Dhivael/Anne’s Hyperactive Blog

It’s been awhile since I visited Wowio.

When I first visited, you had to sign up and you could download five PDFs for free every day. This was great! Then they changed it to three PDFs. Okay. Not bad. Still great! Then it was 3 PDFs for a maximum of 30/month. Not great, but still not terrible.

I went back today, after having forgotten for awhile. It’s changed again. I am sad.

Now half the things on my download list (from last time) aren’t even downloadable. The other half, I can read them online but I have to pay from $1-20 to get the PDF. $20? What’s up with that? I could probably get these titles for half that, used, on Amazon or eBay.

Wowio went from a great place to get things to read when I’m bored to a place to mostly only visit when I REALLY want something. Now.

At least I still have the PDFs I downloaded already. HA! Including the awful Star Trek comics, woo!

I love tortilla chips. And, of course, Dorito’s are some of the best, if not the best. Cool ranch, spicy guacamole, nacho, spicy nacho, etc. Delicious. I never thought that they could do anything that would make a Dorito chip taste bad.

I was wrong.

‘Lemon’, ‘lemon pie’, ‘lemon meringue’, ‘lemon cookie’… all these are ways you might choose to describe the new Dorito’s ‘The Quest’ chips. You’re supposed to guess the flavor, go online and then there’s a contest thingie.

So what delicious flavor are these ‘mystery’ chips? Mountain Dew. Yes, soda flavored tortilla chips. All I can say about them is that they are… unique. And not completely horrible. But would I buy them again? No! If I want Mountain Dew with my chips, I’ll buy some on my own. I don’t need them to be making my chips flavored with soda. And they don’t even really taste like Mountain Dew. One person described it as ‘Gatorade’ flavor. And that’s a pretty accurate description. It’s definitely a flavor that no tortilla chip was ever meant to be.

The last time that they did a mystery flavor like this, it was cheeseburger. What’s wrong with chili dog? Bean burrito? Steak & cheese? Even ‘Italian dressing’ flavor might have been a good choice. Instead, we get… EGH!

I guess Doritos got paid to do product placement and they didn’t bother to stop and think whether or not many people would actually like the flavor.

Riding the buses in the Phoenix Metro area (also known as ‘The Valley’ or ‘The Valley of the Sun’) is a bit like playing roulette. Tempe is not too bad, they seem to pour a lot of money into the mass transit system. Most of the bus lines run on Sundays and even run on major holidays. There are many buses that run every 15 minutes, including the free Orbit shuttles. Plus, many of the north-south buses connect with either Chandler or Scottsdale, both of which are affluent areas. So Tempe gets shiny new buses.

Mesa, on the other hand, you’re lucky if the bus runs every half hour (as opposed to every hour). There is pretty much no Sunday service. No free shuttles. And there is certainly not service on major holidays.

But one thing remains constant, about all the buses in the system. They all break down fairly frequently. And yesterday, I heard something a bit alarming. The bus was stopped at a light and the driver was chatting with another passenger while waiting for the light to turn (better that than a cell phone, which some drivers do). He mentioned rather matter-of-factly that the previous day, a certain part had broken on his bus that meant he couldn’t do his last run of the day.

Pretty routine, yes. The alarming part? He also mentioned that the mechanic noted that many of the bus parts used were ‘illegal’ and ‘not up to state specs’, but that nobody says anything for fear of losing their jobs.

Considering how often buses break down, it sounds pretty realistic to me. And definitely scary.

(BTW, I also passed the ‘expensive gasoline‘ station yesterday and it was up to ‘$41.79′ now. Hasn’t anyone noticed the misplaced decimal? I guess not.)

In some cities in the Phoenix area, the bus system is tolerable. In Tempe, they have many buses that run every 15 minutes, including the wandering ‘Orbit’ shuttles. And by ‘wandering’, I mean that the routes look a bit random, on a street map. They don’t go down any one street, but go down different side streets. But, hey, they’re free! This is good.

Anyway!

On most routes, the buses turn around by going around a block and then coming back. On Thursday, I was sitting at the bus stop on a corner, waiting for the (somewhat late) bus which was running a bit late. It’s near the end of the line, but the bus is supposed to come from down the street. I look up and there’s the bus, turning the corner instead. It missed the correct turn, oops!

So on Tuesday, I get off the connecting bus and I’m sitting there at the same corner. Waiting, waiting… this bus is supposed to come every 30 minutes (boo!), about 15 minutes after I get off the connecting bus. After I’ve been waiting there for a good 30 minutes, I finally decide to call the bus company. I get the runaround on their automated system and finally end up connecting to an operator. I’m put on hold for a bit, only to be told that ‘the bus went by 15 minutes ago’. Uhm, no. It did not. I was there. The bus that I wanted was, supposedly, about 5 miles away. Er? Where’d the bus go? The operator claimed that the bus didn’t take any wrong turns, but I KNOW the bus absolutely, positively did not go by me or I would have seen it.

And they wonder why more people don’t take the bus around here. Waiting almost an hour, in 110 degree heat for a bus that was supposed to have come a half hour ago is not fun.

I have to admit, the flashy pink template I had been using was starting to get to me. Maybe it’s part of why I haven’t been blogging. But I think I’ve settled on a new template. The header is a bit big, but at least it is interesting, yes?

Green!
Flowers!
And butterflies!

WHEE!

I’ve just been browsing around my blog stats, looking for something interesting (which I usually find) and what do I see?

Someone came to my blog searching for ‘remove ads from wowio pdfs’.

You cheater. The ads are there so you get the PDFs for free. But I guess you knew that, right? You want to share the book with a friend? Tell them to go to Wowio and sign up. Wowio is FREE after all.

Or maybe you want to put it up for sale yourself?

Quit ruining things for the rest of us. Really.

It’s been awhile since I did any blogging. I’ve been awfully busy with stuff.

And now it’s almost Christmas.

Christmas can be annoying. I always get asked what I want, which is fine. But in my family, surprise is a key point. So I either end up getting not quite what I asked for or I get what I wanted and something… weird.

Two years ago, I ended up getting bath sets from my aunt for Christmas. Very nice soap stuff, but I still haven’t used it all up. I cringe a little when I think about how much each bath with the soap costs.

I’d much rather have something useful, but fun. Like an MP3 player. Last year, one of the gifts I got was Star Trek: The Animated Series on DVD. This was a bit better than usual. I did want the set eventually. But I haven’t really had much time to watch it.

This year, I’ve asked for a Palm PDA. But it has to be a specific Palm. I do not want the Palm Z22 – they apparently left out the SD card slot! So I want an older model, one that does have a slot. I’ve said I want a Tungsten E2 or Tungsten T2, I don’t care which, refurbished or used – whatever the case may be. I don’t really care if it’s here by Christmas either. A little late is fine, since it took awhile for me to tell them what I want.

But my family has a ‘thing’ about ‘used’ gifts. Antiques would be fine; a used bit of electronics, not so much.

So will I get what I want or will I get more bath sets and candles?

22 days and counting…