Anyone interested in playing a game in my comments? I thought of a pretty good opening sentence. Please add a sentence at a time in the comments to create a story.
Thunderclouds rolled in just as the sun began to set, reducing twilight's already short lease on the day.
I've been following the Kindle discussion threads over on Amazon lately. It seems quite natural to me, given that I am a Kindle owner, that I should attempt to keep up on what's going on in the world of my ereader.
Several topics recur with the tenacity of a rat terrier. A couple of the more commonly revisited themes are "When are the Harry Potter books going to be available?" and "Can you read library ebooks on your Kindle?" Periodically, a user will ask a question and the answer will provide handy information of which I was previously unaware.
Perhaps the most frequently revisited issue has to do with ebook pricing and the agency model. In a nutshell, the major players in the publishing world will not allow Amazon to discount ebooks. As an example, go visit the Amazon page for Jim Butcher's Side Jobs
Did you see the text under the price?
Sold by: Penguin PublishingThe publisher is fixing the price, not suggesting it.
This price was set by the publisher
Security experts will tell you that you should password protect your home computer - even if it is a desktop computer that you don't normally allow no one else to use. There are all sorts of reasons behind this recommendation. Suppose you forget to tell your new teenage babysitter that the computer is off-limits? What if, heaven forbid, someone broke into your home?
Of course, there was a case where the thief logged into his social networking site and led the police right to him... rather Darwinian...
I can, should, and do password protect my computer and/or particular files on my computer; shouldn't I be able to password protect my ereader in the same way? Nook just launched password protection for the unit and for purchasing privileges in firmware update 1.5. Kindles support password protection on reading the content. Kindles do not support password protection on purchasing new content nor on retrieving content from the archive.
We are seriously considering investing in a Kindle (Wi-Fi)
As parents, we feel that it is not our right, but our duty, to monitor what our child views and reads. Neatnik is not allowed to use the computers at home unless Mommy or Daddy is there to supervise. We pre-screen movies if we have any doubts about their suitability. Given that Neatnik reads so far above grade level, we consult regularly with the local librarians for books that are challenging but yet not age-inappropriate.
There is a fairly well-defined rating system for movies. Web sites have disclaimers and age restrictions. These are accepted as good and proper in order to provide parents with tools to help them in their selection of media for their children. Why is it, then, when parents ask for parental controls and password protections on their ereaders that other people throw their (figurative) arms in the air and start yelling about they should not be sujected to censorship?
Guess what, folks: good parenting is all about setting limits and expectations. Parents should be involved in their children's recreational activities - including being aware of what they watch and what they read. Is it censorship? You betcha, and I, for one, refuse to apologize for it. Nobody is suggesting that ereaders censor or restrict what legal adults are reading. If someone does not want to opt-in on password protection, that is their right but what right do those folks have to criticize parents who are trying to protect their children from material that they do not consider suitable? Sure, you can tell your child they cannot download any new books. You can tell your child that certain books in your archive are off-limits.
Just remember this: your child is an imperfect human being, just like all the rest of us. Your child will make mistakes.
How many times have you accidentally opened the wrong file on your computer? If you give your child a book allowance, is it inconceivable that your child, no matter how responsible, might one time accidentally go over that limit?
Remember this, too: your child is an individual with free-will. Your child will inevitably push boundaries at some point.
Did you have a curfew as a teenager? How many times did you push that particular envelope? If being five minutes worked, did coming in ten minutes late work, too? Might your child want to read a book that you are reading? It's perfectly all right for an adult to read a police procedural with graphic descriptions of crimes and violations against another human being but will an eight or nine year old reading the same material become frightened, perhaps have nightmares?
Parental controls: I support them. Teaching your child values and morals and integrity are a parent's first priority, raising them to become responsible adults, capable of contributing positively to society. Parental controls, movie ratings, and password protections are simply tools which parents can use to help get the job done.
Stick, singular, not sticks, plural.
No, not that stick!
This stick, the stick shift.
Before we invested in the minivan back in '05, I drove a 2001 Dodge Neon. I loved driving my Neon: it hugged the road really well, had a pretty tight turning radius, and best of all, it had a 5-speed standard shift tranny. A fair number of people are probably scratching their heads right now wondering, "Well, if trek like the zippy little Neon so much, why on earth did she part with it in favor of a whopping behemoth of a minivan?!"
