Cat

I think the weight of all that snow on top of your internet cable is slowing those 0's and 1's down.

Already anticipating the next and we're still dealing with the last. The storm dropped about 25 inches of the heavy wet stuff starting Friday night knocking out the power. We have been huddled around kerosene heaters and oil lamps.

The only silver lining in all of this is that my power has stayed on [knock on wood]. I have a gas fireplace that can put out some heat, but no where near enough to cope with the low temps we've been having. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fear of power loss, by this point I'd just throw my hands up and say, "Bring it on! What's another 20 inches?!" Oh and then there's the fear of my roof caving in...

Can you say... 10-20 more inches tomorrow?? I can't. I'm in severe denial.

Not sure how I feel about having fudgies (urban dictionary, the first definition not the other two ) all year round.

I'm *really* glad you clarified that!

Please tell me I don't have to move to Michigan to get away from the snow

Michigan is my very favoritest State -- in the summer. Winter's starting to look good too, now...

I measured about 25" in our front yard.

Lucky you with the snow removal. We rely on VDOT for our streets. I don't think we'll see a plow for a couple days at least.

Our little community (87 townhouses) spent over $12,000 on the last big storm. This one's dumped about 30% more snow on us and it's considerably heavier. I'm not looking forward to the bill...

Neither am I looking forward to the 6-12" forecast for the next storm coming tues/weds. If I can ever dig out, I'm moving south.

We have one more shoveling to go, and I'm not sure where we'll put the snow.

My community hired a front-end loader to haul it all away.

Well, I think it's over. I'm declaring it over, anyway. Total snow accumulation: 32 inches

Anyone who wishes they had some of it is welcome to drive a snowplow / dumptruck over here and take as much as you want!

...and we got nothing!

I know, I have a friend who lives in Ann Arbor who keeps moaning about it, too.

The view out my back balcony. That's 29" of snow on the top of that table, folks. And it's still coming down...

Ours didn't really start to stick until mid afternoon. Sticking pretty well now though.

Ditto. Got 6-9" right now. It's supposed to *really* start snowing in an hour or so. Along with sleet/freezing rain...

Here's what they're telling us to expect:

* ACCUMULATIONS...STORM TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS OF 16 TO 24 INCHES.

5:45 pm EST, Fri., Feb. 5, 2010

* ACCUMULATIONS... WIDESPREAD STORM TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS OF 20 TO 30 INCHES... WITH SOME LOCATIONS IN EXCESS OF 30 INCHES.

snow snow snow snow snow snow snow........

please, just don't let my internet connection go down...

Please please please send some of it this way! We've had a mid-Atlantic winter here and I'm sick of it!

If I had a nickel for every snow-deprived person who's said that to me, I'd be able to afford a plane ticket to a tropical island right now.

Perhaps its my Canadian roots, but I'm loving it!

One of my cow-orkers is from Chicago and she's loving it, too.

Blech.

I've actually posted a couple LV-related answers to questions so it's time for some fluff. Or a lot of fluff, as the case may be. The current weather forcast has another 1 to 2 FEET of snow heading my way. This is after it snowed wednesday, snowed last weekend, had a freakin' blizzard with 2 FEET of snow in December, snow snow snow snow and more snow.

ARGH!! I'M TIRED OF IT!!

ahem... sorry...

It's not supposed to do that here in the Mid-Atlantic. Winter is supposed to be 40 degrees and raining for 3 months. An occasional 2-4" of snow once or twice in the season. That's it. Once every 5 or 6 years we might have 1 real snow storm, but over and over the whole winter??

Thanks god for Global Warming, or we'd be in real trouble! (that was for you, Paul )

Two possible options:

1) Delete the file before you replace it

2) Break into "Write Characters to File.vi" and write your own version where "General Error Handler.vi" has "no dialog" as the "type of dialog" input.

Exactly, if the publisher decides to sell their book cheaper on Amazon and get 70% of the sale, you may not get any more than you are getting already,

I'll let you know if the 70% really happens. FWIW, my step-dad is now getting a comparable percentage to the $3.15/$8.99 mentioned in the article.

