Worthy Read

I enjoy reading the Mad Genius Club, and I found a particularly worthwhile post the other day. Check out Velocity and Trajectory: A guest post by Dorothy Grant. Dorothy writes about the new Amazon algorithm for determining a book's popularity, then provides a nice list of promotion sites.

Health Update

The latest health news is in.  I have type 2 diabetes which was brought on by obesity.  I test positive for Human Papilloma Virus (HPV).  Worse, I have squamous cell cancer which is in stage 4.

The good news is that the diabetes will leave when I lose the excess weight.  The cancer is treatable by either surgery or a combination of radiation therapy and chemo therapy.  Given that the surgery is 12 hours long and leaves permanent damage to my head and neck, I'm opting for radiation and chemo.

The national success rate for this is around 85%; My oncologist, Dr. Steven Rubin, has a success rate in the high 90s.  I'll be having 7 weeks of radiation therapy, 5 sessions per week and 7 weeks of chemo therapy, 1 session per week.  This translates into four months of misery.

Getting old isn't for sissies.

Repent!!!

The world will end tomorrow, Wednesday, April 9th, in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand and Fourteen.  That is, the world ends if you use Windows XP.  You can still be saved - there's still time! - if you switch to Windows 7 or Windows 8.  An alternative is to switch to a different operating system (OpSys) altogether, such as Linux.  Or you can renounce Microsoft altogether and byte the Apple, where you'll find a brand new migraine about the third time you try to print something and discover nothing will print, and in fact there is no print option on the menu.

Woe is me.  I am one such person who's life depends on XP, and I intend to do nothing to rectify my supposedly untenable situation.  The fact is that I'm well protected from viruses, trojans and other digital nasties, and I tend to stay away from such sites as DonkeyDickVirgins, SuperFreeDownloads and anything with the edu suffix.  I use Webroot and Malwarebytes which have served me very well thus far, and will continue to serve until my hard drive finally gives up the ghost and I lose a day's work.

So I'll just skip spending $150 for a copy of Windows 7 that my poor, tired old PC probably wouldn't be able to run anyway, and just limp along as best I can.  I'll also save myself the tedium of 16 hours of OpSys updates, installing all my software on my system and moving my data files back.

What really irritates me about the whole business is that we in the good old U.S. of A. have a government that loves nothing more than to regulate things.  If our government was actually looking out for our best interests, the government would force Microsoft to support XP for the next 15 years.  Fat chance of that ever happening.

Maybe I'll enjoy a celebratory martini when Microsoft finally disowns their bastard child.

Book Review: The Bell Witch [Kindle Edition]

The Bell Witch [Kindle Edition]
John F.D. Taff (Author), James Roy Daley (Editor), Books of the Dead (Editor)
File Size: 4491 KB
Print Length: 266 pages
Publisher: Books of the Dead Press (August 5, 2013)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00ED5QAZW

I rate this book 3 out of 5 stars.

This story is about the infamous Bell Witch, a legendary poltergeist which is said to have terrorized the Bell family of Adams, Tennessee back in the early 19th century.  The first third of the book is very good, and if I stopped after the first third I'd rate this at four stars.  But I didn't, and so discovered that the plot tended to stall out during the second third of the book, and by the final third I was wondering if this thing was ever going to end.

The characterization is average, or maybe a little below average.  This is a handicap that you can get away with if the pacing is solid and the scenes are exceptional - which isn't true here.  The scenes are okay.  Not great, not bad.  Just okay.  The pacing in the final chapters drags along with the tedium people experience while they wait for the dentist to come back in with the x-rays.  The ending is in sight, but no matter what happens the author refuses to take us to the end.

What I found disappointing was that the rest of the book didn't live up to the high quality of the first third, which I found very enjoyable. Too bad, because it didn't have to be this way.

Critical Thinking (Humor)

Woman: Do you drink beer?
Man: Yes.

Woman: How many beers a day?
Man: Usually about 3.

Woman: How much do you pay for each beer?
Man: $5.00, which includes a tip.

Woman: And how long have you been drinking?
Man: About 20 years, I suppose.

Woman: So if a beer costs $5 and you have 3 beers a day, that's $15 a day you spend on beer, or $450 per month. In one year, it would be approximately $5400. Correct?
Man: Correct.

Woman: If in 1 year you spend $5400, not accounting for inflation, the past 20 years puts your spending at $108,000, correct?
Man: Correct.

Woman: Do you know that if you didn't drink so much beer, that money could have been put in a step-up interest savings account and after accounting for compound interest for the past 20 years, you could have now bought a Ferrari?

Man: Do you drink beer?
Woman: No.
Man: Where's your Ferrari?

Currently Reading: Characters and Viewpoint

I attended a lecture at Origins Game Fair a few years ago, and the most valuable advice I received was a suggestion to buy Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card (ISBN 0-89879-927-9, 173 pages).  I read sections of it shortly after I bought it and found it helpful.  I found it in my bookshelf the other day, and I intend to sit down and read the whole thing before continuing with Otheldo.  After I finish I'll post a review.

Writing a Bad Review

If you're self-published, you are quite literally one of millions.  After you've completed the laborious process of getting your work listed on Amazon and fixing it so it doesn't look too awful bad on a kindle, you've got to somehow get yourself noticed by the multitudes who are going to read your work and want more.  One major part of that particular flaming hoop is to get people to give your work a review.

Most of us have friends and family who say that they'll do that right away.  Most don't, and there are some that you'd really rather not say anything at all.  I'm somewhat borderline.  I tend to be overly critical and when I give something a good review, it sounds a little like flattery no matter how sincere it is.  I write reviews anyway, and I probably shouldn't.

So my current problem is that I've been asked to review someone's work and tell them how good it is, and it sucks.  It's poorly written, formatting is non-existent, the plot is disjointed, the characterization has been skipped because it takes a lot of work and, well, if anyone's reading this they may understand what I'm talking about.  It sucks.  How do I say all that without taking a soldering iron to their fingertips, figuratively speaking?

I think the person in question is looking for a mutual admiration group.  I know these sorts of groups exist, but I've never tried to find one and I wouldn't be interested in joining if I did.  Maybe I should encourage the newly hatched author to seek out and join such a group, and eventually run for club president.