Useless Conversation

[Sky]

I'm about to weed my books pretty hardcore...going to need the shelfspace for minis!

[ghost]

Sounds like you just need more shelf space.  And from knowing what you've kickstarted, you're going to probably need more shelf space regardless. 

[Paelos]

I think he needs to build a mini shed. He's got access to lumber.

[Yoru]

I used to buy a ton of books, particularly hardbacks. Then I switched nations once and left three-quarters of my book collection in a storage shed somewhere in the southern California desert. Most of my real prizes are in there: a nice hardbound suite of the full works of Nietzsche, hardback "library" editions of the LOTR trilogy (printed pre-films so they don't have the stupid SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE banner on them), and hardbacks of everything Neil Stephenson wrote up to Anathem.

They're still there, waiting for the day when I come to pick them up and ship them to whereever I've moved. Given that it would cost roughly $5000, and I generally have much more pressing needs for $5000, that day is a ways off.

Then I switched nations a second time and ended up giving away three-quarters of the books I'd bought in the interval, paying a large amount to ship my favorites (more Stephenson hardbacks, some Roosevelt biographies, a hardbound box set of the Feynman lectures) to my new new country.

Now that I'm preparing to switch nations a third time, I've bought a Kindle and resigned myself to purchasing anything that I don't REALLY want to keep FOR EVER FOR REALS in electronic format. Even then, I find myself planning to buy hardbacks of some of the stuff I've bought and read on the Kindle for my new new new place.

My name is Yoru and I am a hardbackaholic.

Edit: Does anyone have a good formula to keep mosquito bites from itching? I proposed dousing this lousy, humid island knee-deep in DDT but people seem averse to the idea.

[Signe]

Ammonia! 

[Salamok]

Edit: Does anyone have a good formula to keep mosquito bites from itching? I proposed dousing this lousy, humid island knee-deep in DDT but people seem averse to the idea.

Try this and report back please (if you don't die of west nile or something that is).

[ghost]

I used to buy a ton of books, particularly hardbacks. Then I switched nations once and left three-quarters of my book collection in a storage shed somewhere in the southern California desert. Most of my real prizes are in there: a nice hardbound suite of the full works of Nietzsche, hardback "library" editions of the LOTR trilogy (printed pre-films so they don't have the stupid SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE banner on them), and hardbacks of everything Neil Stephenson wrote up to Anathem.

They're still there, waiting for the day when I come to pick them up and ship them to whereever I've moved. Given that it would cost roughly $5000, and I generally have much more pressing needs for $5000, that day is a ways off.

Then I switched nations a second time and ended up giving away three-quarters of the books I'd bought in the interval, paying a large amount to ship my favorites (more Stephenson hardbacks, some Roosevelt biographies, a hardbound box set of the Feynman lectures) to my new new country.

Now that I'm preparing to switch nations a third time, I've bought a Kindle and resigned myself to purchasing anything that I don't REALLY want to keep FOR EVER FOR REALS in electronic format. Even then, I find myself planning to buy hardbacks of some of the stuff I've bought and read on the Kindle for my new new new place.

My name is Yoru and I am a hardbackaholic.

Edit: Does anyone have a good formula to keep mosquito bites from itching? I proposed dousing this lousy, humid island knee-deep in DDT but people seem averse to the idea.

OTC steroid cream? 

[Yoru]

Try this and report back please (if you don't die of west nile or something that is).

Therapik delivers orders to the United States and Canada.

EU, dude. No dice.

OTC steroid cream? 

I'll have to go find out if it's actually OTC here. If it is, I'm going to be Arnie by the time bug season is over.

[ghost]

I'll have to go find out if it's actually OTC here. If it is, I'm going to be Arnie by the time bug season is over.

Where are you?  It would seem odd for something to be OTC in the US and not other places.  We're pretty restrictive on our medicines. 

[Reg]

Canada definitely has over the counter steroid cream but we also have aspirin and Tylenol pills containing small amounts of codeine that are unavailable in the US.