And I answer thee, "The Neatnik."
Neons are great fun to drive. It is probably about as close to driving a sports car as I'll ever get and like a sports car, they are somewhat lacking in the backseat department. By the time our little Neatnik was two, we were having a devil of a time trying to put her into her car seat. We always had her buckled into the middle seat of the car so we had to climb halfway across the backseat in order to secure the great collection of straps and buckles designed to safeguard our little bundle of joy.
Trust me, there was no joy in that.
The backseat of a Neon is only as wide as the rest of the car but it does not feel that way when you are trying to restrain a wriggly toddler. Suddenly, the back doors seem twenty feet apart and the limited amount of leg and head room is temporarily sucked into an alternate dimension. This leads to the parent of said toddler being forced into odd and uncomfortable Gumby-like contortions. For a short time, Neatnik was able to climb into her seat on her own and we had only to arrange the straps and fasten the latches but then she, like all of the children her age, grew. When the backseat is too tight for the child to crawl into the car seat without banging her head/elbows/knees, it is just too tight.
The minivan doesn't have any space issues and Neatnik was able to climb into the van all on her own. Latching her in was much easier since she was now at waist level and not eighteen feet away. Neatnik loved the new vehicle. In fact, she claimed her very first chore: it is her job to push the close door button. Heaven help the parent who pushed the button for her. She would cry. I kid you not. She had a job to do and she would do it!
Fortunately, she has mostly outgrown that particular neurosis.
Driving the minivan is very different from driving the Neon. Beyond the obvious that the driver's seat is much higher off the road and the vehicle itself weighs so much more, the minivan is an automatic. It took me a few weeks to stop reaching for the stick on the floor.
This morning, I finished up the last few pages of a trade paperback from the library. I wanted to read a short story in progress on my Kindle
Just like reaching for the stick shift.
You know I would reach the point of the car story eventually, didn't you?
I hope my little story was worth a chuckle to you on this very sunny Sunday.
PS - When I feel like zipping around town in a sportier vehicle, I borrow Number Guy's car: he drives a standard-shift Neon.
It's quiet here. Number Guy just let to drive the Neatnik to school. The hamster is sleeping soundly. I am sitting down to review my lecture slides for this morning's class. Well, I was doing that right up until I thought, "Gee, I bet I have enough time to put together a little Friday morning Bullet Post
issues all sorted out. I am Wi-Fi empowered, my elibrary has been downloaded, and my collections tagging system re-implemented. Still think it needs a name, though.
One of Neatnik's fellow Brownie Scouts just happens to be the daughter of a pair of old high school classmates of mine, RoadRunner and T-Sax. We lost touch during the college years but sort of reconnected when our daughters ended up being enrolled in the same pre-k program. RoadRunner recently read a book which she said was riveting and she loaned it to me during the last scout meeting. The book was The Accidental Billionaires
While I am not "on" that particular social networking site, I knew that there were court cases involving ownership of the company and the news has been liberally splashed recently with claims about the abuses of private data. Since I wanted to become a bit more informed, I read the book and I researched some of the articles listed as primary sources.
This book opens at a party on the Harvard campus in October 2003 and retells the events of the next 24 months. Two parallel stories of trust and betrayal are told in these pages; the first is the tale of the founders, the beginning of their friendship, their association in the early days of development and launch, and their subsequent falling out and legal battle; the second story is the claims made by another trio of Harvard students that the idea for this web site was theirs and that their intellectual property was stolen.
Where is the truth in this maelstrom of accusation and counter-accusation? It would be nice to say, "Here, this is the truth", but I suppose that each individual must make up his/her own mind.
Perhaps it was the author's intent to draw the reader into the language of the current college scene, but the scatological language used throughout the text is inappropriate for polite conversation. Such misuse of language and the author's poor writing style made the book an unenjoyable read.
Even if the text has been of higher literary quality, however, I do not think I would have enjoyed this book. The key programmer is described as self-absorbed, socially autistic, and interested in women for one thing only, who is willing to lie, cheat, and betray anyone who disagrees with him; doesn't sound like the kind of guy I'd like to invite over for dinner.
