Time to officially say this blog is closed to new posts....the generalist blog is passing into history and my blogging is doing more or less the same. I am still over at Eyelets In The Seams which is just a somewhat lazily done chronicle of whatever I want in the realm of sewing and quilting.  Bye now!

Jet Blue rocks!

Jet Blue. What can I say? I finally tried it for myself after a dozen trips out West. Everything they do is different from every other airline in the way they do it. No huge metal rolling elbow crusher down the aisle....they deliver drinks and snacks with trays and bags. They take your drink preference and bring it to you. No loud, assertive announcing, no pushing around the passengers, no boarding the planes in a hoard. They loaded consistently from back to front  with the exception of the front row "More Leg Room" spaces for which you pay more - only about 20-30 more!  Boarding from back to front JUST MAKES SENSE. The inflight television offers a nice set of channels and the snacks are better than Delta's - that's for sure.  Now, the most important thing overall is the difference in the ambiance of the entire experience. Each and every employee in all three airports I visited on my trips - Burlington, Vermont, New York, NY, and Seattle, WA, was polite and spole always in a moderate tone. No loud yelling, no brisk treatment of the passengers. Seemingly calm at every moment, the Jet Blue employees were considerate and kind. This ambiance of calm permeated through the gates, the plane and the passengers, which just rolled along into an entire calm surround. I really think that other airlines should send at least one or two of the higher managers on a trip on Jet Blue to see how you do it - Delta is only my example since I have flown Delta and Northwest before that so much, but all other airlines I have flown have been more or less the same, except Jet Blue. I can only put down the difference to a different philosophy of customer service that must flow down from the top and spread as it goes. Whatever goes on there, I applaud it and look forward to my next flight on Jet Blue.

Chabon Returns on Vinyl plus eBook Excitement...

Lookie here! Another Michael Chabon novel! This is really the best news since chewing gum. And somehow I missed that it was being published this week, and then it hit my desk for cataloging. What a terrific week! Of course I zipped on over to B&N to buy me one. So I can wait until maybe October to read this, as I am sure it will be a long wait for another. Having finished Maps and Legends, I did need another fix. Chabon is, without a doubt, the best wordcrafter in the English language today. At the same time as the release of Telegraph Avenue, several publishers settled with the government about eBook pricing. Now that is a milestone, and I hope the government keeps pushing for fairness in the eBook market, as anything over $9.99 is really gouging. I am thinking of an eBook purchase as well because the price is at the good price point of $9.99 for this book already! The problem is that AMAZON can almost corner the market on pricing, and I hope Barnes and Noble will be able to take the heat. Barnes & Noble is my choice since I have the NOOK.

Ukulele NOOK and progress that isn't...

A few random subjects have come up that probably rate mentioning here, since I am still retaining a vestige of interest in blogging! To update my NOOK usage, the device is doing a good job, and doing a good job of accumulating more eBooks. The advantage of the Simple Touch is its one function. I read with it. No back lighting is different from my previous readers, but I got used to it fast. Buying is easy, too easy, and archiving and arranging the books is effortless. And what brought me back to the blog is that friend is beginning a new blog, and she wants to use WordPress. I went on over and got a blog name and played a bit. What's the deal with that? I don't see any advantage to WP over Blogger at all, and in fact for the price (FREE) Blogger offers so much more tweakability. I thought I would change the font on the WP blog, only to find out that that is one more thing you cannot really do unless you pay or use some convoluted coding.  SO here I am using the new Blogger interface since I tried it and cannot see how to get back to the old creation interface. New things for new times. Not necessarily better things for better times though.  You wonder why the ukulele and the dashboard dolls, eh? Back last July I got ukulele fever, and bought a pretty pineapple Luna ukulele. It's a stress relieving fun pastime. I recommend it to all. Read more here at the other blog.

NOOK the new...

Well, I finally got another eReader. The Barnes & Noble NOOK the all-new better contrast-lighter-smaller-less-expensive one. I love it. I urge you to try it. I must tell you that you NEED Wi-Fi for the registration process and to download and sync your eBooks when you buy them. I haven't explored the USB to PC yet so cannot say what functions I can do with that yet. BUT, I do like this iteration of the E Ink® technology. I like the price of this unit, and although my ZIRE is still operational and no problems have arisen, the pdb format is sadly left behind, and the NOOK supports epub. Books are quick and easy to purchase on Barnes & Noble once you register your product with your account. In fact, they are too easy to buy! They download extremely fast. I was told they download faster than a friend's Kindle, but I haven't first hand knowledge of that. I have been using the desktop software for both PC and Mac for both NOOK and Kindle now for some time. They are both good products but NOOK really outshines Kindle in my book. Both will sync your reading to either the desktops or the devices as you read wherever you are on whatever you read - say I read a book on my desktop while I eat my lunch, then NOOK will sync my reading to my device later. So far the PC software for desktop doesn't sync, as the Mac desktop version is newer and has nicer features so far. Kindle's desktop software is rudimentary so far for both, but does have the handy option for reading the books with a sepia or black background instead of all that light shining into your eyes on a desktop with a white background to the book pages. White light and eInk aren't the same at all. One interesting note is that you need a book light for both the Kindle and the NOOK because they aren't backlit. Of course the NOOK color is but it is a whole different animal and not in this post. It's an Android Pad and not really a dedicated eBook reader, so since I wanted a dedicated eBook reader, I got the NOOK.