Tag: good chance

A New Hope For My Bike

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, Cycling, Diet, ExerciseLeave a comment

I was at the grocery store yesterday and I ran into a guy who I gave my old bike seat to when I bought my ergo bike seat.  We were talking about bikes and he asked if I was riding and I told him about the saga of my back wheel drama and he told me that he has an old mountain bike that he was using for parts with a back wheel that I can have (HAVE!).

The bike store was going to charge me $40 for the wheel and $10 to install it and most likely there will be taxes and chances are it’s going to be $55 or so which I can’t afford.  I haven’t had a bike in 6 months or so to even ride to the store, I’ve been walking everywhere so this will be great.

He told me he has to dig it out because it’s in the garage and I’m sure it’s deep in there so I’m not expecting it any time soon but it does give me some hope that some day I might return to the bike trail.

I know it’s a “don’t keep your hopes up” type of thing and I’m not but at the same time it gives me a glimmer of hope at least.  I won’t be holding my breath or counting down the days and I don’t expect much since he’s giving it to me for free, I really don’t even know if it will fit either so there’s that.  He said it was for a mountain bike and mine is a mountain bike so I told him it has to be a 26 inch wheel and he said he would check or bring it on by the house to compare.

Also there is a good chance that the gears might not be the same gears.  If it doesn’t have the same, what’s it called?  A cassette?  If it’s not the same then perhaps I might have trouble, or I can bring it to the bike store and say here, let me pay you that $10 to remove this from this and put it on that.

I really hope that it does happen because I really need to get my fat arse back out there and make it smaller.  And actually my bike has a weight limit of 250lbs which I am over so I’ll probably have to veg out for a week to lose 10lbs at least so I can start riding it.  God forbid I break the bike with my fat arse lol.

Wish me luck!

My Final Decision – Nook

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Nook, Products I LikeLeave a comment

I’ve made my final decision about which e-book reader I want to buy. I said in my last post about waffling that I really wanted the Kindle because it’s the iPod of the e-book reader world but then last night I found out that Calibre will convert many e-book file formats to the .epub file format.

I’ve literally spent the entire day today trying to figure that program out and came to the conclusion that .epub is the best file for the Nook. When I tried converting my ebooks to .pdb file format (which is Nooks familiar format), the table of contents were always screwed up. It worked but it wouldn’t just say chapter 1, it would have the word Calibre with the chapter title.

The .epub file format works so much better and it’s the first choice in Calibre when you are converting a file so it makes it that much easier.

Of course Calibre probably won’t work with DRM books, the books I buy from Rainbow eBooks don’t have that restriction on them (yet). Although if a book I buy from them is already in the .epub file format then I won’t have to convert any of their books for the Nook. I can just buy,download, upload and read.

Although the book “Fell” did come in epub but it didn’t work on the Nook for PC program. So there is a good chance that I will still have to convert other file formats for the Nook.

And yes, I know, I can do the same thing with the Kindle but I think I’m going to get the Nook WiFi despite the fact that it’s $10 more than the Kindle and if I buy it at Barnes and Noble, chances are I’m gonna pay even more with taxes. The issue that I’m having with the Kindle is how it’s sold out lol. I don’t want to buy a Kindle if I can’t get it for another month. I also don’t want to buy something that I can’t return to the store.

There are a few features of the Nook that I like and don’t care for. For example you can replace the battery, it has an Expandable micro SD slot. I’ve seen in a video how slow the color screen is when sliding your finger to find a book, that is a bit irritating to me but I think I can get past that. The lend feature won’t do me any good but on the other hand who knows what might happen in the future. The very fact that we can walk into a B&N and I can bring a Nook with me and be able to read a book for free for 1 hour is appealing.

The main thing is that I can convert my existing e-books to the .epub format that I can read on a Nook and be able to use the dictionary, look up words, highlight and annotate. That’s all I wanted. That’s all I needed.

If I do get one, I’m going to buy 1 copy of the Los Angeles Times so that Darrin can see if he likes reading it on the Nook. If he does then I’ll get him the monthly subscription.  I’m tired of having to pick up his newspapers lol.  I don’t read so much that I will monopolize it from him, although I can’t say that he won’t monopolize it from me lol.  If that is the case I will suggest he buy himself one with his credit card.

I think I was wrong when I said that the Kindle is the iPod of the e-book world because it’s not sold in stores, it’s only online.  My Dell DJ was only online and they screwed me over on that because I can’t take it to any store to have it fixed but the Nook has a store.  So I think the Nook is really the iPod of e-books.