via interaction with my tinnitus. I try to avoid those, but the greater the range of frequencies (and harmonics, overtones, etc.) expressed by a piece of music, the greater likelihood of problems on my end. And that’s a BIG PITA since I really, really find great pleasure in music. (I was actually making significant–to/for me–progress with my lil Bach Strad Cornet before I put it away because playing it just hurt too much. *shrugs* At least I can still “play” it in my head.)

Of course, some of the loudest frequencies in my tinnitus are those ranges also inhabited by the enunciation of consonants in speech, hence a growing dependence on watching an interlocutor, since all the vowels are clear as a bell, and only consonants seem seriously affected by being overwhelmed with noisy tinnitus.

Other frequencies above and below my tinnitus are only interfered with my the apparent “loudness,” which varies according to other conditions. As recently as a couple of years ago, for example, I was able to hear the “mosquito ring tone” us Olde Phartes are supposed to be unable to hear. *shrugs* It was outside those frequencies masked by my tinnitus and the examples I listened to weren’t on any “conflict overtones”.

I hope that the trials on a vagus nerve treatment for tinnitus are successful in humans and are approved for general treatment sometime soon. That would be cool. I could deal with arthritis pain while playing a horn. Heck, I might even try singing again.

Let me dream, OK?

Spring. . . again

Semi-random wanderings/wonderings about this Spring of ours.


Northern Hemisphere, Vernal Equinox: astronomers say it’s Spring since yesterday. What do astronomers know? (How we can let astronomers and accountants–quarterly reports, etc.–run our lives, I dunno. Probably an artifact of public schools.) The daffodils* have called it Spring for nearly a month and a half here in America’s Third World County. The ugly, wild purple clover has agreed for easily as long. So far, robins have not cast their vote, but many plants are budding and (apparently) hardier birds than robins have been making their presence known.

So now, snow. Go figure. Of course, at the rate it’s coming down now, we can expect to have around 2 or 3 hundredths of an inch accumulation. *meh* Not enough to sneeze at. We need more slow-melt moisture right now–or at least I would prefer more.

My gardens already planted won’t mind a few days of cold, since they still have a couple of weeks left before I’d expect any sign of growth anyway. A blanket of snow would be just the trick to hold in what warmth the ground has and then provide some slow watering. One can but hope the rate of snowfall picks up a bit.

Well, it is time for Spring cleanup outside and in. A nice cold day like today encourages the “in” part.

Snow and freezing rain, with a low just reaching freezing temps is forecast for tonight. Folks are talking about this being atypical for Spring weather, but folks have poor memories. Just since we’ve lived in America’s Third World County–a wee tad shy of 20 years–I can recall March weather that was similar.

Maybe I’ll hit the outside long enough to at least mulch the two wee garden areas I’ve planted. Yeh, they’re already covered with garden cloth (with cutouts where I’ve planted seed), but mulching on top of that might be a Good Thing, anyway. We’ll see how it goes. Should have light enough later this afternoon, still.

I wonder if Spring’s pretty much the same as always in West Texas. . .

West Texas Spring–Boing!

Texas-Spring


*Oh, the asterisk on “daffodils”? When I was growing up, I called them “jonquils” because everyone I knew called ’em that. Regionalism, I guess. Or not. Maybe just a variant name like Narcissus–pretty much the same plant/flower. Orson Scott Card has a gentle not-quite-a-rant on Spring where his take (mentioning jonquils instead of daffodils) is similar to mine.

*sigh* Looks Like It Has to Be This Year. . .

. . .when I get serious about finishing up electrical work here at twc central.

*profound sigh*

I do so very much dislike doing electrical work, but the only electrician I really trust here in America’s Third County retired a couple of years ago, and I really, really, really don’t want to pay someone to just screw things up, so that leaves me, my “consultant” (“Hey, X, can you tell me what to do/where to go for parts/etc., for such and so?”) and my several references on electrical work, codes, etc.

See, there are several ESSENTIAL circuits. Some I’ve already reworked, and they’re OK, but there is one seriously, majorly [messed up] circuit that serves stuff all over the house in ways that make no rhyme or reason that I’ve been putting off simply because it is the single weirdest electrical circuit I’ve ever run across. It serves parts of serveral rooms and one room entirely–the small room I have used as an office that is now pretty much simply a computer junk room and place with my most comfy chair for sitting at a computer.

(Yeh, yeh, I know, whine, whine, whine.)

