Texting is Not an Option

I plagiarized the headline of this post, but I am giving credit to Gitomer.

Those of you — including me — that resist texting, or are skeptical, this article is enlightening.

Texting is not an option.

Who Edits the Wiki?

Check this enlightening article.

Movie Review: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Mark Hunter (Michael Douglas) is a corrupt district attorney with his eye on the governorship of his state. A journalist, C.J Nicholas (Jesse Metcalfe) figures out the district attorney’s method of operation and sets up his own gutsy sting, putting himself on the line to take down Hunter. His plans are elaborate, but he miscalculates, and things go wrong.

This is a legal thriller, complete with car chases, corrupt cops and unexpected plot twists. The acting is quite poor in some of the minor roles and Michael Douglas plays the ruthless executive like he did in so many other movies.

It actually starts slow, and it almost lost me in the first twenty minutes, when the action picked up speed and I stayed. When done I concluded that I was entertained, but that was all.

Rating: **

TrustPilot Edits and Removes Negative Reviews

Not very long ago there were nine reviews of MobilityPass on TrustPilot.com. Eight of these reviews were strongly negative, and one review was positive. These reviews disappeared from TrustPilot.com. There are two new ones there now.

I am disappointed in TrustPilot. Why would an outfit dedicated to impartial reviews purge content supplied by consumers?

MobilityPass seems to attract a flood of negative reviews. Just google “MobilityPass Reviews” to see.

Instant Communication

It was sometime in 1995. A business associate connected me with a potential client in France who was working on setting up an online business, and we had stared emailing occasionally. At that time, private email addresses were rare. I still had a CompuServe account, and the address was something like 12345,6789 which looked pretty technical to us at that time. I remember clearly one morning when he sent me an email from Paris, and I responded within a half hour. He wrote back almost immediately, gushing about how a customer of his was utterly amazed about how he had just communicated with somebody in the United States during a meeting with him, and actually got a response back.

It is now 15 years later. Instant communications is common. My Droid phone not only receives phone calls and voice mails, it receives text messages, instant messages, email from my Exchange account as well as email from my gmail account, all seemingly at the same time.

Last week I amazed myself. I was having dinner alone in a small Japanese hole-in-the-wall restaurant in San Diego, reading a book, when I received an email on my Droid from our accountant. She happens to be traveling in Egypt right now. She could not sleep, so she was in the hotel lobby (for WiFi access) at 3:00am in Cairo, paying bills for us. She had some questions for me as to which bills to pay. I texted her back answering her question, and the process took two or three text messages back and forth. I marveled about being able to accomplish meaningful work, like paying the bills, with the accountant in a hotel lobby in Egypt in the middle of the night and myself at dinner in California.

Through the centuries, the only way to communicate overseas was by letter, and letters took months to travel across the oceans. Many letters, of course, never arrived, due to shipwrecks, theft, robbery or outright carelessness of the carriers.

At Christmas, one of my sisters in Germany arranged for us siblings to pool money for a gift for our parents. To pay her back, I did the old-fashioned and simple thing: I put the bills into an envelope and mailed them to her through the postal service. Since I didn’t just want to send the cash, I wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper and put it into the envelope. When I sealed the envelope, I had this flash of awareness when I realized that I was folding the very piece of paper that my sister in Germany would have in her hand, physically, a week later, and I was touched by the “intimacy” of actually sending a physical letter – rather than the instant, immediate and so impersonal emails we usually send.

What a difference 15 years makes. A letter is now quaint, personal and actually intimate.

Positive Kindle Surprises I Did Not Expect

Comments:

Here is a comment from a reader of my New Era post:

I am on the brink of buying something kindle-like, too. But the issues for me are: can I make comments on the book? The difference between a marked and an unmarked book for me are everything–highlighting, marginal marks, questions, etc. The book doesn’t feel like it is mine without them.

Issue two: why does kindle, and its corporate headquarters, have to store my comments, and any other personal documents that I want to read on its pages? I should be able to “kindle” my word documents without Amazon.com taking possession of them.

Issue three: I can’t lend a friend a book without lending them the entire library (my kindle).

Issue four: I love to see and feel the pages, and thumb through them. I don’t really know of a kindle equivalent to that.

So right now I am inclined to wait for a different version, or, if I break down and buy one, to use it for newspapers, magazines, and books that I want to read but don’t want to keep in a holdable, thumb-able library form.

Return Comments:

Here are some thoughts to those comments:

Issue 1: Contrary to the commenter’s strategy of reading books, mine are always pristine when I am done. So while I appreciate the comment, it’s not an issue for me. As a matter of fact, I put in bookmarks and comments while I was reading, just for testing, and I took them out when I was done, just so my copy was pristine again when I “put it back on the shelf.” However, it does allow you to leave them in, of course.

