Random Musings.. Showing 1,051-1,100 of 1,161

[Ctgt]

That one fell flat. We'll talk about it on the 30th.

[Suzanne]

How cool to meet him! Awesome.

[Kat]

Oooooooh exciting! Lucky you!

[Mark]

Jealous Rob.

[Kat]

Rob wrote: "Ctgt wrote: "Wow, left the third musketeer home."

Hmm?"

OBVIOUSLY he means me.

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Oh. Well that explains it..

[Ctgt]

Kat wrote: "OBVIOUSLY he means me."

Right?!

[Kat]

* polishes her rapier and puts a feather in her hat *

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

So I woke up this morning (about 30-45 minutes before my alarm) and discovered my cell phone was stuck in some kind of boot loop.

It probably means the hardware finally died. I've been having some hardware issues for awhile now.

I've been holding off on a new phone because I didn't want to lose the aux port. I'm probably going to switch from a Google phone to a Samsung phone because Samsung seems to still have an aux port on newer models.

Needless to say it's going to severely hurt my audiobook time until I get it sorted out. I think I can get a new phone by tomorrow after work, so I'd only lose out on 2 days of audio.

There are probably a whole bunch of other issues I'll have to deal with as well though, but since most of my data is in the cloud, I don't think it should be too bad. It would have been a lot easier to transition to a new phone with my old phone still in tact though.


I might have found away I can get the phone to boot, we'll see. I'm going to see Jurassic World tonight, so I won't have much time to play with it until tomorrow at the earliest.

[Suzanne]

Oh how frustrating! But it's certainly important enough to take your time choosing the right phone.

Enjoy Jurassic World! I thought it was fun, as long as you don't think too hard - but really with Jurassic Park movies, you kind of know what to expect :)

[Dara]

I'm hanging on to my iPhone 6s until it dies. I don't want to give up my 3.5mm headphone jack.

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Suzanne wrote: "But it's certainly important enough to take your time choosing the right phone.."

Haha. Normally I'd agree with you. But being without a phone for several days is not something I really want to do. Too much is tied to my phone, not just my audio books.

So I already bought a Samsung Galaxy S9. I figure I can mess with the software enough to get it to be kind of like stock android and just suck it up for 2-3 years until I switch back to Google/Pixel devices.

Unless I either really like the Samsung despite the bloatware, or Samsung keeps the aux port for the next several years.

I really liked my last Samsung phone (until that also died) but it was a Samsung Galaxy Nexus so it ran stock Android.

If Google hadn't removed the aux port from the Pixel 2, I'd have bought one last fall.

[Suzanne]

Lol I'd be the same, as far as buying ASAP - it is a lot easier to counsel patience than to actually have it. I'll be interested to see how you like the Galaxy S9 - I have an older Samsung Galaxy that has been great.

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Oh and I had like 90 minutes of Out of Spite, Out of Mind. I listened to some on my tablet this morning and some on my PC at work.

I'm hoping I can finish the rest when I get home before going to Jurassic World.

Then I'll just hold off on starting a new book until the phone stuff is sorted out (which may be Tuesday night/Wednesday Morning)

[Kat]

We"re having a massive heat wave in Europe at the moment. Here in Northern Germany we're not really equipped to deal with temperatures like these (well over 90 F). Absolutely nobody has aircons, and water is getting restricted to household use only. Several harvesters and tractors on the fields went up in flames when a pebble hit metal and struck a spark, instantly setting fire to the field.

Today someone in my German bookclub reminded us to put food and water out for wild animals, as the landscapes are parched and plants die and it hasn't rained properly in months.

So I've put a bird bath on my balcony and bought 3 lavender plants for my spare planter to feed the bees. I have also ordered summer food for wild birds to put out, and glass marbles to put in little bowls with water, to make insect drinking stations.

I feel like a responsible adult now.

[Dara]

I'm in a Discord server with a lot of Europeans and they're all melting as well. You guys aren't build to deal with heat like this (not like, personally but infrastructurally). I'm glad you're doing your part to help the animals! They often get forgotten in times like this.

[Suzanne]

That's really a nice thought - a good idea.

[Kat]

It was payday yesterday, and I just bought this lampshade for my library:



Handmade in Hamburg, and it arrived today despite them saying delivery date was end of next week. Hooray!

[Ctgt]

Love that! Is it wrong that I just spent 15 minutes trying to figure out the titles?

[Kat]

Oooooh, there's a thought!

Reading list of titles pictured on lampshade! I bet I'm the first to have THAT reading list!

[Ctgt]

Ha, I have to believe you're the trailblazer.
You guys still boiling over there?
Here on the east coast we have been crushed with rain for about a week.

