There is this nifty app for the Macintosh called Delicious Library that allows you to enter the books, movies and music you own into its database to help you keep track of these items. In some regards, it is similar to iTunes. You can preview items by their covers (yes, books, movies and music covers), sort them, and even search for titles to see if you already own them. If you have a lot of books and music and movies like many people do today, it is hard to remember whether you have a particular item sometimes. Delicious Library makes it easy to check in only a few seconds, instead of rummaging through shelves or stacks of stuff.

Delicious Library makes this sort of thing easy by automating the procedure. All you have to do is click to add a new media item, then enter its title or author or similar information, and Delicious Library goes right to work to pull the cover and information about every item featuring your search query. It pulls this information directly from Amazon.com. Even in its simplest use, something along the lines of what I do, to catalog my books, movies and music, Delicious Library is pretty cool.

Delicious Library is also helpful, really, for insurance purposes. To collect insurance on stolen items, you must have an inventory of those items, else you can never really know what was stolen. Delicious Library serves this purpose to help you catalog the $1000's of media and other items (even electronics!) you have accumulated over time.

Delicious Library, though, goes one better: it also allows you to publish your library to any ftp site, like this web site for example, to share your data if you like. The resulting web pages resemble the Delicious Library interface, with all the covers in your library. Truly, it is pretty slick and easy to share this information with your friends. Check out my Delicious Library >

I learned about AnthologyBuilder.com recently, and I find that I'm very excited by its prospects. I feel there is a lot of great writing being done in the world, but much of it is not receiving the audience it should. Case in point is one of my friend's book. C. Dennis Moore's Terrible Thrills has several masterful, memorable stories in it. But they will never receive the audience they deserve because its publisher, SIlver Lake Publishing, apparently has now gone out of business. I cannot find reference to it anywhere, and its web site is no longer available. I fear this means that Dennis' book will never be reprinted by the company, and so the life of its stories end when the supply runs out at Amazon.com.

How does Anthology Builder figure into this? Currently, Anthology Builder offers mainly previously published short stories in the following genres: Alternate History, Children, Classics, Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mainstream, Mystery/Crime, Romance, Science Fiction, Suspense/Thriller, and Young Adult.

One problem is that the stories available in these genres are VERY limited! There just aren't very many of them. Visitors can't choose their favorite stories because they are not in the database! That's where AnthologyBuilder can experience explosive growth: providing a means whereby readers can choose their favorite stories of all time from many sources and have them all collected in several anthologies. Heck, I think most story lovers would go for this schema!

Today, Anthology Builder serves only to allow short story authors to continue to make their stories available, after the magazine or book in which they were originally published has gone out of print. There is some advantage to this. I have several stories I too would still like to have available to the public, but after 15 years that just wasn't possible, until Anthology Builder came along.

Another problem is that the stories accepted by Anthology Builder must have appeared in paying venues previously. I don't know why this is, because there is a great deal of great writing appearing in the small literary presses (for example) that should have a wider audience, but these magazines and journals do not pay except in contributor's copies. Does this count as a paying venue? I suspect it does not. Even some of the small genre publishers don't pay very much. I think of Dennis' book mentioned above. With his publisher out of business, what kind of royalties will he now receive? I don't know. He doesn't know. And with the publisher out of business, there isn't much hope to hire an attorney, either, even if Dennis could afford to hire one.

Another problem is that the site doesn't pay nearly enough per story per anthology printed. Currently, each author in an anthology can expect about $0.15/story each time it is printed, if it is a 7000 word story. What if the story is only 1000 words? The author will get less than this. All the authors in an anthology receive a total of $1.50 to share among them. If there are 10 stories @ 7000 words each, each author gets 1/10th of this $1.50. If there are 20 stories, each author gets a similar share, or possibly $0.07. That's not very much money at all. In fact, that's little more than some venues pay per word! This pay scale, of course, makes it impossible to interest the more successful and popular authors to contribute to the site. I can't imagine Stephen King accepting 15¢ for one of his stories. Even it is were published 1000 times, that story would then only earn him $150. Can you say "welfare?" There are plenty of stories by big authors that I would pay more than $14.95 to have them in a single anthology.

