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A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University's Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.
Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.
Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer's block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable's circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets.
But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there's trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it.
Author Notes
John Grisham was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas on February 8, 1955. He received a bachelor's degree in accounting from Mississippi State University. He was admitted to the bar in Mississippi in 1981 after receiving a law degree from the University of Mississippi, specializing in criminal law. While a lawyer in private practice in Southaven, Mississippi, Grisham served as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 until 1990. He left the law and politics to become a full-time author.
His first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in 1989. His other novels include The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, The Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers, The Last Juror, The Broker, Playing for Pizza, The Appeal, Calico Joe, The Racketeer, Gray Mountain, Rogue Lawyer, The Confession, The Litigators, The Whistler, Camino Island, The Rooster Bar, and the Theodore Boone series. Several of his novels were adapted into films including The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The opening chapters detailing an elaborate scheme to steal five F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts from Princeton are the best part of this thriller from bestseller Grisham (The Whistler). A sophisticated gang pulls off the theft after faking a campus shooting that causes widespread panic. The university's insurance company, liable for millions, reaches out to unemployed academic and struggling writer Mercer Mann, who has just lost her position at the University of North Carolina and is in desperate financial straits. Mercer grew up spending summers on Florida's Camino Island, where Donna Watson, the shadowy insurance company representative, believes the stolen manuscripts are; she thinks they're in the possession of Bruce Cable, who runs a successful independent bookstore there. Despite Mercer's initial misgivings about functioning as a spy, she agrees to return to Camino Island and insinuate herself into its literary community as a precursor to gaining Bruce's confidence-and determining whether he has the stolen goods. But after this promising setup, the plot follows predictable lines to a conclusion that genre fans have seen before. Author tour. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Novelists who write novels about novelists often produce fine work, from literary fiction like Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys through thrillers (Donald E. Westlake's The Hook) and horror (Stephen King's Misery). And now John Grisham, who continues the quality run with this thoroughly entertaining thriller about a novelist who's recruited by a shadowy organization to infiltrate the inner circle of a rare-books dealer and find proof that he's in possession of F. Scott Fitzgerald's handwritten manuscripts, which, in the story, were recently stolen from Princeton University. As Mercer Mann, our hero, gets to know the captivating book dealer Bruce Cable, she runs the risk of falling under his spell and forgetting what she's supposed to be doing. Filled with lively supporting characters (most of whom are writers) and with insider knowledge of the book business, this offers a fascinating take on people who write novels for a living. And it has a genuinely suspenseful plot, too. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Approximate number of John Grisham books sold: 300 million.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MERCER MANN, a young novelist struggling to come up with an idea for her next book, is recruited by a shadowy company to locate five priceless F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts that have been stolen from the Firestone Library at Princeton. In John Grisham's latest thriller, the inspirationstarved Mercer spends a lot of time moaning about her lack of juicy subject matter, even as she runs down clues to the Fitzgerald theft and befriends a cunning rarebook dealer she suspects may be the crime's mastermind. About midway through, you may feel like tapping Grisham's heroine on the shoulder: "What do you mean, you can't think of a plot? Look around you! You're living in a dandy one!" The veteran suspense novelist is off on a happy lark with "Camino Island," a resorttown tale that reads as if Grisham is taking a vacation from writing John Grisham novels. Instead of hurtling readers down the dark corridors of the courthouses that dot his 20-plus legal thrillers, here he gently ushers us onto an island off the coast of Florida, a sleepy place whose town's social life is enlivened by a busy independent bookstore run by a garrulous peacock who has a different-colored seersucker suit for every day of the week. At Bay Books, Bruce Cable presides over book signings with authors on tour and regular dinners with local writers. But since his real money comes from trading in rare first editions, this makes him a suspect as a possible fence for the Fitzgerald manuscripts, the clever theft of which gets "Camino Island" off to its suspenseful start. Law enforcement goes after the thieves, but so does a mysterious private company that specializes in "security and investigations." Enter Mercer Mann and her thwarted second novel. A representative from the unnamed company taps her to get close to Bruce. Why does she agree? The company will write off her collegeloan debt as well as hand her a hefty paycheck. (As with so many thriller plots, it's best not to get bogged down in the plausibility of this setup.) Grisham is crafty in his construction. "Camino" begins with the theft, and the quick, precise portraits of the perpetrators lead you to assume this is going to be a caper novel. Then the focus switches to Mercer, and you start wondering how this innocent with writer's block is going to connect to the criminals. Cable, the colorful bookseller, is the glue that holds Grisham's plotting together. He's also a way for Grisham to have more fun than usual. "Camino Island" contains leisurely passages in which Cable gasses on entertainingly about collecting first editions by writers ranging from Virginia Woolf to J. D. Salinger to John D. MacDonald. Sometimes, though, Grisham gets a bit too relaxed, letting his dialogue become both simplistic and florid, as when Mercer, pondering Woolf, sighs sadly: "She killed herself. Why do writers suffer so much, Bruce? So much destructive behavior, even suicide." There are also repetitions: In these pages we encounter "seasoned thieves" and a "seasoned raconteur," and find Cable described as a "seasoned professional" when it comes to sex. That's a lot of seasoning. Yet these flaws don't impede the jolly appeal of the novel's storytelling. Grisham has said that he and his wife dreamed up "Camino Island" during a long car ride to Florida, and the book provides the pleasure of a leisurely jaunt periodically jolted into high gear, just for the fun and speed of it. ? KEN TUCKER is critic at large for Yahoo, and a music critic for NPR's "Fresh Air With Terry Gross."
