jjmcgaffey's random reading in 2024

My ninth year in Club Read - hopefully I'll be able to track, review, and post this year (as I didn't last year!).

I'm Jennifer; I live in Alameda, CA, with one elderly cat. My father died two years ago. My mother still lives down the street (about a mile and a half away); one sister in Reno, about 4 hours' drive away, and the other recently moved to Indiana. I'm a Foreign Service brat who grew up moving around the world (more or less literally); it's still strange to me to be living in the same house for the 18th year this year. I cook, garden, stitch, sew, weave, braid, program, fix computers (run a home computer repair business) - and oh yeah, read.

I read mostly genre fiction - primarily science fiction and fantasy, which get grouped together as SF (speculative fiction). Then romances, mysteries, animal books, children's books (which include examples of all the genres...). I also read a lot of non-fiction - biography, sciences, history, words, etc. And craft books and cookbooks, which don't so much get _read_ but do get used and referenced. I don't read horror, and I don't read literary fiction - in both cases, because I don't enjoy being depressed by my reading.

My goals last year were 200 books read, 50 BOMBs (Books Off My Bookshelf), and 50 discards. I missed all of them - I got close on books read, but the vast majority of them were new ebooks (or old ebooks...but that doesn't help me with all the boxes of books under my bed). I think I won't bother with setting goals this year, just try to track. Though I'd still like to get rid of more books, so I'll track discards (but my goal is however many I manage to do). The ticker wants a number so I'll make that 200 too...maybe I'll even do that, if I can convince myself I don't want to read a particular bunch (author, genre...).

Read January-March

January
February
March

Read April-June

April
May
June

Read July-September

July
August
September

Read October-December

October
November
December

Thread open!

BTW - my old thread (with a quick list of books I read last year) is here.

Welcome back to Club Read, Jennifer! This seems to be the year when many people are kicking back and setting fewer numeric goals. I know I am. I hope the ones you do read are interesting and satisfying. Happy reading!

Thank you! I've been finding a lot of good books - and actually managing to stop when a book doesn't work for me (new skill!).

Happy 2024 thread and a year free of goals.

Hi Jennifer!

Happy new thread for the new year!

Happy New Year, Jenn!

I can't wait to hear about your gardening tales and travels with your family.

As for me - I am now in Kansas and will be here for the foreseeable future. I have become the primary caregiver for my Mom and it is a full time job. I haven't gotten much reading done since caring for her takes up most of my time.

Hi Jennifer, I'm here for another year. I hope you have a great one.

Glad to see you back posting, Jennifer.

Yeah, not too good a start...Reading a lot, tracking OK (though not in my spreadsheet), not reviewing or posting. Need to fix that tomorrow, hope I can...

We're happy to hear from you whenever you get the inclination. No pressure!

Hi Jennifer! I've found you again; I've been going slow on getting around the threads so far this year. Wishing you a good year and good books.

Thanks! I'm reading, quite a lot...but not reviewing and intermittently tracking. Drat it, doing the same thing I was doing last year. I'll try to get stuff moving in the right direction.

At least you are reading a lot, that's the best part!

Yes. And a lot of good books, too. The only problem with that (and it leads to the above problem) is that I read a good book and immediately want to go on to the sequel - so I don't stop to review. That's the habit I need to cultivate - read and review as one continuous action. Even if I didn't post immediately, I'd have the reviews... I'll start doing that, and work on back-filling the reviews of what I've already read (soon, so I don't forget what I thought of them).

>20 jjmcgaffey:
I find that I do my reviewing with the first book of the series. After that I just keep track of the titles in the series that I have read and don't really bother to review them. I do make a short note about whether I thought it was well written or that one character was developed more - things like that I might want to remember.

If I don't write my review immediately, it doesn't get written. I'm terrible that way. But, I've learned to cut myself slack and not feel compelled to always write a review. It can backfire though because I'll go look for a review to remind myself what I thought about it and ... nada. ugh.

I've pretty much reviewed everything I've read since joining LT, but I don't demand much of my reviews - Most are 2-3 lines, generally giving reason for liking it or not, sometimes a bit of description. Sometimes they help me remember something about the book months later, but sometimes they are no help at all.

I’m trying to keep track of my books and get to 75 again so I put down the title, at minimum; but I know what you mean about wanting to rush on to the next read. I have to space out my sequels though, or they start merging with the real world 😊 (also, too many books, too little time) so it’s useful if I’ve written something about the previous book if it’s been a while between sequels, to remind me of who did what.

I’m on Litsy too. I don’t log every book on there but I find it a useful place to keep notes if something occurs to me as I’m still reading a book.

Of course, you don’t have to review anything or track anything if you don’t want to.

I review mostly to remind myself what the book was about - and to remind myself what I thought of the book at the time, which is sometimes very different from what I remember later. I'm not reviewing for others (though I do try to avoid spoilers for others), I find them useful - and yes, that "What did I think of this book? Oh drat, didn't review" feeling is very annoying.

Since I'm basically reading ebooks, I know when I started them and I try to remember to note when I finished. So I've got the titles fine - though it's something of a process to get them out of my phone, onto the computer, and then into the spreadsheet and onto LT.

