Looking at Echo and Google Home

Today's not very conducive to blogging. Nevertheless.

Amazon and Google have been having a lot of sales lately for their Echo and Google Home products. I almost bought an Amazon Echo Dot(Alexa) for $19.99, but I didn't feel comfortable with it. Not for any logical reason. It was more like that little voice saying maybe not. I listened to it and did more research. This article has a small graph of accuracy measurements in a test of various digital assistants that were asked over 800 questions. Google was 87.9% accurate and understood 100% of the questions. Alexa was 72.5% accurate and understood 99% of the questions. Siri was irrelevant, since I never buy any Apple products whatsoever. I already have Cortana on my PC.

Cortana is the reason I was looking at digital assistants to begin with. I have Cortana. I like Cortana. I just can't get it to keep working. I rarely shut my computer down. My habit is to put it in Sleep mode instead, because I always have multiple browser windows with multiple tabs open. I like being able to pick up where I left off the night before. The problem is that Cortana goes into Suspended mode during Sleep and doesn't want to wake up even after restarting the Cortana process. I finally gave up. I need something that works.

Accuracy isn't the only factor. Digital assistants do more than answer questions and tell the weather. After a lot of reading, it kind of comes down to this. Alexa is great for people in the Amazon ecosystem who consume media and buy off Amazon and probably have Prime. Google Home is great for more informational type needs. Both are good for home automation, which is something I want. I have an air purifier and plugin heaters, etc., that it would be nice to be able to tell to turn on and off from another room. It would be nice to be able to control lamps with a voice command or have the lights come on as I'm coming up the driveway instead of having to leave a light on.

I ended up ordering a Google Home Mini 2-pack and one smart plug to test. Finding a smart plug without a lot of bad reviews was almost impossible. It seems quite a lot of them work for a while then die. This one had only 5% bad reviews, which is great for any product. I ordered it. We'll see. It should all arrive by the end of next week or early the week after, depending on holidays and how many orders there are and the perils of free shipping. I'll have more to say about how it works, assuming it works, in a few weeks.

Have a great weekend.

The Prime Directive

There's a two-story house I pass sometimes that used to be painted purple. It was for sale for a long time, and one night I looked it up. It was nearly half a million dollars and had 5,000+ square feet of space and an elevator. The road it's on is set lower than the house. You have to look up at it, when you drive past. Aside from its size and odd purple color it wasn't exceptionally remarkable.

One day someone finally bought the big, purple house. They painted it. I'm not sure if the purple is reflecting through the new paint or if the new color is deliberate. It's now flesh-colored. Whenever I take that route, the house looks like a huge box of skin staring down majestically over the road.

I used to watch Star Trek back in the day. I grew up watching reruns of the original series with Captain Kirk. I watched The Next Generation, when that came out, but it had too much left-wing preaching in it. BBC America occasionally shows Star Trek Voyager. I've seen a few of those lately. It was one of my favorites among the Star Trek shows. It had a lot of time travel and didn't preach like TNG. It was about exploration instead of politics.

Starting with TNG, the Prime Directive became a major plot device. According to the Prime Directive, Starfleet isn't supposed to interfere in the development of alien cultures, especially ones of lower technological levels. It was kind of based on advanced countries on earth who go to places where people live in huts and hunt with bows and spears. Driving up in a Jeep drinking a bottle of Coke with rock and roll playing on the radio supposedly damages those cultures.

The Prime Directive was actually in the original series. It just wasn't that important. Kirk was a real man not a politically correct diplomat. He nevertheless kept a copy of the Prime Directive close at hand. It was  printed on a 2-ply roll in his bathroom.

Have a great weekend.

Baseball Business

I've been watching the Braves and the Cubs for a number of years, and I think I've figured out how baseball works as a business. I'll tell you upfront that I don't have insider knowledge. This is based on years of observation.

From what I've seen, most ballclub owners don't care about three things: a)winning and losing, b)the game itself or the c)fans. 

a)Winning isn't as important as having a winning record. The team needs to above .500, but that's only for business reasons. Fans pay money on a winner.

b)Timers are starting to creep into the game. The game itself isn't built for that. Think of all the basketball games where the last 2 game minutes take 15 or 20 real minutes to play. That's a flagrant abuse of the rules of the game of basketball. Football has similar rules abuses that drag those games out, too. If timers are put into baseball, clock abuse will come along with it. Timeouts will also come along with it. The games will end up taking longer to play just like basketball and just like football. The timers that have been put in need to be removed and the commissioner fired. The only reason I can see for the timers is so the commissioner can have a place in the history books. There's no game reason for them.

The game is about winning. When owners care more about profit than about winning, they don't care about the game. Allowing timers also tells me they don't care about the game.

c)From watching the Braves, I deduce that owners only care about fans to the extent that they have enough butts in the seats to look good on television. Modern stadiums have fewer seats than older stadium. It's easier to make the crowd look bigger and the stadium fuller that way. Other than that I think the fans are viewed as a commodity.

My observation has been that the players are traded like stocks on the stock market. Owners buy low and sell high to maximize profit regardless of the damage done to the team. I can't count the number of times I've seen the Braves develop a superstar like Andruw Jones and then dump him when the team needs him most for a younger, cheaper player. The excuse is always that's the player is just too expensive. Cue tears of sadness.

The Braves are very good at poor-mouthing. The announcers will talk about how the Braves are a small-market team with limited resources for buying players unlike those big, rich clubs. However, every time a key player gets injured, the owners open the checkbook to the tune of what could be scores of millions of dollars. The money is always there, and it flows freely whenever needed in complete contradiction of all the poor-mouthing. That tells me they have the money to buy the big players. They just don't want to spend it. They want maximum profit.

Fans will hang onto a loser for a long time, if there was a win beforehand. I've seen a pattern among owners. They'll fund a championship team and then sell off the good players to maximize profit. The players are basically stocks. The owners will then ride the afterglow of the post-season as many years as they can to maximize profits.

I could go on, but this is probably too much truth already. The basic strategy seems to be to buy low and sell high while stringing the fans along with big talk about the potential the team has this season.

The people who seem to care the most about the game are the players and the coaches. A great example is Brian Snitker who was named Manager of the Year for 2018. That man spent decades out of the spotlight working past the time when he could have retired. You don't spend that much time at a job unless you care about it. He finally got a chance at the big time and has made the best of it. A lot of players are the same way. Not all of them, of course, but I'll see players who sacrifice and do everything they can to play just a little bit longer that extra season or two. For those guys you know it's not about the money. It's about the game.

What baseball needs are owners who care about the game the way fans do and not owners who care more about money.

Have a great weekend.

A Couple of News Stories

There have been a rash of news stories about people being accused of things and then being immediately fired. It always makes me think the same thing: innocent until proven guilty. The farther back in time the accusation is the more proof I want to see that it actually happened.

The other day I ran across one of those stories that sounded horrific. A Facebook selfie saved this man from spending 99 years in prison. That guy was accused by a girl he hadn't talked to in two years of attacking her and cutting her chest with a box cutter. The police assumed he was guilty and arrested him. He wasn't given the details of the accusation until nine months later. That's when someone he was with at an event in a different city was able to clear him with a time-stamped Facebook selfie. The story has more details of how the accusation affected his life. What happened to innocent until proven guilty?

But it's not all bad news. I saw a feel good story from South Carolina. Woman kills jail escapee who kicks in her door. A couple of inmates escaped from jail and ran different directions. One of them kicked in this woman's door and tried to attack her in her bedroom, the same bedroom where she keeps her gun. Pickens County Sheriff Clark said, "I gave her a big hug. I told her how proud I was of her." Aw, and just in time for the holidays.