Kirkus Review
A light caper turns into a multilayered game of cat and mouse in a story that, as with most of Grisham's (The Whistler, 2016, etc.) crime yarns, never gets too complex or deep but is entertaining all the same.Bruce Cable is a bon vivant-ish owner of a bookstore specializing in rarities, which ought to mean he's covered in dust instead of Florida sunshine. But he's an aging golden boy, the perfect draw for young aspiring novelist and cute thing Mercer Mann, who's attracted to books and Bruce and the literary scene he's created on formerly sleepy Camino Island. It takes us a while to get to the smooth-operating Bruce, though, because Grisham's first got to set up, with all due diligence, the misdeed to be attended to: the theft of F. Scott Fitzgerald's manuscripts from the Princeton library. Now, who wouldn't want the mojo associated with holding a piece of paper out of Fitzgerald's typewriter? Suspicion falls on Bruce, whereupon Mercer enters the picture, for a novel way has been presented to her to pay off some crushing student loans. (Always timely, Grisham is.) Eventually, Bruce and Mercer are reading between the lines and searching for clues between the sheets ("We're not talking about love; we're talking about sex," Grisham writes, with a perfectly correct semicolon). But was it Bruce who pulled off the literary crime of the century? Maybe, and maybe not; Grisham leaves us guessing even as he makes clear that literary criminals don't have to be nice guys in order to be good at their work: "He died a horrible death, Oscar, it was awful," one particularly menacing bookworm tells a quarry once the stolen manuscripts go missing a second time. "But before he died he gave me what I wanted. You." How all these little threads join up is a pleasure for Grisham fans to behold: there's nothing particularly surprising about it, but he's a skillful spinner of mayhem and payback. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
A theft of priceless books from a library, a book dealer who dabbles in the black market of stolen manuscripts, and a novelist who is recruited for a daring mission all add up to what sounds like the ideal beach read. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
CHAPTER ONE The Heist 1. The imposter borrowed the name of Neville Manchin, an actual professor of American literature at Portland State and soon-to-be doctoral student at Stanford. In his letter, on perfectly forged college stationery, "Professor Manchin" claimed to be a budding scholar of F. Scott Fitzgerald and was keen to see the great writer's "manuscripts and papers" during a forthcoming trip to the East Coast. The letter was addressed to Dr. Jeffrey Brown, Director of Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University. It arrived with a few others, was duly sorted and passed along, and eventually landed on the desk of Ed Folk, a career junior librarian whose task, among several other monotonous ones, was to verify the credentials of the person who wrote the letter. Ed received several of these letters each week, all in many ways the same, all from self-proclaimed Fitzgerald buffs and experts, and even from the occasional true scholar. In the previous calendar year, Ed had cleared and logged in 190 of these people through the library. They came from all over the world and arrived wide-eyed and humbled, like pilgrims before a shrine. In his thirty-four years at the same desk, Ed had processed all of them. And, they were not going away. F. Scott Fitzgerald continued to fascinate. The traffic was as heavy now as it had been three decades earlier. These days, though, Ed was wondering what could possibly be left of the great writer's life that had not been pored over, studied at great length, and written about. Not long ago, a true scholar told Ed that there were now at least a hundred books and over ten thousand published academic articles on Fitzgerald the man, the writer, his works, and his crazy wife. And he drank himself to death at forty-four! What if he'd lived into old age and kept writing? Ed would need an assistant, maybe two, perhaps even an entire staff. But then Ed knew that an early death was often the key to later acclaim (not to mention greater royalties). After a few days, Ed finally got around to dealing with Professor Manchin. A quick review of the library's register revealed that this was a new person, a new request. Some of the veterans had been to Princeton so many times they simply called his number and said, "Hey, Ed, I'll be there next Tuesday." Which was fine with Ed. Not so with Manchin. Ed went through the Portland State website and found his man. Undergraduate degree in American lit from the University of Oregon; master's from UCLA; adjunct gig now for three years. His photo revealed a rather plain-looking young man of perhaps thirty-five, the makings of a beard that was probably temporary, and narrow frameless eyeglasses. In his letter, Professor Manchin asked whoever responded to do so by e-mail, and gave a private Gmail address. He said he rarely checked his university address. Ed thought, "That's because you're just a lowly adjunct professor and probably don't even have a real office." He often had these thoughts, but, of course, was too professional to utter them to anyone else. Out of caution, the next day he sent a response through the Portland State server. He thanked Professor Manchin for his letter and invited him to the Princeton campus. He asked for a general idea of when he might arrive and laid out a few of the basic rules regarding the Fitzgerald collection. There were many, and he suggested that Professor Manchin study them on the library's website. The reply was automatic and informed Ed that Manchin was out of pocket for a few days. One of Manchin's partners had hacked into the Portland State directory just deep enough to tamper with the English department's e-mail server; easy work for a sophisticated hacker. He and the imposter knew immediately that Ed had responded. Ho hum, thought Ed. The next day he sent the same message to Professor Manchin's private Gmail address. Within an hour, Manchin replied with an enthusiastic thank-you, said he couldn't wait to get there, and so on. He gushed on about how he had studied the library's website, had spent hours with the Fitzgerald digital archives, had owned for years the multivolume series containing facsimile editions of the great author's handwritten first drafts, and had a particular interest in the critical reviews of the first novel, This Side of Paradise . Great, said Ed. He'd seen it all before. The guy was trying to impress him before he even got there, which was not at all unusual. 