Issue two: Well, not necessarily because they want to or are interested, but there is a sinister aspect to this too. Read the Fourth Realm trilogy, reviewed in these posts below, if you are worried about being On The Grid or in the Vast Machine. However, I challenge you: You keep your photos on Flickr, you keep your private musings on FaceBook, you tell people where you are in Twitter, and your cell phone can indicate where you are, down to the Starbuck level, to the Vast Machine any time. Who cares? Perhaps we SHOULD care, of course. Valid issue, therefore.

Issue three: That is outright wrong. I have not tried it, but as far as I know, you can share up to 5 copies of your books with others. As a matter of fact, it’s better than hardcopy books, because you and your partner can read the same book at  the same time sharing it, provided both of you have Kindles.  Noted, I haven’t tried this, but I have been told by other readers that’s what they are doing.

Issue four: I do too. I love the feel of pages. I also love the act of  purchasing a book at the bookstore. Tough. But read my surprises below.

Kindle Surprises:

I have now read one book and started another one on the Kindle, and here are the positive surprises so far:

One: Traveling with the Kindle is great. Your books are all there. You don’t have to decide which to take with you. That is the overriding benefit of all. I have the thing in my briefcase, and downtime, waiting for a meeting where I arrive 30 minutes early now turns into reading time. Small breaks here and there, and I have my entire library with me for the weight and size of one paperback.

Two: It requires less physical effort, and I am more comfortable when I read. Reading a book like Stephen King’s Under the Dome is work. The book is huge and weighs several pounds. My arms hurt holding it up in bed and everywhere else. You can hold the Kindle with one hand, but mostly I lay it on my lap. You can “turn pages” with a simple push of  one link of one finger and move on. So you turn pages faster than you would otherwise. In bed, it’s also easier. I just rests there on my chest and I don’t have to move to read. Zzzzzz.

Three: I read faster. I am a slow reader for fiction. I like to savor my words. But I have now sized the screen just right for me, and all books look the same. So my reading  cadence has sped up without any downside. Every book is read the same from the mechanical aspect.

Four: I like to read over meals when I am alone. Being a very frequent traveler, I often have to eat alone, which does not bother me at all if I can read. Most books, however, are very awkward at dinner. They don’t lay flat. The salt shakers are not heavy enough to hold down the pages. The plate rim does not function well as a book holder. So it requires constant use of the left hand to hold a book while eating for the most part. The Kindle just lays there, perfectly for reading, and you can even turn the pages with the back knuckles of your hand if your fingers are chicken-licking-greasy and read right on while munching away. This is a huge benefit that I did not expect.

Five: I have made it a tacit goal to read the hundred best novels ever written. I have probably done ten or twenty of that list (which I need to post here someday) and there are probably eighty left to go. Devin just gave me The Count of Monte Cristo for Christmas, which is on every list. Just for kicks, I started checking Amazon, and I found that you can “buy” classics for zero dollars. These are books that were converted to Kindle format by volunteers. So just to test, I “bought” Treasure Island, which is also on the list (surprisingly, from the movie industry I know the story but I never read the book). It’s now on my Kindle and it cost me nothing. So I went on searching, and I must say, since the 100 best books of all times are mostly all classics, they are in the same category as Treasure Island, and without any specific research and counting I would estimate that half of those books are available for free for the Kindle.

Summary:

I have not come up with any serious negative issues or arguments, other than I have no “proof” in form of a book on my shelf, or rather, in a box in the garage, that I actually read a book.

Book Review: The Golden City – by John Twelve Hawks

I lost no time reading the third book of the Fourth Realm trilogy by John Twelve Hawks. Now I am asking myself why I read these three books and kept turning the pages. I actually don’t think that the books are that good or that Twelve Hawks is that good a writer.

First, I should note that The Golden City is the first book that I read on my Kindle. For the first time I do not have the satisfaction of placing the book on the top two shelves in my den, the “books already read” shelves. There is nothing to put there. It’s digital only. But that’s another blog post entirely.

Second, if you check my reviews of the first two books, The Traveler and The Dark River, you’ll see how I criticized the writer and rated the books two stars and one star respectively. The Golden City will also be one star.

As I said already after the second book, the author should have combined the three into one. It would have been a more consistent story that stood on its own feet. It would not have required awkward regurgitation of background that the reader of the preceding books already knew. And the more I think about, the less I believe that anyone would pick up The Dark River or The Golden City and make sense of them without first reading The Traveler.

The Golden City was disappointing. Just as the author left things unraveled after the first, and particularly after the second book, he didn’t bother to completely tidy up after the third one.

Spoiler alert — I am giving plot information away and if you are going to read The Golden City, stop reading this review now.