Some series are, yeah, "here's what this is about! world, characters, situations..." second book "this happened in this book" third book "this happened..." last book "threads tied off (or not)". But some have more to them.

I've tried Litsy and it just doesn't work for me - too complicated to get into and find the book (and I don't put in the book when I start reading - Catch-22). When I want to do a quick review, I put it in Keep (Google notepad), then copy and paste to LT when I'm ready for that. There are a lot of reviews and partial reviews in Keep right now...

I actually take notes while I'm reading in a little paper notebook. Then, I transfer my notes to my spreadsheet and use them when I eventually write my review. That way, even if I never write the review, I have notes from my reading.

>25 jjmcgaffey: I review mostly to remind myself what the book was about - and to remind myself what I thought of the book at the time, which is sometimes very different from what I remember later. I'm not reviewing for others (though I do try to avoid spoilers for others), I find them useful - and yes, that "What did I think of this book? Oh drat, didn't review" feeling is very annoying.

Exactly!

>26 Julie_in_the_Library: I’m terrible at keeping notes. They end up everywhere.

Yeah. I have written vast reams on paper - and then the paper goes poof (until I find it again ages later. Ages can be a week or two for a shopping list or years later for a review or...Anyway, what it is is "too late"). I can lose a scrap of paper, a whole notebook, or anything in between in no time flat. Keeping notes electronically works _so_ much better for me (been trained that way since the 1990s, when I got my Palm PDA...).

>28 jjmcgaffey: Electronically is just as bad for me. There are so many apps, each promising to be more organising than the last. I put reminders in Reminders, in Notes, on Calendar, in text messages on various platforms to myself, in documents, spreadsheets ... And then I can never find them, so I start new ones.

I'm lucky. My dad has tons and tons of little pocket-book sized notebooks with various logos on them that were given to him because of his work, and he gives them all to me. So I don't need to worry about scraps of paper at all; everything is contained in notebooks. I bought canvas boxes at Target or Kohls or someplace to store them in, and whenever I finish one, I just slot it in next to the others.

>29 humouress: This! I use plain text files, edited on a real computer, and never never use a cell phone or app for note taking.

And I miss the Palm Pilot's single, one-size-fits-all notes app, that worked on both PDAs and host computers.

>31 ArlieS: Google Keep is the closest thing I've found to the Palm notes app - though I don't remember using that at the time (I had a paper planner, and printed out my own pages for it. Just found the templates a little while ago (digital declutter)). There's also Apple Notes, if you have an iPhone. I am far more likely to have a phone handy when I want to jot something down than to be sitting at my computer, so I definitely take more notes on my phone than anywhere else. Also more likely to have it handy when I want to look something up (where was... how do I... who said...).

I am currently sick - not COVID, it's a classic (for me) cold, on the nasty side. Head entirely stuffed up, low energy, coughing...bah. Today I am intentionally doing nothing (except reading). Maaaaybe I'll also get some reviewing done, or at least enter reading dates, and maybe not. I'm going back to bed after this.

Yesterday I was also sick, though it didn't hit me this hard until evening. Thank goodness, because yesterday was the White Elephant blowout sale (also today, but I got all the important stuff yesterday). It's a fundraiser for the Museum of Oakland; there's a Premium sale in January or the very beginning of February, where you pay for an expensive ticket (well, $40 - that's expensive) and get in to see everything first. Then sale days 4 days a week throughout February - I went every Friday, and got stuff. You pay 10% over the basic price those days, and a $5 ticket - but there's wonderful stuff at great prices. I got a flannel shirt that probably cost $50 new, for $15 ($16.50), for instance. Kitchen stuff, books, games, office supplies, hardware...

The blowout sale is the first full weekend in March every year (they stopped, or rather went online, during the pandemic - I missed it and was delighted when they started up again). Still need tickets but they're free, it's to keep the crowds down - they didn't use to do that before the pandemic and it used to be a serious crush. Yesterday, besides the tickets, there was a bad crash on the highway just above where the sale is held - people coming from the North or the city couldn't make it, or had to go the long way around. So it was pretty light, though it filled up later. I got _amazing_ stuff - and they decided (unlike usual) to discount everything 50% on Saturday from the start (and 75% on Sunday - sorry but not very sorry to miss that). I got two Aerogardens and some books and a shirt and a Baggalini bag and some cloth and and a game and and... Very glad I was well enough to go yesterday, I would have been very unhappy to miss these. Many of them I'd seen earlier and decided to wait for the blowout (and the prices were _excellent_ yesterday).

And after the sale there was a party for volunteers with my local Friends of the Library - nice to see people and hear (short) speeches and eat some excellent food. But I was dragging by then so we (my mom and I) left early and I pretty well collapsed.

