Over Listed

Not too long ago there was a Best Seller List, one for fiction, one for non-fiction, in the Sunday Book Review section of the New York Times. .

Now, we have:

• Combined Print and E-Book Best Sellers, Fiction and Nonfiction.
• Print/Hardcover Best Sellers, Fiction and Nonfiction.
• E-Book Best Sellers, Fiction and Nonfiction.
• Print/Paperback Best Sellers, Trade Fiction and Mass-Market Fiction.
• Print/Paperback Best Sellers, Nonfiction.
• Print/Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous, Hardcover and Paperback.
• Children's Best Sellers, Picture Books, Chapter Books, Paperback Books, Series.

To say that there are duplicates is putting it mildly. Fourteen of the 16 books on the Hardcover Nonfiction list also appeared among the 25 titles listed on the E-Book Nonfiction best seller list.

At this point I was too tired and confused to start comparing all the other lists with each other. Bottom line, when faced with confusion, leave. I left.

Whenever I'm looking for a book to read I go to my local library and browse. You meet the nicest people there and sometimes someone will recommend a book they think you might enjoy. Much more rewarding than being a slave to a Best Seller list.

Lists are for grocery shopping.

Have a What?

Do you notice how often people tell you to “have a great day!” I wish they they really meant it but I'm sure they're just doing what they're told to do when ending a conversation with a customer or client. I find it banal and in some cases annoying.

If someone had said that to me today, I might have said: “have you looked out the window?” The weather was downright grouchy today. I suppose the meteorological phrase would be unsettled.

Starting last night we had really big claps of thunder accompanied by heavy downpours of rain. Then it stopped for a while and we had some morning sun. Later, thunder rolled through the area and it seemed all around Verona but not much rain. Then, whammo, more thunder and the rain came down hard and was mixed with hail.

I looked up “hail” to see exactly what caused it and the explanation was so technical I just left it there. Suffice it to say it's frozen rain caused by super-heated air colliding with super-cooled clouds in thunderheads. Or something like that. In any case its amazing to see and in some instance can cause damage. Don't go out in it.

So then the storms passed and the sun came out again for a while.

I like to watch thunderstorms and heavy downpours. They are amazing demonstration of raw nature. When I first thought about today's weather I thought it was grumpy. Then I thought that was too lame. Grouchy seemed about right.

About the way I feel when someone tells me to “have a great day!”

You Think I'm Muddled?

Talk about muddling through, just try dealing with Verizon. It started simply enough when my wife called Verizon to question a service we had ordered. That went well and we even managed to save $20 a month in the bargain.

Then the fun began. Next day I get an email that tells me my Verizon Security Suite has been canceled. What the...? We didn't cancel that service. In fact, we were working in an entirely different set of services. So I called one of the many toll free Verizon numbers and navigated through their voice mail until I finally got a person to talk with.

Next thing I knew the line was disconnected. Can you redial and get the same person? You jest. So here we go again through the message maze until finally I get another person. They must have a gazillion people working their customer service numbers because you never get the same one twice. And when I ask if I can call them back directly if we get disconnected again the answer is no, of course not.

So I finally get a sympathetic young man who chats me up while checking my account. How's the weather up there, he asks? Where I you, I ask? He's in Florida. Well, we had a Florida sort of day here today, I said. And by the way, how are we doing resolving my security suite non-cancellation. Oh, we'll have to transfer you to Rachel. She'll take care of it. Oh, yeah, well Brian, you better stay on the line with me until I hear Rachel's voice because I sure as hell don't want to be disconnected again and have to go through all this rigmarole a third time. I do have a life I like to lead.

So Rachel comes on the phone and I make her pledge that if we get disconnected she'll call me right back 'cause sure as shootin' I can't call her.

Well, bless her little heart she restores the security system that should not have been canceled in the first place. No one could explain to me the unsolicited cancellation. The best one of the Verizonites could come up with was that someone must have hit a wrong key.

Is it any wonder this so-called modern world is all muddled up.

Time Out

Every once in a while you have to walk away from something that's bugging you. It's the only way to restore some semblance of sanity.

Take last night, for instance. I told you two of six pictures of my great granddaughters I downloaded from the internet would materialize only in Jpg. form. I asked my Israeli grandson for some advice to correct this but my stateside son chipped in first.

So following his instructions I tried again this afternoon and the two missing pictures appeared on my PC. BUT THE FOUR OTHERS ARE NOW MISSING!

It's enough to make you cry. Or, as I said before, just walk away and follow the advice broadcasters give to pro golfers who mess up: “gather yourself.”

Those pictures are out there somewhere and some day I'll find them and some day my prints will come.

Grind Teeth Here

I'm having a hissy fit. We received adorable new pictures of our two great-granddaughters by e-mail from Israel the other day and today I decided to print out six of them. It was not to be.

They were sent via Picasa, which I understand is part of Google. But never mind that. In order to print them at home, as I usually do, I have to import them into my Documents/Picture file. Normally this is easy. Except now it isn't.

At first I couldn't do it at all. So I sent a quick email to my grandson in Israel outlining the problem. He promptly replied with the procedure to get the job done. Seemed simple enough, but two of the six pictures I wanted to print refused to follow instructions. They transferred as Jpg files (I don't know what that means either) but not pictures. Ergo, unprintable, which was pretty much my reaction as well.

I tried and I tried to save them in different locations but they still transferred as Jpg files, not pictures. In fact, through a mysterious computer alchemy, one of the lesser photos ended up as my PC wallpaper. I replaced it immediately with a bucolic scene of our local park.

So enough frustration for one night. I'm sending another email to Israel for more instructions and hoping for yet another illuminating reply.

This definitely falls into the category of “no good deed (theirs) goes unpunished (me).

The Girls in the Back Seat

I owe this one to a reader who shares our dim view of the overuse of techno gizmos. However, she notes, there do seem to be some benefits. She has three young granddaughters and she's frequently driving them from here to there and back again.

Here's her observation: “I've noticed how quiet it is in the car when driving the grand children around. They are always working their phones texting some "VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE" that when I speak to them, I'm told "just a minute, I'm almost done".

Not that silence from the back seat is a bad thing. At least you don't keep hearing “are we there yet?” And kids cocooned in their tech world can't (or are less likely to) beat each other up.

Unlike years ago (read pre-cell phone days) when our boys were much younger. We had them sitting together in the back seat of our station wagon as we drove from New Jersey to Maine for a two week vacation. We weren't on the road more than two hours before we had to separate them, one in the front and poor Mom in the back with the other.

The dog, by the way, was inside the wagon, not strapped to the roof.

At least he behaved himself.

50 Million?

CBS's Sunday Morning program did a piece on the Blogosphere today and estimated that there were about 50 million bloggers on the internet. It may sound crowded but I feel safe and snug in here.

It really is amazing, though, how many people have come up with clever ways to make money through blogging. They have good ideas or products and the time and energy to devote to putting themselves “out there,” as the saying goes.

But truly, in today's society nothing is too trivial to attract an audience. I applaud those inventive bloggers who've found a niche that interests significant numbers of people. I'd like to have a few more followers but I'm not offering anything other than the musings of an 80-year-old man who marvels at how technology has transformed the news business he used to be in.

What is truly astonishing is that the mainstream media now has to monitor all sorts of blogs in order not to miss some tidbit of real news that needs covering. They used to cover their own stories. Now they follow blogger leads.

There's a tale wagging a dog. (Pun intended).