It snowed yesterday. Then, it sleeted (slet?). Finally, it rained. And the wires froze, and we lost power for a couple hours during late night/early morning hours. This morning — bright, blue, and crispy — we have power, but everything is coated in ice.
*crosses fingers for the continued flow of electricity into the Cat Farm*
News around the house has been light. Work on the taxes goes forth, slowly, as work on the taxes tends to go when performed by someone who can’t actually add.
We had some excitement issuing DMCA notices for forty-one separate titles to a new pirate site which has set itself up as a kind of subscription book club. All you have to do is give them your credit card number, they’ll charge you $15/month to download all the “free” books you can eat. Such a deal, right?
Except none of the books on offer are legitimate copies, which means the authors get no royalties.
So, anyway — this is amusing, in a black sort of way — I got a note back from these nice folks, assuring me that my titles have been removed, despite the fact that my take-down notices were “incorrectly formatted” and stating that eBookr takes the DMCA “very seriously.”
Which they obviously do.
What they clearly don’t care very much about are the rights of legitimate copyright holders. Which makes them no better nor worse than a coalition of universities, I guess, and rather more polite when found out, too.
In other news, Steve has unfortunately come down with Teh Crud. I’m hoping to dodge it, myself. I’m also hoping not to have to wear the walking boot to Boskone.
Today, I really must read Dragon Ship, which I haven’t done yet, because — see taxes, above.
Fans of Mozart and Scrabble will naturally wish to know how they weathered the long separation.
Scrabble had a rough time of it, what with supervising the cat sitter, and Mozart, too. She was very happy to see us, and immediately fell in to an exhausted stupor from which she occasionally rouses herself to take a few crunchies and a sip of water, and to assure herself that Steve and I are towing the line.
Mozart is being very clingy. Apparently a week’s separation is Too Long anymore. He began to complain to poor Mary sometime on Monday evening and continued, more or less non-stop, even after we got home on Wednesday (apparently the auto-bitch app takes a while to cycle into shutdown. I’ve actually found this myself, regarding auto-bitch — a note to developers.)
I am, alas, still behind on email. Patience, grasshopper.
And that? Is the news that’s fit to print.
How’s by you?