I decided I didn't want to read any of the books I'm in the middle of - I'm finding all the characters stupid and annoying (why would you do that? oh for gods sake _talk_ to each other. Stop that. Well, I'm no longer surprised you keep losing jobs). So I went for comfort reading, that had been nagging at me for a while - rereading the Trader's Tales series by Nathan Lowell. Really well-written, low-conflict space stories with interesting characters that I've continued to read - they go on through six books in this series and then another trilogy (quartet?) after two or three branching series (following other characters, some of whom show up in the last-so-far). Interesting universe, as I said well-written - and low-conflict is exactly what I want right now. Finished Quarter Share last night and I'll start Half Share today (it's kind of a job ranking/status point scale thing, the shares).

oof. I think I'm done. G'nite. (at 11 am)

>32 jjmcgaffey:
That is interesting about the Apple Notes. I loved my Palm pilot back in the day, but when that went bye-bye I stopped using anything but my Outlook calendar. These days I rarely spend an entire day at my laptop so have been trying to figure out something to use on my phone, when I get a new one. I am still using an old flip phone for calls. It is clear that retirement has brought about a change in the office equipment I need and use from what I was using, so updating some things has become necessary. I do need something that I can carrying with me and take notes on as well as act as a calendar.

I am going to have to get a new phone but don't want to spend a huge amount of money for an Apple phone. What do you recommend?

I too, was struck by a pestilence. The neighbor boys (6 and 4) spent a couple of weeks at my house when the weather was so bad. We did lots of baking together. It kept them occupied and provided for all the extra people in the house as well. However, that meant that we had our heads together and as a result it wasn't long and I was sick. I spent three days laying on the couch. The first day I slept, the second I started reading, the third I did nothing but read. I read A Wizard's Guide to Defense Baking and loved it! Then I started Loki's Ring and found it disappointing, so stopped about half-way through that book. After the lethargy left me, the coughing and running nose started. I am now just having the nose problem, but that bug that is going around is a nasty one. You are doing the smart thing - sleep through most of it.

>32 jjmcgaffey: I'm sorry you are feeling punk, Jennifer. I hope you recover soon. So many nasty things going around right now. Very glad you were able to make it to the sale. Sounds like a lot of fun.

>33 benitastrnad: I am going to have to get a new phone but don't want to spend a huge amount of money for an Apple phone. What do you recommend?.
You can’t beat an iPhone though. Next for quality would be a Samsung, but if you use your phone a lot, I’d really recommend the iPhone SE 2020. It’s around $700 USD new.

I'm Android all the way (never got into the Apple ecosystem), so all I could contribute would be some Google searches. If you know someone who has an Android phone they like, and someone with an Apple phone, you should take a look; they run different ways and once you've gotten into one it's really hard to switch (both UI and the cost of re-buying all the apps you want to have, since Android and iOS don't cross).

In general - if you have a Mac, if you like the way Apple does things (and dictates how you'll do it), definitely get an iPhone. If you have a Windows computer AND want to have more choice (which means trying a lot of things to find the one(s) that work for you), I recommend Android. An iPhone will work with a Windows computer, though not as smoothly as with a Mac. And in general, for equivalent specs, an iPhone costs more (though the top Android phones are about as expensive as the most recent iPhones, bah). If you don't need the latest greatest though (and if you're currently using a flip phone, you don't), there's a much wider choice in Android devices (and again, that means more time and effort investigating to pick the right one for you).

Re the matter of choice in apps - one example is that very recently, like in the last 5 years, iPhones became able to install different keyboards so you could have one that worked the way you thought instead of the way Apple thinks. Android has had that option since about the third version, a couple decades ago. On the other hand, I have bought and tried out and used for a while four different keyboards (and trialed more); the one I liked best was abandoned by its developer, two others started doing things ways that bothered me, and I'm currently using the keyboard from Google. It's not bad, though there are certain things that drive me nuts (symbols I use constantly that are two or three clicks away, for instance, with no way of remapping - the keyboard I liked best would let me remap).

Did I mention I'm an independent computer tech?

>36 jjmcgaffey:
I knew you were an independent computer tech. I think that is how you make your living. That is why I sort of hate to ask these questions in this forum. It feels like cheating.

I am hoping that I can make a phone work the way my old Palm did. That was why I asked about the phone. The things you wrote about the apps that allow a person to take notes on a phone are of interest. I didn't think I would use my Palm like that, but I did, so I think I would use it that way again - if I had an app on a phone. That was why I wondered which phone worked better for taking notes.

I used a Mac for 6 months during the lock-down and it didn't work that well for me. It wasn't at all intuitive - at least in my world. I made it work by adapting, but it was hard. I found it had too many clicks to do things and I suspect that a phone would be the same way. Also, there is the cost. Apple stuff is expensive. That is why I am leaning toward the Android models, but then I saw that Google Pixel phone and wonder if that might be a good fit for me. Oh well, with the unexpected expenses from my mother's funeral it is going to be several months before I can buy any phone, so I have time to do some research.

>36 jjmcgaffey: Excellent compassion. I used to be very anti-Apple and have never used a MAC as I cant understand its file system. I’ve mostly worked with Unix networks and PCs. But for phones and especially for non-techies I prefer Apple. iPhones are a good choice if they are affordable.

I often help people with both Android and Apple phones - older people and non-English speakers, and Apples are far easier to explain and troubleshoot.

>38 kjuliff: Yes, Apples are simpler if they fit the way you think, because they all work the same way (more or less). Androids are more complicated, partly because each brand does things a little differently and partly because they're a lot more open - as I said, you can get apps to do more things. Personally, Apple stuff drives me nuts, it's anti-intuitive for me; I know a lot of people do find it intuitive, just not me. But I'm pretty good at helping people figure out what suits _them_, not me.