The challenge for Anthology Builder is to survive its launch. It is and will be rocky! They must continue to strive for constant improvement and growth. They can't stop, let up, quit. Of course, this is true of anything that is successful.

1) They need to consider charging a fee per story, rather than per anthology. Some people are willing to pay more for a very, very favorite story than for a story that they like but it's not as favored as other stories. In this way, as the anthology is built, each anthology's price would be built by the stories selected. Perhaps the cost for a story is directly related to its popularity. If a story is a best seller, it should cost less because of the volume of its sales, as that is how it works in other markets. Volume helps reduce the cost. So an anthology might cost as little as $15 and as much as $60 or $70 I think, depending on the stories selected. If not this scheme, then another based on the cost per word perhaps. A shorter story would be less expensive than a longer story. In this way, if the reader chooses a lot of shorter stories, the cost for the anthology would be more, as there would be more authors to pay. Everyone would get their fair share. Perhaps it would be a function of BOTH popularity and length. I don't know. But something besides the flat rate should be considered, although the flat rate is a great place to start.

2) The writer's guidelines need to be revised. By all means I don't think every story ever written by every Joe in the world should be included in the Anthology Builder database, but I think every story ever published by a third party (i.e. not self-published) should be available at Anthology Builder, regardless whether it is a "professional" paying market or not. I think many friends of writers, and new acquaintances, who can't get their hands on the original publications, would be willing to consider Anthology Builder to get that 10-year-old story in book form. I know I would consider it. I think many others would, too. I think the criteria should be that the publication can be verified (anyone can say anything about a publication, even make one up); heck, even the authors could send the original publication with an SASE if it came down to it. There is a way to manage this.

3) The site in its current state is not very user-friendly. It is not a horrible site, by any means, but it doesn't do much to market its stories or anthologies. The site currently appears to be created in a Dreamweaver template (very basic), and therefore everything probably has to be custom-coded. I think it might be useful to consider taking the site into a content-management system such as Joomla! and garnering community support to pay for custom modules for the enterprise. Or a similar system that already has the under-pinnings. I think with this proposition, writers would be willing to provide donations for the cause. Perhaps donations can be accepted for each phase of the site's development. And perhaps each donation allows the donor to have one story included in the site's database for their donation. Of course, the story must still meet the criteria for acceptance, but it would be shortcut to acceptance to donate. I think many would support the site and see that their contributions are making a difference, and therefore making it possible for their stories to be purchased. It's writers helping themselves. If the site were a community effort, as it were, increased support would help get the site developed faster, rather than relying on sales alone.

4) The site should have instances that help market the stories and the anthologies already created. This means that the site should be more like the giant shopping sites like Amazon.com, etc. Each story might have a feature that "Visitors who bought this story also bought these other 4 stories," or "Stories similar to this story are," and the like. In this way, every story considered by a visitor recommends other stories, shortcuts the search process for visitors by recommending similar stories and stories purchased in groups. Of course, a best sellers list is necessary (in fact, all stories in the database should be able to be sorted by genre and popularity and rating so that if a visitor wished he could view EVERY story in the database based on any or all of these factors from the top to the bottom). A featured story(ies) feature would also be a useful tool. Just take a look at any large retail site to see the features that work for them.

5) I think a professional community of reviewers should also be developed to review each individual story. Anthology Builder currently has the option to post reviews for each story, but those reviews are not only sparse but completely inadequate and useless. For example, one review of a story reads, "This is an awesome story. Old Irish Fae Folk in South Africa. Nice storytelling and a fun read." I don't think that is very helpful for any visitor. Its sentiments can be applied to almost any story in the database. There just isn't any reason for any visitor to look further at this story based on this review. So I think it is a problem to allow every Tom, Dick and Harry to post useless reviews like this. Instead, perhaps they can rate the story, where they might still have a say that helps visitors consider the stories without having to go thru the work to write a useful persuasive review that sells the story. Though it would take a small army of reviewers to accomplish the task, we must remember that writers with work in the database have probably read the work of other authors in the database and can write reviews of other stories in the database. Something like this could be a part of the reviewer's toolbox. A list of stories that meet the writer's preferred types of stories to review. He or she can then spend an afternoon writing the review (of course, the writer must also have access to the story). Perhaps the writers who write reviews of the stories in the database also get funds for writing reviews, something like epinions.com. That would help motivate writers to review stories, I think.