Well, that circuit decided today was the day to go crazy. Dead. Live. Dead again. No, the circuit breaker doesn’t pop. It’s the live bus bar in the main box. *sigh* Yeh. Best solution is simply to replace the main service panel. *groan* I do NOT want to do that. Second best: call the manufacturer and order a new bus bar. Now, while that’s nearly the cost of a completely new circuit panel and still involves working around the live mains, I can do that. (Good insulation all over, including properly insulated tools, gloves, shoes, etc., then terminating the live mains with appropriately-sized insulators; still a PITA and still a bit scary. *shrugs* I have life insurance. :-)) But that, of course, will still leave me with rewiring to do, since circuits wired by a jackleg electrician and added to later by someone’s retarded pet monkey still need to be cleaned up (*cough* rewired completely *cough*).

Ah, well, in th meantime, I can bring in those three (or four–there is room in the box) circuits someone added to the house in a box outside about 30 years or so ago (going by the manufacture date of the circuit panel outside). . . coming straight off the mains! *sigh* I suppose I could cut off two of the rooms on this bad circuit and use one circuit apiece from the outside box for them. That’d (temporarily, in a hash-up sort of way) solve a world of ills. Another for an appliance circuit that I think is overloaded, although it’s never had any problems. I could almost do that recycling the conduit that’s outside, although I’d want to use new wiring.

Looks like my Spring task list has pretty well filled up, cos I do electrical work v e r y s l o w l y.

More Typical Fedgov B.S.

So, since we–very uncharacteristically–have a refund due us from the fedgov this year (primarily due to some rebates on “energy efficient” home improvements and to lower income *sigh*), we filed as soon as all the correct forms were available.

Son&Heir filed a couple of weeks later.

Whose return was processed first? You got it.

Reason #1,386,237 why I hate the IRS.

Fun lil mini-project

Mini-project: Cleaning up and configuring a used, but otherwise nice, older Vaio desktop for use by a (very nearly*) first time computer user who’s nearly 90. Purpose of the computer? “I want to be able to do email with my children and grandchildren.”

A worthwhile use for a computer, but it doesn’t require all that much. So. notebook or desktop was the first question. (Tablet or “smart” phone? Nope. Nixed by user.)

There were several barriers to a notebook: cost, screen size, cramped keyboard and any kind of touchpad were some of the stated barriers. But size mattered, in some senses, as well because of limited living space.

Nice discovery: a nice-sized, high-resolution (1080p) TV with an analog video computer input that sits within pretty close viewing range from the user’s most comfy chair. Desktop that’ll fit into the user’s entertainment center? The right fit.

Internet access. Limited, fixed income. Relatively high medical expenses (relative to fixed income). But. The assisted living facility does sport a wireless network with Internet access, and the wireless password is in my password book. . . Now, if only the user can access it from her apartment, Internet access is solved. Hmmm, a small parabolic dish to improve reception and transmission from a 5db base antenna on a wireless adapter? Could be.

Other minor concerns:

Would have preferred a Linux OS with desktop links to Internet/Email, but (sort of computer literate) adult children would not be all that comfortable helping the user with that OS as an environment, so some sort of Windows environment. Oh, dear. It is a slightly older computer. Only 512 MB RAM, and only room for expansion to a max of 2GB (one pair of expansion slots effectively X-ed out, because one of them is has a small issue: broken clip). That’s not all that bad, since the computer’s limited to a 32-bit OS, anyway. Maybe Win7 wouldn’t be best, though. So, WinXP Pro, 32-bit it is. (Hmmm, seems to run very nicely with the 512MB it has. With installation of software blocked, it might just do as is! But. . . another 1GB would only be about $25. Decisions. . . ) Fully updated, WinXP Pro SP3 will certainly serve the user well enough and be familiar to family who may want to mess the computer up. *heh*

After those trifling concerns were met, the rest has been easy-peasy.

Necessary software:

A decent browser (Opera) configured with useful extensions (WOT, LastPass, Adblock Plus) and Speed Dial selections (the user’s webmail address, several sites fitting user’s stated interests, etc.). Links on desktop to Internet/Email.

Basic security software–Microsoft Security Essentials.

OpenDNS set as DNS resolver, and free account set up for customized filtering.

Irfanview–better for viewing family photos than the XP built in viewer.

TeamViewer8 for the most computer-savvy relative to use for remote management.

. . .and a few other little details, like the mini-manual with outlined user tips.

With a little luck on the Internet connection (via the assisted living facility’s existing wireless network), I think this will serve the stated needs pretty well.

Fun lil mini-project.


(Kudos to JDS and MES for the donation of the computer.)