Sunday, February 19, 2012
I'm feeling tired and dehydrated now, because we're having a brownout, which means I have to be at an Internet cafe instead of my office, and the shopping center, although the stores stay open on a generator, there's no air conditioning, so it's very stuffy in here, though not enough to get stenosis of the spine. I don't have long. Luckily it waited until later in the day. I was in my office until 4 o'clock and didn't know there would be one, so I guess it's unscheduled. When they are scheduled, they start at 8 in the morning and last until around 5 o'clock. It's one of the penalties for living here. And since it's unscheduled I don't know when it will stop. Or whether it applies to my house or not.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
On. house cleaning service cary nc
Plus, this book failed to bring out the drama of the events. The main character and her friends meet a cult based on David Koresh, but it predates the zombies, so it says nothing about their new world. In fact, the cult is living well, so she is subliminally giving the impression they're a good thing. But there's barely a fight when they leave. Not even between the character's lion and the cult leader's tigers. Yawn. Same when they encounter a group who are celebrating the violence, even against living people not zombies. A little conflict, then they're gone. I finally gave up about 3/4ths of the way through. I wouldn't have lasted that long except I kept trying to figure out Hocking's appeal. Maybe she's better in her vampire books. Or will someday be a house cleaning service cary nc.
On laminate floor
I also tried to read Hollow Lands by Amanda Hocking. I'm sure glad it was free. Everybody who's a writer interested in the Kindle knows of Amanda. She's managed to promote her books to make a lot of money,including landing a lucrative contract with a legacy publisher. Now I really wonder why. It's not that she's a bad writer. She's just not a good writer. Her prose is colorless and free of detail, except when she's describing clothes. Then she's particular. And some of the fighting against zombies in the book is told well enough. Good writing reads smoothly, while giving the impression the writer is in control, knows all the details of the scene and is giving the reader enough to make it real for them, even a laminate floor. I've often heard of cardboard characters. Hers live in a cardboard world.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
On Medical Liability Insurance
The on-going threat to Tom Sawyer in Tom Sawyer the novel is of course Injun Joe. I'd forgotten or never knew Tom and Huckleberry Finn originally saw Injun Joe kill a man in a cemetery late one night. They had another brush with him, and then Tom sees him in the cave when he's lost with Becky. However, the cave is then boarded up, so Injun Joe dies there of starvation. I'd have preferred a little direct solution, but I guess Twain didn't want Tom to kill anybody even if in self-defense. After all, he didn't have Medical Liability Insurance. Maybe that would have been too much for readers of that time. But it was one way to have Tom be indirectly the cause of Injun Joe's defeat.
Friday, December 30, 2011
On ACH payment
It may not directly affect your next ach payment, but recently some scientists finished a dubious accomplishment of the year -- finding the chain of mutations of the influenza virus H5N1 -- bird flu -- which could make it easily transmissible between humans. The reason it didn't become a pandemic in 2005 when it made the media spotlight is because it infects people deep in the lungs, and this inhibits transmission through the air. It's also the reason it's so deadly. Now this new virus -- created by scientists deliberately -- could go from person to person easily, and so could cause a pandemic. I don't know if it's confirmed it's as deadly as the original bird flu, however. So far, it's been kept under control so nobody has gotten sick from it -- yet.
Friday, December 23, 2011
On swimming pool pump motors
And I read Edgar Allan Poe's first short story, about two Hungarian noble families who've hated each other for centuries, and how one finally wins thanks to a supernatural intervention. Kind of good though he'll get better. A short story by HP Lovecraft is next on the list. I have a craving for Robert Louis Stevenson and William Hope Hodgsdon as well, but will probably wait and finish the John Le Carre novel I'm in the middle of first, though so far it's not really very good. Hopefully it will get better. I haven't been a big Le Carre fan, since I never understood The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, but I did enjoy a recent one. But so far, this one, could be used for the swimming pool pump motors, but perhaps it will have a good ending.
On pool safety covers
I've also sampled some of the other public domain works I've downloaded to my Kindle. I read All's Well That Ends Well, a play by William Shakespeare, though it was odd in ways. I never understood why the man didn't want to marry the woman who was promised to him by the king. Then there's a scheme for her to replace a woman in bed he does want to seduce, and get his ring. And it seemed that not much was done with the traitorous advisor who is found out late in the play. That doesn't seem to relate to the romantic plot, which is not about pool safety covers. A short story by Lord Dunsany about a centaur who goes and takes a beautiful woman, but it's pretty slight.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
On nj electricity
However, I did know the Kindle library has a large number of older classic books that were published prior to 1923 so they're now in the public domain. I'd forgotten how many great books that would include. And people have created huge collections of authors. So my Mark Twain collection includes all his novels, short stories and essays, everything except the few books published by his daughter in the 1960s, such as Letters to Earth, his anti-religious book which he didn't dare publish in his lifetime. Those collections are often just a few dollars. And many individual books are there for free. So I have enough on my Kindle for maybe $20 to read over the next two decades if I read nothing else, which of course won't happen. I want to read more contemporary thriller and horror novels, using nj electricity to light the bulbs with.
Saturday, December 03, 2011
On buy ipod touch
Van Lustbader does seem to know something of the Yakuza, the organized criminals of Japan, though having them worth with the Mafia to create some super transnational criminal organization is not very credible. There's some subplot about Linnear developing a super computer, but nothing is done with that. Lustbader friend is a detective in the US who's following the mafia widow he's in love with. People come and go, nobody stands out. It's hard to see how they're connected to everybody else, and whatever parts of the plot you can figure out. Part of that may be that it's a continuation of four or so earlier books. I know I've read at least two of those, but I can barely remember which ones, or what happened, because they're just as confusing. Better to buy ipod touch and just listen to some Japanese music.