6) I think it should also be made easy for writers to link to the stories at Anthology Builder so they can recommend them on their web sites, their personal blogs, etc. Links to the site would increase its search engine rankings, introduce new visitors to the site, and help encourage sales of its anthologies. Alternatively, I think writer profiles should also provide some information about the author, list his/her stories on the site, and link to his/her web site to further help increase their search engine rankings and public awareness. It's all a matter of back scratching. I think an author should also be able to list his/her favorite authors on the site which in turn links to those author profiles to once more market their work through recommendations like this.

7) Currently, the teasers for the stories at AnthologyBuilder.com are in PDF format. I think this is a poor choice, since PDFs are sometimes problematic. In Firefox, my web browser of choice, I cannot view PDFs. I must instead download them and then open them. That's clunky. I think the teasers should be in JPEG format (as an image) or a short text object. It is not clear why PDF has been chosen at this time, but it is just as easy probably to provide a text object for the teaser. Every browser on every computer in the world can then conveniently display the teaser to help make it easier to decide to purchase. That's the principal of any sale: make the path as simple, straight, uncomplicated as possible. The PDF format for the teasers is a road block. The text teasers should appear on the same page as the story information. No need for a new window or anything.

8) I think artists should also be allowed to create artwork for individual stories and make them available to be printed with their stories. That would be an awesome add-on for any anthology. If I purchased a story, and artwork was available for it, I would consider choosing artwork for it. In fact, I would probably choose artwork for it to make the book more interesting. If I had a selection of artwork available, each at a small cost, or one image included for free if available, I would certainly consider it. Such niceties help make the resulting anthology not only interesting but also noteworthy as a gift, I think. These artists could then be paid upon publication, too, each time an anthology is sold.

9) I think a similar site for poetry would also be very useful and poplar. The features could be the same in general as the fiction site, but one could choose poetry instead of short fiction. Poetry books might also make great gifts for special occasions such as births, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, and even the deaths of a loved ones, I think. A different beast with similar features.

I see great opportunity for AnthologyBuilder.com, and I hope that these ideas help make the site a success. I am currently looking to create my own anthology on the site, but I am not finding many stories that I want to purchase on the site. Hence my long list of ideas to help make the site a success.

My wife and I watched An Inconvenient Truth last night. We have wanted to watch this film since its release, but I admit that we were afraid to watch it, afraid of what we might learn, afraid that our planet is changing at an alarming rate and few people are doing anything about it, or even seem to care. But we rented it yesterday and watched it. If you have not seen this film, YOU MUST SEE IT! It is eye opening. It is more than convincing, based on abundant research and statistics from around the world. It is clear that in the last 30 years our fossil-fueled society has had a lasting global impact on our planet's ability to support life as we know it. In fact, at one point in the film, it is said that ice ages have occurred in less than ten years but last thousands of years. Folks, at the very least, this is what we will face if we do not take individual responsibility and action to recognize, acknowledge and neutralize this threat immediately. We can wait no longer. Remember: in the last ice age, much of the northern hemisphere (where incidentally most of our planet's plants and animals live) was under many hundreds of feet of ice! Tell me, can you live under this ice? Survive such extreme temperatures and such a barren landscape? You should also read the book The Coming Global Superstorm. It says many of the same things as this film, but it explains how we have found flash-frozen animals such as woolly mammoths with food from a temperate climate still in their mouths and belies. Where did this food come from in the belly of a frozen animal? It is clear that the food was nearby when the animal was frozen. Now, that doesn't make much sense, does it? Read the book The Coming Global Superstorm. Watch An Inconvenient Truth and read the book. Then visit the companion web site ClimateCrisis.org for more information about this very real threat to our children and life on this planet >

I recently won an eBay Motors auction for a 1993 Camaro. The listing was specific about the condition of the vehicle, and the seller had sold two other vehicles with positive feedback. Plus, eBay offers fraud protection up to $20,000. So how could I go wrong? I'm glad you asked. The financials: Winning bid $1226. Repairs: $2100 (more about this). Repairs left to be made: ~$3000. This just to make the vehicle match the auction description!

