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I did finish reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons.  It's a very readable book but without spoiling anything, Hyperion just seems to be an intro - sorta like The Hobbit , there are three more books in the series.  I did put a hold on the next book, The Fall Of Hyperion but who knows how long it will take before it is available. My Dad always hated this kind of thing, especially on TV, he'd use the phrase "soap opera" as a sort of epithet.  I guess Hyperion would qualify as a space opera :) BTW, I have no idea why I reserved Hyperion in the first place, must have been something from the internet ?   Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I think the only reason why I've read some fiction is because it was referenced in another work of fiction.  For example, as mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/08/braves-yankees-1957-world-serious-game-1.html the only reason why I read the book: You Know Me Al is that the author, Ring Lardner, was mentioned by Holden Caulfield in Catcher In The Rye . Another was the book: Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.  I saw that referenced in the Heinlein juvenile SF novel: Have Space Suit - Will Travel .  Of course that title was derived from the TV / Radio show: Have Gun - Will Travel   :)  mentioned previously: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/08/hvac-comfortable-rate-of-cooling.html Those are the only two that come to mind - although a lot of the juvenile series books like The Hardy Boys will reference other books in the series, but that's not quite the same thing. I started reading a book called Hyperion (soon to be a motion picture ?  :) ...

 I took a required engineering design class in college - one thing they gave us was a deck of cards (about the size of the chance cards in Monopoly ).  The cards provided suggestions on designing a product - I remember one of those cards said something like:  Make it smaller - that is what Xteink did with their e-readers: about the size of a credit card I saw the Xteink X3 mini ebook reader reviewed in The Atlantic : https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/09/xteink-e-reader-best-technology-years/688539/ the Xteink X3 page:     https://www.xteink.com/products/xteink-x3 Incidentally I have actually read the book mentioned in The Atlantic  review, The Power Broker - in hardcover - I have it around here somewhere, I remember the cover picture of Robert Moses standing on a beam: from the 1930s to the 1960s Robert Moses was hot stuff in New York The Power Broker is a really interesting book.  But I always wondered: how did author Caro know that R...

It's the end of the tourist season on the island -so I was surprised to find out that a local store owner was interested in buying books.  I got in touch by email and was able to deliver and get immediate payment for a very nice wholesale order of books, nice ! AND coincidentally I got an email question from a customer on whether I accepted credit cards for book purchases and was able to refer the buyer to the local island store, Fair Isle: https://www.fairisleshop.com/ So if anyone is interested in books with electronic payment (no kits) please contact Fair Isle. And if ordering with check or cash by USPS is still OK, please see the Jackson Harbor Press books page: http://wb9kzy.com/books.htm Thank You   and  Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I found this clipping looking for a place to stash a book of matches - it was in a music box: Not sure of the source, probably just filler from a book catalog ? (the back is a blurb for a book called: Lost Gardens of England).  Now that I think about it, there is a bookseller, Bas Bleu (blue-stocking) that used to send this kind of newsprint type catalog: https://www.basbleu.com But I can't really check, the site won't let me in :(  must be the VPN or ?? Answering my own question about the clipping, it was apparently from this book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737216/brit-think-ameri-think-by-jane-walmsley/ Here's an updated page of the terms: Maybe the newsprint clipping was an earlier version of the book ?  Anyway I thought it was funny. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Yes, I sometimes follow the way of the weasel.  But no, not the right wing racist path of Scott Adams (who knew ?):    I got a request to print 30 (or more) poetry booklets for a local museum.  They haven't asked for anything in almost 2 years so I figured they had made other arrangements. I was wrong. I wrote back that my printer seems to be on it's last legs (true although a new, expensive toner cartridge would help) and that the computer I use for printing might not power up (hadn't been used in almost 2 years).  So I said I wasn't interested. Then the request came for the booklet files so I tried booting up the computer - it did "work" although there was an error I had never seen before.  Even in the past when I did do the printing there were problems that I wasn't able to fix.  I was able to scrape the files off after finding an old USB 2.0 SD card reader and getting it to work (for some reason one of my old 2GB SD cards only works in the Kodak CX...