With all the books that Teal and I have, we have our own private library and this doesn’t include all the books that we’ve given away.  I keep looking at the book shelves in my office and noticing how much space we’ve taken up plus every time Teal goes on a trip she buys at least 2 more books.

So I decided that an ebook reader would be better, not only can it store a number of books, the ebooks are cheaper than the printed versions, but the best thing is that it’s less impacting on the environment.  So after researching different readers I settled on the Sony Digital Book over Amazon’s Kindle.  The main thing that I liked was the fact the Sony Digital Book could read many different formats as I’ve heard the Kindle was kind of limited.  Plus the look of the Kindle was not appealing and the extra features such as wireless and subscription to some news services were not interesting to me.

Priced at $299, I think it was worth it plus I like the fact that Sony was offering 100 free classic novels which basically cut $200 off the price so in a sense it was only a $100 reader.  Having used it for a couple of days there are a few of things that I don’t like about it.  First is the slowness in changing pages, as it takes time to refresh and I can be impatient sometimes but I’ll have to live with it.  The other thing is the zoom feature which I guess is OK if the document was formatted for the reader but we tried to upload a tech document and needed to zoom in a bit and it didn’t zoom very well.  I can’t complain about that too much, again the document was not formatted for the reader, but I’ll try their instructions on formatting a document to fit the reader and see how that turns out.  But what I really miss and it may be that I haven’t found out how to do this but I like the ability to go to a certain page instead of having to turn each page individually.  Once I bookmark the page then I can go directly but I kind of wish I had that feature.  I kind also wish there was a light feature so I can read in the dark but that’s not too important as it’s bad to read in the dark anyways, besides I think they want to make a few extra bucks as you can buy an attachment for it.

But besides the few things that I don’t like about it, I have to say that I’m quite impressed with it.  The display is very crisp, light doesn’t reflect off so I don’t get any glare.  The buttons are ergonmically in a good position for me so changing pages is very easy.  Internal storage is 192MB which according to Sony can hold about 160 books, but the fact that I can use an SD card and/or Memory Stick Duo is great which means Teal can have her books on her stick while I have mine on my own.   Another feature that I like is the fact that the Digital book can also play music and display photos.  For me, sometimes a little bit of music is needed after straining my eyes, plus viewing pics is something I like even though it shows them only in Gray/White and not color.

Overall I’m pleased with my decision, the cheaper ones were just that cheap too me, the Kindle is great but not for me, but the Sony Digital Book was just right for me.  Teal likes it so in the end that’s all that really matters!

Well at least I don’t have to worry about this for a while but I found this somewhere, made a copy of it.  I’ll probably tweak it a bit but any potential boyfriends will have to fill it out:

APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO DATE MY DAUGHTER
NOTE: This application will be incomplete and rejected unless accompanied
by a complete financial statement, job history, driving record, lineage, and
current certified medical report (including drug tests) from your doctor.

1. NAME _______________________________ DATE OF BIRTH ________________

2. HEIGHT ______________ WEIGHT __________ I.Q _______ G.P.A.____________

3. SOCIAL SECURITY # _____________ DRIVERS LICENSE # __________________

4. BOY SCOUT RANK______________________________________________ ______

5. HOME ADDRESS _________________ CITY/STATE ___________ ZIP __________

6. Do you have one MALE and one FEMALE parent? ______________________________

If No, EXPLAIN __________________________________________________ ____

7. Number of years your parents have been married ________________________________

8. Do you own a van? ______ A truck with over sized tires? ______ A water bed? _________

Do you have an earring, nose ring, belly button ring, or a tattoo? _____________________

(If “yes” to any of #8, discontinue application and leave premises)

9. In 50 words or less, what does “LATE” mean to you? ______________________________

__________________________________________________ _____________________

10. In 50 words or less, what does “DON’T TOUCH MY DAUGHTER” mean to you?

__________________________________________________ _____________________

__________________________________________________ _____________________

11. In 50 words or less, what does “ABSTINENCE” mean to you? ______________________

__________________________________________________ _____________________

12. Church you attend _____________ How often do you attend ______________________

13. When would be the best time to interview your father, mother and priest/rabbi/minister? ____

14. Answer by filling in the blank: please answer freely. ALL answers are confidential (That
means I won’t tell anyone -ever- I promise.)

a ) If I were shot, the last place on my body I would want wounded is __________________

b ) If I were beaten, the last bone I would want broken is my ________________________

c ) A woman’s place is in the _______________________________________________

d ) The one thing I hope this application does not ask me about is _____________________

e ) When I first meet a girl, the first thing I notice about her is _______________________

(NOTE: If your answer begins with “T” or “A”, discontinue. Leave premises keeping your
head low. Running in a serpentine fashion is advised.)

