Buy my books!

So, I went to Wonder Book and Video to sell the 206 books I wanted to get rid of. The buyer guy wanted to give me $10 for the lot! Grrr. Considering I had done my research to find out the lowest used book price for each title, this irked me.

I had gone to Amazon and looked at the used book listings for each title--for each one, I checked the lowest price (not including the ones selling for only $0.01) for the condition my book was in. I added all of those prices up, and got a little over $360, which was only about $51 more than my original estimate for all 206 books.

Since Wonder Book was only going to give me 1/36 of the money my books were worth, I decided to sell my books online at iOffer. So, if you want to see what books I'm selling (and maybe even buy some), just go to the top link at the right of my blog.

Amazon Kindle

One of my bosses bought an Amazon Kindle. I had never even heard of them until last week, and even then I didn't know what it was until Gabe (the guy I share my office with) was setting up the one my boss bought. Turns out, they're back-ordered until like, February right now.

I got to hold Willem's (my boss) Kindle for a little bit, check out the features and stuff. It's pretty nice, and the screen doesn't strain your eyes. But the cost! Oh, my goodness, the cost!

Just the reader itself is $400! Then, you have to pay about $10 for every book you put on the Kindle from the Kindle store. You'd think, if they were making you pay so much just for the technology, they'd at least let you pick out 20 (better 100) books from the Kindle store for free! Not to mention, regular e-books usually don't cost more than 1/5th of that!

Some people have figured out how to put other e-books and PDF files onto their Kindles, and you can e-mail text files to the Kindle too, but still.

I do like the fact that you can get magazine and newspaper subscriptions on the Kindle though--not that I actually subscribe to anything except the TVGuide. I don't subscribe, because that means I have to take time out of reading books and fanfic to read the magazine/newspaper/whatever. And some months/days/weeks, I just don't want to put the book down, or I just want to get through the fanfic, y'know? But if I had a Kindle, they'd all be on the same thing, and I could just switch between them if one couldn't hold my interest for long.

Overall, the Kindle is awesome, but I will have to wait until the price--both for the reader itself, and for the content--comes down to my price range.

First Snow of the Season

For the first time in years, it's actually snowing before Christmas. I can't remember the last time that happened. Yesterday, they said that the meteorologist called for 2-4 inches today.

When I left for work this morning, it was coming down, sort of flurry-like, but there was a lot of it in the air. It had just barely begun to stick. I checked on it again before lunch, and there was at least 3/4 of an inch on the ground outside the basement office.

Just checked again--there are about two inches.

I'm going to have to shovel the walks when I get home today, or else I won't be able to move the car when I have to go to work. I can't afford to take snow days off right now, since I was just out sick for two days last week, and I didn't even have enough paid time off saved for that.

Last weekend, Anna and Jason came over and helped us decorate for Christmas. We got the tree set up, plus a few things we put in the cubby over the fireplace. Anna also set up the stockings, I think.