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This is the newsletter that went out to my e-mail subscribers yesterday. You want some of this free action? My e-mail is:
jimd303@reagan.com
Drop me a mail requesting a subscription.
Until I change my mind again, a certainty you can bet on, I'll make this the weekly newsletter subject. Product reviews. I'll try to never do book or movie reviews, but no guarantees. Length will probably be one half to three quarters of the daily articles.
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NEWSLETTER #6
Product Review
10pk USB Memory Stick
128mb each
I’m sure most of my
readers are Old Farts and vividly remember the days not so long ago that floppy
drives were the standard removable computer memory. I loved floppies. They didn’t contain so much damn information
that it was all lost in the clutter.
And, I know this probably sounds gay, they were certainly digital but
there was remnants of analog to them with all the springs and moving
parts. They had a smidge of
character. Plus, you had to be a little
bit careful with them. Thumb drives are
super handy and a definite improvement but they have no charm or soul and they
almost invite abuse and neglect.
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What was a floppy? Something like 1.4 megs of memory. Now, every year thumb drives seem to double
in gigabytes. I understand if you have a
LOT of porn, but otherwise who in the hell needs that much memory? You can’t find anything in that mess if you
just want a couple of e-books stored.
And you WILL have tons of books in there because you spent $20 on the
drive and want to get your monies worth.
Worse, you have a centralized storage unit. There isn’t a cheap alternative that
encourages redundancy.
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Sure, for 15 cents you
could rip a DVD containing roughly half the Library Of Congress content ( I’m
kidding. Probably just a few shelves
worth ). The issue with CD’s and DVD’s
is that you are roughly getting what you pay for. The media is cheap but relatively
disposable. They degrade much
faster. You want to get the info on to a
flash drive, not keep that as your primary media. Plus, not every computer comes with a disc
reader but all of them come with USB ports anymore.
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Fun Filled Story. I had just bought a refurbished laptop (
living out of the van at the time ) for a steal at $150, using it to write my
first book and started the first blog on it.
Yet within a short period of time found it to be worthless without a USB
port ( I was going to the library to use their computer to post blog articles,
having written that during my lunch period at work. At the time we were living off not enough
solar panels for just lights ). I gladly
shelled out $350 for a netbook unit with the newest Microsoft XP ( I’m thinking
perhaps 2008? ), for no other reason that I needed the USB media port.
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Keep in mind my poverty at
the time. Add on another zero for a
frame of reference for all you high rollers reading this. It was worth the expense, for that and for it
only using half the electric ( solar panels at the time were five times the
cost per watt-it was cheaper buying energy efficient appliances rather than
more panels ). And heck, I’m still using
the same computer a decade later writing this right now, and about four
millions words since. I love you, Aspire
brand!
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Obviously I think thumb
drives are the bomb diggity. I just don’t
care for the higher cost for too much capacity and the danger of putting all
your eggs in one basket. So, perhaps you
can envision my great orgasmic nipple tightening and sphincter tingling delight
when I finally came across the much cheaper diminished capacity USB thumb
drives. It was nice to see megabytes
again rather than gigabytes. I mean,
come on! What are you going to do, put
the plans for the Death Star on the thing?
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A big production was made
of thumb drives for the survivalist in the old timey days of the Rawles
Survival Blog ( back before he jumped the shark ). Not just to capture all the worlds knowledge
( I dislike the concept in general but recognize there are few alternatives one
person can realize ). But also about an
easily concealed media that can be used in guerrilla communications and
such. At $20, not so feasible ( I buy
mine every year at the Wal-Mart back to school sale and they are always a deal
at $5 each. The rest of the year, not so
much ). At $2, you can almost give them
away as business cards ( they have smaller CD’s that you can actually use this
way. Some even have cut off tops and
bottoms to look more like a card, with a label option to really snazz it up ).
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If CD’s aren’t optimal for
you, consider this media-affordable and a reasonable size.
( .Y. )
( get the thumb drives here https://amzn.to/2p9bzrA )
“I understand if you have a LOT of porn, but otherwise who in the hell needs that much memory?”
ReplyDeleteWell, you answered your own question :D But if you have a lot of images, they too can also take up a good bit of memory. And downloading how to survival videos isn’t the worst idea.
I remember the standard 3.25” floppies (The Christian lady at work complained that her husband had one :D ). They also had a larger capacity version, that I believe was called the LS-120? Then there was something called the ZIP drive that was even beyond that. PC’s have long since stopped coming with floppy drives, but usually come with DVD drives I believe.