This is why we can't let the politicians take away our guns. Good people need them.

It's been fairly uneventful otherwise. I've been working on the non-fiction book. It's not as easy as fiction. There's a lot of research that goes into it. Fiction has research, too, but there's more flexibility in applying it. For the non-fiction it has to stand up to criticism I expect later. It's about the Bible. I can already imagine the Pharisees lining up.

Have a great weekend.

He Never Came Back

This is Lynx the stray cat I befriended. He went from wild and unmannered to a big love kitty who learned to respect certain boundaries. It took a while, but he learned that walking up and grabbing a leg with his claws is not a standard human greeting. In the beginning I would see him in the distance, and he would run if he saw me. Eventually, after seeing me in the yard so much, he decided I was his person and would sit in my lap. He hated the rain. I guess it made it harder to hear enemies. This is the best picture I have of him. He was in a great pose. When I snapped it, he meowed at me at just the right moment. He disappeared several months ago in a rainy week, the kind he hated. I don't know what happened to him.

Things have been a little slow on the writing front. I didn't get enough sleep this week. Nevertheless, I've had a very creative week away from the keyboard. I've been thinking about things past the non-fiction book and different ways of approaching fiction. I think future fiction works will be easier.

Have a great weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving

With the holiday, yesterday felt like Friday or Saturday, and today feels like the weekend. I think I'll take this week off as a holiday week. Nevertheless, it's time for an Is He Still Alive? recap.

Is He Still Alive?

Rich Little was very big in the 80s doing impressions of presidents and celebrities. He was on all kinds of shows. As we learned in a previous blog, he is indeed still alive. YouTube recommended this video of him to me this week. I hope you enjoy it.

Have a great weekend.

Fake Justice

I saw a show on Christian television in which these two young guys were, as is so often the case there, trying to sell a book. Because I don't want to promote them, I won't name the show or the book. Their theory is that freedom of religion in America is a Satanic conspiracy and that the founding fathers gave it to us so occult forces could freely sneak their mystery religions into our new country. In case you wondered, yes, the young men looked like Millenniuals. I could go on about the faux gravitas, but I'll spare you. I didn't pay attention to all of it. I was reminded of Isaiah 8:12 Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy, neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. A modern translation I read put it something like this: Conspiracy, conspiracy. Everything this people speaks of is a conspiracy. Don't be afraid of what they fear. I'm not a seminary graduate, but I think what was going on was that people in Isaiah's time were focused on conspiracy theories instead of focused on solving the real problems facing the nation. Sounds very familiar. Just because something sounds logical and fits the facts doesn't make it true. We have a literary genre for that. It's called Historical Fiction.

While I didn't watch every single minute of that show, a picture of the Supreme Court building caught my eye. Carved in stone was Equal Justice Under Law. It reminded me of "hate crime" laws. When those were first being debated, it was pointed out that there are no hate crimes. All crimes are "hate" crimes. A crime is a crime no matter what. In our legal system the law is supposed to punish people for what they do not for what they think or feel. The law can never ever know what a person was thinking or feeling at the time of a crime. Knowing that would require a supernatural act. The law is not supernatural. Even if the criminal swore he felt hate at the time, the law can never ever know if that's really true.

As a theoretical example, suppose you got into an argument with a stranger that led to a fight. Suppose the stranger was a member of a special class according to hate crime laws, but you're not. If the law charged the other person, he would get a light sentence if any. If the law charged you, the sentence would be severe with lengthy imprisonment. This is not equal justice under the law. What this actually does is allow the government to selectively punish people they don't like. That's what hate crime laws are really for. The government has figured out a way use dictatorial and oppressive powers under the illusion that it's constitutional, when the very carving on the Supreme Court building tells us it's injustice.

Have a great weekend.

How Could They?

I think it's that time again, the time when I talk about politics. Since 2016, I've become more and more disgusted with the liberal media and the left. Take the Russia thing. Before Obama left office, his administration investigated and cleared Trump of the accusation. Consider that. One of the most corrupt administrations in the history of this country said Trump was innocent. Despite that, the Democrat party wouldn't stop talking about it. The false accusations and lies never stopped. The baseless attacks by the media have been relentless. They began accusing him of all kinds of things before he even had a chance to do anything in office at all. It's been rabid and perhaps insane as if they were being controlled by malevolent supernatural entities. The lack of integrity in the media and among the Democrat party since 2016 has thoroughly disgusted me. And it's been in sight of the public.

How in the world could this country have given control of the house back to the Democrats when they're clearly incompetent to rule? Historically, it was expected that that would happen. The party opposite the President usually wins the congress. Nevertheless, I'm extremely disappointed by such a large step backward, especially after the inexcusable behavior of the left. The silver lining is that the Republicans control the Senate, which means good things for Supreme Court justices. On the whole it turned out better than expected. The Democrats took the house back, but they did worse than anticipated.

In Europe terrorists protest, riot, burn cars and attack people. Terrorist organizations are banned over there. After the 2016 elections Democrats protested, rioted, burned cars and attacked people. Should we should think about banning the Democrat party as a terrorist organization? It seems logical, especially after the last two years.

Washington, D.C. has a lot of problems. We all know this. The way I see it the Democrat party and the Republican party are the two main problems. If we could get rid of them both, the other problems would solve themselves. Neither one of them are interested in solving the problems of the country. The "problems" they keep trying to solve are how to get reelected and how to find more time on the golf course. I don't see those as problems.

Let's talk treason. When congressmen are sent to Washington, they vote on bills that become laws. The votes do not belong to the congressmen. They belong to the people. Every time a congressman trades or sells a vote, that's theft. Every time they vote according to an order given by a party official, that's theft. That's violation of their oaths of office. That's treason. Maybe not hang them all from a lamppost treason, but it's still treason against the Constitution and treason against the American people. It's a blatant violation of their fiduciary responsibilities to voters. Both parties are rust from the past. As long as they stick around, we'll never have a bright future.

So, last week I reported that Tesla had made a Q3 profit. It turns out they fudged the numbers by reporting money from previous quarters as third quarter profits. It appears they made a little money but only a little and not the way they massaged the numbers to make it look.

Despite all that, have a great weekend. :)

Low Confidence Score

I've mentioned Tesla and how it looked like they could go bankrupt. I was a huge Tesla fan until the Solar City bailout, a move that according to analysts ended up costing them a billion dollars a year. Well before that nugget was revealed, I stepped back and reevaluated. The bailout made absolutely no sense. Tesla kept losing money. My time as a Tesla fanboy came to an end. I decided I had no confidence in the company unless they could turn a profit for two quarters in a row. They've turned one in a row before. It didn't stick. After the bailout, the loss per car began to grow instead of shrink. It looked like a train wreck in slow motion.

It's taken a lot longer than it should have, but Tesla finally made a profit. Third quarter results came in the other day. The train wreck, if not stopped, has at least slowed down. Will they be able to do it again next quarter? Time will tell. They've done so many wrong things I have a hard time placing any confidence in them. Stories in the past have described Tesla as having a very high lemon rate. That has not changed.

I've looked at them partly from the analyst side but mostly from the consumer side. I can't afford a Tesla, but I kept track of them hoping for the day I could. After the Solar City fiasco that changed. If the funds came through today, I would buy something else. It would still be electric. It would just be a different brand. Maybe later I've reevaluate but not today.

Have a great weekend.