[Yoru]

I'll have to go find out if it's actually OTC here. If it is, I'm going to be Arnie by the time bug season is over.

Where are you?  It would seem odd for something to be OTC in the US and not other places.  We're pretty restrictive on our medicines. 

Malta. So even if I can't get it OTC, 20eur will serve as a prescription.

[ghost]

Well that's a super shitty place to be.  I don't know how you can stand it.   

I'd at least try to dig up some steroid cream.  It probably won't help.  I suspect that for serious itching an oral antihistamine will be necessary. 

[Yegolev]

Baby's name is Quinn, apparently. Quinn Elizabeth. I cannot, CANNOT read her name without thinking of Queen Elizabeth.

You just summed up her school career.

[Yegolev]

Fuck HP and their anti cartridge refill bullshit. 

Do you need a corp discount?

[Soln]

I know some people who view books purely as ornamental.  A kind of furniture.  I sort of believe this is what books are to a lot of people -- trophies they show off once they've claimed to have read/imbibed them. 

To me they are essential.  I will take one day my Dad's library, and my son will inherit mine and my wife's.  Having access to knowledge and entertainment and culture (see what I did there?) is vital to me. 

 

[Yegolev]

When Disney followed Phineas and Ferb with things like Fish Hooks and Gravity Falls, I felt we had entered a new age of family entertainment.  Now I see a bumper for a show about a talking dog with a blog.

Gravity Falls is pretty awesome.

[Ingmar]

When Disney followed Phineas and Ferb with things like Fish Hooks and Gravity Falls, I felt we had entered a new age of family entertainment.  Now I see a bumper for a show about a talking dog with a blog.

Gravity Falls is pretty awesome.

[Evildrider]

To me they are essential.  I will take one day my Dad's library, and my son will inherit mine and my wife's.  Having access to knowledge and entertainment and culture (see what I did there?) is vital to me. 

One of the things I dread is having to move and taking all my books. 

[Selby]

I was going to comment "why not just donate old books to the used book store?"  Then I thought about it and realized that it has been 14 years since I left home and stopped going to mine (which was in an ancient dress shop and beauty shop with mountains of books everywhere).  I checked to see that the nice lady in charge is still running it after all these years, but she's the only "not Barnes & Nobles" book store in town now and while isn't struggling, isn't exactly doing great either.  So I guess used book stores are a thing of the past now with e-readers and whatnot, but I still love combing through shelves of old books and different editions looking for something out of print or interesting.  Spending hours at that store with my mom growing up instilled a love of reading that most kids never would have gotten otherwise.

[JWIV]

Fuck HP and their anti cartridge refill bullshit.  

Do you need a corp discount?

I just need to not be up at midnight trying to print out a stupid family photo for my daughter's preschool and having to argue with inanimate machinery that's  decided that it doesn't like a cartridge that had been refilled because of shitty contacts. 

I appreciate the offer though.

[Ingmar]

There's a great used book store near me which at least seems on the surface to be doing fine, given they've been able to maintain a massive storefront in a pretty expensive area (Castro Street in Mt. View) for years. Definitely worth a visit if people are ever in the area.

https://www.bookbuyers.com/isc/

(Obviously they cut budget corners on web design.)

[Abagadro]

I used to be really into buying and keeping books but for some reason just tired of the entire thing. Now I get nearly all my books from the library (save maybe 4 authors I will buy their book upon release) and at one point donated 15 boxes of books to the library.  I have a few bookshelves of my "keepers" and a few piles lying around in various nooks that I just haven't bothered to do anything with, but as a rule I don't accumulate books any more. The turning point for me might have been when I had to clean out two houses in relatively short order of massive book collectors who had died (one I was related to, one was just a client whose estate I was overseeing). In both cases the books were for the most part moldy and smelly and pretty much unusable. Seemed like a waste that they just hung around on the shelf deteriorating for 40 years and then ended up in the landfill as a health hazard.  The thought of them circulating around to multiple readers made more sense to me.