I’ve had a lot of problems with floppies, CD’s, and DVD’s, and have had many of them fail on me. Flash drives are said to fail after a period of multiple write/rewrites, but generally speaking, if you buy quality flash drives, they are dependable.
From the little I know of flash drives, while the recordable function might have failed you still have access to files already there. Which is kind of nice.
DeleteAn attribute as well of course is it's small size and insertability. When one has to pass through new frontiers and different lines of control this must be considered. You will be stripped and searched, thoroughly. Your Bison tattoo may get you a brownie point in certain circles and stave off slave labor work detail. It was wise you loaded up all them back issues of Bison Prepper blog posts on sticks and balloon smuggled them up your bum. That is one smart assed fellow then.
ReplyDeleteGood idea-so, I can continue being a pain in the ass AFTER the InterWeb is down!
DeleteI'm still waiting for the Bison Morale patch.
DeleteI can't remember. Did we discuss this before? Sounds familiar. Maybe that guy with patches shown at Western Rifle Shooters would hire out :)
DeleteHere's another reason to back stuff up. iTunes recently started deleting / removing access to movies that people had bought due to reasons. If you complain you got offered some credit to be used to *HIRE* movies.
ReplyDeleteI stress. These movies were bought and the agreement was you could access them whenever you wanted. Amazon did a similar thing with their kindle books. They promised not to do it again after the backlash but we're living in Bizarro World where corporations DGAF about making money anymore and are all about .... I dunno WTF they want. Yeah, Amazon is making a fortune I know. But still my argument stands. Don't like it? Fight me IRL (to be fair you'd win because I'm a sook)
Amazon also started censorship. A bunch of wankers complained Pick Up Artist books were something like Date Rape books or something else stupid. So an established author had his latest disappeared. I'm too small, I think, knock on wood, for either Google or Amazon to harass me, but you never know. I always say don't buy cloud movies just because they might go out of business, but you present another reason. Got DVD's? Buy while the herd gives them to the pawn shop.
DeleteI find BINDERS crammed with factory-made DVD movies and audio disks regularly. Sometimes, in a free pile, sometimes at G-sale for $10. It must be too much trouble to carry all of those shiny disks from place to place when they all fit on flash drives in the same shoulder bag as the MacBookSuperProMicroAirExtendedPlus8K-XDR screen with built-in NanoProjector. Too bad about the THOUSANDS of retail dollars spent on media with no remote backup. No worry, more spending from Grandma's trust fund!
DeleteMore media than I wish to consume in 2 lifetimes. Most movies are dreck, but there's always something fun and a bunch of re-sellable.
Kindle hardware is best used as a USB dongle for a computer in "airplane mode". Load your .pdf's/mobi/e-pub/etc. and get weeks of use without charging if you have a "paperwhite".
pdxr13
I miss my Kindle, just for the much longer battery times and the ease of PDF viewing ( you get neither on the Fire tablet ). I just got tired of buying $70 units that were poorly made.
DeleteI don’t have the kindle, but I have the kindle app on my Android tablet. Battery life isn’t very good on the tablet, and there’s no night mode on the kindle app, so if you’re viewing it in the dark, the brightness tends to blind you.
DeleteI recently picked up the entire DVD collection of a TV series. I found it inconvenient to have to drag a portable DVD player along with me, when I always have my tablet with me, so I copied the DVD’s to my hard drive, and then onto my tablet for viewing. Sounds like a hassle, but it’s actually more convenient, and now I have a digital back up copy if the DVD’s ever fail, which they’re prone to doing.
It’s for this same reason that I find kindle books to be more convenient. My policy now is that if it’s pleasure reading, I get kindle copy. But if it’s a book that you would really want to have a physical copy of in emergency situations, it’s a hard copy.
Elko Minion
I was a good boy and didn't buy books, hookers or blow, saved my money and invested in reloading lead and powder. And six months of tobacco. Next up is the NOL's birthday. After all THAT, I feel I deserve a treat. I have been eyeballing the complete seasons of Miami Vice for only $25.
DeleteWe had a lunch and learn (business presentation during lunch) where they presenter gave us free 8 Gig memory sticks as one of the parting gifts. I asked for another - no problem, here you go my man. Great for storing JPEG (photos), they hold approximately 3000 of them. Just as a back up. E-books and other stuff - plenty of reading. Zip lock that bad boy and keep it in a safe place.
ReplyDeleteAre Lunch And Learns a way to get you to work through lunch without pay?
Delete