2. F. Scott Fitzgerald enrolled in Princeton in the fall of 1913. At the age of sixteen, he was dreaming of writing the great American novel, and had indeed begun working on an early version of This Side of Paradise . He dropped out four years later to join the Army and go to war, but it ended before he was deployed. His classic, The Great Gatsby, was published in 1925 but did not become popular until after his death. He struggled financially throughout his career, and by 1940 was working in Hollywood, cranking out bad screenplays, failing physically and creatively. On December 21, he died of a heart attack, brought on by years of severe alcoholism. In 1950, Scottie, his daughter and only child, gave his original manuscripts, notes, and letters--his "papers"--to the Firestone Library at Princeton. His five novels were handwritten on inexpensive paper that did not age well. The library quickly realized that it would be unwise to allow researchers to physically handle them. High-quality copies were made, and the originals were locked away in a secured basement vault where the air, light, and temperature were carefully controlled. Over the years, they had been removed only a handful of times. 3. The man posing as Professor Neville Manchin arrived at Princeton on a beautiful fall day in early October. He was directed to Rare Books and Special Collections, where he met Ed Folk, who then passed him along to another assistant librarian who examined and copied his Oregon driver's license. It was, of course, a forgery, but a perfect one. The forger, who was also the hacker, had been trained by the CIA and had a long history in the murky world of private espionage. Breaching a bit of campus security was hardly a challenge. Professor Manchin was then photographed and given a security badge that had to be displayed at all times. He followed the assistant librarian to the second floor, to a large room with two long tables and walls lined with retractable steel drawers, each of which was locked. Manchin noticed at least four surveillance cameras high in the corners, cameras that were supposed to be seen. He suspected others were well hidden. He attempted to chat up the assistant librarian but got little in return. He jokingly asked if he could see the original manuscript for This Side of Paradise . The assistant librarian offered a smug grin and said that would not be possible. "Have you ever seen the originals?" Manchin asked. "Only once." A pause as Manchin waited for more, then he asked, "And what was the occasion?" "Well, a certain famous scholar wished to see them. We accompanied him down to the vault and gave him a look. He didn't touch the papers, though. Only our head librarian is allowed to do so, and only with special gloves." "Of course. Oh well, let's get to work." The assistant opened two of the large drawers, both labeled "This Side of Paradise," and withdrew thick, oversized notebooks. He said, "These contain the reviews of the book when it was first published. We have many other samples of later reviews." "Perfect," Manchin said with a grin. He opened his briefcase, took out a notepad, and seemed ready to pounce on everything laid on the table. Half an hour later, with Manchin deep in his work, the assistant librarian excused himself and disappeared. For the benefit of the cameras, Manchin never looked up. Eventually, he needed to find the men's room and wandered away. He took a wrong turn here and another one there, got himself lost, and eased through Collections, avoiding contact with anyone. There were surveillance cameras everywhere. He doubted that anyone at that moment was watching the footage, but it could certainly be retrieved if needed. He found an elevator, avoided it, and took the nearby stairs. The first level below was similar to the ground floor. Below it, the stairs stopped at B2 (Basement 2), where a large thick door waited with "Emergencies Only" painted in bold letters. A keypad was next to the door, and another sign warned that an alarm would sound the instant the door was opened without "proper authorization." Two security cameras watched the door and the area around it. Manchin backed away and retraced his steps. When he returned to his workroom, the assistant was waiting. "Is everything okay, Professor Manchin?" he asked. "Oh yes. Just a bit of a stomach bug, I'm afraid. Hope it's not contagious." The assistant librarian left immediately, and Manchin hung around all day, digging through materials from the steel drawers and reading old reviews he cared nothing about. Several times he wandered off, poking around, looking, measuring, and memorizing. 4. Manchin returned three weeks later and he was no longer pretending to be a professor. He was clean shaven, his hair was colored a sandy blond, he wore fake eyeglasses with red frames, and he carried a bogus student card with a photo. If someone asked, which he certainly didn't expect, his story was that he was a grad student from Iowa. In real life his name was Mark and his occupation, if one could call it that, was professional thievery. High-dollar, world-class, elaborately planned smash-and-grab jobs that specialized in art and rare artifacts that could be sold back to the desperate victims for ransom. His was a gang of five, led by Denny, a former Army Ranger who had turned to crime after being kicked out of the military. So far, Denny had not been caught and had no record; nor did Mark. However, two of the others did. Trey had two convictions and two escapes, his last the year before from a federal prison in Ohio. It was there he'd met Jerry, a petty art thief now on parole. Another art thief, a onetime cellmate serving a long sentence, had first mentioned the Fitzgerald manuscripts to Jerry. The setup was perfect. There were only five manuscripts, all handwritten, all in one place. And to Princeton they were priceless. The fifth member of the team preferred to work at home. Ahmed was the hacker, the forger, the creator of all illusions, but he didn't have the nerve to carry guns and such. He worked from his basement in Buffalo and had never been caught or arrested. He left no trails. His 5 percent would come off the top. The other four would take the rest in equal shares. By nine o'clock on a Tuesday night, Denny, Mark, and Jerry were inside the Firestone Library posing as grad