I support this one. Also, if you’re using WIC vouchers, please don’t use the express lane. Those things take a while to process.
I am such a geek. I mentally heaped scorn on someone for not understanding that her new cat should not like boxes. She got the name from a TV show.
Everyone knows that, right? Well, no. I’ve been asking people irl and online and I just get deer in the head lights looks. please, Flatlined, don’t lecture me about random shit that only you care about
So not only am I geek, I’m guilty of heaping scorn on the head of someone who didn’t deserve it. I’m such a jerk 
Sorry to hear about the collision and the car; glad to hear your wife was not injured. Sorry the cops were such douchebags, too - you can’t just damage other people’s property and walk away, even if you are a cop.
No disputes at any cashier - go take it up with Customer Service, who might actually be able to do something for you. And while I’m at it, frigging Western Union service at Customer Service is such a pain in the ass - I just want to get my buck fifty that I was overcharged accidentally, and I have to wait in line for 30 minutes for everyone sending money back home. That should be separated out from regular customer service issues.
Your link’s not working, but I assume you are talking about a cat named Schrodinger? It’s not such a geek thing any more, is it?
I do adore you. Someone got it. Bill, the smartest man I’ve ever known, didn’t get it. Sorry for the bad link, Using my phone while sitting at the airport.
One of these wretched cats vomited twice on the WHITE down comforter. It’s fucking disgusting. One more thing to have to take to the laundromat. This is why i don’t like white and pastel fabric. Pretreated the shit out of the motherfucking blanket, hope it’s not fucked up.
One of my art students was wearing a “Watch out, Schrodinger’s Cat! It’s a trap!” which combines a quantum physics meme and a Star Wars one. The other students got it, so I polled them. 100% of these midwestern kids (many of whom have to do farm chores before class) knew about That Cat.
(At which point I might have done a fist-pump and muttered “In yo’ face, Bill!”)
And when I added that I should make a t-shirt that says “There’s no way Schrodinger could’ve gotten that cat in a box without being scratched to death… I mean, half to death”, they laughed dutifully.
Colonoscopy Prep Day.
What a tremendously not fun day for me!
Today is the day when you have a damned good reason to wear elastic waist pants. Oh, and stock the bathroom with reading material, if you haven’t already done it.
iPads are a blessing.
I’ve seen an author’s answer to this question, and I think it makes sense. Only a small percentage of the cost of a new book involves printing it on the paper. New books going to digital still involve most of the same expenses as the dead tree versions: writing, editing, writing some more, editing again (lather, rinse, repeat X number of times), proofreading, formatting, publishing, plus probably some other steps I haven’t thought of. I don’t know what the cost of putting out the digital format is, but I doubt it costs nothing at all. I think a new ebook should be slightly cheaper than a paper one because if the author wrote it on a computer, it should be relatively easy to convert a digital manuscript to an ebook format. But the other expenses of creating that book in the first place still apply even if no paper was involved.
Old books are a different matter, because they are not already in a digital form such as a word processing document. Someone has to scan the books, proofread and correct them, and format them into ebooks. That is time-consuming and probably pretty expensive to do it right. I’ve got several free or cheap ebooks that are almost illegible in places because someone’s merely scanned the pages with an optical character recognition thingy and left them as is, with all the misread words and punctuation still in place. Some of the mistakes are pretty funny, but mostly it’s just irritating – however, one does get what one pays for, so I can’t really complain if the book was free or less than a dollar.
The biggest drawback of the digital book is certainly the inability to get it cheaper secondhand. That’s why I purchased one of my favourite series in secondhand paperback volumes even though that’s a lot of books that take up much more space on my shelves (and in boxes when I move next) than they would have in my Nook. It was cheaper to buy them secondhand than it would have been to buy them in ebook format. For some books, especially older ones, there’s probably no way around that.
Why can people just not apologize when they’ve caused hurt or anger? “I apologize for x. I can see I upset you/hurt your feelings, and I didn’t mean to. I won’t do x in the future because I can see it hurts you and I value our relationship.”
The end. “I know you are but what am I” is not an apology. “Well, I need you to understand from my perspective” is not an apology.
I’m willing to buy certain books in new books (dead tree or ebooks) in order to support the authors. I want my favorite authors to write more. But I’m less than willing to pay full price on an author that I’ve never read before…and the samples of ebooks that I can get for free often consist of 60 pages of blurbs about how great the author and/or book is. So, if I haven’t read an author before, I probably won’t buy a full ebook, but I will either check out a library book or buy a secondhand paperback by this author, to see if I like him/her.
Even in dead tree books, there were some proofreading errors, which seem to have become more common as I get older. Or maybe I’m just noticing them more. In the ebooks, even the newer ones, it seems that gremlins work the night shift to insert additional typos and formatting errors. I don’t think that there is ANY proofreading by humans being done in about 99.999% of books being published today. It seems to be spellchecked, sometimes, but not proofread, even if it’s a new book. Maybe nobody makes blue pencils for computer screens? 