15. What do you want to be IF you grow up? ____________________________________

I SWEAR THAT ALL INFORMATION SUPPLIED ABOVE IS TRUE AND CORRECT
TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT,
NATIVE AMERICAN ANT TORTURE, ELECTROCUTION, CHINESE WATER TORTURE,
AND RED HOT POKERS.

________________________________________
Signature (That means sign your name)

Thank you for your interest. Please allow four to six years for
processing. You will be notified in writing if you are approved. Please do
not try to call or write. If you do attempt any communication before your
application is approved, automatic disqualification will result.
If your application is rejected, you will be notified by
two gentlemen wearing white ties and carrying violin cases (You might
want to watch your back).

Do you still want to date my daughter?

_____ Yes, please accept my application
_____ I um, no, I uh, think I have the wrong house…

I finally found a gallery for wordpress that I’m happy with.  I ended up using NextGEN Gallery which was less complex than WordPress Plugin for Gallery2 (WPG2).  Even though Bluehost had Fantasico which did the install of Gallery2, come to find out that the reason it wouldn’t work was that my theme didn’t support it.  So instead of having to recode the theme, which I was not looking forward to, I decided to look elsewhere.

Having found NextGEN this afternoon, I was able to get it up and running quickly and after some testing and learning of the options, the gallery was back up and running.  I’m going to leave the photos on Flickr for a while but will delete them, so dad if you want them better grab them while they are still there.  I’ve already uploaded some of the photos to the new gallery but some of the older ones will probably not go up.

NextGEN happen to surprise me at how simple it is compared to other gallery programs that I looked at.  I was under the impression that gallery’s had to be complex applications to work but was quite wrong in that assumption.  I am very please at how simple it was to manage NextGEN compared to other galleries but that may be because there is so much more you could do with them that you can’t with NextGEN but not needing anything fancy, this will do for me.

Update: Blah, wouldn’t you know it, stupid Internet Explorer which I only use when I want to test this site in IE, well guess what, when you click on a pic, it doesn’t display it correctly.  I guess I’ll look into it but in the mean time if your using IE get a real browser (Firefox).  Appears that I’m not the only one having this issue so that’s good, hopefully someone has come up with a fix, time to start googling around.

Update to the previous Update: Found a work around in the wordpress forums.  Thanks to Voddie for this.  Had to hack the thickbox.css file to get it to work.  Basically had to change one value:

/* Orginal install css
#TB_window {
position: fixed;
background: #ffffff;
z-index: 102;
color:#000000;
display:none;
border: 4px solid #525252;
text-align:left;
top:50%;
left:50%;
}
*/
#TB_window { /* my IE7 Hack*/
position: fixed;
background: #ffffff;
z-index: 102;
color:#000000;
display:none;
border: 4px solid #525252;
text-align:left;
bottom:10%;
left:50%;
}

Stupid IE!  Don’t care what JT says, IE sucks!!!

Update to the previous Update which was an Update to the orignal post:  Yes I know, annoying aren’t I, ask Teal she’ll tell you all about it.  Anyway, another tip I found was to change the effects from Thickbox to something else which also worked but I kind a like Thickbox effects.

OK once again I changed the theme, although I liked the last one it seem too much trouble to widen the thing plus it was too bright for me so I found this really cool looking theme and decided to give it a try.  But that’s not the only thing that’s going to change.

One of the things I hated was using flickr for my picture storage but since I only had a 1gb of space, I couldn’t start uploading my pics to the web server.  That was until Bluehost graciously gave me the same package that they are currently offering new customers.  So now I’ll have plenty of space to upload pics.

So what does that mean?  Means the gallery will be changing but not right now.  I’m currently in a pissy mood because the stupid wireless router keeps cutting off.  It’s time to replace that thing but I really just want to run it into the ground before buying a new one.

Oh well hope to have things going with the gallery soon.  I need to find a good plugin for one.  Anyone have any suggestions?

I’m wondering why in the hay have I not eaten that cat but she is sweet.  The kids (including the big kid, Teal) named her Daisy.  I have a feeling that she’ll be around a while but Gizmo has got to control himself but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of chasing going around this house.