The Foundation is Moving (10/24/2011)
The foundation is moving - after having a very nice 10 year run using Lycos domain hosting I'm moving hosting providers over the next week to one that is more modern and should make all this updating, hosting, etc. a lot easier for me. Things are not easy for me these days.
Hopefully no one will notice any kind of changing occurring and it will all be smooth sailing, but I am a little worried about the RSS URL changing since it will likely change from the hobbled CGI script that currently does it into some sort of current technology. I'll do my best to drop a note on the feed URL if it does break - but yeah. We'll see. Hopefully in the next week you'll see an update that all is well in the Chaos Server. TTFN!
Book Club (10/22/2011)
Legends should stay legends otherwise they just become history, when the natural course of things is the other way around, from history to legend.
- Ian McDonald (The Dervish House)
I've always felt social pressure to join a book club. Isn't that the kind of things smart well adjusted people do? Especially if they don't have kids? About four or five months ago when Mrs.Chaos mentioned that one of her coworkers was in a fun book club with his friends from schools and that we could join, I said "sure thing!" So we've been in it long enough to read four books.
At the most recent book club we volunteered to host for the first time and the rules of club are that whomever is hosted gets to pick the books the group is going to vote on. That way if you're hosting, at least you're going to want to read the book. It also gives the great commentary that if you don't like the books, you need to volunteer to host the club! Take that!
Over the first few months the books picked were totally NY Times best sellers or Oprah book club or the like. That is not normally my cup of tea, but I read (by read, I mean listened on Audible) all of them. As a new member that was my job. It was starting to struggle because while I can handle about one book a month, I cannot handle two. Which meant that book club books were the only books I was going to be reading. So I was glad to host at my house and take charge of the recommendations.
The group picked my first suggestion of "Dervish House," which is Ian McDonald's latest huge-nominated book. The nerd podcast I listen to (which has two people on the Hugo panel) all said this book was there top choice. It didn't win the Hugo, but we read the book none-the-less. It was really fun for me, especially because it was set in Turkey in 2025. Having a sister-in-law who is Turkish, lots of discussions with her and my brother about cultural differences between the US and Turkey, and having been to Turkey for long trips, I had a great time reading about things that I had seen first hand.
Mrs.Chaos got through the book too, just finishing it on the last day (the previous book she finished early and I finished on the last day, so it's an even race)! She was very excited to have people over and had a great time making halloween-inspired recipes! Yes, we got finger cookies and spider dip. Delicious.
I remain excited to be a in book club, and as expected about 50% of the people actually read the book each time. It works out well, because if we like the book, then the other people spending their time talking about their favorite parts and favorite characters and trying to sell the people who didn't read it that they should be reading it! Ya know? Awesome. So go read "Dervish House" because it's fun and it's good fiction. Now I'm going to back to work on "Game of Thrones" until the next book is picked. I better read fast.
A Matter of Money (10/15/2011)
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
- George Bernard Shaw
When Netflix raised prices I cancelled. I saw great uppitiness on the internet about furious over this change. No rage from me. No fury from me. A business made Netflix raise their prices and business decision made me cancel my service. I singed up so many years ago on the cheap disc-by-mail plan they had and used it to the max. A disc would arrive on Monday I would watch it, back in the mail on Tuesday, and so on. It gave me around three discs a week, around twelve discs a month, and that was awesome. A good use of $4.99 running at about 40c a rental.
Netflix slowly raised prices over the years and I slowly and diligently kept paying for the upgrades. I started slowing down on my disc processing speeds, watching a disc around every week and I started to question the value of it. Then they gave me free streaming. The novelty alone made it pretty cool, but the selection? No, Netflix was never to see the movies you wanted to watch, it was always about seeing the movies you were willing to watch when you had time.
When they did the crazy price changes over the summer I sat back and asked myself what it was worth. The streaming service? Not worth it. The selection just wasn’t there. I also live in AT&T DSL suburb nightmare, where internet speeds drop in the evenings and weekend to speeds where it is sometimes very hard to stream. So it was time to cancel streaming, but maybe the disc business would still do it for me? No, it turns out that there competitor Redbox has a much better deal for me. Netflix is $7.99 a month these days; that would get me around eight Redbox movies. I’m not going to watch eight DVDs a month. It’s a business thing.
I looked for better streaming options. I have a GoogleTV (it was free from Google) which does Amazon Unboxed. It has a worse selection than Netflix, but its streaming is combined with Amazon Prime. Which would be awesome if I were impatient. Yet I don’t really need to get all my Amazon shipments in a couple days, I am more than happy to wait for the super shipper savings.
Here is another fun thing - AT&T just got rid of all their text plans. I used to have the 200 messages for $4.99 plan - and I average about 50 messages a month. Now they only have the “pay as you go” at $0.20/message and the unlimited for $19.99 a month. So at 20c a message I would need to send/receive ~100 message a month. So what is in my best interest? To drop any plan and convince all my friends and family that text messages are for chumps. I will never send another text message. I will encourage you to do likely.
