Lights Out

8:15 PM

I am typing this by candlelight.  About half an hour ago my on-line existence came to an abrupt end when the power went off.

So this is the afterlife.  I was hoping for more Grace.

Maybe the new battery in my laptop will last until the city gets things going again.  And then there's the Netbook, which is good for 8 hours or so.  I've never had a power outage last longer than a couple of hours here.

Georgetown is not Iraq.  Not yet.

It is still a little bit light outside, but quite dark in the house.  I can't see the keyboard.  Thank God for touchtyping.  I suppose I can get on line with Verizon, if I can see to connect it by these cursed candles, but my cable connection went down with the modem.  I would repair handily to the Lazy Daze, and may yet, but it's still hotter than blazes out there.  In fact, it's starting to get warm in here.  A portent of my eventual destination.

I did go out and start up the generator.  It is not running well, spitting and surging.  But it is running, and so is the AC.  It may take two hours, though, just to get temps down into sleeping range.

Uh oh.  Dooooom.  The AC in the Daze switched off, due to low power from the Onan.  This is not good.

Even 60 years ago, many houses in the South had a summer "sleeping porch", situated to catch what breeze there was.  Men were giants in those days, and houses had ceilings to match.  I remember using one at my Grandma Harvey's house in Baytown.  Or Goose Creek, as it may have been then.  She also had a whole house attic fan.  You had to hold on to the covers when that thing revved up.

All one now with Nineveh and Tyre.  This house is old enough to have been paid for twice.  But it doesn't predate air conditioning.

The power just went on, briefly, then off again.  Dang.  I'm dooooomed to a hellish night.

It's an old sad story.  If you never use it, you lose it.  I may have to clean that generator carb before I leave.  "Or maybe if I run enough gas through it, that will do the trick," he thought, economically.

When things go wrong, the chain of redemption falls back to its weakest link before it fails.

Once again, that was me.

Bob, posting in the dark via cell phone.  Just because he can.

Reading Es

 I am a reader.  Mea culpa.  As a teenager I found it very useful to be suddenly "somewhere else" at a moment's notice.  Bored of living in a small town?  Welcome to Paris.  Tired of your inane neighbors?  Meet my friend Quasimodo.  Or maybe Rikki-tikki-tavi.   

Reading freed me up that way.  So it is no great news flash that reading can be a liberation.  It took Amazon to turn it into a trap.

They've come out with a new Kindle Reader for $189.  And a WIFI-only version for $139.  If I hadn't already paid $400 for the old one, I might have bought it.  But that's not the sort of trap I mean.  Heck, I've paid thousands of dollars over the years for a series of sorry approximations, looking for a usable E-reader.  A Hiebook,  a subnotebook, a netbook, various laptops.  So I am not afraid to throw money at the problem.  It's just that none proved really useful.  My objections were technical.   Primarily to do with the wretched  screens.

My current objections are to the Amazon business treatment of Ebooks.  It turns out that a new Ebook  generally costs as much as a paperback.  And at that price the paperback is simply superior technology.  It is easier on the eyes, has greater contrast,  is completely portable, very durable, doesn't need batteries, and once you buy it you own it outright.  You can lend it out when you finish it.  Sell it.  Or give it away.

And it is unlikely that any vendor will sneak into your house and steal it back from you.

That is exactly what Amazon did last year.  They got into some licensing difficulties with a publisher, and as a result deleted "1984" and "Animal Farm" from the Kindle devices of people who had paid good money for them.  Orwell, of all authors.  Of course they refunded the money.  But they didn't ask permission to take them away half read.  

Apparently you don't buy ebooks from Amazon.  You just pay to check them out for a time, subject to random seizure.   Read fast.  Big Brother is watching.

This is old news.  You can read about it here:  

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html.  

The Kindle is not properly a reading device at all.  It is merely, as one wag put it, "an Amazon Vending Machine".   

There are two caveats to this conclusion.  For the traveler, there is some utility in a portable book store at desperate moments and in intellectual deserts, where books are not readily available.   Rural America is full of places like that.  When I was in Harrison, Arkansas, last month, trapped in the motorhome by continuous rain, I went to a nearby Walgreens and asked the clerk if there was a book store in town.  "We used to have a Christian book store," she said, "but they went out of business.  Have you tried Walmart?"

I suppose when you are faced with questions like that, the Kindle can seem like a Real Good Thing.

But you don't need a Kindle to read Kindle books.  There are a number of reading apps Amazon has made available free to suck you into their scheme, including Kindle for PC, Mac, Android, Iphone, Blackberry, etc etc.  And here's the best thing of all:  these programs allow you to download from the Kindle store, absolutely free, the first chapters of almost any book you might be interested in, and read them on screen.  

This is an invaluable aid to figuring out what Treekiller Books you might want to actually buy.  Or even obtain at your local library.

So don't waste your time with the Kindle.  But check out the free Kindle apps.

Bob

Doggone!

Here's a problem I never considered solving:

I was at the dealer getting a new front tire when a guy road up on an Electra Glide with one of those little chinese dogs (chi-poo? something like that, with blond hair in it's eyes) sitting in the rear seat.  Nothing holding him in but will power.  The little dog waited patiently while he stopped and parked the bike, then jumped into his hands.  I asked the guy how far he had ridden like that, and he said a couple of miles from his home.

The dog rides everywhere with him around town.  When he first started carrying it, he tied it down with a leash so it couldn't jump off.  It never tried, so he left off the leash.   He did say he never goes over about 30 mph like that.  For longer and faster trips he uses a pet carrier strapped to the seat.

O, and the dog wasn't wearing a helmet, either.

Bob