students and watching the clock. Their fake student IDs had worked perfectly; not a single eyebrow had been raised. Denny found his hiding place in a third-floor women's restroom. He lifted a panel in the ceiling above the toilet, tossed up his student backpack, and settled in for a few hours of hot and cramped waiting. Mark picked the lock of the main mechanical room on the first level of the basement and waited for alarms. He heard none, nor did Ahmed, who had easily hacked into the university's security systems. Mark proceeded to dismantle the fuel injectors of the library's backup electrical generator. Jerry found a spot in a study carrel hidden among rows of stacked tiers holding books that had not been touched in decades. Trey was drifting around the campus, dressed like a student, lugging his backpack, scoping out places for his bombs. The library closed at midnight. The four team members, as well as Ahmed in his basement in Buffalo, were in radio contact. Denny, the leader, announced at 12:15 that all was proceeding as planned. At 12:20, Trey, dressed like a student and hauling a bulky backpack, entered the McCarren Residential College in the heart of the campus. He saw the same surveillance cameras he had seen the previous week. He took the unwatched stairs to the second floor, ducked into a coed restroom, and locked himself in a stall. At 12:40, he reached into his backpack and removed a tin can about the size of a twenty-ounce bottle of soda. He set a delayed starter and hid it behind the toilet. He left the restroom, went to the third floor, and set another bomb in an empty shower stall. At 12:45, he found a semi-dark hallway on the second floor of a dormitory and nonchalantly tossed a string of ten jumbo Black Cat firecrackers down the hall. As he scrambled down the stairwell, the explosions boomed through the air. Seconds later, both smoke bombs erupted, sending thick clouds of rancid fog into the hallways. As Trey left the building he heard the first wave of panicked voices. He stepped behind some shrubs near the dorm, pulled a disposable phone out of his pocket, called Princeton's 911 service, and delivered the horrifying news: "There's a guy with a gun on the second floor of McCarren. He's firing shots." Smoke was drifting from a second-floor window. Jerry, sitting in the dark study carrel in the library, made a similar call from his prepaid cell phone. Soon, calls were pouring in as panic gripped the campus. Every American college has elaborate plans to handle a situation involving an "active gunman," but no one wants to implement them. It took a few dumbstruck seconds for the officer in charge to push the right buttons, but when she did, sirens began wailing. Every Princeton student, professor, administrator, and employee received a text and e-mail alert. All doors were to be closed and locked. All buildings were to be secured. Jerry made another call to 911 and reported that two students had been shot. Smoke boiled out of McCarren Hall. Trey dropped three more smoke bombs into trash cans. A few students ran through the smoke as they went from building to building, not sure where exactly the safe places were. Campus security and the City of Princeton police raced onto the scene, followed closely by half a dozen fire trucks. Then ambulances. The first of many patrol cars from the New Jersey State Police arrived. Trey left his backpack at the door of an office building, then called 911 to report how suspicious it looked. The timer on the last smoke bomb inside the backpack was set to go off in ten minutes, just as the demolition experts would be staring at it from a distance. At 1:05, Trey radioed the gang: "A perfect panic out here. Smoke everywhere. Tons of cops. Go for it." Denny replied, "Cut the lights." Ahmed, sipping strong tea in Buffalo and sitting on go, quickly routed through the school's security panel, entered the electrical grid, and cut the electricity not only to the Firestone Library but to half a dozen nearby buildings as well. For good measure, Mark, now wearing night vision goggles, pulled the main cutoff switch in the mechanical room. He waited and held his breath, then breathed easier when the backup generator did not engage. The power outage triggered alarms at the central monitoring station inside the campus security complex, but no one was paying attention. There was an active gunman on the loose. There was no time to worry about other alarms. Jerry had spent two nights inside the Firestone Library in the past week and was confident there were no guards stationed within the building while it was closed. During the night, a uniformed officer walked around the building once or twice, shined his flashlight at the doors, and kept walking. A marked patrol car made its rounds too, but it was primarily concerned with drunk students. Generally, the campus was like any other--dead between the hours of 1:00 and 8:00 a.m. On this night, however, Princeton was in the midst of a frantic emergency as America's finest were being shot. Trey reported to his gang that the scene was total chaos with cops scrambling about, SWAT boys throwing on their gear, sirens screaming, radios squawking, and a million red and blue emergency lights flashing. Smoke hung by the trees like a fog. A helicopter could be heard hovering somewhere close. Total chaos. Denny, Jerry, and Mark hustled through the dark and took the stairs down to the basement under Special Collections. Each wore night vision goggles and a miner's lamp strapped to his forehead. Each carried a heavy backpack, and Jerry hauled a small Army duffel he'd hidden in the library two nights earlier. At the third and final level down, they stopped at a thick metal door, blacked out the surveillance cameras, and waited for Ahmed and his magic. Calmly, he worked his way through the library's alarm system and deactivated the door's four sensors. There was a loud clicking noise. Denny pressed down on the handle and pulled the door open. Inside they found a narrow square of space with two more metal doors. Using a flashlight, Mark scanned the ceiling and spotted a surveillance camera. "There," he said. "Only one." Jerry, the tallest at six feet three inches, took a small can of black paint and sprayed the lens of the camera. Denny looked at the two doors and said, "Wanna flip a coin?" "What do you see?" Ahmed asked from Buffalo. "Two metal doors, identical," Denny replied. "I got nothing here, fellas," Ahmed replied. "There's nothing in the system beyond the first