JoeyBahr.com

This past weekend I finally finished reading a novel in an eBook format.

eBook stands for electronic book. Right now the most popular of such books is the Amazon Kindle. Technically, the Kindle is a reader, or just the hardware that displays the files that are the actual books.

I have to say that I enjoyed the experience. I downloaded the book, First to Fight (StarFist Series #1) by David Sherman & Dan Cragg through Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore and onto reading programs for both my computer and BlackBerry.

I liked the fact that I could read the books either on my computer or my phone. The phone part came in very handy for those moments when any other time I would not have thought about reading because I didn’t have my book with me. I could become very accustomed to that feature.

Since my fairly positive experience with reading an eBook, I’ve been mulling over something, getting a dedicated reader. Right now two main readers exsist: the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble nook.

Both use an eInk display which does not act like the screen on your phone or computer. Instead it uses power sparingly by changing the text on the screen and then waiting for the next command to change.

Both connect to cellular data networks to download books onto the device.

The Kindle was first to the party and is already on it’s second revision. The Amazon Kindle Store has over 350,000 books available for download along with many magazines and newspapers. The Kindle uses a hardware based keyboard for typing in books to search for or adding notes to a book.

The nook started shipping last week and from the reports it is a worthy competitor to the Kindle, but needs some polishing still. The nook uses a color touchscreen LCD in place of hardware keys for typing and navigation.

The nook has two major advantages over the Kindle. In addition to the cellular modem, the nook also can access WiFi networks to download books.

Second, the nook is built to read content in the ePUB and PDF formats natively. This opens up more stores and websites to download or purchase books from than just the manufacturer of the reader.

The nook still needs to flesh out parts of store, but it definitely bears watching.

My dilemma is first do I need to get a reader and second which one?

Time will tell on that.

Looks like the first real winter storm of the year is on the way.

NWS Wichita Weather Story for Nov. 14, 2009

The National Weather Service is predicting 6 to 10 inches of snow across Southwest and Central Kansas with some locations receiving up to a foot. Don’t forget to add in the 20 to 30 mph north winds with the snow.

What a great way to start off the week.

Can anyone say Happy Monday?

This is a test post to try out something for Saturday’s football action.

More to come later.

Eli Manning of the New York Giants commented that his injured heel “wasn’t aggravated” in Sunday’s game against the Oakland Raiders.

That makes absolute since given that the younger Manning probably didn’t even sweat in the game.

Honestly Oakland, could you even show some life in the game? KC at least gave Eli an injury.

What did you muster besides getting a weekend in the Meadowlands on Al Davis’s dime?

Once again, I made the attempt to write a 50,000 word in the space of the month of November, and failed.

My damn mind keeps getting in the way with little things like: Hey idiot you gotta big gapping hole in your plot.

Maybe next year.

Though in the mean time, I’m not giving up the idea of writing a novel. Just going to take it on my own schedule and not having to worry about any set of rules governing how I write it.

Being a political junkie/hack/veteran, how could I sit on the sideline and not offer up some info on this election? So, here are some of the things I’ll watch for and think might happen tomorrow on Election Day. Any and all predictions made here are done so with ZERO guarantee any use of this for betting purposes are done at your own risk.

Feel free to send this on to anyone else you want to.

* The Exit Polls will be near meaningless. With a huge turnout of voters voting early, the sample of voters the exit pollers will interview could skew away from the actual vote total. I’m certain network news execs have begun to figure out how to call the Election for many of the 30+ states with early voting. Early voting could make for a longer time to call a state for one candidate.

* Missouri will take forever to call. Why? Because it takes a long time for St. Louis to count their votes. The one exception to this is if Obama has a big lead from the rest of the state, then it would be safe to say the state will go for the Democrat.

* Watch the Senate. It’s pretty much a given the Democrats will gain at least 20 seats in the House. The bigger drama will lie across the Capitol with the Senate. Can the D’s get to 60, enough votes to nullify a filibuster. I expect the Dems to get to 57 easily. The next three will be tough.

* Kansas will stay Red. This will long be a deep Republican state, yet keep your eyes on the results. The Congressional Delegation will all get re-elected. (Though watch the 4th District—Wichita and surrounding counties. If it is tight enough, don’t be surprised if Don Betts runs again if the seat is open.) What will be interesting is if the Obama coat tails extend down to the legislature. If the Democrats in Kansas want to have a chance at more input in drawing redistricting maps, they need to pick up seats this year and 2 years from now. I would not be surprised to see the House Dem caucus go above 50 and the Senate maybe picking up a seat or two. Any of these victories will show that the national party’s investment in organizing in all states can pay off.