Kelly Nocella (hotnocella1) listed this vehicle for her neighbor, Keith Bynum, whose last name she did not know. At first, Kelly wished to have deposit sent by PayPal, then after the auction changed her mind and wanted a money order or cashier's check. When I inquired about whether the car was drivable, as it was described to "run and drive excellently," she responded by email that it was drivable. The only problem with the vehicle noted in the auction was jerky shifting into 2nd gear. I called several transmission shops to inquire about costs for repairs, and was told they should be about $300. So I made an appointment to have the vehicle's transmission checked out before driving it from Spring Hill, Florida, to Wichita, Kansas, at a repair shop on Spring Hill.

But when I paid for and picked up the car, it would go no faster than 35 MPH. Shifting was fine, but there was no 3rd gear or overdrive. The car also pulled to the right and the steering wheel was cocked 45 degrees to keep it on the road. At the repair shop, the vehicle's condition was discovered to be far different than the auction, to the tune of about $5000! Ouch! In order to drive the vehicle back to Kansas safely, we had to rebuild the transmission, replace the u-joints, replace the rear brakes (they did not work at all, and in fact the DR brake had come apart due to a broken shoe!), replace tie rod ends, realign the vehicle, and replace the DF tire. At this time, we also discovered the front brakes worked, but the pads were completely gone (the tin warning clips had been removed from the front pads to eliminate that warning sound that brakes are bad), the AC did not work, the cooling fans did not work (were not hooked up), the fuse block under the hood was gutted so that relays for the cooling fans and other parts were missing and any replacement would not be held in place because the contacts were missing, the electric window motors did not work, the dash was broken, the odometer did not work, the radio did not work, there was no CD changer, and the PR wheel was severely bent on the inside bead. Each of these items were listed as features and/or working in the auction, or not mentioned as problematic in the auction. I made only the necessary repairs to drive back to Wichita safely.

In Wichita, I had the car checked further. The service engine bulb had been removed from the dash and codes are in the car's computer, indicating further problems. During this time, the seller had been notified by email that the condition of the vehicle was NOT like the auction description, but no response has ever come from the seller from these multiple notices. In fact, the seller has not made any contact with me regarding these problems and excessive repairs necessary to make the vehicle both safe and match the description. The owner of the vehicle did call me once to subtly threaten me that I needed to find something else to do with my time besides pursue getting my money back. He had also asked whether his conversation was being recorded (make of that what you will!) I also discovered that I cannot transfer the title for the vehicle into my name due to the way the title was signed with Keith Bynum's middle name spelled out. At this time, I have a POS Camaro that was completely misrepresented on eBay's auction that I cannot even tag, title and drive. A few days after getting the vehicle to Wichita, the front brakes locked up and also had to be repaired. The only accurate information about the car in the auction description was year, make, model and color.

I contacted eBay's fraud protection insurance agency, Auction Insurance, only to discover that eBay's policy only covers 3 things: engine, transmission and body/frame. Each component is treated individually, and to be covered must require more than $1500 in repairs to be eligible. They even estimated the mileage of the Camaro, since its last recorded mileage on record, to be over 200,000 miles (the car was listed with 120,000 miles, but the odometer has not worked since before 2004!). Despite the 20 page fax that I sent to them detailing the misrepresentations and my expenses thus far with the vehicle, they would not honor the self-proclaimed fraud protection offered by eBay or make any further efforts to reclaim or refund my winning bid or monies for repairs already made.

I then tried contacting eBay thru their website over the past week, requesting that someone from eBay call me regarding this auction. I have also made complaint against the seller thru eBay's official system on their site. But after several days, no one from eBay has responded by email or phone to my request, and neither has the seller. I will try calling eBay tomorrow directly. This is all very disappointing, since I've been an active eBay member since 1996 and have over 1300 feedback rating, to say that I have done a lot of business over eBay.

I will update this blog as more information becomes available. As it stands right now, the car should have gone to the salvage yard, I have nearly $4000 wrapped up in it, I could have bought a really nice car for this money anywhere in the country, much nicer than the Camaro at any rate, and I cannot tag and title it so I can drive it, whatever the outcome.