door. Start cutting." From his duffel Jerry removed two eighteen-inch canisters, one filled with oxygen, the other with acetylene. Denny situated himself before the door on the left, lit a cutting torch with a sparker, and began heating a spot six inches above the keyhole and latch. Within seconds, sparks were flying. Meanwhile, Trey had drifted away from the chaos around McCarren and was hiding in the blackness across the street from the library. Sirens were screaming as more emergency vehicles responded. Helicopters were thumping the air loudly above the campus, though Trey could not see them. Around him, even the streetlights were out. There was not another soul near the library. All hands were needed elsewhere. "All's quiet outside the library," he reported. "Any progress?" "We're cutting now," came the terse reply from Mark. All five members knew that chatter should be limited. Denny slowly and skillfully cut through the metal with the torch tip that emitted eight hundred degrees of oxygenated heat. Minutes passed as molten metal dripped to the floor and red and yellow sparks flew from the door. At one point Denny said, "It's an inch thick." He finished the top edge of the square and began cutting straight down. The work was slow, the minutes dragged on, and the tension mounted but they kept their cool. Jerry and Mark crouched behind Denny, watching his every move. When the bottom cut line was finished, Denny rattled the latch and it came loose, though something hung. "It's a bolt," he said. "I'll cut it." Five minutes later, the door swung open. Ahmed, staring at his laptop, noticed nothing unusual from the library's security system. "Nothing here," he said. Denny, Mark, and Jerry entered the room and immediately filled it. A narrow table, two feet wide at most, ran the length, about ten feet. Four large wooden drawers covered one side; four on the other. Mark, the lock picker, flipped up his goggles, adjusted his headlight, and inspected one of the locks. He shook his head and said, "No surprise. Combination locks, probably with computerized codes that change every day. There's no way to pick it. We gotta drill." "Go for it," Denny said. "Start drilling and I'll cut the other door." Jerry produced a three-quarter drive battery-powered drill with bracing bars on both sides. He zeroed in on the lock and he and Mark applied as much pressure as possible. The drill whined and slid off the brass, which at first seemed impenetrable. But a shaving spun off, then another, and as the men shoved the bracing bars the drill bit ground deeper into the lock. When it gave way the drawer still would not open. Mark managed to slide a thin pry bar into the gap above the lock and yanked down violently. The wood frame split and the drawer opened. Inside was an archival storage box with black metal edges, seventeen inches by twenty-two and three inches deep. "Careful," Jerry said as Mark opened the box and gently lifted a thin hardback volume. Mark read slowly, "The collected poems of Dolph McKenzie. Just what I always wanted." "Who the hell?" "Don't know but we ain't here for poetry." Denny entered behind them and said, "Okay, get on with it. Seven more drawers in here. I'm almost inside the other room." They returned to their labors as Trey casually smoked a cigarette on a park bench across the street and glanced repeatedly at his watch. The frenzy across the campus showed no signs of dying down, but it wouldn't last forever. The second and third drawers in the first room revealed more rare books by authors unknown to the gang. When Denny finished cutting his way into the second room, he told Jerry and Mark to bring the drill. This room, too, had eight large drawers, seemingly identical to the first room. At 2:15, Trey checked in with a report that the campus was still in lockdown, but curious students were beginning to gather on the lawn in front of McCarren to watch the show. Police with bullhorns had ordered them back to their rooms, but there were too many to handle. At least two news helicopters were hovering and complicating things. He was watching CNN on his smart phone and the Princeton story was the story at the moment. A frantic reporter "on the scene" continually referred to "unconfirmed casualties," and managed to convey the impression that numerous students had been shot "by at least one gunman." "At least one gunman?" Trey mumbled. Doesn't every shooting require at least one gunman? Denny, Mark, and Jerry discussed the idea of cutting into the drawers with the blowtorch, but decided against it, for the moment anyway. The risk of fire would be high, and what good would the manuscripts be if they were damaged. Instead, Denny pulled out a smaller one-quarter drive drill and began drilling. Mark and Jerry bored away with the larger one. The first drawer in the second room produced stacks of delicate papers handwritten by another long-forgotten poet, one they'd never heard of but hated nonetheless. At 2:30, CNN confirmed that two students were dead and at least two more were injured. The word "carnage" was introduced. 5. When the second floor of McCarren was secured, the police noticed the remnants of what appeared to be firecrackers. The empty smoke bomb canisters were found in the restroom and the shower. Trey's abandoned backpack was opened by a demolition crew and the spent smoke bomb was removed. At 3:10, the commander first mentioned the word "prank," but the adrenaline was still pumping so fast no one thought of the word "diversion." The rest of McCarren was quickly secured and all students were accounted for. The campus was still locked down and would remain so for hours as the nearby buildings were searched. 