[Kat]

we have a tiny thunderstorm right now. Next to no rain at all, but GLORIOUS WIND!

[Suzanne]

What a fantastic lampshade - that is beautiful!

[Bill]

Cool lampshade. I really like the concept but would have to do a custom one. It would drive me crazy if there were books I didn’t like on it.

[Ctgt]

Hi Rob

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Ctgt wrote: "Hi Rob"

Hi. I haven't talked to you in AGES! Or is it hours?

[Ctgt]

Seems like it's only been hours......🤔

[Kat]

Whoa, I'm 2 books behind my challenge. I thought travelling on the train for 2 hours each day would increase my reading time, but apparently it has decreased instead. I end up sleeping on the train too often...

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Sleep is for the weak!




I totally took a nap after work when I could have been reading instead..

[Kat]

Also, WoW happened.

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Kat wrote: "Also, WoW happened."

That too..

[Kat]

My TBR just grew by a whole stack. Someone in the German bookclub was giving away books for free - just have to pay postage. Score!!

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Haha. Congrats?

[Kat]

Tomorrow I shall finally become Nat Pagle's best friend. I swear, if I have to see one more Tiger Gourami school, I'm going to shoot someone in the foot.

[Kat]

Ouch. Apparently there are more levels to this friendship than I thought. Waaaah!

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Yeah. I did enough fishing for the mount and the raft, but I think Nagle and I are still estranged.

[Kat]

I want the purple fishing hat and the reputation bar filled.

[Kat]

Been rummaging around in my book collection. Turns out I seem to have an endless supply of new, unread books that I own twice. Sometimes I have read the other copy already, some are in my TBR.

So far I have found duplicates of:
The Bands of Mourning
Foxglove Summer
The Hanging Tree
Dark is the Moon
Sword Song

I really, REALLY need a better system to keep track of my books!

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

I'm not sure if this would help, but I tagged books as "owned" (and owned-and-unread, and now owned-backlog) on Goodreads to help me track which books I already own to try to prevent that sort of thing.

This at least lets me check quickly on my phone or computer if I have a book already.

[Kat]

I do own a little programme called Bookpedia, which is for exactly that sort of thing. It even scans the barcodes via my webcam and looks up the details for me. I added 642 books already, but I need to do it for the rest as well....

[Kat]

Found more duplicates. My friend is coming over Saturday, to stand by the bookshelves and read out titles to me, so I can put them in my little database.

On another note, I might be moving house. I got wind of a 3-bedroom apartment close to the train station that even has a little garden, in the next town over. Being 2 train stops closer to the city and being able to walk to the station (instead of a 20 minute bus ride) would cut about 40 minutes off my commute. Also, my friend lives in an identical one, owned my the same landlord, and her rent is only 90 Euros more than what I currently pay for my 1-bedroom place.

Fingers crossed!

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

Sounds like a good upgrade. Good luck!

[Ctgt]

Good luck...we'll be over for the apartment warming. Cookies!

[Kat]

Anyone here from London?

I'll be over for a fortnight in March on personal business, and my only touristy plan is to have my photo taken in front of the 'Black Books' bookshop, which for some reason I never did while I lived there. And perhaps buy a book inside.

Somebody wanna meet up for a pint?

[Kat]

Many pints later, I'm now back home.

Are you guys familiar with the British Comedy Series "Black Books"? It follows the bad-tempered bookseller Bernard Black (Dylan Moran) and his assistant Manny (Bill Bailey) as they get up to all sorts of adventures while running a second-hand bookshop.

And I finally paid a visit to the shop they used for the exterior filming, yey!

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

I'm not familiar, but that's cool!

[Kat]

I can only recommend it - I've watched it several times over, and I still sit on the sofa giggling loudly when I watch it.

[Ctgt]

Thanks Kat. Just added it to my watchlist.

[Kat]

Okay, dumb question:

I received 2 unpublished books from an author. They're not really even ARC's yet - I got raw documents. I'm NOT a beta reader for these, she gave them to me for my entertainment because I love her (published) books.

It's the first 2 books in a planned 7-volume series, and I think she doesn't want them added to Goodreads yet, because she doesn't want to publish them until the series is complete.

How do I tell my Reading Challenge counter thing that I'm reading 2 more books that aren't on GR? I'm such a slow reader, my Challenge thing is only a very sorry short 20 books per years, so I kinda want them to count.

I considered using 2 children's picture books as stand-ins, or putting 2 re-reads of her other books in the list....

Thoughts...?

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

I don't know. Could you add "unpublished work" by author, or would that upset her?

Otherwise either standin is ok. Depends on if you care about stuff like page count, etc, or just want to count that you read a book toward your yearly challenge. Sounds like the latter though.