Some nostalgia

I was trying to remember something.  It was a commercial about a guy whose scarecrow wasn't getting the job done, so he built a new one.  After some searching, I finally found it.  It's a Vault energy drink commercial.

Even after all these years, I still love the idea of a farmer building a robot scarecrow.

Feels like July

It's been unseasonably hot.  Weeks without rain and temps in the mid nineties.  The soil is baked hard, and the lawns are already starting to discolor.

Saturday will be cooler.  High is only supposed to be 85.

We need some rain, though.

On the plus side, the evenings have been very pleasant.  It's nice to sit outside at dusk and listen to the cicadas buzz and the bullfrogs croak while watching the lightning bugs blink on and off and smelling the aroma from the gardenia flowers.

It might be blazing-hot summer already, but summer still beats winter every time.

Back in contacts

It's nice to be able to see again.

I should probably get Lasik or something.  The problem is that I'm really not comfortable with having a laser beam shot into my eye.

You know what would be ideal?  I pill that improves your vision.  Some sort of retrovirus thing, perhaps.  I don't know.  But there's got be a non-invasive way of doing this, even if it's just theoretical at this point.

In the meantime, I'll count my blessings.  For most of history, people with poor eyesight simply had to live with it.  I have the luxury of corrective lenses, and it makes a world of difference.

Accidentally stabbed my eyeball again

So frustrating...

All I was trying to do was put my contact lens in.  But something went wrong, and the lens went in edge-first.  Now my eye has a mild stinging sensation, and I'm stuck with wearing glasses for the next few days while the cornea repairs itself.

This isn't the first time this is happened, and it won't be the last.  But it still sucks.

To all you people who have naturally perfect vision: don't take it for granted.  It's a gift.  A marvelous one.  Always be thankful that you don't require corrective lenses or laser surgery like so many of the rest of us do.

One day more

One more day until Game of Thrones reaches its conclusion.  One more day to guess who--if anyone--will sit on the Iron Throne when the end credits roll.

One day more!

Crossbows

After watching that Euron "Bowmaster" video, I sort of want a crossbow now.

Amazon offers a large selection.  I have no idea what I'd prefer, though.  There are shoulder-fired crossbows, but also pistol crossbows, and I can see the merits of both.

It also occurred to me that I could go to Home Depot, get some lumber and fasteners and some rope, and maybe build my own ballista.  The problem with that is that it might be too big to fit through a door, so I'd have to leave it outside, I guess, and that's not very appealing.

I suppose I could build my own crossbow.  I'd have to use metal springs instead of flexible bow arms.  Of course, a really fancy crossbow would be a repeater.  Sort of like a revolver, except with bolts instead of cartridges.  I found this instructable for a repeating crossbow, but it uses a stack magazine that sits atop the thing, and I'm not really crazy about that design.  I'd prefer a mag under the firing level.  A rotary mag, a left-side cocking lever, and a forward bullpup-style pistol grip would be the bee's knees.

I probably won't get a crossbow, or build one, but it's fun to muse about.

This is funny

Spoiler alert: contains images from the recent Game of Thrones episode.

Walmart's search engine has improved

Last August, the big Walmart/Kobo partnership began, and books listed on Kobo appeared on the Walmart website.  The indie author community was abuzz about the possibility of selling books to a whole new market.

Unfortunately, there were some snags.  One of those snags was the search engine.  In order to find my books on Walmart's site, I had to put quotation marks around my name in the search field.  If I didn't, then I'd get results for more famous Jeffs like Bezos and Dunham.  Even with the quoatation marks, though, I still didn't get my books.  I'd get results for "Jeff Tankard," and the products would be beer steins and such.  I had to click on the "did you really mean to search for Jeff Tanyard" link to see my books.

Now, though, something has changed.  I can type my name in--without question marks--and my books appear in the results.  No fuss, no muss.  This is exactly the way their search engine should behave.

So, thanks, Walmart, for tweaking your search engine.  :)

Now I just have to figure out how to make sales there...

Thanks, Kobo!

Looks like Kobo has done away with the Captcha thing.  That's good.  I hate the Captcha thing.  Smart move on Kobo's part to get rid of it.

In other Kobo news, the Free Space trilogy box set goes on sale on Kobo on May 8.  Kobo customers, here's your chance to get it at a discount.

Had a scare

I had a scare tonight.  My laptop stopped working suddenly.  I got the Dell version of the BSOD.  It restarted and told me no hard drive was found.  Then it shut down on its own.  I waited about thirty seconds and then turned it back on.  Everything booted up normally, thankfully, and all seems well now.  Still, the incident gave me a jolt, and I don't like jolts.

In other news, I'm back on Firefox.  The addons glitch has been fixed.  Hopefully Mozilla will learn some lessons from this and reevaluate how they handle addon signatures.

Watching Game of Thrones and reading about the fans' reactions has given me lots of ideas about what not to do as a writer.  Thanks, Benioff and Weiss, for the unintended craft tips.

Progress on book 4 has slowed, but for good reason: I've had to think through some things.  I'm in the middle of a battle scene, and it's not easy to keep everything straight when you're dealing with so many people and motives and variables.

I had a couple of promotions last week, but they didn't perform as well as I had hoped.  I'm reevaluating my promotion strategy.  I really don't want to have to invest the time and money in CPC ads, but it might be unavoidable if I want to make a viable career out of this.  Still mulling all this stuff over.

That's all for now.  Later, folks.

First post from Brave

I've been meaning to give the Brave browser a try for a long time.  Mozilla decided to wreck Firefox tonight, so I figured this was as good a time as any.  I downloaded Brave and am currently using it.

On the plus side, installing was pretty easy.  Importing bookmarks and saved passwords was insanely easy.  On the downside, the scrolling seems a little clunky.

The security settings... well, I have no idea what to think about those yet.  Too different from Firefox.  Only time and use will tell.

Are addons available?  I don't think they are, and that's the biggest flaw.  That's where Firefox excels: the vast selection of addons for almost infinite customization options.  I'll be going back to Firefox as soon as Mozilla fixes what they broke.

For now, though, I'm giving Brave a shake.  And it's always nice to have multiple browsers available if you need them, because disasters happen, and you never know what might come in handy.


UPDATE:  Looks like I can use Chrome extensions in Brave.  I have no experience with Chrome, so this is all new to me.  I might have to browse around the selection a little.