One More Night, Just One More Night

    I have to be honest here.  I have nothing planned for my blogcast today. Nothing whatsoever. I trying to save better topics for the new year when I have more time to type them out. I've all but finished the inventory.  Mostly, I just have to total everything up. I have taken down almost all of the Christmas decorations at the store.  Unfortunately, I forgot to bring over the boxes for the wreaths, so they will have to stay up until Friday. Still, everything else will be down, and the Valentine's Day  decorations can be put up on Saturday. I hope to find the time to create a the store's Upcoming Releases board Friday and Saturday, after cleaning it off this afternoon. I am making plans for my new video, which I should be uploading either Saturday or Monday.  I just need to come up with a theme. I'll be closing only a little earlier than usual today, as most places will be open all day, although I have two stops to make on the way home. Unlike other years, I doubt I'll be staying up much past midnight. There's just not that much to make me stay up that late any more. Well, besides hearing fireworks go off for who knows how long. That can keep me up for almost an hour some years. I find it stupid, but whatever. Anyway, I'll just be waiting on confirmation on my latest comic book order/s.  There's a good chance I'll have to split it between multiple stores. I still haven't heard back from my local one about when they will have them again. 

    Like I mentioned at the start, I've got nothing to say today. I hate to end the year on such an underwhelming post, but I've got a lot to do today.  I need to get on with it. So, Happy New Year!

    See you next week.

Odds and Eves

     In case you never noticed, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve always fall on the same day of the week.  This year, they fall on Wednesday. Wednesday is the day I usually post new material for the blogcast.  On these holidays though, I also close my store early. For Christmas Eve, I usually close the store about two hours earlier than normal. This means that I have a lot less time to do all of my regular Wednesday chores. I have already checked my email and watched my YouTube shows, and I am obviously writing my new post. However, I have a lot of other things I have to do online today, and that isn't counting other tasks at my store.  This doesn't even consider any last minute customers who might come in. Considering that there haven't been that many so far this week, the chances aren't very good.  Regardless, to make sure I get as much done today as possible, I'm going to have to make today's post fairly short. I'm almost halfway through it now. Next week, I'm only planning on closing only an hour or so earlier, so that post won't be as rushed or short. In fact, it is planned to be a close to a 'normal' post as possible. Things could change, of course, but they probably won't.  So, I'm almost finished with this one. I'll get the link up on Facebook, and then play a few games before turning the computer over to someone else as I prep the store for inventory starting Friday. I'll solve a puzzle or two over lunch before playing another game and checking up on an RPG forum for any updates. I have been lurking instead of posting for quite some time now. If I'm lucky, I will be able to have one last check on social media before I close for the holiday. Anything I've missed will be checked up at home this afternoon before I start another gaming session, this time on my phone. It's almost eleven now, so I better finish up. Happy holidays, merry Christmas, and whatnot. See you next week.

Every Letter, Everywhere, All at Once

    In last week's monumental 500th post, I mentioned that I would be discussing its unusual title. Namely, "Quixotic Topics Involving Sheer Luck and Jazziness towards Blogcast Infamy." In case you didn't notice, that unwieldy title is a pangram, a work that features every letter of the alphabet at least once. While it can refer to any work, it is primarily focused on sentences, as much longer works are just naturally pangrams. Coming up with that title took a while, as finding just the right words was tough. I narrowed down on quixotic, blogcast, and infamy immediately. Involving and topics were next. Jazziness, while atypical, came next. Finally, I chose towards over wit, so I could get sheer and luck to finish up the alphabet. 

    As pangrams go, my title isn't too outrageous.  I have seen some that were questionable with many of their decisions.  In fact, many of my posts are pangrams as well. This is mostly not intentional, as I just naturally want to use as many letters as I can. It is a bad habit I have picked up over the years. I have even done such things in assignments. The papers are just long enough that it appears normally and not an affectation. I find it comforting and not crazy at all.

    My favorite pangram sentence is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." I believe that this was originally a typewriting assessment but I can't be entirely sure. It's only thirty-five letters long, with some obvious repeats, but it shows all the qualities that the best pangrams have. First, it uses common words. the average first grader would know all of these words. Some pangrams resort to the most obscure words possible to use up the letters as possible. I remember seeing a pangram using the words sphinx and quartz. While such words keep the repeats down, it can lead to unusual phrasing.

    Second, actual words are used. I've seen pangrams that resort to abbreviations and acronyms to keep the word count low. While technically correct, the wordplay aspects are tossed out. Sure, use TV and Mr. so you can avoid repeats.  Just don't call it a true pangram.

