Day: January 25, 2016

Monday, 25 January 2016

11:30 – We ended up bagging Orange is the New Black. I don’t have any interest in a series set in a women’s prison, let alone one with with a whining, entitled bitch as the protagonist. We finished series one of Last Tango in Halifax last night, and started on series two. It’s a decent series, as is everything we’ve ever watched that stars Derek Jacobi (AKA Clavdivs and Cadfael). The entire cast is excellent, but Nicola Walker as Gillian stands out even among that group.

I finished Volume 4 of Bobby Andrews’ Prepper’s Crucible series. That didn’t take long. With only six normal-length chapters, this volume barely makes it into novella territory as far as I’m concerned. It’s listed as 115 pages on the Kindle, and totals less than 31,000 words. Still, it was something new to read. But it does highlight a disturbing trend, particularly in PA writing, of writing a third or a quarter of a novel and selling it at the price of a full novel.

I wish I had the time to follow OFD’s and Jen’s lead, and start work on a PA novel series myself. I’m pretty sure I could do a decent job on it, particularly given the generally weak competition. Just for relaxation, I may rough out an outline and a couple chapters to see how it goes. And, yes, I’m still working on the non-fiction prepping book, although the move and the science kit business don’t leave me much time to work on it recently.


13:25 – I just did something I haven’t done for probably 15 years or more: ordered a desktop computer. Our computing environment here is too fragile, and I just don’t have time to build a desktop.

So I ordered a Lenovo H50 desktop mini-tower with an Intel Core i7-4790, which is 25% to 50% faster than the Core i7-980X processor in my old, dead main desktop system. That’ll replace my current main system, so to speak, which is a low-end Dell Inspiron notebook that has only a Core i3 processor and 4 GB of memory. That notebook is simply not enough to handle the way I work, which is with a lot of windows open.

When I built i7-980X desktop several years ago, it was about $2,500 worth of system. The new desktop was $750, on sale for $650. Even with shipping and sales tax, it totaled only $727. I’ll leave it running Windows 10, because I need Windows to run the stamps.com software. I’ll disconnect the notebook, which is running Linux Mint, from the display, keyboard, and mouse, and start using it upstairs as my secondary system. At least I can get some work done on it, which I can’t on my Kindle Fire.

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