6. At 3:30, Trey reported, "Things seem to be settling down out here. Three hours in, fellas, how's the drilling?" "Slow," came the one-word response from Denny. Inside the vault, the work was indeed slow, but determined. The first four opened drawers revealed more old manuscripts, some handwritten, some typed, all by important writers who didn't matter at the moment. They finally struck gold in the fifth drawer when Denny removed an archival storage box identical to the others. He carefully opened it. A reference page inserted by the library read, "Original Handwritten Manuscript of The Beautiful and Damned--F. Scott Fitzgerald." "Bingo," Denny said calmly. He removed two identical boxes from the fifth drawer, delicately placed them on the narrow table, and opened them. Inside were original manuscripts of Tender Is the Night and The Last Tycoon . Ahmed, still glued to his laptop and now drinking a highly caffeinated energy drink, heard the beautiful words: "Okay, boys, we have three out of five. Gatsby 's here somewhere, along with Paradise ." Trey asked, "How much longer?" "Twenty minutes," Denny said. "Get the van." Trey casually strode across the campus, mixed in with a crowd of the curious, and watched for a moment as the small army of policemen milled about. They were no longer ducking, covering, running, and dashing behind cars with loaded weapons. The danger had clearly passed, though the area was still ablaze with flashing lights. Trey eased away, walked half a mile, left the campus, and stopped at John Street, where he got into a white cargo van with the words "Princeton University Printing" stenciled on both front doors. It was number 12, whatever that meant, and it was very similar to a van Trey had photographed a week earlier. He drove it back onto campus, avoided the commotion around McCarren, and parked it by a loading ramp at the rear of the library. "Van in place," he reported. "We're just opening the sixth drawer," Denny replied. As Jerry and Mark flipped up their goggles and moved their lights closer to the table, Denny gently opened the archival storage box. Its reference sheet read, "Original Handwritten Manuscript of T he Great Gatsby --F. Scott Fitzgerald." "Bingo," he said calmly. "We got Gatsby, that old son of a bitch." "Whoopee," Mark said, though their excitement was thoroughly contained. Jerry lifted out the only other box in the drawer. It was the manuscript for This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald's first novel, published in 1920. "We have all five," Denny said calmly. "Let's get outta here." Jerry repacked the drills, the cutting torch, the canisters of oxygen and acetylene, and the pry bars. As he bent to lift the duffel, a piece of the splintered wood from the third drawer nicked him above his left wrist. In the excitement, he barely noticed and just rubbed it for a split second as he removed his backpack. Denny and Mark carefully placed the five priceless manuscripts into their three student backpacks. The thieves hustled from the vault, laden with their loot and tools, and scampered up the stairs to the main floor. They left the library through a service entrance near a delivery ramp, one hidden from view by a thick, long hedge. They jumped through the rear doors of the van and Trey pulled away from the ramp. As he did so, he passed two campus security guards in a patrol car. He flicked a casual wave; they did not respond. Trey noted the time: 3:42 a.m. He reported, "All clear, leaving the campus now with Mr. Gatsby and friends." Excerpted from Camino Island by John Grisham All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.


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Maybe it's your mom and/or dad. Maybe it's a sibling or a grandparent. Or maybe it's just that one friend who still uses a Motorola Razr from the early 2000s. Whoever it is, there's a high probability you'll be devoting some time to fixing their gadgets and answering a backlog of questions this holiday season.
The WIRED staff feels your pain. Covering technology for a living means there are pretty high expectations when it comes to finding lost downloads and answering a year's worth of questions about Apple, Google, Xbox, and Netflix – often before even putting our suitcases down. Our pain (Fine. It's not really a pain. We love our families.) is your gain. We've assembled some of the most frequently asked questions below to help you quickly navigate these tech-related queries:
Fix my printer.
Why is my Facebook stuff all public?
Is there a way to get lots of pictures off my phone without clicking them one at a time?
What exactly is Twitter?
How to buy music on iTunes and then get it to your phone?
Should I buy the new iPhone?
My Netflix looks fuzzy, can you fix it?
I bought a universal remote and only half the buttons work.
We're going to Cabo for New Years. How do I do the thing where my phone bill doesn't get huge?
Please fix my router/network.
I forgot my password. Again.
Please hook up my Roku or Apple TV.
Please set up a "simple" website for me.
Internet Explorer keeps randomly closing.
Why is my computer so slow?
I want to update my computer, but I don't want to lose all my files or make my apps not work.
How do I get books on my Kindle?
Why do all my smartphone photos look horrible?
Fix my printer. —————
Ah, the printer. Is there a more evil and infuriating piece of hardware in any home? They jam, they need adjusting even though you haven't printed anything in months, and ink is apparently a rare substance mined in faraway lands worthy of fetching $20 a drop. It's no wonder everyone has problems with these horrid beasts. For jamming issues, the best you can do is remind them not to push already printed on paper through the machine. Use new paper that's been stored flat. Also, if the printer is in a humid environment, unless they print over 500 pages every month, only buy one ream at a time. The moisture in the air warps the paper.
On the actual printing front, print dialogue boxes are notoriously confusing. In some instances, the landscape and portrait features show up in to different areas. Sometimes they'll print 50 pages of a document when they only need one copy of page three. If general printing issues continually plague your family members, set up Google Cloud Print to print to a designated printer from anywhere. Set it up and log in with your computer. Now your family can just send you the file and tell you what they want printed. It seems like a pain, but it's better than getting sucked into another print dialogue-box tech-support call.
Why is my Facebook stuff all public? ————————————
Inform your family that unlike most tech companies, Facebook actually makes money. But in order to make that money it wants you and everyone else on Facebook to scroll and click and generally never leave Facebook so they can serve you ads. If you hide yourself away and people can't find you, when you do share an update, fewer eyeballs will see how awesome your life is. Fewer connections means fewer clicks. Fewer clicks means fewer ads being shown. Fewer ads means less money.
Then again, Facebook has tons of money. So why share everything? While you can no longer hide your account from searches, you can target your posts with Lists. File away friends, family, and acquaintances into separate Lists.
