I have an informal poll for you this morning.

How do you feel about writers releasing their material online as "patronage-ware"? (That’s what I call it when someone puts up a story or novel without requiring payment for the download, while asking people to pay whatever they think their entertainment was worth to them.)

Have you/would you pay a writer directly after reading the whole book for free online, or do you refuse to pay for anything that doesn’t come on dead tree from Borders or Amazon.com?

I’m putting up an anonymous click poll to gauge the winds out there, but feel free to respond with a comment as well, if you have thoughts to share.  You have two votes.  If you participate, please choose one of the Pay/No Pay options, and then one of the “…and” answers on the purchase of the paper version.

(Note: I’m still very much going the traditional route to publication, but I’ve been thinking that the traditional way and the Doctorow method are not mutually exclusive.  In the past, I’ve purchased the paper versions of free-to-read ebooks I’ve found online–John Scalzi, Cherie Priest, and David Weber in particular–and I’m pretty sure that others would do the same.)

(Note the Second: This poll is anonymous, and n0body else can see how or if you voted, not even this humble scribe.)

Check out what the little striped buggers built this summer:

It’s in a tree branch right above our garage, and it escaped my notice until yesterday, when I was mucking around behind the garage to re-string some invisible dog fence wire.  The nest is a bit bigger than a basketball.

Because of the cold, the previous inhabitants have vacated it, so I have no idea what species they were.  We have paper wasps under the eaves every summer, but Robin says that this is no paper wasp nest.  She’s guessing bald-faced hornets, or possibly yellowjackets.

Strangely enough, the wasps weren’t really a bother this year, despite the size of that colony right near the house.

Our closest border with Canuckistan is about an hour north of us (the Derby Line/Stanstead I-91 crossing), and the second-closest one is two hours away in Vermont.

Imagine my mild surprise when, on the way back from town with the kids, I ended up in a U.S. Border patrol checkpoint right on I-89 outside Lebanon, NH, close to a hundred road miles from the international border.  They had set up shop across the southbound lanes of the Interstate, and every single vehicle had to stop for inspection.

As far as stops go, it wasn’t much of an annoyance.  The uniformed BP agent gave the van the once-over, presumably to check the plates out, and make sure the Grand Caravan wasn’t sitting low in the water from having a ton and a half of explosives in the back, or twenty-four stowaways from Saskatchewan.  Then he asked how I was doing today (thereby eliciting a verbal response by which to gauge accent and/or nervousness level), and peeked past me into the back, where the kids were sitting.  Then he asked if everyone in the car was a U.S. citizen.  I answered in the affirmative, we wished each other a nice day, and I was on my way.

The libertarian knee-jerk reaction would be “ZOMG checkpointz!!!”, and utter revulsion at once again being asked to justify oneself in front of the agents of the state.  The conservative/Daddy State response would be to be glad that the stalwart defenders of Old Glory and apple pie are making sure the Islamists won’t invade us while being poorly disguised with flap-eared hats and hockey jerseys.  The Liberal response would be to be annoyed at having one’s mellow harshed by The Man. (I’m guessing here, of course.  I’m sure there are Liberals who are pro-enforcement on the immigration issue, and conservatives who get the heebie-jeebies at being asked their citizenship status by a Fed.)

I wasn’t too terribly put out, I suppose.  I wasn’t asked to present papers, and I thought that the quick on-the-spot interview was as effective as time constraints and practicality allowed.  They were fishing for stuff that looked off, and we didn’t.  Yes, I do realize that there are people who take advantage of the fact that both our land borders with our neighbors are way too long to effectively seal.  (The Mexican and Canadian borders put together are close to eight thousand miles, and that doesn’t even take into account our coastlines.) I also recognize that border protection is actually a legit and proper function of Teh Fedz.

Still, it’s a little weird to get funneled into a BP checkpoint while going about one’s business a hundred road miles away from the border.  You’d figure that running checks in west-central NH takes manpower that could be better used at the actual border itself…

The latest thing on my “want” list:

That’s a Pelikan fountain pen, more specifically the M400 in the Special Edition “Brown Tortoise” pattern.