Last Night's Georgia Tech Game

Watching Georgia Tech football has been hard this year. There have been lots of fumbles and turnovers and lost chances. In one game a referee called a penalty against them that never gets called. I forget the name of it, but it was something that every team does multiple times in every game. I never even realized it was a penalty, but college football rules don't always make sense anyway. It changed the momentum of the game, and after another bad call later, they ended up losing. Tech is one of the cleanest-playing teams in college. Save the never-called penalty calls for the teams that play dirty.

Tech's main quarterback has been playing with an injured foot for most of the season. For a while he was getting five hours a day of treatments. Why not let him heal? I've been metaphorically screaming at my television nearly all season to put in the backup quarterback. In every game he's gotten a few minutes to play, the opponents have not responded well. Tech seemed to go on a rampage. I thought it was because the other teams had practiced in anticipation of the normal quarterback and were thrown off by one with a different style or maybe had different plays to run.

Last night the backup got to start the game. I was wrong about the practice thought. The backup is a lot better than I was giving him credit for. Tech played Virginia Tech who was number one in the ACC Coastal Division and was undefeated in conference play. Tech was second from the bottom, and let's not talk about their defeats. They ended up crushing Virginia Tech 49-28. VT is still number one. Tech is now third from the bottom.

For the first time this year, I'm excited about the rest of the season. The backup quarterback, Tobias Oliver, wasn't perfect, but he did a good, solid job. I can't give him all the credit. The team as a whole played better. How much of that is due to the quarterback, and how much is due to unknowable factors? I don't know. I just know I really liked what I saw from Oliver. What I saw before in the games in which he got a few minutes of playing time really makes sense now. This kid can win. All he needed was a chance. I'm not dreading the rest of the season any more, not even the game against Georgia. The only thing I'm dreading is if they put the regular quarterback in.

Something else that makes it even more fun is that Oliver is only the backup quarterback, because the "real" backup quarterback got injured and was lost for the season. Oliver was supposed to be the backup to the backup, and now he looks better than the regular quarterback. It's a great story about the kid who wasn't even supposed to be in the game getting that big break and doing well. At the end of last night's game Oliver was taken out to rest, and his backup went into the game for the final few minutes. I'm pretty sure that was James Graham. The announcers were talking about other things. So, the backup to the backup to the backup got a chance to play, because the backup is out for the year. I love it when people who are on the team but don't normally get a chance to play get the chance. You can imagine how excited he must still be. He also did a good job for good yardage.

The Dodgers have lost the first two World Series games. I'm kind of dreading the rest of it, although they did come back from what looked like certain doom against the Brewers in the league championship series. Let's hope they bring their A game from here on out. It's not that I'm a Dodgers fan. I don't want to see the American League win.

Have a great weekend.

Divergente 2

I was in a rush last week and didn't get to everything. A couple of weeks ago I said I thought the Braves would be swept by the Dodgers or win one game, two at the very most. They won one. It was brutal. They didn't score the first two games. One of the commentators said no team in history has been shut out two games in a row in the post-season. That's not the kind of history I want to see made. Knowing ahead of time that failure was inevitable, I couldn't get into the games this year.

It was a slow week on the writing front. I got some done but not what I had expected. It seemed like everything lined up to get in the way. I did a ton of cleaning, and I'm still not finished. I had to replace my bed frame, which took forever. It was a tiring week.

Back in June, I ordered Divergente 2. It arrived toward the end of August. I ordered it from Germany, which was the cheapest price. I saw 17 for the delivery date and assumed it was July. Boy, was I wrong. I finished it the other day and moved on to book 3. I had this idea that if I read a million words I'd be relatively fluent in written French. I passed a million a while back, and I constantly have to look words up. I'm getting better, but it sure does seem slow. I'm thinking now that 10 million words is my new goal. I'm still listening to shows on YouTube. Sometimes I can follow along. Sometimes I get quite lost.

I must be making progress, because I've had some weird things happen to my English. French has a lot of reflexive verbs. This past week I was saying something and the construction of my sentence made the verb reflexive. I didn't notice until after I'd said it. It wasn't something conscious. The other day I used a conditional form of an English verb without thinking about it. After I said it, I realized what I'd done. Those were strange occurrences. They reminded me of a video by a French woman I used to listen to. I need to check her videos again. She was making French teaching videos and practicing English, too. She said in a video that English was doing weird things to her French, but she didn't explain it. I see now.

Have a great weekend.

Non-Fiction Progress

The way I do these blogs is usually to work on them the day I post. Today I need to go help someone that probably doesn't really need the help, but you know how it is. I'm a bit pressed for time. I can't post nothing, so it's going to have to be a brief update.

A few weeks back I posted about Hurricane Florence going through. This week it was Hurricane Michael. Flo was nothing but light rain and light wind here. Michael was stronger winds and much more rain. We lost power twice. The first time was for about thirty minutes. The other time was just under fifteen. I think the second one was so they could install something. It was well after the winds had stopped, when the danger was well passed.

This week was some real work on the non-fiction book. I've gotten most of the introduction done. Some of that depends on exactly what goes into the book. I won't know everything I need to put in until the book is done. I'll need to tell people what they can expect to see later. I've also gotten most of a couple of chapters done. Rough draft done, I mean. I'll need to polish later, of course. It's both easier and harder than I thought. Fiction takes a certain logic to makes things happen in the proper order and to reveal information in stages. Non-fiction is taking a different kind of logic. This book is about biblical topics. I'm presenting verses to support what I'm saying. There's a bit of research for that and a logical progression that's not the same as fiction. It's hard to explain it as I'm pressed for time. It's harder in that sense. It's easier in the sense that I can be as conversational as the text requires. There's a certain formality to fiction prose. I can loosen up more with the non-fiction. It's also not as hard to fill pages as I thought. I'm not putting in filler. I don't mean that. Explaining things takes more space than I would have anticipated. For example, there's a verse that's about the Holy Spirit, but you almost never hear an explanation of why. He's not mentioned by name. I had to explain it, and it took multiple paragraphs and verses to lay a foundation of why it has to be him. It fills space.

I'm out of time.

Have a great weekend.

Propaganda in Action

I was a store I don't shop much and decided to pick up some toilet paper, when I saw something absurd.

It was such an outrageous lie I laughed. I couldn't help it. Seeing six equal twenty-four was too much. It was like common core math. I see garbage like this all the time. Paper towels will claim that six rolls equal nine rolls, but no one else has gone to six equals twenty-four. I was laughing while taking a photo of it, hoping people didn't think I was going crazy in the store. I think most advertisers are going to hell.

So, the Braves made the playoffs this year. The usual announcers have been so excited and so enthusiastic. The hype was almost off the rails. Most of it was propaganda. They didn't promise a World Series appearance. There was a little bit of caginess amidst the selling of playoff tickets. It's because there's more than one problem with the team, and nobody is talking about it.

The Braves are in a very weak division. If they had been in any other division, they would not have won the division title. That leads to a second problem. They played a lot of games against very weak opponents and crushed them. That leads to the elephant in the room, and this is half of the real problem in my mind. The Braves have not played well against top-ranked teams. They've been swept more than once. They've been dominated. They have not been able to compete against tough teams.

The other half of the problem is the composition of the team. The bullpen has been a problem all year. The owners did not fix it. Starting pitching hasn't been bad, but it has not been dominating. It has been too inconsistent. The owners picked up a starter. One more guy is not enough. Also, the hitters have been very streaky. They're either on fire or in a bad slump. They don't have enough top-level hitters either. They have a few guys who do well. It's not enough.