After you create a new post, you'll notice a button that you can use to determine who sees it (it's to the left of the Post button). Show your confused relative how you can set it to friends, family, or any List that they want to see the post. The next time they post a status, it will be already be set to the last List they picked.
Is there a way to get lots of pictures off my phone without clicking them one at a time? —————————————————————————————-
If you have an iPhone, you can use iPhoto for OS X and Photo Gallery for Windows. Both will let you download all your photos to you computer and give you the option to delete photos already downloaded. For Android, use Image Capture on the Mac. The phone will show up in the left sidebar, and you can pick and choose which photos to import and which to delete. You can also set Image capture to load every time you plug in the phone. In the lower left hand corner, under the "Connecting this [device name] Opens" drop-down select Image Capture as the app to launch. If the drop-down is missing, just click on the tiny triangle to make it appear.
For Android on Windows, use Photo Gallery for Windows. But be aware that you may be presented with every image on the device. Find the folder named DCIM. That should have all your camera photos.
If your family member would rather not plug in their smartphone, a Dropbox account is also a great way to get photos on your computer. Sign up for an account, put it on their computer and phone and set up photo syncing. Launch Dropbox on the smartphone when you want to sync new photos and the app will take care of the rest. That's it.
What exactly is Twitter? ————————
Twitter is a micro-blogging service that doubles as a messaging service. It's more than what you had for lunch. It's been used to break news, share ideas, and connect with individuals. And of course share what you had for lunch.
How to buy music on iTunes and then get it to your phone? ———————————————————
You can set the iPhone to automatically download new music no matter what device was used to purchase said music. Head to Settings > iTunes & App Store. Head down to Automatic Downloads and turn on Music. You can also set up auto downloads of books, apps, and app updates.
Should I buy the new iPhone? —————————-
If your current phone does everything you want it to do, then don't upgrade. If it's held together with tape, it's probably time to replace your phone. Almost all carriers will have Black Friday deals for the new iPhone and Android phones. If your family member is in the market for either of those, we recommend the iPhone 5s, HTC One, and Moto X.
My Netflix looks fuzzy, can you fix it? —————————————
Check your family's broadband connection with a speed test. If it's painfully slow (under the 3 Mbps Netflix recommends for DVD quality) see if their plan actually supports quicker speeds. If it does, do the old unplug and replug the router trick. This usually solves most broadband speed issues.
If the speed test indicates adequate data flow into the house, it's an internal issue. Check to see if there are 30 items leeching off the same Wi-Fi connection. That's definitely going to affect the quality of Netflix. If their set-top box and Wi-Fi Router support 5Ghz, create a separate network just for the set-top box. If that's not the case, it's probably time to run an ethernet cable from the router to the streamer. It won't be pretty, but at least Duck Dynasty will come in crystal clear.
I bought a universal remote and only half the buttons work. ———————————————————–
That universal remote you bought your family last Christmas was supposed to make controlling the home theatre easier. Yeah, it didn't work out that way. Usually the main issue is that people stop the setup after entering the first code that works with the volume and mute. If other functions don't work, it usually means you'll have to jump back into the setup and try some other codes.
After assigning additional codes to the universal remote, test it out. If the functions your family wants still don't work, try another code. It's tedious work. But if it means you won't get any more phone calls about not being able to hear Downton Abbey at 11 p.m., it'll be worth it.
We're going to Cabo for New Years. How do I do the thing where my phone bill doesn't get huge? ———————————————————————————————-
Even your less-than-tech-savvy family members know that a trip abroad with their phone could end with a huge roaming bill. While putting a phone in airplane mode will keep your phone from pinging international cellphone towers, the best course of action is to pull the SIM. If a phone pings a tower in another country there's a chance your carrier will forward all your calls and texts overseas and start charging you ridiculous roaming charges.
The iPhone SIM slot on the right side of the phone can be accessed with a paperclip. Just shove a paperclip in the tiny hole and the SIM tray pops out. Most Android phones with removable batteries stash the SIM card either under or near the battery. Once it's out, put the SIM in an envelope and store it in a safe place. Instruct your parents to do this before they land at their destination.
If you're a T-Mobile customer, you can get unlimited data (2G) and text while in over 100 select countries. Phone calls will still cost you extra, but when's the last time you made a phone call?
Please fix my router/network. —————————–
Unplug it and plug it back in.
If that doesn't work check to see if someone has gone in and started mucking around with the "advanced" features of the router. It doesn't help that companies seems to think it's a good idea to give every router feature its own proprietary name. Sometimes the best bet is to ask the family member what they want the router to do and then reset it to its factory default.
Setting up a router from scratch is actually easier and quicker than trying to troubleshoot a mess. This also gives you the opportunity to set up a better password than your family member's home address. Be sure to take note of that password, however. It will be forgotten.
I forgot my password. Again. —————————-
After reading about a particular journalist getting hacked, everyone decided to change their passwords. Of course remembering all those passwords creates a whole new set of problems. You have two options.
You could set up your family member with a password wrangling tool like 1Password or LastPass. Both managers store multiple login information and sync that information over multiple devices and operating systems. Just come up with a single, hard to crack, password. Preferably a string of random words instead of just a single word where you replace the "I" with a "1."