>37 benitastrnad: Yes, it's how I make my living - which feels like cheating. People will actually pay me to do this easy, fun stuff, and talk about it, and... As far as I'm concerned, I'm getting paid to solve logic puzzles, which is something I do for fun anyway.

Pixels are pretty good - and pretty barebones Android. Any other brand is going to have stuff overlaid - some of which can be nice (I still miss my Motorola's chop for flashlight (shake the phone sideways to light the flashlight) gesture). I started...I don't remember what I got first. Then I had a long line of Samsungs, but they got weird and expensive, so I switched to Motorola - my first one was an Android One model, which means it didn't have the Motorola stuff on it just straight Android (or pretty close). I had several Motorolas, then recently (two phones back) switched to Pixel. I'm liking them a lot. I usually get the #a model - a 5a and then a 7a; they're not top of the line but darn close and relatively cheap. For complicated reasons I'm currently using an 8; I suspect I'll go back to an a next time, though. The one real limitation of a Pixel is that they do not have an SD card slot. You get a decent amount of memory (64/128/256Gb), but there's no way to expand that if you fill it up (have to delete stuff (after syncing or copying to your computer or whatever)). Motorolas do have SD cards and some nice gestures, and a good lineup of midrange phones; it just takes a little longer to get updates, because they have to get the update and then modify it for their unique overlay. They don't do Android One any more, as far as I know (phooey). Samsungs are high-end and high-quality...but very expensive, and updates take forever to roll out because they have to make a lot of changes. And they've had a lot of quality failures recently (the Note that kept going on fire, for instance - though that's not very recent). I wouldn't get a Samsung these days. And I would really recommend playing with a couple phones a bit to see what they're like and what suits you, if you can find someone who'll let you fiddle and show you their tricks. Just using it in a store usually isn't enough to make a good decision.

And I finally went to Android (and stopped trying to keep my Tungsten T functional) when the calendar app and HanDBase database got ported from Palm to Android. I wasn't going anywhere until I had those two (the calendar is Pimlical, in Android, I don't remember if it really had a name for Palm). I don't remember really taking notes on Palm, though I may have done so. I did put things in databases. Both Apple Notes and Google Keep are easy to add notes and add to notes on the phone, easy to sync, and accessible on the phone and the web. Notes also has an app on a Mac, don't know if it will sync to a Windows machine; Keep doesn't have an app, just a website, but it's easy to access and simple to use. I also use Zoho Notebook, for bigger more complicated stuff; Keep is great for quick notes, and for things like packing checklists, when I want to be able to open it quickly and easily and add/edit/delete stuff.

>39 jjmcgaffey: I totally agree Applie is not intuitive and I think it’s totally unacceptable for commercial applications. When I worked in It (25 years) I only bought Apples for the graphics and marketing departments. I can’t understand what’s going on internally with Apples. Could never find files, difficult to troubleshoot. Even now - I’m retired - I can’t do my tax returns on an Apple and use my desktop Windows PC.

But I see a number of iPhones and androids being used by non tech savvy people , many whose native language is Spanish. I can help then with an iPhone set up with Spanish, but with android smartphones it’s a drag. I have a grandson in Australia and recommended an iPhone for him. So much easier to maintain long distance.

>37 benitastrnad: I LOVE my Google Pixel. I picked it originally because the camera rivaled the iPhone and that was important to me. When I went to Prague and Vienna two years ago, I upgraded to the Google Pixel 6 Pro. It took wonderful photos. The price was up there, but with a trade in and other promotions through my carrier (Verizon) most of that cost disappeared. The menus and settings are all pretty straightforward. I tend not to like all the "fancy" stuff anyway.

>41 WelshBookworm: I haven’t ever taken camera quality into account. I’m just interested in ease of use right now. Though there was a time cameras were an. Important consideration for me.

Sorry about your cold, I hope you feel better soon!

About text notes: simplenote is a cross-platform application that works well to write plain text notes and share them between phones and PCs.

In the Apple world, the one I use is Drafts. In fact I'm using it to type this message. They have lots of predefined actions to export your notes not other apps, and you can define your own. The idea is that you draft your notes in this app and then move it to somewhere else, but it can also be a place to dump random notes (there are no option to organize them except for the three predefined buckets Drafts, Flagged and Archived). You can add custom buttons on top of the keyboard for often used actions or text snippet. I also use it to quickly note my GPS position (aka where did I park my car?) because notes can be geolocalized if you choose to allow it.

Unfortunately they have moved to a subscription model, as so many do these days, and in this case I decided it was worth paying 20€/year. I think syncing between devices requires the subscription.

Non-tech savvy person here. We went the Apple route with iPads and then iPhones and eventually the whole hog, especially since that's what the kids were recommended for school (we could hire MacBooks from the school but eventually they got their own so they wouldn't lose stuff when they had to return them). You can sync most Apple apps (Notes, Mail, Calendar etc) through iCloud so it's easy to pick up where you left off from on a different device if you have another Apple one. I think iCloud is free for under a certain amount but if you take lots of photos, for example, you'd probably have to pay to upgrade your storage (we opted for a shared family plan).

