View 763 Saturday, February 23, 2013

The Cable Guy showed up this morning at 0820, looked at my TV, and went out and climbed the pole. Ten minutes later we had TV and high speed Internet connection. Someone had disconnected the cable to our house up high on the pole across the street. No clue as to who had done it, but presumably a Time Warner Cable Guy working on a neighbor system. No reason why it should have been disconnected. I pay my bills. Do they do this to make work for each other? I doubt that, but I have no other explanation as to why my cable TV should be disconnected.

We missed the game last night, which of course turned out to be The Second Best Lakers game yet, and Kobe’s best game of the season (40 points). It’s always interesting when Kobe goes mad. He says he intends to keep doing that so that the Lakers will make the playoffs. It looks to be an interesting season but the Lakers have to win a lot of games to get in the playoffs. We’ll see.

The President has excoriated the Republicans for not bailing us out of the sequestration which is going to end life as we know it. He says the only way out is to keep borrowing more money – the sequestration was his idea on how to insure that we did some spending cuts when we raised the debt ceiling, but he has forgotten that I guess.  Now the only hope for the nation is to raise taxes. Supposedly on the rich because there are plenty of tax rises that will affect us all coming inevitably.

The notion is to blame the coming Depression – and that looks to be inevitable – on the sequestration, although we will be spending more next year than we did last year, and more the year after that than we will this year: the sequestration will not be a “cut” in the budget, merely a diminution of the increase that is automatically built into the budgets we don’t pass any more. And Obamacare will cost a lot of money, the 2% increase in salary tax (as opposed to income tax which hits what’s left after the 12 to 20% salary tax), inflation, raise in minimum wage, and other economic disincentives will cost more, and the incentive to expand a business is lowered, fewer businesses start – maybe we won’t hit a full Depression, but the probability is there. We are doing it to ourselves.

Minimum wages of course hit those entering the work force; they don’t yet know how to make money for their employer, and as we make it harder and harder to fire incompetent people, the reluctance to hire them to earn more than they are worth in the hopes that they will learn to produce enough to earn their starting salaries — well, you get the idea. And the schools which ought to be teaching people to be worth at least minimum wages have not been doing that – it is unlikely they will get better at it so that graduates will be worth a higher minimum wage.

Ah. Well.

Not everyone is hurt by depressions. Some do well indeed. Others scrape by. But it’s really hard on those just entering the work force. Fortunately, Story Tellers always survive, and with the eBook revolution my backlist is worth something. Unlike physical books which sell out and have to be reordered, eBooks are always on the virtual shelf and the store is always open. And Young Adult books tend to do well in times of high youth unemployment; many of my books appeal to younger readers as well as to adults. They sell well in PX stores, too. I should get through the coming worse times. And thanks to all those who subscribed or renewed during the current pledge drive. That helps a lot.

It’s time for a walk. I have a lot of mail that has accumulated. I’ll try to get some of that up tonight.

And we have this for your amusement:

Great Moments in Contemporary Publishing

February 14, 2013

This is just too good to keep to myself.

An independent bookseller I know landed a major bestselling author for a rare in-store signing. He got the word out, took advance phone and internet orders for signed copies, and called his sales rep at the publisher to make sure the books would reach him in plenty of time.

“You’ve ordered 450 copies,” the rep told him. “I’m afraid we can only ship you 200.”

Why, for God’s sake? Hadn’t they printed enough?

“No, it’s policy,” he was told. “Two hundred books is our maximum order. We can’t take the chance of huge returns, or credit problems.”

http://lawrenceblock.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/great-moments-in-contemporary-publishing/

The rest of the story is worth your time. It’s one more reason that print publishing is being eaten by Amazon

(Sunday: I intended to do mail last night, but we went out to dinner, and things caught up. And today will be the Oscars and I have an odd desire to watch them, probably because my oldest granddaughter is interested in fashion and design and will undoubtedly be watching it…)

View 763 Friday, February 22, 2013

1200 Noon. Time Warner will send a truck sometime but probably not until tomorrow. Meanwhile I am cut off from the internet. Also my television isn’t working. At all. And the feeling of helplessness is building. I am contemplating using the modem and phone line. Pathetic. I’d have to transfer all the files over to the ThinkPad and connect that to the phone lines. And of course I don’t have an antenna set up to let me get broadcast TV, which has always been lousy at Chaos Manor anyway. But I don’t miss TV. I do worry about not being connected. I wasn’t for most of my life, and now the prospect of a few hours or even a day of not being wired is scary.

