For people worried about losing their soon to be delivered Apple wireless earbuds, I HAVE SOLVED THIS PROBLEM in what I think is a truly elegant manner.
Here’s the “In” position:
Pretty much genius, am I right?
Nevertheless, she persisted.
Some of you may have seen my post about gaming hells over at the Risky Regencies or seen me tweeting about some of the research. One of the things I came across was a reference to maggot racing and how to cheat at it, and Meljean Brook and I had a hilarious twitter exchange about the story I said I was going to write: Miss Fiona Harper’s Night of Passion, in which Miss Fiona Harper’s brother accidentally kills his racing maggot and loses his sister to the notorious Lord Hawke.
I’m totally going to write that story as soon as I finish Surrender to Ruin. And so…
Hard experience has taught me to keep a spare keyboard around because I am an optimist. Despite knowing full well that water and keyboards don’t mix, I routinely keep a glass of water by my computer. THIS time and forever more I will be CAREFUL and not spill any water on my keyboard.
Last year I went through three keyboards, and the last time I spilled water … on Christmas Eve, I made it to the store in time to buy a keyboard of the sort that is kind to my hands and wrists. I didn’t have a spare because the Christmas Eve incident took out keyboard No. 2. Then, and I kid you not, shortly after that, I spilled water again. I ended up finding and having to use a spare Apple keyboard of the sort that looks awesome but functions as a torture device.
It’s a bluetooth keyboard. As soon as I had money and time, I went off to the store and bought two more keyboards. For about a month everything was fine. And then all of a sudden, my new keyboard was typing all by itself. I watched in horror as random strings began to overwrite part of my chapter. MY WORDS!!!!!!! I got things shut down keyboard-wise and swapped in the spare. Again, for some time, everything was fine.
Then, again, the keyboard had a life and a mind of its own. Again, I watched as nothing I did stopped the magical appearance of strings of text, spaces and characters overwriting portions of my chapter.
I did what every good tech person does when something bizarre happens. I rebooted. Things were fine. But hmmm. This was strange and odd and inexplicable when actually, in tech, nothing is really random like that. I was often afraid to type. What if my keyboard went all wacky again and had to reconstruct, AGAIN, a paragraph of text?
Then, not too long after that, a “low battery” notice popped up on the iMac. Low battery? For a keyboard? What keyboard—
Oh.
The bluetooth keyboard that I had apparently left on a side table three feet from my computer. Powered on.
The bluetooth keyboard that my cat would occasionally jump on and even sit on.
Allow me to represent to you that my cat is not a good typist.
Some of you may recall the great Shoe Off of 2013. No? You can read about it here.
Basically, I challenged Megan Frampton to a Shoe Off. Despite my best efforts to cheat, I lost. I have no idea why. But here’s the 2013 Shoe Off Photos.
It took some time, but I’ve recovered from my defeat and now I want a rematch. Obviously we would have to submit new shoe photos. 2013 is done. Those shoes are history.
I’m waiting to see if Megan says it’s on.
?
:::checks watch:::
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Amazon is debuting a feature where when you look at a book, up at the top they show you books they feel are similar and that have better ratings.
Much I as I think Amazon is usually pretty smart about things, I’m not so sure about this one. I think it’s an attempt at curation — As in, “are you sure you want to buy a book with a 3-star rating when there are similar ones with 4.5 stars?” I guess we’ll see.
In the meantime, I thought I’d give everyone some advance help with my book My Darkest Passion. A paranormal romance of mine. It has 24 reviews with an average 4-star rating.
What Similar Items with Better Ratings might there be?
Sadly, one of my top candidates is not available: I mean, who wouldn’t want to read about that? (search term: “My Darkest Passion”)
No ratings at all, so even though that sounds totally awesome, that won’t qualify. My Darkest Passion is better than a moleskin. Please debate this in the comments. (search term: “Coffee Passion”)
I am totally outranked by this. 355 reviews and 4.5 stars. I just bought this product so I guess this “Similar products” thing works! Note: My Darkest Passion in Kindle books is considerably less expensive. (search term: “Darkest Chocolate”)
The characters in my book have psychic powers so if you’d rather have the power than read about others with such powers this may be the book for you. 4 star rating, but 34 reviews. (search term: “How to Be a Pyschic”)
4 star rating but 637 reviews. Note: Also considerably more expensive than the Kindle version of my book, but not too much more expensive than the print version. (search term: “How to deal with demons”)
I hope this is of some assistance. Other ideas? Let me know in the comments!
Here’s a link to the promised update.