As much as I'd like to see the Braves win, I think they have a good chance of being swept by the Dodgers. They lost last night's game 6 to 0. To me it comes down to how they've played against real opponents. They've been crushed all year. That may be why the announcers have been giddy as schoolgirls up to a point but no further. Maybe the team wins one game, two tops. I think they've gone as far as they can go this year. Hopefully, I'm wrong, but I've been following them all year. I see what I see.

So, last week I mentioned I had finally realized the one, main problem with a business a friend of mine has been trying to get off the ground for a decade and a half with no profit. I felt I should tell her but knew she wouldn't want to hear it and didn't think she would listen. What to do? What to do? I finally did the right thing. I told her. She came up with reasons why I couldn't be right. After that she said in so many words she would consider what I'd said. At least I had a tremendous sense of peace after telling her. There are multiple problems that could be fixed that would turn things around. It's easy to ignore the people around you. I think what she needs is a consultant to come in, evaluate the problems and lay it on the line in black and white with figures.


Have a great weekend.

Belated Survival Report

I forgot to mention last week that I survived Hurricane Florence. Where I live, it turned out to be light rain and wind with high humidity. The humidity had just started to turn lower for autumn until that. Because of a another weather system, it has stayed high with warmer temperatures. In my post two weeks ago I mentioned the problem with hurricane coverage on television is all the exaggeration and how weathermen will lean into the wind and scream into the microphone about how bad the storm is while someone in shorts walks past in the background. I specifically mentioned already seeing that kind of exaggeration on the Weather Channel minus the people in the background. Check out the first 30 seconds of this video. Weather Channel equals busted.

After the last blog it occurred to me that I need to re-prioritize the order of books coming out. I was going to work on the non-fiction with the mystery/romance giving me a break on the side. That won't work. I need to get the next B'vellah War book out. The non-fiction has to have the highest priority, but I may work on two at once. When last we left book 2, I had to withdraw it from sale, because of problems. My goal is not to do a rewrite but to fix it if possible. That would make it a lot faster.

Something else that has been on my mind is a business a friend of mine has been trying to start for a number of years. She's done a tremendous amount of work on it, yet it has never gotten off the ground or made a profit. She can't figure out why. I suddenly realized recently what the one, main obstacle is. Should I tell her? She already doesn't listen to anything about it. To make it worse, one day a few months ago she mentioned an online video game. Ever since, she has been playing that and been almost out of contact. I'll send an occasional message to try to stay in touch and generally get an impersonal, one-word reply, sometimes a day late. If it was my business, I'd want to know. I feel that morally I need to say something, but almost everything is pointing toward no.

I was at Walmart the other day and saw Christmas trees. I was in Lowe's this week and saw Christmas trees beside Halloween displays. It's still September. If the Hallmark Channel isn't showing Christmas movies, it's still too early for Christmas.

Have a great weekend.

The Non-Fiction Book is Back

I finished the "last" pass through AoE. It's getting very close to being out the door. Aside from the cover, I have to fix one final problem I just found. At an important arc in the book, several characters are missing who should be there, and a character who doesn't have a stated reason to be there is present. It makes sense the way it is. The reader can logically assume things are the way they are from prior events, but I'll need to go back and add a few sentences explaining the absences and why that extra character is there. Writing him out would make sense, too, though that would take extra time I don't want to spend.

It was something of a long week. After I finished the AoE pass, I was able to take a look at the first couple of chapters of the mystery/romance. I wrote it around 2013 and 2014 as something different, when I needed a break from the other books. My dad died in late 2013, and that caused a lot of disruption. The level of polish isn't what it would be today. In a perfect world I could think about a re-write. This isn't a perfect world. I have too many other books to do. Unless I see something absolutely dreadful, I'm going to give it a good polish and kick it out the door. Under a pen name, of course. It was always going to be under one. Now it really, really is. I'm not sure about the timing, though. I have another book that needs to go out as soon as possible. I may work on the mystery'romance on the side as a mental break from that book.

I've mentioned a non-fiction book that would be a collection of things people don't hear in the churches of institutional Christianity or in the "independents" either. Denominational Christianity is very culture bound. A lot of the way people view the Bible seems to come out of mindsets present in the Dark Ages. Too much of Protestant thinking flowed down directly from Catholicism. The reformers didn't correct all the bad doctrine, and it's still taught in Protestant denominations.

I've been collecting a list of topics of things I've gotten revelation on that denominational Christianity isn't capable of thinking, because of traditions(Mark 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which you have delivered: and many such like things you do.) and cultural biases. Lately, I've had a massive insight into who the anti-Christ really is. Not the specific person but who and what that person will be. Very controversial stuff. I've also seen a different way of looking at the Rapture that will settle the debate once and for all without a list of scores of verses. :) Hint: my new doctrine doesn't use the twinkling of an eye verse. Sounds intriguing, eh? "That they should believe the lie." I know what the lie is, and it has nothing to do with fallen angels posing as aliens. And so on.

I haven't felt I had enough material to flesh out a full book. I hate it when people publish a Christian "book" that's basically a 163-page booklet but still has a full price on it. If it's only 100+ pages, it's probably not ready. It certainly doesn't justify top dollar. I think now I can make a full book that will give people their money's worth while delivering solid revelation. I also see a way of promoting it. So, that's become my top priority. I'm not 100% sure on the page count, but I'm going to start on the text anyway.

Have a great weekend.

Waiting on Flo

This week was more work on the final pass through AoE. It's almost done except the cover. I've also watched some painting videos for technical insight. I'm thinking of a cityscape, but I've never painted one. In principal a daylight scene should be like a landscape painting with lighter values in the background and darker values in the foreground. I don't think I'll do a night scene. I think it would be easier, but I want strong, eye-catching color. The main thing is to try to keep it simple enough for my skills. :)

I'm waiting to see what hurricane Florence does where I live. According to the last map of its path I saw, my area is at the edge of the red zone. That means heavy wind and rain, as it will be a tropical depression by that point. A forecast from a few days ago predicted 1 to 12 inches of rain, but it depends on the track it takes and all that. Monday is supposed to be clear.

The problem with hurricanes is all the exaggeration. Weather forecasters will stand out in the wind leaning against it shouting into the microphone about how bad it is. Then in the background someone in shorts and no shirt will walk by and glance over at the reporter like he's a moron. I'm seeing a lot of that on the Weather Channel minus the people in the background. They've picked isolated places to avoid that sort of reality.

It's time for another installment of Is He Still Alive? Born in 1936 Burt Reynolds was in tons of things. Nobody told me he died. I saw a commercial for a memorial marathon of things he was in and had to look it up. He died last week at 82. He was in a lot of not so great movies, but he was funny. I saw him on the Carson show. I wouldn't have guessed that. One of his most famous movies was Deliverance. If you haven't seen it, don't. It would scar your soul. I bring it up, because that movie is mentioned in the first Messengers book. The characters are being chased through the woods by scary people. One of them mentions that, "This is so Deliverance." I live near where the movie was filmed. I like to say that this isn't Deliverance country, but you can see it from here.

Have a great weekend.

I've Solved It

It was a wet, rainy summer with lower temperatures. That is gone. It's been hot and humid. But that's not important right now.

I like the Braves and the Cubs. The Cubs are "out of market" in my area, so I usually watch or listen to the Braves. For a long time they've had a television announcer I wish they would get rid of. He's the worst one they've ever had in the modern era. The other announcers are former major league players. This guy is not, and does it ever show.

That bad announcer calls plays before they happen. Live television is delayed by two to five seconds, depending on who you listen to. If anything unusual happens, the public will never see it. The government will control the explanation of what happened. Censorship is built in and automatic. When the plays were being called before the video showed them, it seemed logical that the video and audio were out of sync because of the time delay on the video.