[Cyrrex]

I'll have to go find out if it's actually OTC here. If it is, I'm going to be Arnie by the time bug season is over.

Where are you?  It would seem odd for something to be OTC in the US and not other places.  We're pretty restrictive on our medicines. 

Wait, what?  I know you are technically a medical professional and I shouldn't be arguing this with you, but there is no way this can be true. Maybe you are making a distinction about the strict definition of OTC, but not only would I bet that more OTC drugs are available in the US then practically everywhere else in the first world, but the FDA is also approving FAR more drugs for public use in general.  You have prescription and OTC medication for conditions that most of the rest of the planet hasn't even heard of. 

The US is not restrictive on its medicines.

[Ingmar]

Our reporting is constantly telling us about things that are over the counter in Europe but not available here. I have no idea which is true, but that's certainly what we hear.

[Cyrrex]

Interesting.  Well, call it anecdotal, but for example it is not possible in this country to buy cold medicine unless it is OTC, and even then it is weaker than what you can get down one of the aisles at your local Walgreens.  And some of the maximum strength stuff you get OTC (like Pseudophedrines and that sort of thing)...I am sure they technically exist here, but you can't get them easily, that is for sure.  As far as pain killers go, I am not sure I have heard of anybody taking anything stronger than what would compare to an Advil.  For lesser ailments like allergies, headaches, upset tummies, heartburn and whatnot...people generally suffer through them.  I was once laughed at for describing heartburn medicine to a local.  Nobody medicates for Droopy Cock Syndrome (which also means no commercials, thank the gods).

There may be a technical argument to be made here, but I would be one trillion internet dollars that the US - which is so ridiculously over-medicated that I can't believe it is even in question - has easier and more abundant access to medicine of all kinds by a vast margin.  At least in all the ways that count.

[ghost]

The US spends much, much more on prescription medication than the rest of the world and it is through both increased cost and number of prescriptions handed out that this increase is achieved.  And looking at the numbers of idiots running around with oxycontin pills it's clear that a prescription is not an impediment to obtaining medicine (which it sounds like you may be suggesting).  The US does, however, have a shitload of medicines that are prescription only.  OTC has not traditionally been as big of a market in Europe as in the US, but my experience back in the early 1990s in London was that you could get the same medications that you could get here in the states (an OTC steroid cream from here is pretty much useless except for minor itching).  I'm sure things have probably changed in the restrictiveness of OTC, particularly with antibiotics in Europe.  But my comment is not about Western Europe, necessarily, but more focused on places like Mexico where you can buy whatever your heart's desire OTC (or possibly by what passes for "illegal" over there right now) or even Greece and Spain where they aren't quite as rigorous as they should be with their need for an actual prescription at the pharmacy.

And....we probably ought not to have such a serious discussion here in the Useless Conversation board. 

[Cyrrex]

Fair enough, I can generally go along with that.

[rattran]

After months of piss-poor phone intarwebs travelling, I now have piss-poor att dsl where I'm at now. It feels like freedom.

[ghost]

Well this is really fucking creepy.   

[Evildrider]

Well this is really fucking creepy.   

Was Dr. Lecter involved?

[Paelos]

I suspect he owed the wrong people. I guess he was trying to live too...

High on the hog? 

[Chimpy]

God I want to kill whomever at VMware decided to use 5 different directories to put settings/snapshots in Workstation and not make it clear where those places are in the app.

Of course, if industrial/embedded systems manufacturers would update their software to work on systems newer than windows 98 that would make the hoop jumping unnecessary.

[Hammond]

Oh Chimpy boy do I feel  your pain.  At least the software you are talking about works on windows 98.  I had to install windows 3.0 last year. Then there was the dos 5.0 one last year boy was that a pain tracking down the software for.  Or the  8 pin dot matrix printer a couple months ago...  Thankfully we are phasing most of that stuff out.

[HaemishM]

Windows 3.0? For fuck's sake, WHY??

[Engels]

Even in this economy, I would probably walk out of any job interview that  intimated it wanted me to do anything in OS'es older than Win XP.