About two weeks ago, I posted some raves and rants about my Kindle (Wi-Fi)
For those who do not own a Kindle, if the unit is idle for a sufficient amount of time, it will go to sleep, just like a notebook computer does. The text you were reading is replaced by a screen saver. You need to push the power slider on the bottom to return it to wakefulness. Ralph Ellison was displayed on my screen when I pushed the power slider to return to my book.
Nothing happened. Ralph continued to look at me.
Okay, maybe I didn't push the slider all of the way to the right. I tried a second time and a third time.
Ralph remained. What is up with that?! I don't like Ralph Ellison's works. Is the guy somehow forcing my Kindle to channel a projection of his astral self in an attempt to force me to consider reading his stuff?
Nope, nothing quite so flowery. The answer was much more prosaic: the Kindle, it was dead.
I did not hyperventilate but I made have made a child-like whimpering noise deep in my throat. My Kindle was not quite two months old! I rushed home and called Kindle Support.
There was a minor panicky interval during which I actually did begin to hyperventilate. The Kindle support agent at first misunderstood my request for a replacement. He thought I was asking for a full return and refund. Once we got that all straightened out, though, the process went smoothly. He set about the process of sending me a new Kindle and issuing a return label for the broken unit to be sent back to Amazon.
I spent a bit of time reviewing my digital bookshelf on the Amazon web site, tracking down descriptions for all of the books I had purchased and assigning them to their genres. All that was left to do at that point was to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Until yesterday morning when I came home from educating the masses in the vagaries of the Java programming language: FedEx had already come and gone and my new Kindle was sitting right next to my door. Yay!
Downloading the library took a bit of time. Tagging each individual book took rather a bit more time but by the end of the day, all of my library was restored and sorted by genre.
Have to say that while I would not wish this on any ereader user, the folks at Kindle Support made the situation as minimally painful as possible.
Now all I need to do is to think up a name for the new Kindle. Ideas, anyone?
The Greek yogurt experiment had mixed results. Let's examine them item by item...
Coagulation did not happen as scheduled. The recipe video indicated that one should expect nothing to appear to happen for the first 3 to 3½ hours and then a miracle would occur and there would be yogurt. Scientifically, this makes a lot of sense. The yogurt happens when the bacteria you are incubating reaches a certain concentration.
One of the things that makes the school year different from summer vacation is the lunch menu. Okay, for some people this isn't the biggest deal in the world.
Those are the people whose child(ren) enjoy eating things that are just as good packed into an insulated lunch box as freshly made, like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, every day.
Neatnik is not a fan of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She likes the occasional peanut butter quesadilla or open-faced peanut butter on oatmeal bread, but don't ask her to slather on the crushed and sugared concord grapes. One should also avoid suggesting ham and cheese or any of the standard "sandwich salads".
Most days, Neatnik likes to have oatmeal or yogurt for lunch. In the past, I have experimented with a variety of yogurts: different brands, various flavors. Vanilla is almost always a winner. Another popular option is plain or vanilla yogurt with a small scoop of crushed Oreo crumbs or mini M&Ms stirred in right before eating.
Third grade, however, has brought some changes. It seems that several of the girls in class have been bringing Greek yogurt to the lunch table.
Well, of course, Neatnik asked me to buy her some.
Which is why I am spending my Wednesday afternoon popping up like a Jack-in-the-Box to check the crock pot every ten to fifteen minutes. Here's how it all played out...
There are only a few brands available at our local grocery store. I purchased one non-fat vanilla and one 2% plain and we gave them both a try. I say "we" because I also tried some. It was much better than my memories of regular old American yogurt and I found that plain yogurt with a teaspoon or so of honey is actually quite tasty; Greek yogurt has twice the protein content of "regular" yogurt and less sugar. This is the result of the long straining time to remove excess whey.
Problem is, each of those six to seven ounce cups runs about $1.69. That means you're paying between $3.86 and $4.51 per pound. Rather pricey, wouldn't you say? Enter the Internet where I found Dale Grote's Greek yogurt tutorial posted on YouTube.
I purchased milk and some yogurt to act as a starter...
Posts