To make it worse, the bad announcer often calls plays that are not actually happening in the game. You can never trust that his description of the game is correct. I thought he was dramatizing the game to make it more exciting to fans. However, recently he made a call so bad I finally realized what he's been doing. He called a catch at the base of the wall in the outfield. It wasn't even close. The catch was actually made on the grass. The fielder never set foot on the warning track.

Maybe I've been a little slow on this, but I've solved it. That bad guy is not calling plays he sees. He's calling plays he thinks are going to happen. He's predicting the future and failing miserably. In a sense he's one-upping the other announcers by trying to be the first to call the play. He's even worse than I thought. I can't wait for him to be gone.

Moving on.

I don't have central air, so it's been too hot to do a lot on the computer. When I can, I've been working on polishing AoE. It's almost done. I have one more pass to go through and make final decisions about the hardest things to edit. It shouldn't take long at all. Then it's just the cover, and it's out the door. The weather is slowly turning cooler. It looks like next week will see a nice improvement in productivity.

Have a great weekend.

Taking a Break?

It's been too long a week to do a blog today. The second wave of torrential rain never appeared. It rained, of course, but not like the forecasters thought it would. Nevertheless, with all the humidity I've been fighting mold and mustiness. There was a leak in a wall that I had to take apart to let dry out. It looks relatively easy to fix. I think it just needs to be sealed. I still have a little to do on it. The hard part was removing the boards.

I may take a few weeks off from the blog. It depends on how things are going.

Have a great weekend.

I Still Won

Not long ago I got a letter out of the blue from a debt collector regarding a hospital bill. I was quite surprised, since as far as I knew everything was either taken care of or in the process of being paid off. I called them and said I didn't owe it and gave them what proof I had. The woman asked me to fax it. Fax? Is this the 90s? Do people still use those? I scanned and emailed my proof. They ignored it. I ended up going to the hospital and talking to their "Cashier" who looked over my evidence and gave me a number to call for the physicians billing department. I called and then had to email them my proof.

In the meantime I emailed the debt collector and explained to them that someone would be contacting them soon to sort it out. A few days later I heard from the billing department. The second sentence of the email started out, Unfortunately, this already has been turned over to a collections agency, etc. And then they admitted in very vague wording that I didn't owe them anything after all. Two of the sentences they used were sentences I had used in my email to the debt collector. This let me know that a) they were sharing my emails behind my back and b) the physicians were not on my side, even though I was in the right!

The scary helpless thing about all this was that the debt collection agency deliberately ignored my proof. All they had to do was pick up a phone and call the number I provided them. They willfully refused to do anything to help me at all. All the burden was on me. I see why people hate them so much. Even when you're right, you're still wrong. The attitude I got from the billing department was also inexcusable. It was like they were mad at me for not actually owing them money. #DoctorsAreDevils

Remember all that rain I mentioned earlier this summer when it rained for three weeks? It started raining Monday and has rained every day this week. If you watch the Weather Channel, it's been on there a lot. Another wave is coming in around Wednesday. There's a high percentage chance for rain every day between now and then. That cool front I was looking forward to this week arrived, but it rained every day it was here. It's looking like two weeks or more of straight rain. Again.

I had no internet or phone last night. The rain washed out a cable or something. On the way home I saw a crew working on the side of the road with a giant spool of something wiry.

Have a great weekend.

Thou Shalt Not Infodump

I want to share my pain.

Several years back I read book 1 of a series. It was a good book. The main flaw was that there were no pauses for the reader to catch a breath. It was non-stop action. The result was reader fatigue. By the end I was on overload. The action wasn't affecting me any more. I just wanted to get to the last page. Nevertheless, it was well written otherwise. I was interested in the next book. Instead of doing one, the author started putting out other books. I had this idea that he would learn about writing doing those and there would be pauses in the sequel. It would be great. Finally, after years of waiting book 2 came out recently. I was going to buy it immediately but didn't. The day I checked again, it turned out to be Amazon Prime day, and I got it for $2.99.

Roughly the first 25% of the book was a massive infodump. By page two my eyes had glazed over at the flow of background information. This was two Kindle pages, which would be roughly one or so paperback pages. After non-stop action in book 1, basically nothing happened in the beginning of book 2. There were, I believe, two things relevant to the end of the book that were peacefully inserted into the flow. The rest of it was infodumping, setting and background information.

The book is set in the future, partly in the real world and partly in a virtual reality video game. There's background and history for both worlds. This automatically doubles the mind-numbing flow of information. Like a sucker I expected the story to begin on the next page. For 25% of a 400+ page book I kept expecting the info to stop and the action to begin. It didn't happen.

At 25% the story starting moving very slowly forward. The main character was finally doing something no matter how insignificant. At 43% the story picked up where book 1 ended. Imagine you get to the end of book 1, wait years for book 2, and the story doesn't start again until 43% of the way into book 2. Arrrrrgh! It was almost like the first part of the book was a prologue. One of the reasons for the infodumping, which slowed but never really stopped, was that the author kept inventing new elements for the world. Every time something new was introduced, background information was dumped into the text.

Would you like to hear the worst part? Almost none of the infodump was relevant to the story. It bogged things down. It was annoying, more annoying than the undisguised, science fiction references. The main character is named after a comic book/movie hero. Other characters were named after real people. After four or five of these references it became irritating. Every time it happened, it took me out of the story and made me think about Star Trek, Star Wars, Planet of the Apes or whatever work the name or situation referred to. Sometimes a reference was a quote from a movie or a scene from a movie rather than a name.

If you're a writer, infodumping is a necessity. Readers need to know things. The correct way to do it is to insert the information in small pieces along the way. Blend it into the text. Put it in dialogue. Make it relevant to the story. If it doesn't affect the outcome, is it really necessary? Some things are there for flavor alone, but they can't bog the story down. Brandon Sanderson puts it something like this. There has to be forward momentum. The reader has to feel like the story is progressing. Massive infodumps do not progress the story.

But there's also good news. This summer has been very cool, very rainy but cool. Normally, the temperature would be around 100F(37.78C) during July. It's barely broken 90F(32.2C). Last night it dropped to 61F(16.1C), when it should be in the 70s(21-24ish C). Would you like to hear the best part? There's a cool front coming down from Canada next week. Not only will it be cooler. The humidity should plummet as well. I can't wait! We're a little over four weeks from September, the time the temperatures start to get better and the humidity starts to drop. This cool front will get me that much closer to autumn and the end of the high temperatures and massive humidity. The humidity is the real problem. Dry heat is much easier to deal with than sticky, sauna heat.

Have a great weekend.

Let There Be Water

The water has been fixed. I can run the dishwasher and the washing machine again. I've taken the solar shower down and can take regular showers again. It's so nice not to have to haul all that heavy water. While I was, I thought about those movies and books in which the hero procures a water source, and that's the end of the problem. If the hero's injured, carrying the water is a chore. Otherwise the authors never focus on it. It's amazing how tiring and time-consuming moving water is and how much of it it can take to do things. It's also surprising how little it can take. Washing dishes doesn't take much. Washing clothes takes a lot. Wet clothes are even heavier than wet water. I ended up going to the laundromat almost immediately. But all that's over with. I'm no longer getting my 1800s on.

I got a little bit done on the paintings for the covers for AoE and the mystery/romance from a few years ago. I'm not an illustrator so I don't know if they'll work out. But I'm trying. I also got a little writing done recently. Slowly, things are kind of getting back together.