We have an electric-ignite furnace in our home. This means that when the furnace kicks on, a glow plug glows red hot and ignites the natural gas in the burners. This instead of a pilot light. We have had the furnace, installed in 1999, go out on us a couple of times since its installation. There were two common problems that are relatively cheap and easy to remedy.

It is key to troubleshoot the system. To troubleshoot an electric-ignite furnace such as ours described above, remove the tin cover from the furnace to view the exhaust fan, computer circuits, wiring, and other parts. With the cover removed, turn the furnace on and watch for the following things. BE SURE TO TURN OFF POWER TO THE FURNACE BEFORE TOUCHING ANY COMPONENTS IN THE FOLLOWING STEPS.

1) Listen to the furnace. The exhaust fan will kick on first, then about 30 seconds later the furnace will click. If neither of these happen, you can assume that the fix may not be as simple as you would like. It may be best at this point to consult a trained repair technician.

2) If the exhaust fan kicks on and the furnace clicks, next the glow plug will turn visibly hot, like the heating element on an electric stove. If the glow plug glows, it will be readily visible. If the glow plug does not light, your problem is likely the glow plug. Make sure power is off to the furnace. The glow plug is located in front of the burners so it can ignite them, and it is easy to remove. It will be held into place with two sheet metal screws. Two wires will run down to the glow plug, and be attached to the wiring of the furnace with a plastic clip plug. Uncouple the clip plug and remove the two sheet metal screws. The glow plug should lift out of the furnace. If the plug is burnt, it will have a break in it. If a break is present, replace the glow plug. Glow plugs cost about $30 at an AC/Heating specialty store. Be sure to take the burned glow plug with you. You cannot buy them at Wal-Mart or Lowe's or Home Depot (you can't here in Kansas, anyway). Get a new plug from the AC/Heating specialty store, install it, turn on power to the furnace again, and watch it again. The glow plug should now glow. Your problem is now probably solved.

3) If the glow plug glows, it will next ignite the gas burners. If the glow plug glows but the gas burners do not ignite, you are not getting gas to the burners. Call a trained repair technician.

4) If the gas burners ignite, a thermocouple/sensor will next test if flame is present to keep the burners burning. If the gas burners ignite and the glow plug turns off, but the burners go out immediately, the thermocouple is likely your problem. It is not registering that flame is present and it turns off the burners for safety reasons. The good news is that these thermocouples do not generally go bad, according to our counter parts technician and heating/cooling techs. Instead, the thermocouple is likely dirty. Make sure power is off to the furnace. The thermocouple or flame sensor is, like the glow plug, situated in front of the burners to detect heat and flame. It is usually held in place by a single sheet metal screw. There is a single wire that leads down to it. Unplug the wire from the base of the thermocouple and remove the sheet metal screw. The thermocouple can now be easily lifted from the furnace. Inspect the thermocouple. It is likely dirty and has black and white residue on it. It won't look like much residue, but this small amount insulates the thermocouple so that it does not sense heat/flame. To clean it, simply use a piece of steel wool and rub off all the residue, until the thermocouple looks like bare metal again. Re-install the thermocouple. Turn on power to the furnace again, and turn on the furnace. Your furnace should now stay lit. If it still does not stay lit, follow the same steps to replace the thermocouple. Like glow plugs, these thermocouples can't be found in Wal*Mart, Lowe's or Home Depot. It must be purchased from a AC/Heating specialty store, and costs about $20 (I think, at any rate it isn't much). Once replaced, your furnace will probably function again normally.

These steps have solved our furnace problems for several years. Of course, it is a good idea to have your heating and cooling system checked every year or two, and to replace filters every 3 months to keep your system operating at its peak performance. For problems not solved with these few steps, contact a trained repair techician.

You may not be into pens, but Tul, manufacturer of fine writing instruments, offers an online handwriting analysis application. Go to TUL.com web site and click the link to start your analysis. You need only write "I truly need a new pen" on a sheet of paper, then answer a short sequence of questions about the characteristics of the sample. Dr. Gerard Ackerman (a real graphologist?) then provides you with an analysis of your sample that is both insightful and humorous. The several analyses I've seen done, including my own, hit the mark. So I was impressed that it was both relatively accurate and fun at the same time! Tul pens are available only at OfficeMax. Get your own handwriting analysis >

A very good resource for resume and interview information is Pongo Resume. They offer an electronic newsletter that I recommend for anyone assembling a resume and going on job interviews. Their advice just makes sense.