Not sure if anyone has seen this but it looks like soon some books will be available cheaper on Amazon than any other medium.

Thanks for the link! My step-dad has written a book that Amazon sells for the Kindle. He'll be glad to know his royalties will be going up (from about $20/year to $60/year ).

Take a look at this thread:

http://lavag.org/topic/10400-queue-memory-management/

Your application is a little different since you are releasing your queue afterwards, but hopefully this will help you figure out what will work for you.

Cat

Do a google search on "1easyio.llb". Here are a few results from the NI forum

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&thread.id=168874&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=250&thread.id=42191

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=140&thread.id=32656

I know, I know, I'm sorry, but you can't say I didn't warn you!

True!

I apologise in advance for this, but it's something I saw a couple of years ago, and we're all thinking it:

Oh, gawd! It's a really good thing I couldn't access that at work!

Watch out for Mr. Bookman

Urp!

I'd return it, if my elementary school hadn't been turned into a bank decades ago.

I am a big library fan. Free books!

My problem with the library is a basic belief that once a book is in my house, it's *mine*. So I avoid libraries. I have a copy of The Martian Chronicals I checked out in grade school...

Somebody was telling you you can get books from the library on your e-reader. Is that true?

Instead of plugging into the books available from Amazon could you plug into the Library of Congress for example, and check out books instead of buying them?

The Barnes & Noble Nook has some limited capability to connect to some libraries. As I said in one of my long, numerous posts, the Nook is a Really Good Idea that's not quite there yet.

You can get thousands of books for free for the Kindle from Amazon. Thousands more for 99 cents. There are other resources you can connect to for free books, like Project Gutenburg, that I haven't had a chance to explore yet.

So many books! So little time...

There are some things you can do with books (or rocks) you just would not concider doing with a reader.

LOL! That's very true.

I think my final statement would have to be -- don't knock it til you try it. Or until you're forced to try it for a few days. You might be surprised.

* Currently serving a life sentence.

Seriously???

AS a book collector, the tables and readers are just an expensive toy that will go the way of the phonograph

Hmm. While I don't think Real Books will ever go away, just like LPs haven't gone away, eReaders are the future. Kinda like the horseless carriage and that satellite communications magic became the future.

My 100+ year old books will still be readable when those gizmos go absolete.

The books that I really love won't last 100 years. I read them too often.

Besides which, I downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes the other day (for a whopping 99 cents). Do you really think Arthur Conan Doyle would care what format I was reading his words in? Or just be ecstatic that over 100 years later they were still being read?

And honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the Kindle becomes obsolete at some point. Part of the reason I was really torn about which variety of eReader to get was because of the whole Beta vs. VHS issue.

THe physical interaction with a real book is part of my book experinece. I can jump to the page I am after based on the crumpled pages that occured when I fell asleep with it THAT time. I can keep my finger in multiple pages and flip back and forth in an instant.

As crelf has noted, you can tag pages. And take notes that are stored on the Kindle. And, the Kindle automatically picks up at the last page read, even if you're reading multiple books at a time (something I could never handle).

Just last night I enjoyed watching Olivia (my grand daughter) sitting in a pile of books should pulled off the shelf as she flipped through the pages. Can't do that in electronic form.

And my daughter and I have been fighting over my Kindle since I made the mistake of downloading a couple books I thought she might like to it...

Obviously if you *collect* books (as well as read them), that's a different thing. Other than a handful of exceptions, I purchase books just to read them. Often over and over. I currently have over 1000 Real Books, and that's after purging about 300 of them when I moved last year (it was a very painful occasion, but if I'm not going to read it more than once, there's no point in keeping it around. There again -- I'm not a collector).

When I was going thru engineering school, I promised myself my big reward after I graduated was that I was going to start purchasing hard back versions of books by my favorite authors. After reading about 10 of them that way, I realized that hard backs are a pain. Too big, too heavy. Paperbacks were easier to read.