This next part contains more, massive spoilers to the last Hunger Games book. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Hunger Games is pure Greek storytelling, which is a disappointment. In Greek stories the hero wins but loses the thing he loves most or the thing most precious to him. That's boring and not true to life. Imagine having a child or spouse die every time you got a big promotion at work. That's Greek literature. The last time I talked about this I was fewer than 20 pages until the end of book 3. I speculated that maybe the virgin, female protagonist would die as a sacrifice. It didn't happen. She used knowledge from the character who represented Lucifer to murder the character who represented God. The God character was standing on a balcony and fell when she died. That's right. The God character was a woman. The imagery is God falling dead from heaven. The Lucifer character laughs, when God dies.

And then the story fizzles out. The protagonist is locked up for a few weeks and then sent home with no consequences and no punishment. Admittedly, there aren't always consequences in real life, but she murdered a major character. No, she was the victim. The romance part fizzled as well. During the story, the protagonist loved the one she was with at the time. She never made an active choice between the two men in the story who loved her. At the end, one of them moved away, and she married the one who stayed in town. There was a line saying she loved him, but it was never really shown in the story. She flip-flopped back and forth between the two men or just used one like a tool and threw him away.

Book 1 was a page turner. Book 2 wasn't bad. Book 3 dragged and had an unsatisfying ending. All the annoying, irritating things I was hoping would be fixed never were, because that's not Greek storytelling.

I haven't seen the movies, but I know this. There's no way the weak, wishy washy, flip flopper from the book will ever make it to the big screen. The character is too weak and feeble as a person. She's a passive victim. Hollywood will change her into a strong character, because that's what audiences like. So, I expect the movies will be decent or even very good. Except the last one? In book 1 the protagonist trades places with her sister to save her life. In book 3 the sister is killed right in front of her eyes, because Greek storytelling demands the hero loses the thing he loves most. Would Hollywood ever put that in the movie? I kind of don't think so. They changed the ending of The Manchurian Candidate. The nation is in a different place. I don't see them ending the movies in a sad, tragic hopeless way like the books did.

Have a great weekend.

I Was Shocked.

After the Islamic terrorist attack in Boston a while back, they came up with a slogan, Boston Strong. I was at Walmart last week and saw this on a truck and thought it was funny.

If you live overseas, AA is Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization that helps people recover from alcoholism. Unfortunately, they consider someone to be an alcoholic forever no matter how long ago the person quit drinking. That's complete nonsense, of course.

One of the family legends on my dad's side is of a relative in the early 1900s who used to go to bars. One night he got in a fight and beat a man up so badly he nearly killed him. That was the end of his drinking. Even if he was an alcoholic before that, he surely never was afterward.

In other things, I had a mind-blowing shock this week. I was watching an episode of Mannix from 1967, when I saw someone familiar who didn't look like I was used to seeing her. I remember her from Star Trek in 1989 and 1990 in which she played a bit of a crusty, battle axe of a woman. In the Mannix episode she was a total babe. The difference was amazing. It was Doctor Pulaski from Start Trek: The Next Generation. My mind is officially blown. Is she still alive? Yes.

Have a great weekend.

Typical Greek Story

Still no running water. I need cold, running water to try to paint book covers. As a workaround, I picked up some cheap paint brushes at Walmart that I can use temporarily and throw away if ruined without risking my professional brushes. Someone did come out to look at the water situation, but nothing has been done.

I talked last week about Hunger Games book 1 and how it has a spirit of prostitution. I'm almost finished with book 3. I'm at the very end with fewer than 20 pages to go. I said before that the female protagonist keeps believing lies and how this is the lie the hero believes, which I think comes from Greek literature. It turns out the entire series is a Greek story and possibly, depending on whether the protagonist dies in the last 20 pages, a Greek tragedy. The rest of this is going to contain some spoilers for book 3, if you think you might want to read it or watch the movie.

With about 20 pages left the female protagonist murders the person opposing President Snow, who is the villain of the series. The symbol of Snow is the white rose, which he said is perfect. The symbol of the villain is perfection. Snow's opponent is murdered by the protagonist with information provided by Snow, information that cannot be verified as true.

The problem with Greek stories is they have the same ending. The hero wins but loses the thing he loves the most or the thing most precious to him. Boring. Life doesn't work that way. Hunger Games is pure Greek storytelling. The reason the protagonist murders someone is because she thinks that person destroyed the thing most precious to her. There's no direct proof. There's no trial. The protagonist takes her own vengeance. Technically, the thing the protagonist loves most is herself, but in the story she's supposed to love something else more. No way. By her actions she loves herself most.

Something they don't teach in Greek literature is that a lot of the stories are a retelling of the garden of Eden story with Lucifer as the hero and God as the villain. It works something like this. God is usually but not always portrayed by Zeus. Lucifer could be any of the other gods. There's a woman in the story who needs knowledge or wisdom or something. The woman is a symbol of Eve. God(Zeus) is trying to keep her from getting it. Lucifer(some god in the story) is opposing Zeus to help the woman acquire wisdom or whatever she thinks she needs. Finally, Lucifer gives the woman(Eve) knowledge, and together they've defeated God. Hunger Games is the same thing.

In the series, Lucifer(President Snow) is symbolized by a white rose. Despite his evil/sin, he is perfection. Snow is repeatedly called a serpent, and his breath smells like blood. The God character is authoritarian and trying to defeat Lucifer and free humanity while at the same time withholding information from Eve(female protagonist). But the God character is a bit ruthless as well and will sacrifice anyone to win. When Eve(female protagonist) kills God, Lucifer is standing there watching. It was his knowledge/wisdom that empowered Eve to defeat God. The overarching theme of the series is rebellion against authority.

This isn't the first young adult series to take a walk on the Lucifer side. The Golden Compass, a knowledge that's withheld by authority series, is anti-God. The Percy Jackson books may be, too, but I haven't investigated those. I probably won't. I only read the Hunger Games, because they were fairly clean, cheap in French and I needed the language practice with a series on the young adult reading level. This series and Divergent will give me at least 1.2 million words read and maybe closer to 2 million. One point two is an estimate based on 250 words per page, which is probably low, as these are physically large books.

Did I mention the female protagonist is a virgin? If she dies in the last 20 pages, she'll be a virgin sacrifice.

Have a great weekend.

The Lie the Hero Believes

I ran across the word pourri in my French reading. It turns out pourri means rotten, decayed, corrupt, etc. Pot in French means pot. Therefore a pot pourri is a rotten pot. Suddenly, potpourri makes sense.

I'm up to book 3 of the Hunger Games. One of the criticisms of it is that the male love interest of the female main character is emasculated. Let's see if that's true. In book 1 he's injured and cannot fulfill his role as a man. In book 2 he is once again injured and cannot fulfill his male role. Book 3 starts out with his having been captured by the enemy and thus unable to fulfill his male role. Yes, he's emasculated. He's basically cast as the helpless female who needs rescuing. Very Hollywood.

I mentioned last week that I didn't entirely like book 1. The emasculation thing isn't too much of a problem. The main character has to drive the story not a minor character. If the love interest was more realistic, the main character wouldn't be doing anything. She's far too weak and unmotivated as a person to be around strong characters. The author was forced to team her with weak companions. I hope it will make sense by the end of book 3. Maybe she'll find some kind of inner strength.

The main reason I couldn't get more into it was because of how the main character used the love interest like a puppet. In the story they're thrown into an arena of 24 combatants in a fight to the death. There can be only one. . .winner. The judges change the rules to allow people to team up in teams of two. As part of the rules, the combatants can receive rewards from sponsors. Once the main character and the love interest are teamed up, she figures out that if she kisses him or shows affection she gets a reward. From that point on she slashers on the kisses and hugs and cuddling, etc.

