Stupid Electronic Book Readers

I’m still annoyed at the two main e-book readers: The Amazon Kindle and Sony eReader.

The Sony one is at least available in Canada (since April – almost 2 years after it was available in the States) and the Amazon one is not, and as far as I can tell has no plans to release a Canadian version any time soon (if ever).

Unfortunately, the Kindle book prices are way lower than the eReader prices. :p I looked up a random sampling of books I’d like to get, and they averaged about $6 through Amazon for the Kindle, and about $9 through Sony for the eReader. I picked a popular book, Twilight (ugh), to see the difference. $9.89 at Sony and $6.04 at Amazon. Seriously, WTF?

For that matter, WTF is up with eBook prices that high anyway? $10 for a file? I can buy a whole paperback book for $11. :p (the price of physical books in Canada vs books in the States is a rant for another day) . If they want me to spend three or four hundred dollars on an eReader (depending on the model), why make the book downloads for it be the same price as the physical books?
Yes, I get that it’s convenient to carry around several* books at a time, but it’s just as convenient to simply carry around one or two paperbacks that you’re currently reading. I don’t see that as being $300 worth of convenience.

And yet, I still want one. I just can’t get one, because it’s way too much money, and waiting for weeks for books to come in to my local library is free. :p

*= they can carry hundreds of files, but seriously how many books do you have on the go at the same time? If it’s more than 100, you probably have invented a better solution than a simple eReader.

LJ Test Post

This is a test post to test a new plugin to see if I can crosspost some of my stuff here to my LJ, rather than having to log in to both accounts and copy/paste the posts I want to appear in both.

I don’t know if it’ll work at all, since I have the privacy settings on WordPress here.

Grumble Grumble

Well, I voted, but it didn’t really have the desired result.

The Conservatives seem to be headed toward another minority government. Good job, guys, way to spend money on an election (and get all our hopes up) to have the same lame result as before.

They did manage to increase their minority, but it’s still a minority government, so there will be another election before too long.

One of these years, we’re actually going to elect a leader I can be proud of again.

Well Enough to go to Work… Damn.

I’m well enough to go to work today, it seems. My fever broke, the chills and disorientation are gone. All that’s left is the gross phlegm and cough, and hopefully the NeoCitrin will take care of that long enough for me to do my job and get back home. Woo?

I also need to reiterate how much I love XKCD:

Remember C-61 tonight when you vote, fellow Canucks!

Yet Another Election

http://anthemchallenge.cbc.ca/

I had forgotten all about Hockey Night in Canada losing it’s theme song a while back. Now the voting for the replacement has narrowed it down to two. I can’t really decide which one I like better, but I think it’s #1.

Votes close at 11:59 tonight, and then we’ll find out tomorrow which ones will be the new Hockey Night in Canada song.

It’ll be really weird to hear another song during that time. And I don’t even watch hockey!