stuff, and the current book.
Nov. 13th, 2009 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serynI'm hoping that if I stare at this empty box, something profound will occur to me to say.
I, um, really like the new Google Reader thingy where it suggests other things you might like and makes subscribing to them from the sidebar easy. I wish there was an easier way to change your mind and unsubscribe--- opening the settings, choosing the subscriptions tab, laboriously grepping for it by hand, and then finally having to click the itty bitty trash can icon that's 4 columns away from the name of the feed. Unsubscribing from things is harder than it should be.
There was some really good stuff with the knitting group, but some really lame stuff. Mostly I just don't feel well after interacting hands-on with a bunch of plague carriers.
Insurance dreck. Hopefully I'll be able to sort it out with a few phone calls, but it looks like my doctor stopped taking my insurance and didn't tell me.
I have Droid envy. I'm so disappointed that we got the Palm Pre phones a month before Droid came out. It seems like someone should have known, but when I asked the Verizon people (by phone and in person at a store) they said it was going to be Black Friday and be a lot more money than what it actually costs. There is a new data package from Verizon too, rivalling the Sprint pricing, albeit for fewer minutes (but I never call people anyway.) And it took at least a dozen hours from both my SO and I to deal with the changeover to Sprint. So if we'd waited a month, everything would have been seamless. I had a few days of overlap between my 30-day trial period and the Droid launch, but I was really angry with the Verizon people for not having a fucking clue.
---
I'm reading the sequel to Thirteen Orphans by Jane Lindskold, this one is called Nine Gates. This book is decidedly worse for several reasons. 1) It just discards the villains from the previous book as now being on the same page as "our heroes". 2) The head-hopping stuff is still there, still not a chapter-break thing, just the author is a bit Many Faces of Eve. 3) Still using phrasing like "She married a Chinese".
I can't even comprehend how that's not offensive. But maybe that's because the Chinese people I've met told me flat out that India is not in Asia. Maybe it's because I've seen it go from Orientals being the standard word to "Asian" as if Pakistani and Chinese and Syrian people are all the same thing. But to say "a Chinese" without a noun means the person has no other characteristics or personality or value. If I wanted to denigrate someone's European boyfriend, I would say, "dating a German". If I did not want to be disdainful, I would say "a man [or guy] from Germany". Reducing people to a racial adjective is offensive. Just because you share that racial adjective does not make it less offensive. In this case, the character saying this does not share the same ethnic heritage. And it most assuredly does come across as disdainful, bitchy, and hugely offensive. Unfortunately she's a featured character.
4) but the worst part is the info dumps that keep getting inserted. 10, 12, 15 page treatises on this imagined history and why it has absolutely no impact on what is going on now. I'm just bored.
-----
I'm supposed to be coming up with great presents for my SO's family. I would rather not trade gifts with them since we have no idea what they'd like and they have no idea what we'd like. Seems like if we really meant to be "family" then we should put the work in to be closer.
I, um, really like the new Google Reader thingy where it suggests other things you might like and makes subscribing to them from the sidebar easy. I wish there was an easier way to change your mind and unsubscribe--- opening the settings, choosing the subscriptions tab, laboriously grepping for it by hand, and then finally having to click the itty bitty trash can icon that's 4 columns away from the name of the feed. Unsubscribing from things is harder than it should be.
There was some really good stuff with the knitting group, but some really lame stuff. Mostly I just don't feel well after interacting hands-on with a bunch of plague carriers.
Insurance dreck. Hopefully I'll be able to sort it out with a few phone calls, but it looks like my doctor stopped taking my insurance and didn't tell me.
I have Droid envy. I'm so disappointed that we got the Palm Pre phones a month before Droid came out. It seems like someone should have known, but when I asked the Verizon people (by phone and in person at a store) they said it was going to be Black Friday and be a lot more money than what it actually costs. There is a new data package from Verizon too, rivalling the Sprint pricing, albeit for fewer minutes (but I never call people anyway.) And it took at least a dozen hours from both my SO and I to deal with the changeover to Sprint. So if we'd waited a month, everything would have been seamless. I had a few days of overlap between my 30-day trial period and the Droid launch, but I was really angry with the Verizon people for not having a fucking clue.
---
I'm reading the sequel to Thirteen Orphans by Jane Lindskold, this one is called Nine Gates. This book is decidedly worse for several reasons. 1) It just discards the villains from the previous book as now being on the same page as "our heroes". 2) The head-hopping stuff is still there, still not a chapter-break thing, just the author is a bit Many Faces of Eve. 3) Still using phrasing like "She married a Chinese".
I can't even comprehend how that's not offensive. But maybe that's because the Chinese people I've met told me flat out that India is not in Asia. Maybe it's because I've seen it go from Orientals being the standard word to "Asian" as if Pakistani and Chinese and Syrian people are all the same thing. But to say "a Chinese" without a noun means the person has no other characteristics or personality or value. If I wanted to denigrate someone's European boyfriend, I would say, "dating a German". If I did not want to be disdainful, I would say "a man [or guy] from Germany". Reducing people to a racial adjective is offensive. Just because you share that racial adjective does not make it less offensive. In this case, the character saying this does not share the same ethnic heritage. And it most assuredly does come across as disdainful, bitchy, and hugely offensive. Unfortunately she's a featured character.
4) but the worst part is the info dumps that keep getting inserted. 10, 12, 15 page treatises on this imagined history and why it has absolutely no impact on what is going on now. I'm just bored.
-----
I'm supposed to be coming up with great presents for my SO's family. I would rather not trade gifts with them since we have no idea what they'd like and they have no idea what we'd like. Seems like if we really meant to be "family" then we should put the work in to be closer.