An eReader is even easier. More convenient. Which is the whole point, for me -- whatever makes it easiest to read.

I think that if Kindle (or whatever eBook) had a try-before-you-buy program then they'd sell a while lot more. I agree with most ppl here - I'm more of a tactile person and I shied away from such devices, but when I actually got one and used it for a while I was amazed with just how good it was.

That was exactly my experience. I ran out of books while on vay-cay last summer -- and we were out in the middle of nowhere. I borrowed my mom's Kindle (yup, no book stores for miles, but there was cell service) and was surprised that it wasn't nearly as "sterile" of an experience as I was expecting. I wasn't real keen on the contrast on the screen, tho. It was okay, but not great. But a few months ago, Kindle came out with an international version that also had better screen contrast. The rest is history...

Wow. I'm finding myself in the ironic position of feeling like I have to defend a new technology to a bunch of engineers and scientists.

I didn't spend a lot of time with them, but I looked at the Sony and nook readers just before Christmas. The nook seemed like the nicer unit to me, but I didn't get to hold it; there was a big crowd gathered around a sales person demonstrating the features.

I held off on my purchase until I could get a Nook in my hands. It was okay, but more of a concept thing. The little color interface box didn't seem quite ready for prime time, yet, and the software for the whole thing was definitely in Rev 0 mode.

To me, these devices are a solution looking for a problem. The only 'problem' they seem to solve is that of the distribution of wealth.

The problem they solve for me is not having to lug multiple books around when I'm travelling. Or pay exorbitant prices at the airport book store. Also, there is a lot to be said for the instant gratification of finishing one book of a trilogy, and being able to purchase the next one without even having to move one's butt off the couch. Saves on gas $$ and puts less wear and tear on my death-trap of a Toyota.

According to reports, the publishers give up 30% of the price, but have no printing, inventory or distribution overhead; just marketing and editing prior to release. The publishers will make more because they certainly paid more than 30% in production costs. Lets say for the sake of argument that it is 50% (probably low).

Probably high. You need to take 30-50% off the top of the retail price for what the bookstore gets to sell the book.

The 50% that used to be distributed amongst loggers, paper mills, printers, trucking companies and book stores provided income that was in turn used to pay mortgages; to buy cars, groceries and books . A free economy is like a well architected LabVIEW application; it depends upon flow.

Do you object to industries using robots instead of assembly line workers??

The 30% redirected to the new business model seemingly goes to support the infrastructure to distribute the books. This is false because as a user you must pay subscription fees for access (cellular, broadband, etc...).

Nope, you only pay for the eReader. No subscription fees.

On to the next apologia...

From a technology standpoint I agree they are very cool and it's nice to finally get a viable form of electronic ink that doesn't cause eye strain.

I had a days worth of nirvana a couple weeks ago. My daughter and SO were both gone and I did nothing but read all day long. Went thru 4 books over the course of about 15 hours. Only got up off the couch to attend to personal needs and (of course) feed the cats. Someone asked me later how my eyes could stand that. I realized that there had been no eye strain at all for the whole time. Something that is a definite problem for me after 4 or 5 hours of Real Book reading.

I'm not inclined to buy ebooks that require a $200+ electronic device in order to use. (I don't buy online music that I can't burn to cd either.)

I hear ya. I'm not saying that it's not a luxury item. However, reading is one of my greatest pleasures, and the Kindle makes it easier.

Cat, do you use it primarily for leisure reading or work-related documents?

All leisure. I've got the regular Kindle, not the big one that is better for text books.

I haven't seen a lot of ebooks, but I was amazed by both the Kindle and the Panasonic readers - the screens are amazing.

As an avid reader, I wasn't very keen on the concept of an eReader. After much resistance (and borrowing eReaders from friends), I finally drank the kool-aid... My Kindle is now an essential part of my electronic gear. Especially when I'm travelling a lot.

The worst part about the Kindle?? It's having to continually reminding myself that, yes, I am actually paying for all those books, even if I don't have to go to a store or whip out my credit card to buy them.