I assume, though, that other companies have compatible suites, like Google, which you can use across different devices. But you'd probably have to pay to upgrade storage on those, too.

Yeah. Both iCloud and Google Drive have 5Gb free - not a lot for photos, a ridiculously huge amount for text notes.

Keep you can tag notes with various tags, which helps with finding them, and can pin notes, or archive them. Not sure what you can do in Notes.

On the Apple/PC question, I switched over from PCs to Apple back in the days when Apple products were much less likely to get infested with malware and viruses and all that stuff. I got used to the Apple way of doing things pretty quickly, and now my wife and I both have Apple laptops, iPads and iPhones, just to have everything on the same platform. I like my iPhone, at least to the extent that I'm likely to like any cellphone.

A long time ago, I read an entertaining column in the Atlantic (I think!) by Umberto Eco, comparing the two systems to religion. He said PCs were like Protestantism because they were filled with rules that you had to know how to follow.* Macs were like Catholicism because everything was a mystery, hidden out of sight. DOS (remember that?), he said, was Old Testament.

* Remember the days when you could use a command on Word (or was it still Word Perfect in those days?) that would split the screen so you could see and edit all the coding? That may still be available somewhere for all I know, but I'd guess it's been 20 years since I used it (or knew where it was).

>46 rocketjk:
I loved that split screen option on Word!!! I just don't get the need for two monitors crowding up a desktop and I still use some version of a split screen ALL the time.

I also liked being able to go into the command codes in the old WordPerfect. You could actually figure out what Word was doing all that weird stuff it does because you could see what command was causing the problem.

>47 benitastrnad: The way computing is going is that the inward workings are increasingly less transparent to the end user. Soon for those of us schooled in 3GL 4GL computer languages, this lack of transparency is even more apparent as what we think of as algorithmic programming is overtaken by AI.

We used to encode rules - such a “do x until condition y”. Now the developers in AI don’t even know why AI comes to a conclusion.

AI developers just know what works, as they move dials (metaphorically) to see what connections work better than others. This is the reason many fear for the future be - if we don’t know why a “program” acts in a certain way, how can anyone stop it.

I switched from PC to Mac for 2 reasons:

1) My IT department wouldn't let me have a real Unix or Linux, which is what I wanted. But a Mac is very close to FreeBSD, underneath the graphical fluff. And it still had vestiges of the original, relatively discoverable design of MACs from the mid-1980s.
2) Microsoft had just once again decided to totally rework their UI, destroying users' hard earned expertise, and converting power users back to newbs. Worse, they'd announced that the new improved Windows UI would be modeled on the UI of a tablet or smart phone. Just what a user needs - pay for a large screen, a real keyboard, etc.; get a UI optimized for a 3*5 inch screen with no external keyboard or pointing device.

FWIW, Apple has since stopped developing anything Mac specific, preferring instead to force Mac users to live within the limitations of iOS apps. (They sell more iPhones than Macs, so why bother supporting MacOS as anything but a poor relation?) And I've since retired, so no employer telling me what I can run or not run.

I'm trying to switch to linux, but the experience is painful. Currently I have a Mac, a linux system, and an Android phone.

>38 kjuliff: I've had both PC and MAC and much prefer the MAC - and it is a form of UNIX now and I've even run a couple of old scripts on a term window and made a couple of new ones. My husband got me my first MAC when they switched the basic OS to UNIX, in fact.
Most of my career I programed for non-unix systems, but used it editing and support and it was very comforting to know my knowledge of the utilities need not be entirely jettisoned with SunView and X.
I do like my iPhone and the way it syncs with the MAC, but it wasn't the newest model when we got it, and so was just expensive, not extravagant.

>50 quondame: I’ve used a number of Unix machines and I think it’s a good operating system. But for end-users - which I am now that I’ve retired, I really like iPhones. My first smart phones though, were Samsungs. I can’t remember why I switched over but I think it probably was that I was using an iPad a lot and like you I liked the fact that I could synch both devices.

>51 kjuliff: I got both the iPad and the iPhone because I already had the MAC, and also I've never liked DOS/Windows. I sometimes had to work of Windows machines and have owned at least a couple, but they were always blue screening at the wrong time and updating bizarrely, while I loved the Sun workstations I had in the last 15 years of working.

The split screen was in WordPerfect, which was (and still is, I discovered to my surprise) a competitor to Microsoft Word - it was and is owned by Corel. My dad kept using it for _years_ after Word became a/the standard...but finally gave up. Word has a lot more features, and can do some stuff WP never could - but it's also unable to do things that WP could do last century. And because it's still an active competitor, the standard save formats are completely incompatible - someone using WP has to jump through serious hoops to save as something a Word user can read, and I'm not sure Word has any way to save in a WP format. Nor can Word open a WP document directly; not sure if WP can open a Word file.

Heh. I like the religion=computer system idea - and add that PCs are like Protestantism in that there are many (many, many, many) different sects within the overall grouping. Android is following that path too.

>53 jjmcgaffey: I was working at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco when the WordPerfect to Word switch came about. My title was Publications Coordinator. I was doing a lot of copy writing and copy editing, among other things (like updating the internal phone director on a quarterly basis -- that was fun). The whole organization was mandated to make the switch at once, of course. The only exception was the Senior Vice President's administrative assistant who, because of who her boss was, was able to keep her Word Perfect. I was very unhappy making that move, as it made some frequent editing work I had to do significantly more difficult, but my opinion was not sought. Eventually I adjusted, of course.