That right there is a writing instrument.  (For those curious about price: it’s just north of $200 from most Pelikan dealers.)

Pelikans are typical German engineering: conservatively styled, extremely well designed, and meticulously put together.  I have one Pelikan right now, the translucent blue M205, and that brown M400 Torty would look pretty sweet in the pen wrap next to it. 

Does a $200 fountain pen write any better than a $30 one, or even a $2 gel pen? Not necessarily.  Why, then, would anyone drop two c-notes on that ink stick? To answer that question, you’d have to figure out why people buy BMWs, for example.  Does a $50,000 Beamer get you to the grocery store any better than a $20,000 Toyota?  Maybe not—but if it was only about the end result, nobody would ever purchase cars with leather seats and real wood on the dash when cloth and plastic are available as alternatives for a third of the price. 

Writing with a pen like the one in the picture above may get you the same result as if you had used a $1 throwaway gel ink pen, but you wouldn’t get the tactile experience of that fine gold nib gliding across the paper, or the preparatory act of unscrewing the cap and posting it on the back of the pen (which kind of feels like you’re cracking your knuckles for the work ahead), or the attachment you form with a tool that stays with you through quarts of ink instead of ending up in a landfill once it’s empty.

The truth is that people are willing to pay extra for a superior user experience, and using a fine fountain pen over a throwaway ballpoint is much like driving a BMW instead of a spartan econobox.  Both will get you where you need to go, but only one makes you actually want to take it for a spin just for the joy of using it.

When your home state hands out longer jail sentences for owning the wrong sort of sheet metal tube than for repeatedly molesting a young child, you have to start looking for a new name for your legal department, because “justice” it ain’t.

When parking your vehicle without permission on the lot of a private company for five days in a row, blocking the spot for legitimate users, make sure the company in question isn’t one that specializes in building fences.

That’s a recent picture from Germany.  The company employees put a note on the car, asking the owner to move it off the private lot.  After a few days, they decided to do what they do best: build a fence.  Towing costs would have to be eaten by the company if they called a towing service to remove the car, so they decided to go the alternate route.  Since it’s private property, they are of course free to build a fence on it anywhere they want…

finding subliminal messages rattatouille

I know there are people who go through animated movies frame by frame to find objectionable content, like a cloud of dust that briefly, maybe, possibly (if you squint really hard) spells out the word SEX, the spotting of which for 1/100th of a second will surely turn our kids into prostitutes and adulterers.

The only messages I got out of Ratatouille were these: 1.) Pixar rocks. 2.) Anyone can cook. 3.) Garbage is a sub-optimal dietary choice.

there is no such thing as states rights

No, there isn’t. States have powers, not rights.  People have rights, groups don’t. (States have delegated powers that can be revoked by the citizens.)

does alphasmart work through usb

Yes, the Alphasmart works as a USB keyboard, and transfers its data to the host PC through a standard USB cable.

comfortable shoulder holster glock19

My favorite is the Galco Jackass, which has wide shoulder straps that aren’t a bother even after wearing the rig with a two-pound pistol in it all day long.  Just be prepared to endure Sonny Crockett jokes if your buddies find out you’re toting in a shoulder rig.

mk4 no1 lee enfield production codes

Those are a bit tricky to figure out. My No.4 has markings on the receiver that read No.4 Mk.I* LONG BRANCH 1943, which is a complicated code that means I own a No.4 Mark I* rifle that was made at Long Branch Arsenal in Canada in the year 1943.

one person hot tub

Around here, we call that a bathtub.

springfield 9mm xdm does the barrel move

Yes, it does. The XD utilizes the Browning short recoil system, which has the barrel both move and tilt up during the recoil process.  Do not be alarmed; it is working as designed.

can i use hard candy in a mouse trap?