    Finally, the sentence makes complete sense. One type of canid performs an action around a second canid. Most people would know immediately what was going on. Many shorter pangrams resort to using such unusual words and phrasing, that the sentence has to be "translated" for the reader to understand what exactly is going on. To me, this constitutes an epic fail. If a read can't understand, then the creator tried too hard focussing on the result as opposed to the wordplay.

    I feel that it is the wordplay that is the key to the pangram. Just using the entire alphabet without repeats in a sentence is not enough. A pangram needs to be fun, not just a puzzle to be looked over or solved. A pangram should leave the reader experiencing an acknowledgment that they just read something special, something not seen everyday. A pangram shouldn't have to head someone over the head with its uniqueness, its strangeness. Words should be fun, and pangrams should be an extension of that fun, in its wordplay.

    The next two weeks of posts will be fairly short, due to the holidays and work I have coming up, but they will still be written on time. See you then.

Quixotic Topics Involving Sheer Luck and Jazziness towards Blogcast Infamy

    Today marks the five hundredth post on this blogcast. Yes, I'm still trying to get that become a "real word." I suggest you don't try counting every post, as a few got "lost" over the years. Sometime next spring, I'll hit the official tenth year anniversary, but hitting five hundred isn't too bad either. 

    This wasn't technically my first blog. That would be the original blog for my store, Booknotes. That blog was originally weekly, then monthly, then I pretty much ended it. I just couldn't come up with enough new ideas about the store. Not enough was happening. I still try to post every year or so, but considering that the site's host no longer supports that particular blog app, it's just easier to let it go. Especially since I actually confused the two blogs. That's why a few posts got lost, but I did try to reconstruct them. I also have a literary blog where I post some of my works. This includes the first drafts of two novels/novellas, as well as plenty of poems. I've been trying to start a third novel, but I'm just not into it yet. As it is, it has been a while since I posted there.

    I started this blog as a means for me to start writing again. While I had numerous ideas bobbing around in my head, I wasn't putting anything down. This blog would allow me to put ideas to "paper" as it were, and actually write instead of just thinking about writing. I didn't have a computer back then, so I used one at the recently closed downtown Pikevile branch of the library.  Every Wednesday, I would close the store early, go to the library to check on my emails, and write a post. I chose Blogger as a host, as it already part of my Google suite. Since it was there, it just made things simpler.

    I was fairly aimless during those first few months. Many of those first posts were short, as I didn't have that much time after work to type these things up. So, I tried to come up with simple ideas that I could type up quickly without too much thinking. One of my favorite early posts was about an emu sighting on my way to work. Turns out, there were a pair of emus, both since have gone off somewhere.  Of course, I mentioned the horrible reception I get on the radio at my store. That's been a recurrent topic. Even now, multiple causes are making so much static that I sometimes wonder why I even leave the radio on some days.

    I ultimately decided to focus this blog on a topic that really interested me, puzzles and games. While not becoming the majority of themes I discuss, I dedicate quite a few posts each year to them. Even now, I'm starting to plan the next edition of song title puzzles to start off the new year. The year-end charts were just announced, so I'll have plenty of data to sort through for inspiration. I've discussed puzzle magazines, my early love of RPGs, and a specially made crossword, once.  It is a little harder than I thought to create one on a regular basis. That one took about a month.

    Another related theme that I comment on is humor. If anything, I try to make the readers of this blogcast happy. Humor is an extension of that. Considering all the puns I stick into post titles, this should have been rather obvious. While I try not to get too ribald or risqué, I have been known to push the limits. I dedicated an entire post to "bulges," in light of an Olympic mishap. I've put up two adult parody picture books based on the interpretation of certain food emojis, eggplant and peach. I just wrote a post about holiday confusion in the from of a stand-up comedy routine.

    In the past two years, I've taken up another form of post, a limited run series. The first was about every place I bought comic books from, or could have. The second was about every restaurant I ate from. I've already started to make plans for my next series. This one should focus on something I've barely touched upon before, but it will be a fairly easy guess once I start it.

    Beyond what I've already mentioned, I've got plenty of other new posts in the planning stages. I'll finally make my third adult parody picture book, melons. I will be updating my first two series after the new one.  I've got the idea for a fairly dramatic editorial style post on my longtime desire to coin a new word.  That one is currently leaning a little too political than I normally go. There's also the possibility that I finally start detailing an unusual event that I have been wanting to bring up for many years now, even if it is NSFW. How exactly I'll manage that? I don't have an exact idea, but I'll be trying.  Of course, there is the tenth anniversary coming up next summer as well.

    Next week though, I will be covering a fairly common topic for me involving wordplay. Check this post's title. Spot something a little off about it? I'll explain everything next week.  Until then, prepare to be thwarted.