The September 10, 2006 newsletter addresses interviewing and issues I've puzzled over. And the answer is so simple! Interviewing is like throwing darts in the dark. As interviewees, we need to illuminate the target (dart board) by asking a few questions and then assessing how close we've come to the target. The target is different for each position and even each interviewer. Now that's a moving target! I've condensed these two elements from the Pongo resume newsletter for convenience, but you should review the entire newsletter for best results:

Illuminate the Target:

-- “What are the key skills you feel are required for this position?”
-- "What parts of my background are you most interested in?”
-- “What did you see in my resume that created your interest?”

Check How Close We've Come to the Bullseye:

-- “Did I give you enough detail?”
-- “Does that make sense?”

It is important to remember that asking these questions and then asking follow-up questions will also influence the course of the interview.

Great technique, Pongo! Thanks!

We must delve into our own despair, said the wise old man, before we can achieve peace. It's hard to part with things, hard to let go, because we care. That may be a fault. Or it may be thin-skinned. Doesn't matter. I'm ready to part with some things I've held onto for 15 years. I've recently found a few dozen copies of OR and Passed through the Hands, two of my chapbooks of poetry and short fiction from 1990 and 1991 (respectively).

OR collects my best poetry and short fiction up to the date of publication (1990). It includes some of my favorite poems: "Trust," "The Rain" (award) "Mind Diving," "Crimson Summer Sunshine," "Trust," "To My Wife," "Sweet Chaste Cherry Buds," "Dog" and "The Day After She Was Married." It also includes my stories "The Rogue Rodent," "2." and "Timber Wolf" (tribute to Sherwood Anderson). OR is titled OR because it contains both poetry and short fiction, and the cover was originally printed in five different colors, so readers could have selected this color cover or that color cover or that color cover.

Passed through the Hands features work from myself and Jeff McMillian, a fellow student at MWSC, from 1991. It includes my more interesting poetry, and some of my most powerful poems, including "The I That Survives" and "Lifelines." Passed through the Hands is titled after a line in my poem "Lifelines." Of Passed through the Hands John Gilgun (our creative writing instructor) wrote:

"We are born up in communion, by a blaze, by a song." It is good to be reminded of that communion, of that blaze, of that song. I had begun to forget. Thanks, Jeff. "I am the I of I that I survive." I have no idea what I taught you, Mike. I just talk in class because that's what they pay me for. But if you have learned to survive by centering yourself, getting in touch with your unique spirit and expressing that spirit in language, then I feel I've done well. Publish it in Jeff City that I earned my pay. "Wow, I found myself sitting suddenly back in my home town, like a child, and I am holy again." Holy, holistic, whole, integrated -- Yes, Jeff, in the old hometown/jotown of soul, of mind. Here we are and isnt' it glorious -- the moments of our lives fixed and frozen forever like the glaze on one of Dooley's pots! Mike, how wonderful to encounter "Lifelines" again and to remember hearing you read it in LRC 102 and feeling that shiver pass over my body -- and then Jeff leaning over and whispering, "That's a GOOD poem!" Yes! -- John Gilgun, Author of Music I Never Dreamed Of

Rather than discard or burn these copies of OR and Passed through the Hands, I am giving them away. I read through both chapbooks before deciding to give them away, and found that much of the writing in them still moves me as it did when I published it, and doesn't embarrass me too much. These free books don't cost you a dime. Just a bit of your time. Limit one set per name/address. Limited to quantity on hand. You may only receive one chapbook or the other when quantity is depleted. Offer good only in the U.S. and its territories. Complete the request form and copies will be on their way to you shortly.

I got this link from a magazine (don't recall which one), and went to the URL to see if they had Macintosh software available. Didn't think they would have. But they did! That alone makes this site and software worthy of mention! KnowYourStuff.org, managed by the Insurance Information Institute, helps people like you and me inventory and calculate the valuable possessions in our home or office, to be used for any purpose, especially insurance purposes from theft or loss. I heartily recommend everyone inventory their possessions. This software can help. Other software options may be available, but this one is FREE. And for both Windows and Macintosh!