David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 232

I’m Becoming A Bit Hesitant About Lamb In Nebraska

I am fond of lamb. It tastes good. However, I think I’m becoming a bit spoiled by Colorado lamb. I’m becoming increasingly hesitant about ordering lamb when I go to Nebraska.

I do go to Nebraska quite a few times during the year. We go to some nice restaurants while we’re there. At such times, I often see lamb on the menu. However, it’s becoming increasingly disappointing when I give in to the urge.

I used to frequently get the lamb burger when I went to a nice restaurant in downtown Omaha. It was a good place and though not highly expensive, it wasn’t cheap. For a while, the lamb burger was good. However, then the quality suddenly dipped. The flavor changed, for the worse. I ordered it medium, but it started always looking well. That’s when I noticed that I was suddenly getting a preformed patty instead of a fresh one. It wasn’t overcooked, it was just old and previously frozen to the point that the blood had drained out and it was grey.

Then this weekend I was at another nice place in downtown Omaha. I decided to go for the lamb shank. It was horrible. I realize lamb is fattier than beef, but this was ridiculous. It was overcooked to the point of crust at portions, gamey, and covered in a gravy that belonged more on a cheap pot roast than a lamb shank. In fact, I would have suspected it was a bad pot roast instead of a lamb shank if I hadn’t know better. It was awful…and this was a good place.

I’m not sure what it is. Maybe lamb is so good in Colorado that I’ve gotten spoiled and can’t settle for what I get in Nebraska. Maybe the places I’m going to in Nebraska just cheap out on lamb or don’t know what to do with it despite being nice places. Frankly, I’m not sure. I just know that lamb in Nebraska is seeming like an increasingly worse idea.

Problem Supporting Indie Bookstores When Supporting Indie Books

I decided a couple of years back to try to support independent bookstores as much as I could over Amazon or the like. I also try to pay as much attention as I can to books coming out of the independent presses. However, I’ve been having a problem as of late.

A lot of independent presses these days do their printing through CreateSpace. That means that the book is available through Amazon, but may not be available elsewhere. The presses have to go through a lot of work to have individual bookstores carry their books, or work with other distributors. Many independent presses are not able to handle this, either from a cost or a time perspective.

Thus, I sometimes find myself having to choose between supporting indie bookstores or indie presses. I want to support both, but there are a lot of times where I can’t get an indie book through any independent I can find. I have to go to amazon, or at least when I buy the book. Sometimes it will be available through an indie retailer much later, but I don’t know if that will happen and when.

We won’t even talk about how important Amazon rankings can be to indie books. Amazon has a huge portion of the market and if my purchase doesn’t help the Amazon ranking then other purchasers might not see the book on Amazon.

What to do? It’s a weird situation when you have to choose between supporting indie booksellers and indie books. Course, I buy a lot either way. Maybe it all evens out.

Will I Break Tom Robbins?

Well, Tom Robbins is coming to the Highlands Ranch location of Tattered Cover soon to read from his new book, Tibetan Peach Pie. I don’t normally go to readings out at the Highlands Ranch location because it’s so far from me, but for Tom Robbins. I’m only concerned that I’ll break him.

After all, this is likely to be a pretty big event. That’s why they’re having it at Highlands Ranch instead of Colfax. I already had to get a numbered ticket for the signing line, which happens for the bigger events. I’ve also heard no posed photographs with Robbins and he’ll only personalize with names. There’ll just be too many people for anything else.

That being said, I wonder if Robbins will break when I walk up with the following:

- Skinny Legs and All

- Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

- Villa Incognito

- Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

- Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

- Another Roadside Attraction

- B Is for Beer

- Jitterbug Perfume

- Still Life With Woodpecker

- Tibetan Peach Pie

I’ve read them all except the new one, and I own them all (only Robbins I don’t have and haven’t read is Wild Ducks Flying Backward). Promising to sign and personalize with my name is great, but will Robbins do that for ten books? There’s going to be an immense line behind me. He might break and give up after a few. After all, he still has to have time and stamina left for the entire rest of the line.

We’ll see. I’m going, and I’m bringing these all. We’ll see if he signs them all, and if he personalizes them all. I certainly won’t blame him if he decides to limit a bit. He’s going to have a heck of a lot of books to sign.

“The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes” Now On Kindle!

The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes is now available on Kindle! This is my second book, but the first time that an ebook version has been released in addition to print. I’ve finally moved into the twentieth century! Maybe soon I’ll even move into the 21st, since it’s that already.

Anyway, check it out:

The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes

The Humor In A Name

I laughed recently when I saw that there was a Denver based moving company in criminal trouble for a variety of offenses such as overcharging, holding property hostage, forgery, and attempting to influence a public official (I assume bribery). Obviously that alone isn’t funny. What is funny, however, is these facts in view of the company’s name.