    

Offline and Not Loving It, Again

    I will be taking a break at some point in writing this post due to an unforeseen problem that occurred last night or perhaps this morning. 

    The early evidence of a problem started last night when I got home. Soon after I turned on the television, I had problems accessing certain stations at certain times. The signal would just cut off, and I had to figure out a workaround just to watch the program I wanted. Now, I get my cable television through the internet. The provider switched things to this way a few years ago. Usually, there are no big problems, unless something happens to the internet. However, last night, there were no problems with the internet. I could surf, stream, and play games without any problems whatsoever. I only had problems switching channels on the television. It was only a few stations, and not every time I changed the channel. It was as if the cable box couldn't find the correct signal to latch onto. It got so bad at one point that I had to turn the cable box off and restart it. After watching the late night news, I turned everything off. 

    As soon as I got up this morning, I knew that there was a problem. One of the lights on the modem wasn't on. That light was the one that indicated that there was wifi signal. As soon as I turned on the television, all I got was a notice that there was no signal. The cable box then switched over to the main screen, which somehow wasn't affected by whatever was happening. I checked both my MacBook and my phone. The wifi was working, but there was no internet to connect to. (In case you are wondering, I have almost no cell signal at home. Barely a bar, at best. So, whenever I use my phone for gaming and such, I just use wifi. While this means I can't call or text on it at home, this has only been an issue only a few times.)

    This meant that I had no way to catch up on the news or weather, and I needed to know about some things to plan out the week. It also meant that I couldn't go online to check social media, but with how the algorithm has been acting up, the posts might be over a month old. The worst part was that I couldn't automatically get my check-in gifts on my game. The gifts occur every four hours. I have scheduled things so that I can get six a day, but only by a small window of minutes. By not having internet this morning, I missed out on my overnight bonus, and my early morning bonus. I'm going to now have to take a break in writing this post to go outside so I can get a better signal just so I can activate my bonus at the right time.

    I'll be back in a few minutes, although it won't matter to those reading.

    And I'm back. I hate to go outside sometimes just to check my phone, but I sometimes can't get a signal inside. At other times, the signal is so slow I can't use the phone for anything but calling.

    Anyway, the provider didn't have a time when the internet would be fixed when we called them. On the landline. (It wasn't affected by the outage.) I'm just hoping it will be back on tonight, or will be in some serious trouble.

Time for a Brief Comic Book Interlude

    Last week, I made my annual pre-Thanksgiving shopping trip to Lexington. It did not start off well. First, I was at least twenty minutes late starting out. Some places were going to be cut. Next, I encountered a wreck that had just happened just before the Magoffin county line, just past that place with all the Bigfoot statues, as well as others. Then there was the eleven mile work zone to fix the last stretch of the Parkway, basically two bridges now. In Lexington, I got distracted and missed an intersection. I had to circle back around. I also had to dodge work areas, including one where I also got hit when a car wouldn't let me merge. Oh, did I mention all of the emergency vehicles popping up everywhere?

    I finally made it to the stores. While I found some books I might order for my store, I didn't find the ones that I was looking for that were out at my distributor. Clothes weren't any better. There was nothing in my color palette and style that caught my eye. To be fair, I had already did some searching online, so I kind of expected not to find anything, but I still had to try. I almost ate at a new place, but I "chickened out" at the last minute and ate at my regular spot. I was just too unsure about liking the special offer, not to mention the higher than expected price. There were some new and interesting stores, but not enough to make me want to buy anything. While I wound up getting some basics, that part of the trip was a washout.

    I had to leave early, because I was finally going to a Lexington comic book store to make up for my missing issues while my local shop continues to rebuild after the February floods. I had my choice of two along my usual route. I chose The Comic Interlude as it was a little closer to my route, and I had made an online purchase with them this summer.  Also, it wasn't near a school like my other option, which could have made problems at that time of day. The store is located in a small shopping center, although some might call it a strip mall due to a lack of a major anchor store. I almost couldn't find the shop, as it is a very narrow space. My local shop, Page-3 Game Zone, is easily twice as wide on its main floor.  I almost didn't want to get my hopes up as I entered. 

    The place was amazing.

    Along the left wall were the check out and numerous display counters. There was a door in the back, but I didn't go near it. The centre of the store had the boxes for older comics, as well as overhead displays. By the front window was a small section for kids' comics. However, it was the wooden shelves along the rear and right walls that really blew me away. While the top shelves were filled with trade paperback, there were dozens of current series filling up the others. The comics were basically divided into Marvel and everybody else, but they were alphabetized. Fortunately, my list was also in alphabetical order. I quickly found eight of my nine main titles, as they had sold out of the ninth one. I tried looking for a few others, but I couldn't find them anywhere. With their subtitles, it was going to be hard to locate them, if they even had them. I should have looked online with them as well. I could have asked the cashier, but he had been talking with a regular since I entered, and I didn't want to be impolite and interrupt. The regular left soon after I got to the checkout. I easily could have stayed another thirty minutes there just looking around, but I had someone waiting out in the car, and it was starting to rain, more than the sprinkles that had held around earlier.