Before the combat started, the love interest declared that he loves the female main character and always has. So, he's with the woman he loves and thinks she loves him, too. She's only using him to get rewards from the sponsors. At the end of the book after they win and she's out of danger, she throws him away like a used, snotty tissue. Exchanging sexual contact for payment? I call that a spirit of prostitution. With all the Hollywood sex scandal stories lately, I'm not surprised they wanted to make that into a movie to teach children how it works.(For more on Hollywood's grooming of children, check out this review of the recent children's movie Show Dogs, a movie that was teaching children how to go to their happy place and let adults touch their private parts.) The prostitution angle in the book is a bit subtle. I've cut through the fluff and nonsense to call it like it is.

The other reason I couldn't get more into it was that the main character was dumber than a box of hammers unless the plot needed her to be smart for something specific. She kept believing lies and getting confused about the truth. One of the lies she made up in her head was that the love interest didn't really love her. She didn't have a good reason to believe that. All his actions were love and caring. Her reaction didn't make much sense. In writing there's something called the lie the hero believes. I think it goes back to Greek stories. The way it's supposed to work is the hero believes a lie until almost the end. Along the way a minor character knows the truth and keeps telling the hero the truth, but because of the lie the hero can't accept the truth. Right before the final battle with the enemy, he learns the truth for himself and uses the truth to win the battle.

If you've ever read a book in which the hero believed a lie until nearly the end, and I know you have, that's where it comes from. The problem is it almost never works. Very, very few writers can make the lie the hero believes believable. It nearly always makes the hero look like an idiot. That's why I don't use it in my books. It's annoying to read about a character who's being slapped in the face with the truth the whole book until it finally clicks at the end. What kind of a moron is that? And how often is the hero able to use the truth, an intellectual knowledge, as the means to win a physical fight? Hmm, hard to remember. I'm not saying I'll never use that device. It can be very powerful, but I don't like it. It almost never works. Ancient Greek literature is boring for a reason. I would have to find exactly the right idea for it to work the way it's supposed to. Maybe that could be a personal challenge.

 The water is still out. Next week could be the week.

Have a great weekend.

Still No Water

The water is still out this week. Between heating up the solar shower and collecting water from elsewhere, it's very tiring and time-consuming. The solar shower is hanging from the ceiling in my normal shower. I'm tempted to buy something like this shower tent, but that's a lot of money for a temporary problem, although it would make things a lot easier.

To work on book covers I need cold, running water to keep my paint brushes clean. I use acrylics. Cold water causes the paint to bead up and come out of the brushes more easily. Warm or hot water would make it runny and sticky. It takes a while to clean brushes. The most I can do until the water is fixed is brainstorm ideas and make sketches.

The other day I ordered the second Hunger Games book in French. While waiting for it, I thought I'd read The Maltese Falcon, since it was "only" 232 pages. It took over a week. The book has slang from the 1920s and possibly the decades leading up to then. Imagine all that slang converted to French. Some of it I could figure out. Not only did my dictionary not have a lot of the words, Google translate didn't know them either. Nevertheless, I was able to get through it. At some point I'll watch the movie with Humphrey Bogart. Maybe it'll be on Noir Alley one day.

I've started book 2 of the Hunger Games. The first few pages and a lot of chapter one were a breeze. The problem with book 1 was the translator's extensive use of the thesaurus. It's supposed to be young adult with a smaller vocabulary, but I had to look up tons of words I've never seen in all the adult-level books I've read. Are those books less "literary", or the did the translator go crazy with the thesaurus? I'm kind of thinking he went crazy. After the first little bit of book 2, the thesaurus came out. Even things like Alice in Wonderland or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea weren't like that. So far, looking words up for book 2 hasn't been as tedious as book one. Divergent, which I mentioned the other day, was much more readable. It's young adult, too, and feels more like what a YA book should be.

I didn't entirely like the first Hunger Games book, but that's something for a different day. Anyway, I'm kind of floundering this week.

Have a great weekend.

No Water

It's day three without water. The place I live has a well with a pump. It stopped working Wednesday. The landlord has no urgency to get it fixed. I thought something would be done right away, but now it looks like next week at the earliest. In the landlord's universe, other things come first. Fortunately, a while back, I ran across the solar shower. I got one of those from Walmart and a heavy-duty hook to hang it in the normal shower. When full, the solar shower weighs about 40 pounds (18.1437kg). I had to get the hook in the right place. Fortunately, I've had to replace part of the ceiling in the shower, when the landlord wouldn't do anything about it, so I knew right where a beam was. Water at room temperature is very chilly. I have to preheat part of the water enough to warm the bag up.

I've collected rainwater to be able to flush the toilet. It takes about 3 gallons(11.35liters). After the blog I get to go collect spring water to be able to do some laundry. Fortunately, I was in pretty good shape on that, when the water went out, but I'm going to need clean pants and such. I've had to buy water from the store by the gallon and by the 2.5 gallon container. The 2.5 one goes by the sink to be able to wash my hands and do dishes.

It takes a long time to collect water and do all these extra things. I could use a lot of prayer. It looks like it's going to be a long weekend.

Have a great weekend.

Cheaper Books

Back in the old days, when Amazon only sold books, I used to buy used, "like new" paperbacks there for one penny plus shipping and handling, which could be around $1.65 to $1.80. Not all of them were a penny, but a lot were less than a dollar. It was awesome. I could get 10 books for around $20. Then one day Amazon raised shipping to $3.99 per book, splitting the extra profit with the sellers. It became harder and harder to find books for a penny after that. Today 10 books cost more like $40 to $50 or more. I stopped buying nearly as much fiction, not that I was buying a whole lot before. I never bought 10 books at a time. It's just a round number. Amazon basically killed the fiction market for me. Then the Kindle came out, but a lot of books are more expensive for a digital copy than the print version. I can't justify spending $9.99 for a fiction book that costs Amazon about $0 to send. It's not worth it for something I can read in less than a day. Mostly I download free or cheap books. Rarely do I spend more than a penny per page for fiction. Non-fiction reference books are different. I'll spend real money for those but not for fiction that's gone in a few hours.

Now that I'm putting a lot of time into learning French, I need to do a lot of reading. It's hard to find cheap, digital French books on Amazon or paperbacks either that I find interesting or worth reading. There's tons of stuff from the 1800s, but... And they won't let me download books from Amazon.fr, because the world is divided regions, and I'm in the wrong region. It's absolutely insane the way the regions work. Tip: if you get a multi-region DVD player, you can buy all the foreign DVDs you want from anywhere in the world you want in any language you want, including English.

Anyway, I found cheap copies of book 1 of Divergent and Hunger Games. I finished Divergente 1 this week. I'd been keeping track of the price of book 2 hoping it would drop. The day I went to order it, it had doubled overnight. Plus shipping. I started on Hunger Games instead. Lately, I've noticed that Amazon doesn't always have the lowest price anymore like they used to. I went searching online for Divergente 2 and found something amazing.

Abebooks.com

You can buy used paperbacks on Abebooks.com starting around $3.37, including shipping. Yes, including shipping. It's like Amazon in the old days adjusted for inflation. They didn't have book 2 of Divergente that cheap, but I got book 3 for $3.64 shipped. I can wait for book 2 to drop. I also picked up the Maltese Falcon for $3.64. I've been wanting to read that for a while now, but it costs too much in English. In all, I ordered five books in French that I find interesting enough to read for $18.46 total. On Amazon it would have cost me at least $50 and realistically quite a bit more. For instance, I bought Prelude to Foundation for $3.65. On Amazon it's $17.73, including shipping. The ebook is $9.99.