Yep. WP made it so much easier than Word (then or now) to actually see what the program was doing - what formats applied where and how. That's why Dad hung on to it, too. I don't really know what triggered it - Corel WP was more expensive? Less integrated in its office suite? Just because MS did Windows as well as Office? Politics and economics and probably insider influence - but that was a switch that happened a lot of places.

Ah, here you are! I even have this thread starred.

Did I invite you to read my OA3 9W fic? It's all very tame, and I haven't added anything lately because I floundering around with a story much bigger in every dimension than my capability to handle it.

I...have no idea? I know I haven't read everything of the Nine Worlds on AO3, but unless you have the same username there (and in Discord) I wouldn't know if I've read yours. And the sex scenes are not what I'm reading for - it's the character interaction I love (and so many people have caught the characters (nearly) perfectly, it's wonderful).

Which is to say, yes please may I?

>57 jjmcgaffey: I am also quondame on AO3 and the HOTE Discord server, a total lack of originality I know. Unless you are into alfgifu's reigns of terror, especially Cross Your Heart, Requiem (for Cliopher) is without context. The others are canon compliant takes on odd corners.

Yes, there are some great explorations of character and so many talented writers.

Have we interacted on Discord?

Not that I've noticed. I do a lot more reading than posting there. I am jjmcgaffey just about everywhere, why change it up? Honestly, I haven't been interacting with them much recently because I got overwhelmed - I mantised when ATFOTS came out, and read quite a lot on Discord then, but I pulled back after a while. Mostly now I just go when Victoria announces a new story - loved the second Terec book (she did a crossover again!).

I spend most of my Discord time on Filkhaven - it's a much smaller and less...boisterous?...group. The rapid conversations happen but aren't constant like HOTE - gives me time to take a breath.

>59 jjmcgaffey: True the HOTE discussions on HOTE often go hard and fast once they get started. And there are times I clearly don't understand what's being said even though I know the words and can parse the sentences. I just don't have the fanfic cultural context and the HOTE specific culture seems well established. Very emoji rich, which is a fun aspect.

>60 quondame: What is the meaning of HOTE?

>61 kjuliff: The Hands of the Emperor. The Discord server is called HotE Support Group. We addicts need a lot of support, but tend to egg each other on rather than encouraging abstinence. Kind of like LT.

>62 quondame: Thanks. I thought it sounded like a secret cult!

>62 quondame: Thanks. I was rather confused trying to follow your conversation. I did wonder if the Nine Worlds were Victoria Goddard’s, but had no idea what HOTE was. I have it on my Kobo but haven’t read it yet. I loved the Greenwing & Dart series (and I see I missed the last one!). Discord scares me.

>64 FlorenceArt: I had to get my 30something daughter to act as native guide, but now I'm quite comfortable on Discord's HOTE Support server - but only after tuning the notifications. And I only access it on my desktop with a 17" monitor. Well, my iPad occasionally. So many do it from their phones, which would be too cramped for me.
Of course I highly recommend The Hands of the Emperor. It seem slow moving, but really so much is packed into each short chapter, and almost everything is important, but the flow is so smooth that you don't get any sense of data dumping.

>65 quondame: I keep meaning to read it, but I was so fond of Greenwing and Dart, I feel sad reading something that isn’t about them, if that makes sense. Well, I guess it doesn’t ☺️

>66 FlorenceArt: Greenwing & Dart never quite captured my affections to the extent that the characters in Lays of the Hearth-fire did - the mature yet still vulnerable chief bureaucrat appealed to my desire for characters who got on with things. And the Emperor and his household are quite delightful. Of course my stint as a government clerk, and having broken up with a man who went on to, like, win a Nobel Prize, may have had something to do with my sympathies for the mc's hometown folk.

>67 quondame: Oh, now I know I MUST read The Hands of the Emperor!

>66 FlorenceArt: They're all wonderful. G&D is...lighter? Which is a weird thing to say about it, if you've read all of it (have you read the novella The Saint of the Bookstore)? But HOTE and sequels are...denser. Also note that Victoria does crossovers all over the place - I'm eagerly awaiting the next (or maybe next next, or...) G&D which will tell the events that we hear about in the past of The Return of Fitzroy Angursell which is (one of) the immediate sequels to HOTE (and draws Mrs Etaris into the story of the other series)... Every time I read one of her books it makes me want to read all the rest and see the intertwining (again). And the scenes from a different person's POV. Her latest piece (short novel? I really don't know the sizes of her stuff, HOTE and At The Feet of The Sun are serious doorstops but so fascinating you don't notice how huge they are) interlinks RoFA and the G&D series, specifically Stone Speaks to Stone. That's Terec and the Wall, which is a direct sequel to Terec and the Wild, which is about someone that gets mentioned a lot in HOTE and shows up in ROFA (or possibly its sequel(ish) The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul)...Tangled and twisted and utterly addictive. I've read HOTE at least five times so far (twice in one year, last year), the entire G&D series at least twice...I've only read ATFOTS four times, but then it only came out in late 2022.