    For some reason, that place just felt special. I felt like I belonged there. It wasn't anything like what I felt at the other new comic book store I went to this year, Superhero Creamery at the Huntington Mall. Although technically small, I felt as if there was way more to explore. Part of it might be that this probably would have been the comic book store I would have gone to while at the University of Kentucky, if my plans hadn't been derailed at the last minute. Sure, it might not have been at the same location at that time, but it would still be the closest one to campus, I think.  I'm still filled with joy, almost a week later.

    The rest of the trip had no big surprises. There were the same work areas and emergency vehicles going out of town, but not problems.  I stopped in Stanton for food and fuel. The Parkway was the same going back. A quick stop in Prestonsburg for groceries, and it was home. The worst of the rain held off until just before home, but I still got back only a little later than if I had gone to work instead. Although I only got a few things, the stop for comic books made my day.

No Chance for Redeeming

    I was never into loyalty programs.  I didn't like the idea of carrying extra cards and such just to get a little extra off of a purchase.  Also, I didn't go to many of the places with such rewards that often back then.  No more than two or three times per year. The store that I went to the most did such discounts automatically, without the need for anything else. I left the cards for my mother who doesn't mind carrying extra junk. Besides, many companies were going to online models.  Since I didn't have a computer or phone back then, I was out of luck anyway.

    Then, a few years ago, I heard a news article about how a company whose products I like, who shall remain nameless, were giving members of their loyalty program a special birthday-themed product on  the member's birthday.  At least that is what I understood them to say. I really wanted that, but I wasn't into loyalty programs. Some time later, I realized that I now had a computer, and I had access to a smartphone. (I would get my own soon after this.) I really wanted that birthday product, so I finally joined. I admit, I had some problems that included having to reset my password shortly after I signed up, but I felt it was worth it to get that special product.

    When my birthday came around a few weeks later, I got an email with extra points to go on my account. That was all. Apparently, that special product was a one-time deal for the company's birthday, or maybe just for that one year.  Who knows? All I know is that I didn't get a special gift. I did however start racking up points. It was a hassle to remember to save my receipts, take pictures of them, and send them in to redeem my points. I would have to send a few multiple times as I clipped a vital part out. I forgot a few times.  Just earlier this month, I had to scramble through a stack of receipts to find my most recent one, only to find it in a bag where I had put it so I wouldn't forget it. I then preceded to forgot for a few days to submit the photo. At least I had finally crossed the 500 point mark with that receipt.  Finally, it was time to redeem.

    See, after all the years I had been doing this, I never once redeemed any of my points. While there were plenty of deals involving low amounts of points, such as coupons or free products, the good stuff required hundreds of, if not over a thousand, points to redeem. Even if I had the points, they were be sold out when I opened the notification email. People must have been grabbing them up the second they showed up. I guess it pays to check your email more than two or three times a day. Anyway, I decided to hoard my points, instead of trying for useless gifts such as movie or gas discounts.

    This Monday, I got an email announcing the discontinuation of the loyalty program, just one week before my next birthday. Receipts would be accepted for a few more weeks. Already purchased merch would still be shipped out. Any points not spent would be lost, and no new programs were planned. I quickly logged in to see the last rewards that would be posted, thinking that a few really great ones would be offered at the end. I was wrong. There were only four rewards, with the discount coupon for athletic wear from a partner had already sold out. Only three rewards were still available, and none of them would be sold out: digital wallpaper, an entry for a contest that I was barely eligible for and might not even need by the time it was awarded, and behind-the-scenes footage from a promotional movie that made a few years ago that I never watched. 

    Unless something is added as a bonus for the holidays, I will be forced to download the wallpaper just so I can say I got something from the program. I probably will never install it, as I don't want to mess up my already glitchy computer with anything else. What's worse? I can only get each reward once, and the wallpaper only costs five points. I could have literally bought it at any time, and it wouldn't have affected my score too much.

    It's the story of my life. Every time I get an opportunity for something, I wind up not getting it, only to regret it ever after. I either don't realize the chance when I first receive it, or I don't think it is the right time, or I don't think I am good/ready enough yet, or someone convinces me that I should wait.  This loyalty program is just another one to add to the list.