We went out to try a new Mexican place last weekend, forgetting it’s Cinco de Mayo (a holiday largely celebrated in the U.S. and hardly anywhere in Mexico - but I digress). As we pull up to the entrance, we see a sign announcing that a mariachi band is performing. Alright, we should have expected something like that on Cinco de Mayo. We go elsewhere.
Fast forward to today - when we decide to give the new place another try. We’re about to turn in when we see a sign - Mariachi band performing from 4-9 p.m. for Mother’s Day.
What a treat for Mom! Seriously though, how many people enjoy having mariachi music blaring at them all through their meal? It might be tolerable at a street festival but not in the confined space of a restaurant.
I wonder what other holidays we need to look out for to avoid special mariachi performances at this place - Martin Luther King Day? Groundhog Day? Chinese New Year? National Perfusionist Appreciation Day?*
In case you missed it, last week was National Perfusionists Appreciation Week. I hope you hugged a perfusionist. 
I pit my family life and Monther’s Day. My family life is such shit that it sickens me and hurts me to see everyone on Facebook profess their great love for their mothers.
Yeah, I know, I’ve ranted about this too much elsewhere on the board today already.
I need a drink, but already drank too much this weekend.
Validation is so good. Thank you 
As it turns out, we were both on our cells and in airports, so we didn’t hear each other properly. Nobody except online friends had any clue what I was talking about. Thank goodness this is the only place I publically made fun of her. Of course, most of my friends were educated in Arizona, which is probably the problem.
I do want that t-shirt
<snipped again for length>
I agree with all of your points. I also want my favorite authors to write more, and I like buying their e-books because that means I’m not using up shelf space for a book that I will enjoy and then never read again. I think the problem with newer material is that people run it through spell check and think its good. Its not.
There are times when I just want to grab my red pen and edit library books. Damn, some of those mistakes are so horrible. I restrain myself. I’ve only wrote in library books twice.
However, the nice thing about my reader is that I can correct my copy of the book. I loves that. When I’m reading and suddenly get jarred out of my suspension of disbelief because of a stupid mistake, I can fix it. Suddenly I am happy and back into my book
Yeah, that is lame, but I take my small pleasures where I can.
My rant: It appears as though I’m allergic toMagnolias
We have several beautiful trees in full bloom. They are gorgeous, and the scent is so intoxicating. I’m eating OTC allergy meds like they are candy. Bill wants to have them cut down. I am going to start getting allergy shots, because they are so beautiful.
Offers you hugs and some tea. A while back, I realized that I couldn’t pick my family, but I could pick my friends. The only reason I know where the woman who spawned me is now is because she contacted me after almost 15 years. She wanted money.
Not all of us were born in good families,** EmilyG**. I’m really pulling for you, hoping that you will be able to get out of that toxic situation and start living for yourself.
Well, I made it through Mother’s Day with my mom. Only once did I have to roll my eyes and say “Wouldn’t you be a lot happier if you just grew up?” (at the age of 85 … but it’s a bit old to be getting butthurt by what someone else might be thinking about you…)
AH! You just explained something to me.
Background: there are several international chains which for some reason and despite not being American (or, as far as I know, even having a single store there) insist on marking American whatever-days. They do things such as have “Black Friday sales” in countries which do not celebrate Thanksgiving.
I just realized they are the same ones that I’ve seen advertising “gifts for Mom” for the 11th, when Mother’s Day happened to be the 4th - getting a Spanish Mom a gift on the 11th would get it stuck up your most accesible hole unless you had a real, real good excuse for not giving it one week earlier, on the proper day. So now I’ve gone from through :smack: to :p, thank you!
I’ve heard mariachis performing in restaurants before. They weren’t blaring at all. I promise you, the blaring is no more a requirement for mariachi music than the belting it out is one for soul. Any mariachis which blare indoors do not have the fuckingest what they’re doing.
I don’t know any perfusionists.
I do, however, enjoy mariachi bands, assuming that they adjust the sound level to the environment. I don’t care for ANY blaring music, though. My eardrums might not be perfect, but I prefer to not damage them any further. This means that I avoid a lot of concerts that I’d otherwise go to.
I would imagine that mamacitas and abuelitas would enjoy a mariachi band, too, if it’s not too loud. A couple of the Mexican/Texmex restaurants that I go to play Tejano music, but that’s not the same as mariachi.
No, I think you’re right. Even in reprints of existing books, there are errors. Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series is full of them, when it wasn’t before. Proofreading seems to be something of a lost art these days. And some authors with big enough names can get away with publishing without the severe editing their new works would benefit from (Stephen King, I’m looking at you).