Has anyone successfully sold a used book on Amazon? I’ve had 3 books for sale for about 3 weeks and nothing, so far. They are all technical books with hefty price tags, so you’d think people would be tempted to buy used.
That’s nutty as in “It makes *me* nutty”.
I loath software applications that do not respond. You’d think responding would be an application’s biggest aspiration in life, too. I can point to two particularly frustrating examples on both Mac and Windows.
I have a very handy [VPN](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPN) utility on the Mac called [DigiTunnel](http://www.gracion.com/vpn/). This morning, I woke my computer up from sleep and attempted to make the VPN connection to work. DigiTunnel’s menu was completely disabled, though. I was puzzled. I thought I saw it disconnect last night. My expert conclusion was that something was wrong, so I restarted the computer. As all the applications closed down, one Window remained: a DigitTunnel dialog warning me that a network share was open. The dialog was left-over from the disconnect but got hidden behind a bunch of other windows.
Often, on Windows, I’ll unlock my work PC and try to open a minimized Outlook. The window doesn’t open. I have done something (I think involving the Task Manager) to get Outlook to show up, but I cannot remember the exact steps. I usually restart the computer, though since it’s the one procedure I have down pretty well. If I do manage to revive Outlook, though, it turns out that Outlook has displayed a modal dialog complaining about a failed archive attempt.
In both these cases, clicking on some part of the application should have brought those dialogs forward so I could deal with them immediately. Is that so hard?
If I’ve been slow to write new posts (not that you’d notice), it’s because I’m fighting an increasing deluge of comment spam. ‘bots all over the world are trying to post spammy comments on my blog but they are foiled by my moderation system. Unfortunately, I need to check each comment that appears and delete them. I’m getting over 50 spam comments a day and it’s driving me crazy. I barely have time to find a solution, let alone write about things or post more photos.
So, the bad news is that people still suck.
The good news is that everyone should have my problems!
Update: I’ve installed a plug-in that supposedly identifies spammers without having to force people to decipher and enter cryptic codes when commenting. I hope it works!
If you have trouble commenting, please email me.
Update 2: Sigh. Apparently the spambot is immune to that plugin until the next release, so you’ll now have to enter a code when posting comments.
Someone took our jogging stroller off our porch last night. I am not happy.
Finally, the car is sold! Having it on the market for almost 5 months changes one’s expectations, so the buyer got it at a great price and I hope he enjoys it.
Long time, no blog. I got out early a couple of Sundays ago and the clouds arrived with me for a beautiful sunrise. It coincided with a low tide so I went to Spanish Banks to capture the mud flats.