Of course I could transfer all mail and other necessary files to the ThinkPad, and carry that down to the local Starbucks which happens to be next to the – now my memory fails me. The telephone network that isn’t AT&T or Verizon. I’d use the Internet to figure it out but my iPhone doesn’t work too well at connectivity because it wants to use the wireless network rather than the phone to connect to the Internet. Turn off the net connection on the iPhone. Google phone networks. Sprint. The Starbucks is next to the Sprint store and I have a Sprint data account which I ought to have given up long ago but I keep largely because it doesn’t cost much and it is an alternate way to maintain this place. So if I move everything over to the ThinkPad, then go down to the Starbucks and have a coffee as I connect to my Sprint account, I can check my mail and post this. Seems a big use of time.

The reason I have a Sprint account is that American Airlines had Sprint in all their airline lounges back in the days when I travelled a lot, and there are Sprint wireless stations along the highway to Las Vegas which I used when I went to Las Vegas for computer conventions, and other places, and I got in early enough that the rate is low so long as I keep it. So I do.

{Later. Not to spoil the fun of catching me in a glitch, it was T-Mobile I was trying to remember. I don’t have a Sprint account it’s a T-mobile account. Absent mindedness strikes again. at least I generally remember if I’ve had lunch yet.}

So if you see this today that’s probably what I did, although it’s just barely possible that Time Warner will get here today and fix everything. It’s clear the fault is theirs, and there is nothing I can do.

I probably mentioned this before, but it’s not easy to check – unlike Front Page, which I liked a lot even if all my advisors thought it was hokey and out of date, the Windows Live Writer system I use for this journal doesn’t keep local copies of everything so it’s hard to see whether I have or not. Anyway the Forbes for March 4, 2013 has a High Science column on zero gravity research that describes pretty well what my son Richard’s company NanoRacks does: it sells space on the International Space Shuttle. If you can pretty well automate your experiment in a cubic foot or two, they can get it up there and back down. For a price, of course, but they can tell you about grants available for universities and even high schools. And NanoRacks can tell you cheaper ways to do what you want. I’d give the link but I can’t because I can’t connect to the Internet yet. Astonishing how dependent we get on being wired up.

There’s talk of doom and gloom as the sequestration approaches, and the Administration is running in circles flapping their arms like a local school board telling the district that any cut in the budget will end football and college prep courses and everything else so that the students will have to sit hungry in classrooms without a teacher unless taxes are raised. The truth is that under the sequestration the US will spend more this year than last, and next year than this. The “cut” is in the amount of budget increase, not in actual spending. It seems to me that the whole government would be better off for an across the board 2% cut – actual cut, spend 2% less money next year than last. There’s 2% waste and monkey motion in every department. I note that the Department of Agriculture is threatening to lay off food inspectors, but there’s no talk of firing bunny inspectors. Every department has people doing things we don’t need done, particularly since we have to borrow the money in order to do them.

Bunny inspectors, for those who don’t know, look for people keeping rabbits as pets and offering them for sale – or using them in a stage performance. Bunny inspectors go to stage magic shows and if the performance employs a pet rabbit they demand to see the federal license the magician must have, and no, I am not making this up. By the way, if the rabbit is killed in the act, say eaten alive, you don’t need a federal license. You may be in trouble with the ASPCA but not with the Department of Agriculture. And the bunny inspectors won’t be laid off under the sequestration. I bet if there were a 2% cut in the DOA’s budget they’d go. If not, a bigger cut would be in order…

It is 1600. I have not heard from Time Warner. I will transfer files to the ThinkPad and go down to the Starbucks to get this posted. I won’t be dealing with mail until Time Warner fixes things. It went out at 1012 this morning and I had called them before 1100.