And quondame, I don't think I've found your stuff yet but you lured me into AO3 and Nine Worlds fic...reading We Didn't Expect the Apocalypse and You Can't Tell Me That You're Fine together is giving me serious mental/emotional whiplash. Alternate histories, and the fan-ficcers catch the characters so well...it _could_ have happened that way. So glad it didn't (at least for Fine).

>69 jjmcgaffey: In message >58 quondame: there is a link under my user name to my AO3 works.
Oh there are two hard hitting forced retirement fic that well, ouch!
But for real bare knuckle punching, alfgifu has and is putting Kip & Fizroy through wringers. NSFW, Dead Dove Do Not Eat etc. And she is serious.

>69 jjmcgaffey: Clearly I have to read/reread all of them!

>71 FlorenceArt: "All" is a somewhat moving target....

>72 quondame: Which is good news, right?

>73 FlorenceArt: The Best.

It's been like over 3 weeks since the last release though, so I'm getting impatient!

Yes, I found (at least some?) of yours now (searched on AO3 - I completely missed that that was a link). Limericks? Really? Cool!

I've just finished alfgifu's Embers - I don't think that's what you're talking about, but it was _fantastic_. Even when it doesn't quite match canon (Conju, mostly). Such a lovely rich expansion of what Kip barely mentioned...and I'm _loving_ the one from the guard's POV, among others.

I've read a lot of fanfic that...was good, great stories, who were they writing about because those weren't the characters _I_ knew. I haven't run into that in 9W fandom - even the ones where I don't agree they'd do that in particular (does _everyone_ have to be lovers? Seriously, guys), the _characters_ are so true to themselves they're wonderful.

>75 jjmcgaffey: Alas yes, for about 90% it seems, everybody has to be lovers. But I've found that erotic tales with characters I already like are more, um riveting, than j random smut. My effort at a smut adjacent tale floundered though.

The hardest one to get through was Cross Your Heart, even the trigger warnings need a trigger warning. Aside from bursts of doggerel, my Fix Kip fic for CYH has consumed more words than I've ever written before, 4 months and counting, and wore out two excellence alpha/beta readers who became "too busy just now" to go further. I loved the experience of reworking my text with outside judgement, but I do misplace, or not use, commas far too often for someone who is supposed to be more than basically literate.

The Evil!Household group effort is very sex-oriented, but does include real character development as well. Fitzroy and Conju indulging appetites rather than restraining them is mesmerizing in segments. But only if you find smut entertaining.

There are made up characters in some of the fics, but I haven't encountered ones that aren't centered on HR's household or the Ragnor Bella boys.

>76 quondame: I like your latest poem - though there's an entire story behind it! What could make Kip tired enough to fall asleep _there_? Well, it is Prince Rufus...but still.

Owie. I just spent 3+ hours in the garden - I usually go for about an hour a day, but today I had a bunch of plants that needed to go in and first I had to weed to make room for them. And dig trenches so the water doesn't just wet the surface and evaporate - I'd like to put olla in but I haven't found any to use yet (unglazed earthenware pots/vases that get buried, then filled from the top - the water seeps out slowly and wets the soil much deeper). Also pruned some of the earlier tomatoes so none of their leaves are touching the ground - I read somewhere that that is a common path for diseases and insect attacks. I planted my tomatoes in three tranches - one lot of four a month ago, four more in the middle of May, and the last five just now. The newest ones are of course tiny little things mostly lying on the surface; the second tranche is just starting to stand up and grow tall; and the first lot are a couple feet tall. One has tomatoes (small and green, but there), one has flowers, one has buds. Also planted a couple basils, and scattered seeds for fennel, dill, and poppies - we'll see if any of those sprout, the seeds are a bit old. The squashes are...varied. The zucchini has zucchinis but they're still small - smaller than hotdogs, probably edible but I'm not picking them yet. I'll keep an eye on them. The sugar pie pumpkin has flowers, but I think they're all male so far - no flowers with roundness for a stem that will become fruit if it gets pollinated (assuming there are male flowers still blooming when the females bloom! It's a tricky timing bit). And the honeynut squash (they're very small butternuts) doesn't even have buds yet that I can see. They're all the same age, this is very interesting. It's the first time I've had so many successful squash plants, of different types even (Five plants in all - two zucchini, two honeynuts, one sugar pie). Oh, and I also planted a bunch more strawberries - I had four-and-a-bit plants that I bought and put in the garden last year, which are producing _lovely_ strawberries now (four plants and one baby), then I had some volunteer strawberries on my balcony. I suspect the beastie that eats all my stuff dropped a couple strawberries in different pots last year - the plants are big and strong and growing and have white berries, then pink berries, then empty stems. Bah on the eater - so I shifted one lot to the community garden, we'll see if I actually get some strawberries off it.

I think I'm a bit sunburned about the face, despite wearing a broad-brimmed hat the whole time. My back and legs and hands and everything are informing me that three hours mostly on my knees (on a kneeling pad, but still) was a Bad Idea. I'm going to take a shower to relax and then do pretty much nothing the rest of the night.

>77 jjmcgaffey: That sounds like a lot of work! I’m sure the tomatoes at least will be worth it.