* McCain’s Strategy was foolish. John McCain, despite the results if he were to win, made the worst choice possible when he decided to focus more on a national media campaign and less on a state-by-state ground campaign. Yes, a campaign’s message is important. It does not amount to anything if you don’t get voters to the polls. McCain just this weekend started to publicly ask for people to volunteer to Get Out The Vote (GOTV). Obama seemingly focused on GOTV since day 1. If you watched most of the proceedings on the night Obama accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination, his Colorado State Director made several appeals in between speeches for people to volunteer and contact fellow voters. The challenge for the Democrats will be keeping this machine in place for the next election and beyond. If they do, it will keep the party rolling for a long time. Also, McCain picked early on to run a national campaign; Obama went for an Electoral College campaign, the difference will be huge and it will show tomorrow night.

* Early Voting will show it’s importance. So far almost 300,000 voters voted before Election Day…in Kansas. Yes, in a state where the election doesn’t matter much, at least on the national stage. Secretary of State Ron Thornbugh estimates 1.36 million voters will turnout tomorrow. Almost a quarter of voters decided to not stand in line on November 4th. Advance Voting is very convenient for voters. It is also a great way for a campaign to control their vote totals. You know when someone has voted. If you work it right, you can help them vote. (wink, wink, nod, nod)

* This Election is as much about the Man Barack Obama as it is about punishing the Republicans. Hopefully even the most vitriolic anti-Obama person has to admire his life story and acknowledge his skills as a politician. Yet, he is at the levels he is in part because the electorate has grown tired of the Republican Party. Much of the fatigue rests with the President, as the Democrats have controlled Congress for two years now. The party failed to realize that the message it espouses is not the one for the economic times we are in now. That deafness will lead them to getting shellacked tomorrow in the voting booth.

* Final Predictions
President – Obama
Electoral College: Obama 340 McCain 198
Senate – 59 Democrats with a Run-off in Georgia. (I hope the peach state is ready for the flood of Obama staffers.)
House – 258 Democratic members
Way too many swooshing maps to keep track of on cable news channels resulting in a mass vertigo outbreak.

I’m gonna try it for real this time.

What is that you ask?

NaNoWriMo which stands for National Novel Writing Month. It is an annual “competition” to write 50,000 words for a novel in just the 30 days of November.

So far I have 3,760 words written. Still got a ways to go.

Wish me luck.

Who would have imagined that after the great Netscape Navigator versus Internet Explorer war of the late 90s, there would be more browsers around now than just IE?

I know that many of you just use Internet Explorer because that’s what comes up when you click on the “Internet” icon on your Windows PC.

Shame on you.

Yes, I know that the new version of IE has more features than IE 6. And, yes, the security on it is a million times better. But, the user interface that Microsoft came up with is, well, total ass.

IE now hides many of the important menus, not to mention where some of the buttons are seems asinine. (I know, I know; again with the anal fixation.)

I could go on and on, but I won’t.

Instead I want to mention the newest kid on the block, Google’s Chrome. (I’m linking to a news story about it because Google hasn’t even turned their site for it yet.)

What’s cool about this web browser is that it will be totally open source. That means the code is available for everyone to look at and even to improve. Firefox is an open source browser while Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari are closed source, meaning only the developers see the code.

Now Google is big enough to develop a browser on their own, but to make it in a way that anyone can take the code and make it their own is cool.

Something interesting though lies in the fact that Google decided to use Apple’s WebKit engine instead of the Firefox Foundation’s Gecko engine. The engine in this case is the code that renders the web page. Apple’s WebKit is actually an open source product. One of the reasons for this choice could be that with the iPhone, more and more users now see what WebKit can do with the mobile version of Safari.

If you are interested in more, check out this 38 page comic book from Google on their new web browser. We’ll have to see how it works.

Seven Days to go.

Seven days until I get a key.

A key that will turn the lock.

The lock that has held me in place for three years.

Three years that ends in seven days.

Know hope.

Oh, crap.

Hillary has won in Pennsylvania.

Do the people of the Keystone State have a sick sense of humor?

Honestly, why must you keep this going? Why?

Let’s just hope that Indiana and North Carolina see the pain this causes and finally do the right thing.