Thoughts from Barnes & Noble
by Scott Hardie on May 24, 2009
- Aren't all of these books in the clearance aisles the same ones I saw while Christmas shopping?
- Sarasota must be really obsessed with astrology, Barack Obama, pet psychology, and Eastern cooking. Or the whole country is.
- Is that a Juno songbook in the guitar tablature section? Somebody actually wrote those crappy songs instead of making them up on the fly?
- There's also a Guitar Hero book of guitar tabs. Is it just red-blue-blue-red-green-red-blue-green-red...?
- My back sprain is not as healed as I thought. Thank goodness I'm in a store with chairs.
- Why am I drawn to trivia books? I already knew that flamingos eat with their heads upside down and Bill Clinton was the first left-handed president to serve two terms. I didn't know that Attila the Hun was a dwarf, though.
- The teen books section in three words: Vampires, vampires, vampires.
- Why is there always the same stack of globes in the back of the store? Who buys those? Apparently nobody.
- I know how much of an incredible nerd this makes me sound, but I confess that I was actually drawn to Star Trek Monopoly for a moment. What is wrong with me?
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
So Long, NCSA Primer
Someone asked me for help learning HTML today. I turned to my trusted traditional source, the good old primer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, but alas, it has finally been removed after all these years. This was one of the major how-to guides in the early years of the web, and it's the very guide that I used to teach myself HTML one weekend in 1996, from which this very site you're reading has since evolved. Go »The Wedding
Kelly and I wed on March 15, an event that we've been looking forward to for a very long time. Despite keeping the wedding modest and casual, it still involved a great deal of planning and anxiety, occupying my attention for the last few months. (Kelly was in charge of her outfit; I planned everything else, with her approval at each stage.) Go »Thorough Performance Reviews
I'm not around much this week because it's time for the annual performance reviews at work. I'm staying up till the wee hours each night writing the reviews so that the two-day marathon of face-to-face chats at the end of the week will go well. It's a win-win: For the employees doing a great job, it's my chance to offer serious praise without it sounding phony or arbitrary. Go »Get a Clue
Among hard-core board game fans, an argument has raged for years now over preferences for European-style games and American-style games. European games emphasize strategy, trade, and abstraction, while American games emphasize luck, conflict, and detailed themes. European games also strive to keep every player involved as long as possible, rather than eliminating them. Go »The Little Ship
Our cat Sweetie Pie passed away in her sleep on Thursday night after a very long illness. We don't know how old she was -- she was my mother's cat before mine, and my grandmother's cat before that, and belonged to some other lady in my grandmother's nursing home before then. We have that stranger to thank for giving her the old-fashioned name, but it was appropriate: Sweetie Pie was a friendly cat, who was happy when company came over (especially if they fed her treats!) Go »
