Of books, robots, and new stuff
The eSpec Kickstarter is now less than $100 away from unlocking the next stretch goal, but it’s slowed down lately.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/e-specbooks/something-for-everyone?ref=cardIn my limited experience, they do usually slow down after the first few days and then pick up toward the end, but there’s still so much cool stuff you can unlock! Also, the larger the total sum, the more we authors get paid after publisher expenses are met. Since it’ll be split among seven of us, we’re naturally hoping for a sizeable amount.
Right now, I’m in the middle of proofreading the galleys for Aleyara’s Descent and Other Stories. It’s surprising how quickly it’s all coming together, thanks to the hard work of our editor Danielle Ackley-McPhail. Meanwhile, Mike McPhail is hard at work on the covers, so I’m still waiting to see mine.
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My first time letting my robot vacuum run automatically on schedule worked fairly well, though I did have to take manual control once when it balked at re-entering the living room again — clearly, trying to darken the metal carpet-edge strip with a Sharpie did not stop it from seeing it as an obstacle. It’s still sweeping up an impressive amount of hair and dust, though. I think next time I’m going to stop it after half an hour and see how full the receptacle is. If it gets full too fast, that might reduce its efficacy later in its run, in which case it might not be worth letting it run the full 60-70 minutes each time.
Incidentally, this time I did let it find its way back to the charger on its own when it entered recharge mode, and it did the same as before, just crawling blindly around the edges until it got within range to spot the charger. I’d been wondering if the metal bookcase was blocking a radio signal or something, but it just struck me that it may be an infrared signal needing line of sight.
Oddly, I got two very similarly phrased letters in the physical mail today, both claiming to be from the vacuum manufacturer’s customer service but from two different addresses, one in Texas and one in California. They both offered me a free pack of replacement brushes and filters as well as an opportunity to test a new mopping robot for free (useless for me, given that I have less than 100 square feet of tile floor). They give two different e-mail addresses too, both with the same weirdly generic numerical domain, though a web search shows said domain to be valid. The most suspicious thing is that one letter says the brushes and HEPA filter should be replaced “once two month” [sic] and the other says once every month. Not only do they disagree, but the vacuum’s phone app sets the brushes’ and filter’s life expectancy at 150 hours, which would only translate to 2 months if you ran it all the way down twice a day, seven days a week. As for one month, given that it runs a maximum of some 70 minutes on a charge and takes at least 4 hours to recharge (per its specs), you could get a theoretical maximum of 144 hours in 31 days if you continually restarted it immediately after it fully recharged.
So I’m thinking this is probably some kind of scam, the result of some bot tracking my Amazon activity or something. I’m not sure what scammers would get out of it, though, unless the offer to send me free stuff is just a hook to get something else out of me. I might have been less suspicious if they’d only sent me one letter, so thank goodness for whatever glitch in the system led to me getting two at the same time.
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My new glasses finally came in early this past week. The prescription seems fine — not that different from my old pair, it seems, but with more intact lens coatings — but the frame wasn’t well-adjusted at first, since I wasn’t good at communicating what I needed to the person in the store, and it took a while wearing them to figure out what was wrong. Yesterday, I had occasion to go to a mall where another of their stores was located, and I got them readjusted there. I had the idea to show them my old glasses as a guide for how to adjust the new ones — which may not have been a perfect idea, since the old ones hadn’t been adjusted in a while, but it’s still better than it was. I think they’ll work out okay. I’ve decided to keep the old glasses in my car as an emergency backup, replacing the older, monofocal pair that had previously filled the role.
Meanwhile, the UV/blue-blocking sunglasses I’ve had for nearly four decades, since my melanoma treatment in high school that made me hypersensitive to UV for a time, have developed a crack in one of the temple hinges. When I ordered my new glasses last week, I asked if they could fix the sunglasses, and they recommended a place at a more distant mall that can laser-weld cracked frames while you wait. I decided instead to buy a replacement pair online, but the replacements don’t fit as well over my regular glasses. Maybe I should’ve looked into some visor type of thing meant to go over glasses instead. Still, given how long the old sunglasses have been with me (although there was a span of some years when I didn’t use them because my eyeglass frames at the time were too big), I kind of feel it’s worth trying to repair them. Looking into it, it seems there are some mail-in eyeglass repair services, so I might look into one of those.
Anyway, the reason I went to that mall yesterday was to return the poorly fitting shoes I bought three weeks before and get a replacement pair. I tried tightening the shoelaces as much as possible to deal with the toe-chafing problem, but I noticed my ankles and shins got sore when I walked, and I realized these shoes had much less heel support than I’m used to and weren’t very good for walking in. So I resolved to return them, if I could. The store’s website said you couldn’t get a full refund for shoes that had been worn, but was ambiguous about whether you could get a partial refund. I asked their customer service and was told their might be exceptions to the no-return policy and that I should get a manager to inspect them and make an assessment.
I cleaned the dirt off the soles the night before and took the shoes back in, expecting that at best, I’d get partial credit off the price of the replacement shoes I bought. Indeed, the manager said they normally don’t take back shoes that have been worn, but after I mentioned my e-mail exchange with customer service, she said she’d take them back this one time only and gave me credit on a store gift card. To my surprise, she refunded the full amount — and the replacement pair I ended up buying cost exactly the same, so it was a one-for-one exchange. So that turned out even better than I hoped.
This time, I asked a store clerk to recommend good walking shoes, and she directed me toward the same brand I’ve usually worn for the past couple of decades, which I guess makes sense. The pair I got definitely has much better heel support, and I’m satisfied with them so far, though I’m concerned they may be a tiny bit snug around the toes. They’re a fairly unflamboyant black and gray, and the brand name is not as prominently displayed as it was on the more expensive models. (Seriously, if companies want you to display their brand name on your clothes, shouldn’t they pay you for the service, instead of the other way around?)
So now I have new glasses, new sunglasses, and new (again) shoes. I also bought a new umbrella at the same time as the sunglasses, and on the trip where I ordered the glasses and bought my new mini-vacuum, I also got a new suitcase to replace the one whose zipper broke. So I’ve got a lot of new stuff.
And since I’ve been spending so much money (he said, bringing it back full circle), I hope you, Gentle Readers, will consider pitching in to our Kickstarter so I, and six other authors, can get a better payday!