I just called TW and they tell me that there is a repairman scheduled to come between 8 and 9 tomorrow.  We’ll be waiting. I am now off to where I can see the Sprint wireless connection.

1800: It wasn’t sprint it was the other,  T-mobile, I have an account with and maintains wireless stuff, but they did not have theirs up when I drove down to Starbucks so I came home and activated the little AT&T thingy that is a sort of cell phone for 3G data.  It is not cheap, but not that expensive, and it is what I used to use on the road.  The procedures for buying more time on it have been improved. It turned out to be pretty easy, and that’s what I am using, with the ThinkPad on a table and all the other big powerful machines looking on jealously.  I usually use the ThinkPad up in the monk’s cell so they don’t see. Anyway it works, and that’s what I am using here.

I very much thank Mike Johns. The first Nook posting of Legend of Black Ship Island by Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes had some glaring errors which must have irritated the heck out of readers.  Mike Johns called it to my attention last December, and we pulled it down and checked the formatting.  Authors ought always to do their own proof reading of eBooks. Like galley slavery. It’s just necessary. We put the new version up on Nook and Kindle. Amazon has posted the new one (did at once when we fixed it) and all is well now. If you have not read it, it’s a novelette set in the Legacy of Heorot series, and takes place after Legacy but before Beowulf’s Children: the youngsters have a secret that the adults are never to know.  It was tricky to work in the story since it is never mentioned in Children,but we explain why, and also shed a bit more light on how the teenagers are developing.

Those Avalon stories have been fun. We show you new forms of life, but it’s still a tiny human presence on a new planet, with limited resources, and a generation gap like you wouldn’t believe except of course we want you to believe it…  If you haven’t read it, I think you’ll like it.

View 763 Wednesday, February 20, 2013

I’ve been busy, but I have heard something on the radio that is infuriating.

The soldiers wounded at Fort Hood by the terrorist are not eligible for the Purple Heart, and their injuries have been rated as “workplace accidents” rather than combat wounds. They are thus denied the benefits of those wounded in combat. The shooting is an industrial accident not combat in the war on terror.  So has it been ruled and so the President decrees.

This is to save money.

Beware the fury of the Legions

We had been told, on leaving our native soil, that we were going to defend the sacred rights conferred on us by so many of our citizens settled overseas, so many years of our presence, so many benefits brought by us to populations in need of our assistance and our civilization.

We were able to verify that all this was true, and, because it was true, we did not hesitate to shed our quota of blood, to sacrifice our youth and our hopes. We regretted nothing, but whereas we over here are inspired by this frame of mind, I am told that in Rome factions and conspiracies are rife, that treachery flourishes, and that many people in their uncertainty and confusion lend a ready ear to the dire temptations of relinquishment and vilify our action.

I cannot believe that all this is true and yet recent wars have shown how pernicious such a state of mind could be and to where it could lead.

Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow-citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we ourselves are protecting the glory of the Empire.

If it should be otherwise, if we should have to leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then beware of the anger of the Legions!

Marcus Flavinius,
Centurion in the 2nd Cohort of the Augusta Legion,

The above appears as epigraph for Lartegy’s The Centurions. The Fort Hood horror brings it to mind. It may not be authentic, or it may have been rewritten; but it rings true.

Purple Heart

If what you are saying is true about Fort Hood killings is true, there should be a lynch mob outside of the Capitol and Pentagon tomorrow and we should both be joining it…..

Bill

Tar and feathers, perhaps.  It seems to be true enough.  The survivors of the Fort Hood massacre were not wounded in combat, those killed were not killed in action, and the Major was not a terrorist. It was officially an incidence of workplace violence, not an act of war against the United States. By that logic so was the attack on the World Trade Center.

http://www.examiner.com/article/president-s-policy-denies-purple-heart-to-fort-hood-terrorist-attack-victims

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_21917280/ruben-rosario-widow-fort-hood-massacre-feels-wounded