This is all concerning Mafia Movers.

Isn’t it a little amusing that a company facing criminal charges has the word “Mafia” in their name? Who’d have ever thought that a company called “Mafia Movers” might not stay strictly on the side of law and order.

I’m laughing, but then again I didn’t suffer the apparent nightmare of hiring these people.

Who knows, maybe they named themselves “Mafia Movers” to be cute. Then, sitting around, they thought about what the name implied and decided they might as well live up to it. Wouldn’t want to be guilty of false advertising, after all.

It’s just kind of a humorous situation, them getting into criminal trouble and having the word “Mafia” in their name. We’ve got to take our laughs where we can get them. I’m betting anyone who hired these people could use a laugh or two.

Am I The Only One Who Likes To Pretend To Be Sleeping When Listening To Bloodhound Gang’s “Asleep at the Wheel?”

Am I the only one who likes to pretend to be sleeping when listening to “Asleep at the Wheel” by Bloodhound Gang? I know it’s a little odd, but it’s kind of fun. Given how rare it is to find anything actually original, I bet I’m not the only one.

The chorus in the song regularly screams:

Get up you’re asleep at the wheel!

Get up you’re asleep at the wheel!

Get up you’re asleep at the wheel!

To me, this seems like a perfect time to imagine oneself sleeping and dreaming that one needs to wake up. I imagine that I’ve fallen asleep while driving and my brain is playing a relevant dream in order to try to wake me up. Emergency.

Frankly, it’s not that great of a song. It’s a little catchy, but that’s about it. It just seems amusing to make it seem like an oddly appropriate dream experience as opposed to just a mildly pleasant song.

Of course, I always imagine myself actually waking up in time to avoid any kind of a crash. I’m not a monster.

Three Step Plan To Improve Email

I have a three step plan to improve email. It is:

1. Invent time travel

2. Travel back in time to when email was being invented

3. Convince the developers to put in a feature where you could withdraw from an email chain

I think you can see where I’m going with this. Most of us have been on an email chain with a large number of recipients that really doesn’t have anything much to do with us. We already know that no follow up email could possibly be relevant to us. Yet, whoever sent out the chain put all the addresses in either the “To” field or the “CC” field as opposed to the “BCC” field so we keep getting additional emails commenting on the chain that have nothing to do with us. Worse, people on the chain keep replying to the sender and clicking “Reply All” for reasons that are completely baffling.

PEOPLE: STOP CLICKING “REPLY ALL” FOR MESSAGES THAT DO NOT NEED TO GO TO EVERYONE IN AN EMAIL CHAIN!

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was something you could do to withdraw from an email chain to stop getting irrelevant additions? Kind of like how Facebook lets you withdraw from a private message chain someone has started that you don’t want further updates on? Wouldn’t this be nice?

It’s too late, though. Sure, you can add a rule or filter or something to your email client or reading interface, whatever, each and every time this happens. That gets a bit cumbersome, though. It seems a bit too late to fix this for email…but I wish it wasn’t.

Sprint: Please Stop Sucking So Bad In Denver

Dear Sprint: please stop sucking so Bad in the Denver area. Thanks.

Many of you have probably heard me whine about the LTE coverage for Sprint in Denver. They bet on the wrong 4G horse initially for the Denver network and it’s taken them a while to catch up. However, their numerous texts to subscribers in the Denver area promise this is changing. They are upgrading their network.

However, regardless of whatever long term benefits this may have, it’s causing things to be even worse for the moment. Data coverage goes in and out. I’ve had no data coverage all morning in a location where I at least usually have okay 3G data coverage. Even calls have been dropping, in normally good service areas. I had one phone call recently (just off downtown so you don’t think I was in a dead spot or anything) where the call failed at least ten times, requiring me to repeatedly call the other person back.

Nor am I the only person to have these problems. I know a lot of people who are pissed, one so much that she’s mailing her phone back to Sprint despite still being under contract (relying on this failure to serve as Sprint’s breach of the service contract or something like that).

I know that this is in the interests of better coverage in the Denver area. I know this. And, I know they need better coverage in the Denver area. This is necessary. However, they might want to try to make this quicker or do more to maintain a certain basic level of service while the upgrade is going on. Otherwise, they might not have much of a Denver area market left to service by the time they’re done.

Just saying.

Happy Wedding Day!

Happy Wedding Day, Shannon!

Getting married was so much fun the first time, I just thought we’d do it again.

Which Transformer Are You? Quiz Results

Yeah…so I took one of those “Which Transformer Are You? quizzes. I took the one over at Brainfall. This is a screencap of my results: