For the past few years I've used Beer Advocate, and specifically its rating system, to keep track of beers I've sampled. I am not an expert; one number for an overall rating is just my speed. I'm not interested in breaking that down by look, smell, mouth feel, and so on. (Frankly, I don't care what it looks like anyway, only how it tastes ( Read more... )

Dear LJ Brain Trust ( Read more... )

Dear LJ Brain Trust ( Read more... )

I learned a lesson about customer service in the 21st century this week. If you call a place like, say, Verizon to complain about misleading sales practices, they make some token offer like a few months of a movie channel (that you better remember to cancel later). And you'll wait on hold for a long time to get there. If, on the other hand, you ( Read more... )

I have published authors among my readers; can any of you answer this question about how publishers view prior self-publishing? If you self-publish on Amazon and then later seek a conventional publication contract, are you out of luck because of the prior publication? (If you can provide a supported answer, rather than speculation, I encourage ( Read more... )

Dear Brain Trust ( Read more... )

So, LJ seems to have rolled out some fugly new design, but I immediately clicked on "go back to old version" and that fixed at least most of it. (I haven't tried my reading page yet, nor posting comments; both of those are things they've broken in the past.) But the text in the form on the "post entry" page is now light gray instead of black, and ( Read more... )

Dear Brain Trust,

I have a Mac (Snow Leopard) and a Unix shell account out there on the net, and occasionally I want to move files between them. I can run sftp from the command line, but when dealing with larger directory structures I'd sometimes like something a little more, err, visual. (I know; some of you are calling for me to turn in my ( Read more... )

Often when (or after :-( ) shoveling snow I notice that, despite my best posture efforts, the shovel's handle is just too darn short. Bending at the waist invites lower-back complaints later, but sometimes I just can't do it all by bending at the knees. Sometimes I can "shovel" by (mostly) pushing snow around, but when I've got to lift and move ( Read more... )

Dear Brain Trust ( Read more... )