Today I went on an expedition in search of a book. I decided to
wander down to Chapters because I had nothing better to do with my Saturday. It was a
fantastic day out, and I didn't want to waste it sitting around inside.
Chapters didn't have the book I wanted, and since they disagreed with me on how high the temperature needs to go before
you really should turn the air conditioner on, I didn't stick around. I had a thought, then, that I'd have better luck
at Words Worth downtown.
I haven't been to Uptown Waterloo (as it's called) in months. I used to go down there about once every couple weeks, but
that was when I lived a 15 minute's walk away. It's a bit farther now. I didn't like Words Worth when I first
encountered it in my freshman year. It struck me as some crazy, new age feminist propaganda vehicle. I don't think they'
ve significantly changed their format since. It's more that I'm simply not nearly as frightened by "new age" or "
feminist" as I was (ye gods) seven years ago. Now Words Worth is probably my favourite bookstore in the area. It's
considerably smaller than Greenley's back home and has a much narrower
selection, but it's nice to find a place where books on the shelves are there by virtue of quality. And I love the
little post-it note mini-reviews stuck on books. Every time I've been adventurous enough to pull a near-random book off
the shelf, I haven't been disappointed. This is, after all, how I
found Connie Willis.
Sure enough, they did have two of the Aunt Dimity books I was looking for. This series
seems to have all the "light" and "fun" and "modern" elements of my current ideal mystery series. I picked
up Aunt Dimity's Good Deed. I'll let you know how it goes.
I was surprised to find that Waterloo now has a used bookstore! It's about time. They're currently building up stock,
but you should give Old Goat Books a try, if you happen ot be in the area. Like the best
used book stores, it's in a great old century home and the floors creek when you walk around. Wonderful!
My computer's been making funny noises lately. It's one of the CPU fans. I disconnected the main box fan a couple months
ago because it was driving me crazy with all the rattling. I went out and bought a replacement fan at Radio Shack, but
it made more noise than the one it was meant to replace, so instead of hooking things back up, I just left the dangly
wires. My computer's always left naked anyway so, until it gets really hot in the summer, air circulation shouldn't be a
problem.
Then, a few weeks ago, one of my two CPU fans started rattling. A little at first, then more and more noticeably. This
weekend, it started to drive me nuts outright, so I resolved to do something about it. I new this particular fan was
crap anyway, so this was no surprise. The other day, though, I noted that the fan wasn't just making noise; it was
slowing down as well. Ick. I didn't want to burn out my little overclocked CPU, so I set off yesterday in search of a
new Socket 370 CPU fan.
This, incidentally, is one thing I really hate about PCs. After years of running a completely silent Amiga 500 (well,
silent if you had a floppy disk in the drive), it was enough of a pain to go with the A1200 with the whirring HDD
inside. Not that I minded having the harddrive... My current machine has the PSU fan, two CPU fans, and the box fan (now
disconnected) all making noise, not to mention the noisier than normal HDD and the thunderous DVD drive. This is
considered a sign of 1337/\/355 or something. To me, the really cool computer is still one that runs silently (without
melting through the floor, mind). Hopefully I'll be able to put Linux (it's intended OS, hence the two CPUs) on this
beast and stuff it in a climate controlled closet/server room sometime. But I digress.
Given the time of day and my transportation constraints, the only places I could go to were Radio Shack and Future Shop
in the mall area. Radio Shack had a Socket 7 fan that might have worked, but that's where I got that crappy box fan, so
I decided to keep
my $20. I wandered over to Future Shop, but they only had slot-type PII and PIII fans. Bleah. I didn't like the idea
that this would be a wasted expedition, so I wandered around the store for a bit. And lo, the
JVC HR-S3800U SVHS VCR
I've been thinking about this last month or so was on sale for $230. (Bet you were wondering when I'd get back to that).
I had considered impulse-buying it at $250 (yes, I'm one of the
few people who considers impulse buys) but thought better of it. Given that I'd put my primary computer in dry docks, I
needed something to do. And, like I said, I didn't want this trip to be a complete waste... So I let one of the poor
sales people make a really easy sale.
I do have another VCR, but it's job currently is to act as a cable tuner for
my Commodore 1084S monitor so I can watch TV in my computer lab (I can't
watch the TV tuner through my video card if I'm playing
games...). The SVHS VCR has a small keeping-up-with-the-Joneses appeal, but it's also got much better video output, of
course, than my old VCR so I can use it to do video capture with
aforementioned video card.
So I have one more toy and, for the moment, I am happy. My computer's not happy, but I'll attend to him shortly. But I
did get to watch one of the videos I had stockpiled (too bad
this episode isn't as good as I remember it being...)
Hm, not much to write about lately. Well, some stuff, but it isn't really about me and I'm not comfortable writing about
it even semi-publicly. Yes, I'm slowly developing editorial guidlines for this page. There weren't supposed to be any,
but I should have known that was unrealistic.
Now that I've got it working under Windows 98, I've been playing Black & White, which devours
time in great swathes. No regrets, though. It's fun. My cow isn't as clever and useful as she could be. We'll have to
work on that together. I usually get more enjoyment out of growing my villages, so she's feeling neglected. (Ah, she
planted a tree in her pen. That's so cute!)
I had to put The Big U back on the shelf for a couple days. Partly
because of Black & White, and partly because I didn't want to think about it anymore. I really want to get somebody else
to read this book when I'm done (after I'm done, that is, I might re-evaluate, keeping in mind Neal's aforementioned
problems with endings). I want to know what they think about it. Consider that a recommendation.
I had been looking (maybe half-heartedly) for a good mystery novel when I stumbled across The Big U (well, that and I
had to get a birthday present for my mom). The idea being that I'd get some background before stumbling into a genre I
know very little about, aside from what gets played on A&E. I've been wanting to write a cute little mystery story of
some sort. The only mysteries I've read since I was about 12 were
the Bast trilogy of novels by Rosemary Edghill. These are light
and fun enough to move swiftly and enjoyably, but they've also got some poingnant bits on the nature of belief and other
insights into other forms of human interaction and bookstores. They're really quite good (Book of Moons is the first I
read and the best of the three, IMHO). That's a recommendation.
I'm still hunting for a good modern mystery novel. If anyone'd like to give me recommendations...