>77 jjmcgaffey: Thank you! There was a challenge to write a fic with Kip-napping. I just found the rhymes in the council chamber.

A couple of weeks back a member started real-time posting a alternate-universe fic where Kip and Ghilly broke up when he was 18 and Kip, Basil, and Dimiter went to Kavanor and ran into the Red Company and Jullanar got exasperated that Fitzroy couldn't tell his seduction strategy didn't work on Kip. She posted a few paragraphs and I posted a rhyme. This went on for a couple of days. Fairly soon she will post her story and I will attach my rhymes to it. I'll let you know!

Spring seems to come with responsibilities and sunburn. It sounds like you have a lot of good eating ahead of you!

>79 quondame: LOL - I didn't catch that this was one of the Kip-napping pieces. All the other ones I've come across have used the other meaning. Looking forward to the cousins and the Red Company!

Yep. I do like growing lots of tomato varieties - they taste so different it's worth the effort. Though 13 tomato plants is a bit much even for me. Several of them I'm growing mostly to collect the seeds - I mean, I'll eat the tomatoes, they're good, but the reason they're getting planted _this_ year is because my seeds were getting old and I didn't want to lose these varieties. I've got a couple hybrids I grow just for the tomatoes, but most of them I collect the seeds as well.

Thank you for the gardening update. When I read about others amazing gardens, I get motivated to work on my own little patch.

Since I am in the process of moving to Kansas I have opted to not plant anything at either place this summer. It is very strange for me to not have to water anything, but I decided that I will have all of my pots in Kansas next year so I can go back to growing things then. I am driving my mother's van back to Tuscaloosa in two days and when I return to Kansas I will bring my pots, plant stands, and bricks back with me. Those are all heavy things and I am sure that it will be cheaper for me to move them than for the moving company to do it. They can sit in the storage shed here until next spring when I will need. Because I won't have a garden this spring I really enjoy your garden reports.

I've been doing quite a lot - reading, gardening, going on trips (our usual summer trips to Tahoe), playing guitar, starting a sketching challenge this month...and not posting about any of it. Nor tracking my reading, except sporadically and incompletely. I do want to do the tracking, for future reference, and as much reviewing as possible (given it's been months since I finished some of the books!), but I doubt I'll be posting anything much here. I'll try to report some things, though.

I have a huge list of books I've started and dropped - some because they were being stupid, some because I didn't have the concentration to follow them (mostly non-fiction), some just because they didn't work with me at the time. I _should_ go through and cull them - officially DNF, or skim to the end, of the stupid ones so they're off my list; try some of the wrong-mood or wrong-brain ones and see if I click with them now. But I don'wanna. I do have some books I've been looking forward to, so I may go with one (or several) of those instead. And I've read some really good books, and really need to review some of them (some are even ER or Netgalley books, I _owe_ a review).

I got both the latest COVID shot and a flu shot on Tuesday, was slow, stiff and achy by Tuesday night. Wednesday was a very busy day for me; I managed to get everything done (two jobs, visit the community garden plot, pick up a Freecycle giveaway, go to an AAUW mixer and talk about one of the groups I'm involved in...and also take care of my cat, sketch, play guitar, do my everyday stuff). But when I was done with the day I collapsed, and was in bed by 11:15 (I'm far more likely to be up after midnight - which is a bad idea, but). 8 hours sleep and I'm feeling much better today, though I'm still going to take it pretty slow. I've got plenty of projects around the house that I'll enjoy.

>83 jjmcgaffey: I too had the new Covid shot on Tuesday. Reaction quite different than the previous 5. Slept all day Wednesday. Let’s hope it’s more powerful as well.

Thanks for the update. It's nice to hear from you. No pressure to review, although I would love to know which were the "really good" books you've read.

I need to schedule my flu and covid boosters. I usually wait until October, but I'm not sure that's the best timing any more.

I will get my COVID and flu shot next week. I am planning on spending Friday at home because most people I know have had the same reaction to the combined shots that you described.

Smarter than me. I haven't usually had much of a reaction, though I'm not sure I've gotten them as a pair before.

I got them together last year and had quite a strong reaction, but I took that as a sign that I might have stronger protection as well.

I'm absolutely not brave enough to get them both at the same time. I've scheduled my covid booster for this coming Tuesday, and the flu shot for about a month later, when I'll be at my doctor's office for other reasons.

I've scheduled my covid/flu shot so that I can take the next two days slow if needed. And, if I don't need to, I'll enjoy the extra reading time.

I usually get both covid and flu shots together, and don't often have a reaction to either. But twice (funny that there have been enough rounds of covid vaxxes to say that) I've gotten a mini-flu from the covid—four hours of chills, aches, fever, leaden limbs, and then * POOF * it's over. I was planning on getting them this week and then time just ran away from me, as it often does.

>91 lisapeet: I've had that reaction twice too - only mine lasted about 24 hours. This year, no side effects. Yay!

I had a reaction this year. I got both shots together - one in each arm. I didn't feel good starting about 12 hours after I got the shot. However, the next day I had chills for most of the day. Other than that rather mild reaction, nothing else happened. I am not sure which shot gave me the mini-flu. (I like that term. Mini-flu. It fits.)