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First up is free science fiction books! Well, not really books per-se, but Tor, the science fiction division of McMillan publishers, is giving away free legal e-books for signing up to their mailing list. It's pretty-much a no-brainer. You fill out your info in the form, and every friday they send you an email with links to a new e-book from their catalog. And they're not in any weird DRM-locked formats either. You get links to PDF, HTML, and Mobi format books. This week's book is Four and Twenty Blackbirds, which I recently got on paperbackswap for Shelly.
It'd probably be worth it to head over to ebay and buy an old model PDA or PalmPilot or PocketPC to use as an e-reader. Ebay routinely sells those little Palm Zire organizers for under $50, and those would work fine, although you might wanna spring for a PocketPC just for the higher resolution screen.
Or if you got the big bucks, get one of those Amazon readers. They just came back into stock. Although it's gonna take a lot of reading to cost-justify a $400 gizmo.
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And speaking of free books, my next freebie is old and obvious. The public library. For the low price of free, your local public library has enough books and videos to keep you reading for the rest of your life and then some. I currently frequent the Southlake library (because I'm a resident and it's free) and the Grapevine library ($25 a year but much bigger than Southlake). The Southlake library features free inter-library loan, which means that if I can find a book at damn near any library in the country (searchable at worldcat.org), they can get it for me.
And don't be bashful about requesting that they buy a new book. Shelly often does that with the Southlake library and they're pretty good about buying 'em. Libraries generally work off a common list of books-that-they-should-buy, which consists of current bestsellers, classics, references, and requests from locals. And local requests tend to be at the top of the list because they know they'll be checked out.
Also check out your library's online presence. Both of our libraries have an RSS feed of new books so you don't even need to go to the library to see what's new.
Apart from comics and kids' books, I haven't bought a book in quite a while. There's just no point.
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The third freebie is the best. Free money!
Yep, again it's one of those well-funded startups that is trying to bootstrap itself by handing out free money to everyone who signs up. This one is MoneyExchange, and it's a paypal knockoff. And you know the drill. You sign up, $25 appears in your account, and once your account is verified you can then transfer the cash out or use to purchase things from anyone who accepts MoneyExchange currency.
Which is. . .umm. . .well nobody.
So just transfer the $25 out and keep it.
And it's legit. It's backed by a couple of large banks. Not sure what those large banks were thinking when they decided they could unseat Paypal, but hey. If they wanna give me $25 for the effort, it's fine with me.
Here's the link below. I get a couple of extra bucks for referring you, so use that button to sign up, get $25 free, and spend it on loose living.
Finally, Shelly's computer is now officially built. Apart from the 32-in-one card reader thingy that had a hundred wires coming from it and was just a mite too difficult to figure out all the connections, it went pretty smoothly. I'm now the proud owner of a four-processor 8-gig 64-bit monstrosity with 8 USB ports.
Biggest problem I see now regards running our ancient (at least according to HP) inkjet plotter. According to them, the Designjet 450c is just too goldurned old, and there will not be any 64-bit drivers made for it. I did find a Spanish company that makes a universal plotter driver that they claim will drive it from any OS, 32 or 64-bit. If I can't find a better solution, I'll likely be opening up my wallet and getting that.
Other problem came in with the case. After the PR-guy offered me the case, I didn't hear from him again. Having been in the review business for a while, I knew the drill. Happens all the time. People promise you something, and you never actually see it. After a couple of weeks, I assumed that the case wouldn't be forthcoming, so I went down to Fry's and bought a rather tasteful boring rectangular Antec case with power supply.
Murphy's law taking hold, the big monstrosity multi-fan case arrived the next day. And since I am not really into the idea of re-wrestling the motherboard into another case, I'll need to find a new project for it. Don't worry, though. The case will get itself reviewed, even if I gotta build a four-processor beast for myself :)