Sure, but bait seems to be strictly optional.  I’ve caught dozens of mice around here with unbaited traps.  I set them up in narrow passages as spring-loaded trip mines, and you don’t need to bait those any more than you have to place hard candy on Claymore mines to attract insurgents.

nvidia ion psu

The ION platform is ridiculously cheap when it comes to energy consumption: around 30W under load, and 4-5W idle.  Most micro-ITX cases come with an external 40-60W power supply, which wouldn’t reliably feed most of the laptops on sale at Best Buy.  Mine came with an internal 250W PSU, which is complete overkill for the system.

demonic entities

The best way to get close to some heavy-caliber demonic entities is to go to Ticketmaster, and search for “Miley Cyrus” and “The Jonas Brothers”.

what do air marshals do on flights

They are required to loudly sing the “I’m A Federal Air Marshal” song.  It’s sung to the same tune as “I am Henry the Eighth, I Am”.

cheap handgun ammo 10mm

The word “cheap” looks downright wrong next to the caliber designation “10mm”.  It’s a bit of a niche cartridge, and the bullets have some weight to them, so the average box of 10mm practice ammo found in the wild is usually half again as expensive as the cheapest box of .40S&W the store will have on the shelf.

Back when I was still behind a gun shop counter, a box of lead flatnose 10mm Auto was considered a bargain at $13.  $DEITY only knows what the cheap stuff in that caliber is up to by now, but I’d be surprised if it’s less than $20 per box of 50.

writing a novel alphasmart

I think the Alphasmart is a great tool for writing a novel, even better than a laptop.  You have limitless battery life, the whole thing weighs less than two pounds, and you don’t have built-in Intertubes distractions to get you off track.

That’s the take for this Monday morning!  You may now return to gorging on those bags of candy you bought in bulk at MalWart  just in case  you get a battalion of trick-or-treaters.

I finally picked a callsign for my pilot.

As reader Dirk already predicted, I went through the entire list of entries, and then made up my own.  However, I got the idea for my pilot’s callsign after reading formerflyer’s very comprehensive comment, so I am declaring him the winner.

You didn’t have all the information—my pilot’s last name is Halley, a name I picked because of its proximity to my protagonist’s last name in alphabetic order.  (They needed to be bunk neighbors in Basic, where the bunks were allotted by last name.) I also liked the astronomical relevance, so I have no idea why I didn’t think of her natural callsign of “Comet” earlier.  (I rigged a bit of backstory that involves an expedited atmospheric entry right at the outer edges of the safety margin.)

So, formerflyer, you got my synapses on the right track, therefore you get to claim the chunk of Cold War I have ready on my desk for shipment.  Just email me your snail-type address at marko dot kloos at gmail dot com, and I’ll get that out to you in the mail.

Thanks for all the participation!  I enjoyed the varied entries, especially the ones with creative backstories and explanations. 

I appreciate all the replies to my Glenn Beck/uniform jacket post.

I do have one question for all of you who left a comment.  You don’t need to answer it in public, but be entirely honest with yourself.  Read your comment(s) again, and ask yourself this:

Would my reply be the same if the guy on the cover was Al Franken?

Happy November! Today marks the first day of NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.

I won’t be participating, since I’m a perennial participant in the MaNoWriYe, the Marko Novel Writing Year, which starts anew every time about three weeks after I write “THE END” at the bottom of a finished novel.  For those of you NaNoWriMo’ing this year, here are a few comments:

1. You’re nuts.
2. Good luck.
3. If you need to “prime the pump” on occasion, try changing your process for a day. If you usually write on the computer, try longhand, or a typewriter, or an Alphasmart Neo.  If you usually write at home, go out and sit in a coffee shop.  If you go to a coffee shop, try the library or a different shop.  Mix things up, both your surroundings and the way you put down words.  From my experience, a change in routine can help restart the creative flow.
4. Here’s the very best of all the NaNoWriMo pep talks, given by Neil Gaiman. 

Trick-or-treating was a success—the kids had fun despite the light rain.  The town cops were out in force (all four of them), and played crossing guards at various intersections in the center of town.  The older officer who guarded our crossing commented on our flashlight.

“That’s a smaht family, bringing  a flashlight! You’re only the second family I’ve seen with one tonight.  I can’t believe what I’m seein’ out heah.”

Today will be spent with some housework, leisure, and the reduction of the substantial candy stash we’ve amassed.  Also, I’ll be announcing the winner of the callsign contest later today, so stay tuned.