I was watching the news while running on the treadmill this morning and saw a piece about how the last bookstore in Laredo, Texas is closing. I’m not surprised. Bookstores are going the way of the dodo.
Don’t get me wrong – I love books and I love bookstores. I grew up spending hours in bookstores as a kid. I own literally thousands of books. But the reality is that it is a lot easier to get a new book from Amazon than it is to take a drive off to a bookstore. I can read the reviews on Amazon and see what others think about a book. I can usually peruse the Table of Contents online and sometimes read an excerpt. With Amazon Prime shipping I can get 2-day delivery for free or overnight delivery for $3.99 per item. That’s cheap. As a consultant used to billable time, it’s really cheap compared to how long it would take to get into the car, drive to the bookstore, find the book, stand in line at the counter, check out, get back into the car, and drive home. No comparison, really.
And this all becomes moot when it comes to digital media. Other than a couple of technical reference books, I haven’t bought a real paper book in months. I’ve bought lots of books, but I’ve purchased them all in the Kindle digital format and I download them to the Kindle app on my iPhone. The small screen is kind of a nuisance but the reading is about the same and I can now carry thousands of books with me on a single device. Assuming the new table device from Apple is oriented towards books and reading, I suspect I’ll never buy another paper book. And, thus, I would never need to set foot in a bookstore again.
I just added more AMZN and AAPL to my portfolio. Pretty sure Amazon had a huge holiday season. I’m also confident in that little “tablet” device Apple is probably showing off on Wednesday. Steve Jobs is reportedly quoted as saying the tablet is the most important thing he’s ever done and that’s he’s extremely happy with it. If Jobs is really happy, that means the device is going to be something special. Both of these stock purchases are a 6-month to 1-year hold for me.
I’m using MarsEdit to write posts for my blog ForkBender.com. ForkBender is running WordPress. I am using a plugin called WP to Twitter to tweet an excerpt of my new blog entries to Twitter. I’ve set up Twitter integration on Facebook so that anything that goes to Twitter should be posted as a status update on Facebook. So, in theory, when I post this, it should go live on my blog, be sent as a tweet, and then eventually change my status on Facebook. I’ll believe it when I see it.
UPDATE: Well, the first attempt posted a tweet to Twitter but the tweet did not get picked up on Facebook. Ugh. Debugging…
UPDATE 2: It appears to be working now. I didn’t change anything, it just started working. Probably a Twitter thing.
I am slowly getting back into the blogging thing. I started using MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software. It’s pretty nice if you use WordPress like I do. MarsEdit is a native Mac blogging client so I don’t need to go fooling around with the WordPress UI. Now the WordPress UI is really great but few web interfaces can beat a native Mac UI. So, anyway, hopefully you’ll see more of me here soon.
I pulled the plug on WoW today. I deleted it off of my primary machine (it’s still installed on my MacBook Pro in case I really need to do something there) and deleted my Safari bookmarks to imba and the guild forum, etc. I’m done, indefinitely. The game is great and I made some great friends playing, but Blizzard finally over-trivialized the game. I think the whole 1 Emblem of Triumph = 500 reputation (of Hodir, if that’s what you want) put me over the edge. You’re Exalted with Hodir? Maybe you spent the time doing the dailies or maybe you just traded in a bunch of Emblems of Triumph. You have a whole set of iLvl 231 gear? It no longer means you are a seasoned raider. It just means you wasted a massive amount of time grinding through a crapload of heroics. Woop-tee-doo. Meh, I have other things to do which actually do set me apart from others. I would have stayed for the raiding but, lately, we just can’t even field a consistent team of players. Every week it’s the same thing: pug a few n00bs who are undergeared, underskilled, and don’t know the encounters so we waste time. No longer. Moving on. ’Nuff said. laterz!
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Excellent design inspiration website.
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has been sleeping well. Looking forward to a great week.
0 Comments | Posted by Charles in Uncategorized