Not every book on Abebooks is going to be $3+. Some of the things I looked at were $5+, but that was still cheaper than Amazon. And speaking of Amazon, I've read that they bought Abebooks. Let's hope they don't ruin it.

Have a great weekend.

Like the Rains of Venus

It looks like the rain is going away for a few days starting Monday. The forecast says three days with no rain. This is the third week it's either rained every day or almost every day. Some days it's rained before sunrise but been cloudy, making it hard to keep track. Sometimes, there's so much water dripping off trees it sounds like it's sprinkling, when it's not. When there's been some sun, I thought it was clearing up, but the clouds returned within hours.

Back in the 80s I read this Ray Bradbury story about a man living on Venus. The story was written before we knew what it was like there. All we knew for sure was it was very cloudy. The man in the story is going insane from the constant, torrential rain and incessant dripping. It never stopped. I've thought of that story more than once. I'm not a Ray Bradbury fan, but I still remember that one.

In winter, tree limbs break when ice piles up on them. Some have been breaking now, because of the water weight. There hasn't been enough time for them to dry out, and eventually they crack. Kind of like the man in the story. Trees have been falling, because the ground is saturated and has softened. Sometimes I'll hear something fall and wonder whether it was a limb close by or a tree farther away. I think it's trees.

Yesterday, I was caught in flash flood conditions on the road. In one place there was a hole in asphalt where water was gushing up onto the road. It was outside of town. I don't think there was a water line there, but who knows? It looked like runoff from the hill beside the road had pushed up under the road. The rain became too strong to see much of anything, and we had to pull over. Later, when going back that route, a crew was out where that hole was. A couple of other crews were working on power lines. I saw where a mudslide had crossed the road. That was kind of weird. The hill next to it was only partially collapsed. There was grass in vertical strips separated by strips of bare earth. Past that the Chattahoochee River had overrun its banks flooding fields. I saw a house by the river with water all around it and a low-lying road with water flowing across it, cutting people off from their homes.

When I started on this blog, the sun was out. It looked like no more rain for today. Then the thunder started. It's raining again.

Have a great, dry weekend.

Rain and More Rain

It rained every day last week. It rained most days this week. The forecast says rain until next Tuesday. Nothing was accomplished on getting my dad's old truck running. I didn't get much done on the cabin either. I was able to scout trees for some lumber. It looks very good on that front. It looks less good on the financial front. I could get the foundation, walls and roof done, but with the hospital bills I'm still paying from January, I don't see how to do the extra things the county wants done. However, I still need to talk to them in person and see what the minimum requirements are. Maybe there's some wiggle room that would let me defer some things until later.

News was better on the French front. Divergente and The Hunger Games arrived this week. I ordered cheap, used paperback copies of them in April. I've seen Divergent on television but not the Hunger Games. I've started Divergente. So far it's following the movie fairly closely.

The other good news is that I had an idea for how to fix book 2 of the B'vellah War series. I also had an idea for the cover for AoE. I'm hoping the ideas work.

Have a great weekend.

Boss Week

In case anyone was wondering, Putin is still a boss. The link is a news article with video of him driving a big truck into conquered territory. That could be offensive to some. When it comes to Putin, I don't pass judgement on the morality of his actions. I just show him doing things like a boss.

Speaking of bosses, Trump moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Certain people didn't like that. U.S. presidents always promise to move the embassy in an attempt to gain votes, but only Trump actually kept his promise. Because he's a boss.

Ben Bender at ninety-three years old hit a hole-in-one at golf. Because that's what bosses do.

I was able to drop by the county planning office and pick up the paperwork for the cabin. The building permit is going to run from $90 to $280, depending on whether several inspections are included in the $90 fee or whether they're separate. There's no explanation of how it works. I'll have to ask them to clarify later. They gave me a folder of papers showing all kinds of things I need to do and the various rules. My general plan was to do the foundation, walls and roof then work on electrical, wiring, flooring and all those other things later as I was able to afford them. I figured it would take several years at least.

The building permit is for one year. If construction is not finished in that time, a one-year extension can be filed. That's all. The things they want done are too expensive to do in two years on top of the hospital bills I'm still paying off. Part of my plan was doing it without debt. I would have a place to live without having to pay rent, and it would be paid for. Now I'm wondering what to do.

Something I was going to do to save money was mill part of the lumber myself. There are four beams I could do. I was also going to do the siding. Something I wasn't a big fan of was making the flooring. I'd considered it, but it's time-consuming. It takes a long time to cut all that lumber, and for floors it would need to dry 45 to 60 days. I may have to do it anyway. To save time on building, I could do all that before filing the permit. I could also cut some joists for the substructure that goes between the foundation and the flooring. The same size joists go into the ceiling, too, to support the roof. With the disc problem in my back, I'm not sure how I would handle and move all those boards. A big part of the plan was using lifting tools in one location. The trees this stuff would be cut from would be scattered over a wide area.

Making all those things would save money, but it wouldn't be enough to pay for all the things the county wants, although I really need to find out what the absolute minimum is that they would let me do. There might be things I can get away with not doing.

I'm rethinking it a bit and trying to figure out whether it's something I can do while meeting government restrictions.

Have a great weekend.

Cabin 2

Last week I was talking about maybe building a little cabin. An important step for that done is getting my dad's old truck running. This is something I've been wanting to do anyway. With a new battery it cranks up but lacks the power to move. I've been ordering parts to do a tune up on it a little at a time. This week I changed the pcv valve and the spark plugs. It didn't fix it. The next step is changing the fuel filter, which is located underneath the truck and is designed to be changed while the truck is on a lift. Since I can't drive it to a garage, I'm not sure how I'm going to get it changed. I need to raise that side of the truck up, and I don't know if it has enough power to drive onto ramps.

I've been doing tons of research for the cabin. Financially, a pier and beam foundation makes the most sense. Nine to twelve piers at around $60 each would cost in the $600 to $700 range. That's 12" diameter piers on 2' by 2' foundations in three or four rows. Mathematically, nine should work, but I'm wondering about adding an extra row for greater stability.

Like I said last week, I have a disc problem in my back and would need a way to lift heavy things. I've found some tools. The big one is this 1-ton chain hoist. If I could rig up a cable or rope between two trees, it would lift anything I need including 20-foot beams. I'd never have to be trying to hold a long, heavy board while nailing or drilling. Another device is this material dolly for moving plywood and drywall panels. It holds up to 500 pounds. A companion device I might not need is a board lifter. Once the plywood or drywall panel was moved into place, a panel hoist would lift it up wherever I needed it, including up to the ceiling. I could make the ceilings and never have to lift anything except a drill. Same for the roof.

Something else I found was a miniature chainsaw mill. YouTube has videos showing how chainsaw mills work. What this mini device would let me do is make my own lumber. I don't want to make all of it, just certain parts like the beams. They would have to be 20 feet long. The only one I could find online was $97, and I need at least four of them. Too expensive. The mini mill is $25, and I already have a lightweight, electric chainsaw. The mini mill also solves another problem. With the doctor bills from January, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to afford to build even a bare bones structure. It finally occurred to me that I could use the mini mill to make boards like this for the siding. I was going to use cheap, vinyl siding that would cost somewhere around the $650 range, depending on the cabin's size. Making the siding would save enough to be able to buy these tools.

I still don't have it all figured out, but I'm getting closer.

Have a great weekend.