I can’t figure out why he called this The Golden City. Yes, there is a strange ‘city’ of buildings in the Sixth Realm that has golden towers. However, the story about the city is shallow, the description vague, and the entire chapter is uninteresting.

Matthew, the father of the Corrigan brothers, finally appears in the flesh for the first time in the trilogy, but rather than being the sage, the father of all Travelers, he is basically a self-absorbed and possibly senile old man with nothing to say but trite drivel in his first conversation with his son in twenty years. Gabriel’s comments to his father are wooden, silly, juvenile and totally unrealistic. When reading that chapter, the book lost me. There is better prose in Reader’s Digest. That whole scene is about as wholesome and satisfying as a sandwich and fries at Burger King. At the end we find out that Matthew finally died, but we don’t know about the circumstances, and frankly, we don’t care.

The final conflict between Maya and Boone, the cold-blooded killing machine of the brethren, is so vapid that I was almost exasperated. Just before the final battle, we find out why Boone is what he is. He lost a daughter at a shooting at her school some years before. Boone is the man who killed in cold blood innocent people in all three books, the man who killed Maya’s father by having his eyes eaten by ferrett-like animals trained to hurt and kill. Maya has him at gun point and they have to travel out to the desert. She intends to kill him once he takes her there. But at the last minute, just before she pulls the knife, she changes her mind and gives him a handgun. The modicum of characterization that took place in these books focused on Boone, and how he was a completely cold-blooded killer who wanted nothing more than to eradicate the Travelers and Harlequins. And here she gives him a gun and presumably trusts him. RIGHT.

Hollis becomes a Harlequin, which is not much of a surprise. Linden and Maya actually accept him into their brotherhood.

Maya is pregant with Gabriel’s child. This is significant, since they presumably are in deep love. The child is likely to become a Traveler, and with so few left, that should be a really big deal. Yet she never tells him. The story ends before the child is born. Gabriel never knows. In a plot with so many holes and so many shallow side paths, something as significant as a new Traveler does not really make much of a difference.

Alice Chen hangs with the Harlequins and we sense that one day, she too, will be a killing machine like her role model Maya.

Here is the worst. The overriding conflict of the trilogy is the polarization of the Corrigan brothers. Michael joins the dark forces and spreads evil and killing throughout the world. Gabriel is the savior of  the world. At the end, it seems like Gabriel makes a signifcant dent into the plans of the Brethren, but he certainly in no way eradicates them or their threat. Like the war on terror, this war can’t be won. But incredibly, we don’t find out what happens to the brothers. Toward the end of the story, they both confront each other and slip into another Realm. We briefly follow them there. At the end of the story, months later, Hollis, Alice, Maya and their friends are all well and happy, and we know that the two Travelers have not come back. What happened? Have they won? Where are they trapped? The conflict is not resolved.

I wonder why I kept reading. I wanted to know what happens next, but nothing much happened next. Somehow John Twelve Hawks, who is an awkward writer at best, kept me reading, and got me to buy all three of his books. I would not do that again if I were starting over. He is a marketing genious.

Rating: *

Africa Today

Africa Through the Eyes of Trevor Irwin

Pictures and stories out of Africa. They will draw you in and shake you up.

Profile of Author John Twelve Hawks

Here is the wiki profile of John Twelve Hawks, the author of the “Fourth Realm Trilogy.” He must be an interesting character. I imagine the people that are sparring with him in martial arts classes have no idea who they are dealing with.

Another grand article here with musings and links about the author’s identity.

On the Grid – The Kindle Era

A new era in my life starts today: My Kindle arrived. I will now start reading all my books digitally. I will buy my books online from Amazon, and I won’t be buying as much from Costco, Barnes and Noble and Borders as a result. But that’s not why it defines an era.

Ever since I was a teenager I have collected the books I read. This probably comes from a habit my father had, who liked to have all his books on shelves in his study. I never had enough room to display all my books in the house. All my life I have carted boxes of books around with me and they were usually stored in a corner of the garage.

From time to time I purged them. For instance, in the mid 1990ies I got tired of owning all those German books. I put them all together into a set of boxes and donated them to the local library.

Another time we had a garage sale and somebody bought a lot of my science fiction paperbacks for 25 cents each. I made perhaps ten or twenty dollars.  I have regretted doing that many times, since I have re-bought some of those books again new when I wanted to read them again and spent many times the money I made in the garage sale.

Lesson: Never sell books in garage sales.

So what’s different going forward? I won’t have books accumulate in boxes anymore. I will be carrying my entire library of reading material with me at all times in digital format in a container the size of a medium soft-cover book. I am not sure how I’ll feel about that – no more bookshelves. For now I am excited about the new way, and I will report on how it goes here.