Chris

Once the best high street book store, now the only high street book store. Will there be any high street bookstores, one day?

One of those stores that could seriously damage the Asian economies if it closed down.

The quality you get here for a dollar is often surprisingly good - not all such stores are worth buying from. And every time you buy something, a Chinese angel gets its wings. Or something.

It's been a good place for a mailbox and when I came to close my account they didn't even want to take the 2 weeks arrears I owed them. Not often you have to insist on a company taking your money.

I splashed out on a gift card so that it looks like I have a friend. Sad.

Took tranquillizers, filled tank, looked at bill. Took more tranquillizers.

Bought five T-shirts I didn't need.

As usual.

Intel's new service for netbook owners offers a range of cheap and free downloadable apps including games and entertainment, books, education and so on. Quality and value is variable, but there are a LOT of free apps and most importantly, this is where you get ANGRY BIRDS for the PC. Seems to work on netbooks only and the resolution is fixed at 1024x600.

I really didn't find much worth getting here, other than that one game, but if you want a free source of simple programs and have a netbook, you could do worse.

Some McDonald's branches allow you to plug your laptop into the ceiling sockets, others don't, and it seems to be random. None of them look set to move the ceiling sockets to ground level, to accommodate the wi-fi users, and I had a sudden inexplicable mental image of a line of electrocuted geeks hanging from the sockets along a McDonald's ceiling like rabbits in a butcher's window. As a warning to other wi-fi users that when the manager puts up a sign reading "no staying more than 30 minutes" he means it.

Honestly, what's the point of having free wi-fi and then putting up "only two refills" and "no loitering" signs? They just don't get it. You have to stand on a table to plug your laptop in, you mustn't loiter or drink too much free coffee, and you get an unreliable, slow, ATT connection that's just fast enough for email when it's working. For goodness sake, people, wake up to the new world out there. The only compensation for all this is that the food is really great. Oh, hang on, no it isn't.

Walgreens always feels like the store that tries, but however much it tries, it feels slightly dog-eared and disoriented to me. And prices tend to the high side, even though it feels a bit like a dollar store. For me, it's the drug store you go to when all the other drug stores are closed, and for basic supplies in an emergency, or when the yearning to own something cheap and Chinese becomes overwhelming and there's no local Walmart. I can't put a finger on it; perhaps it feels like the little drug store that tried to be a big drug store and almost made it, but remained a small drug store at heart. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I mean CVS is slick and shiny and modern and the future of drug stores, but even so, not everyone loves it. It's not an environment conducive to poking about in the dimly-lit corners of narrow, slightly cluttered gondolas. For that, I'd choose Walgreens over CVS or Rite Aid anytime.

Found a t-shirt that has "Schrödinger's cat is not dead" on the back and "Schrödinger's cat is dead" on the front. It amuses me that people who like foreign movies or indie bands will be Googling it on their iPhones as I pass by.

iT wUz qUik

None of the people I collided with have ever been seen or heard of again. Now that's what I call car insurance.

I have no idea what or where this is. Frightening, when you come to think of it. I hope it was something useful.

I bought a Nook for a friend, after going and checking out the new Kindle. I still prefer the Nook, even though the Kindle is better on paper. Maybe if Amazon hadn't gone all dog-in-the-manger and not allowed epub books, I would have been swayed, and yes, I know I could convert all my epub books to mobi, but do I want to mess around with conversion software?

For the moment, the basic Nook experience works for me even though I can't hack it into an iPad. Compared to the Kindle, I actually like the extra weight and the somewhat (and literally) hit-and-miss touch panel, and ten days of battery life is plenty for me. Even though the Kindle has the edge in specifications, I like the Nook. So there.

As for Barnes and Noble in a broader sense, I'm pleased they survived where Borders didn't. Better atmosphere, friendlier staff, more relaxed customers. More discount-priced books than you could carry and sometimes a Starbucks too. Free wi-fi, of course, and free gifts when you take your Nook with you. I'd say it's my favorite bookstore but frankly, it's become the only bookstore, so the question now is, will they try to exploit what is almost a monopoly position in the dedicated bookstore market?

[Irrelevant image by Google]

So far, utterly useless. I tried this service because I bought an Asus netbook and there was a special offer for Asus customers. I have no idea now why I did it, and deeply regret the $5 a month I agreed to spend on it. It has yet to connect me to anything that Windows hasn't connected up to, more efficiently and accurately.

I probably should have looked first, because it turns out that Boingo has maybe a half-dozen connections in the entire city, that aren't also covered by someone else's free service. These are hotels I am never going to use anyway.

As for the rest of the free connections, they all require a log-in of some sort: McDonald's, Starbucks, FedEx, the local libraries, and the rest. Windows correctly identifies these and tells you that you'll need to complete a log-in. Meanwhile Boingo chokes on them and just says "Whoops! We can't connect you".

This is the most useless service, and likely to become more so as more free hotspots appear. I thought it would get me a lot more access points, but if it only has a handful right in the center of Silicon Valley, I can't expect it to get better. I'm hoping I can cancel this before I get caught for a long-term subscription.

Many happy returns.
Well, maybe not the happy part.

I guess the simplest and most honest thing to say about Goodwill is that it is what it is, which depends on what's currently in the heap, where the store is, and whether they have a sale on. In the latter case - and this seems to apply to most large thrift stores - either everyone got the good stuff before I arrived, or the good stuff was whipped off the racks until after the sale. In any event, every day at a thrift store is a new opportunity, both to reconsider that bookcase you saw yesterday, which could maybe be repaired with the judicious application of some duct tape, or to discover the new old stuff that the staff has hidden away in the daily recycled egg hunt.

In England it would be called a charity shop, leaving you to feel public-spirited about shopping there even if you were filthy rich. Noblesse Oblige, and all that. Here it's called a thrift store, which implies that you're probably broke if you're shopping here, or at least, too thrifty to be found in Big Lots. Whether this explains why many of the customers at the local Goodwill (including me) look like escapees from Walmart, I couldn't say, but for sure an afternoon here isn't going to have them leaving any better dressed than they were when they came in.

As with other similar stores, a multicolored coding system is in play with different colors of tickets discounted on different days. I'd swear that the staff sneak around changing the colors of the tickets the day before, because I can never find one of the half-price ones, but to be honest I've yet to catch them at it.

Having said all that, I've had tremendous luck from time to time and if you have the antique dealer's determination to do the route from store to store every day, eventually you will, too. You might have a long wait to grab the Gucci handbag, but if you're after a checkered polyester suit, it could happen today.

Oh, the photo. Google offered it up for the Goodwill keyword. No, I have no idea either. And no, I don't want to know.

West San Carlos gas is probably about the same price as East San Carlos gas, more or less. That's all I can think of to say about that. Somewhere in the center, it's a bit more expensive, now I come to think of it.

Note to Starbucks (certain branches only) - English tea is hot, and not made half-and-half with frothy hot milk.

Thanks for listening.

I bought a cheap but practical portable jump-starter for when I leave my headlights on.

Then I left my headlights on and discovered I'd forgotten to charge the jump-starter too.

Moral - a bad memory is a bad memory however many gadgets you buy.