If your family members are scared of the idea of an application holding on to all their passwords, there's the old school (and much less secure) method of changing all the passwords and printing them all out on a piece of paper. Store their list in a safe or lockbox and make a copy for yourself. Now when they call because they can't find the key to their safe, you can still sign them into their email.
Please hook up my Roku or Apple TV. ———————————–
If your parents hooked up a VCR in the 1980s, an over-the-top streamer like the Apple TV or Roku should be pretty simple for them. Unfortunately, new technology has a way of intimidating even the smartest family members.
Before you dive into the set-top box world, get a list of all the streaming services with username and password information. Also make sure there's nothing on the TV that anyone wants to watch for the next hour. To speed up all that text entry, the Apple TV supports Bluetooth keyboards. The apps for the Roku and Apple TV also have keyboards that should make setting up all those services a little easier.
Please set up a "simple" website for me. —————————————-
There are two types of websites your family wants from you. The one where they post photos of their garden or trip to the Bahamas. The other is a site for a business. Both will be updated exactly twice after you leave.
Put them both on Tumblr. It's quick to set up and easy to use. Plus, they won't have to pay a monthly fee for a hosted site. Also, Tumblr supports vanity URLs. Pick an appropriate theme and add the important information. Be sure to make yourself an admin so you can fix things when they go horribly wrong.
If the family with the business page really wants a professional website send them to Squarespace. The site takes care of almost everything they would need for a business site. Domain registration, hosting, and drag and drop design. If the family member still wants real "professional" site, tell them to hire an actual professional. Then walk away and enjoy some pumpkin pie.
Internet Explorer keeps randomly closing. —————————————–
Two of the worst things to come out of the internet are Internet Explorer and Flash. There are still a few places where you have to deal with Flash. But Internet Explorer is completely opt in. Unfortunately, your family may be unaware that there are other options. The first thing you need to do is fire up the world's worst browser and use it to download Chrome.
Now replace the alias/shortcut on your family member's desktop with one for Chrome. Do you best to remove or replace any shortcuts for Internet Explorer with Chrome. Now here's the tough part, sit your family down and explain that Internet Explorer is gone. It's living on a farm with a nice family.
Why is my computer so slow? —————————
It's like asking why you don't call anymore. There are so many reasons. But unlike your sad excuses for not calling your family, the slow computer is a real problem. Here are few of the situations that would cause a computer to slow to a crawl:
Nearly full hard drive: Once a computer has less than 1GB of storage, it struggles to keep apps open and perform even rudimentary functions. The computer is trying to allocate cache from applications to the free space on your computer. When there is no free space, apps stop responding and everything grinds to a halt. To free up some space, check the download folder of the computer's browser. It's usually filled with installers, images, and other storage hungry files that no one uses.
If you're still running into problems with space, see how much storage their media is using. It may be time to invest in an external drive just for music, photos, and videos.
Spyware, Malware, Viruses, etc: Someone downloaded something horrible onto the computer. No one will take responsibility. But now the computer is a train wreck, full of pop ups and browser extensions that insist you visit adult sites. First, download Microsoft's security scanner. The site will determine which version of the software you need depending on your version of Windows. Fire it up and let it clean all the bad away.
It's also a good idea to update the OS on the computer to the latest version too. The updates contain the latest security patches for the operating system. Also, call your family more often.
I want to update my computer, but I don't want to lose all my files or make my apps not work. ———————————————————————————————
First inform your family how important backup is to the well being of their files. They should already be backing up on a regular basis. If not, get them an external hard drive and set that up. If they have a Mac, just use the built-in Time Machine feature. For Windows users, fire up the Windows Backup wizard for Windows 7 and File History for Windows 8. Both will automatically back up your family's computer on a regular basis and offer restore capabilities when a hard drive fails.
It'll take a while for those files to backup for the first time. Go eat some turkey and have another scotch.
Now that the computer is backed up, tell your family it's safe to update their computer at any time as long as they continue to back up their files on a regular basis. Now if anything goes wrong, they can restore all their old files onto their updated computer.
For apps, you'll need to check to see if they work with the latest operating system. It's tedious work. Find out which apps your family actually uses and check those. Get rid of the rest.
How do I get books on my Kindle? ——————————–
Someone got your dad a Kindle last year. So far he's read one book because they never informed him that he needs to connect it to an Amazon account. Inform your dad or other family member that the Kindle is part of the Amazon ecosystem. This is especially helpful if the family member in question is more comfortable making purchases on the computer than with a black and white e-reader.
Direct them to the Kindle store for the latest books available on the platform. This is a good opportunity to show them all the free e-books available from Amazon, Project Guttenberg, and Internet Archive. Amazon has a free e-books collection page with links to all these resources.
Why do all my smartphone photos look horrible? ———————————————-
Smartphone cameras continue to improve and eat away at the point-and-shoot category. And it's that point-and-shoot world, coupled with the dying world of film, that may be responsible for some of your older family members posting out of focus photos to Facebook.
In the land before digital photos, you got 36 chances to take a photo. Unless you were a professional photographer, there's no way you were going to bracket (take multiple photos of the same scene) your shots. Plus, most older point-and-shoot cameras had no way to focus. As long as the subject was at least 5 feet away, they were in focus. That lack of adjustable focus and limited shot behavior may account for all the fuzzy selfies your aunt keeps sending you.
Sit your family members down and explain that they can take more than one photo of a subject. Take two, three, 10 photos until you get it right. Also teach them how to focus. On the iPhone and most Android phones, show them how to tap on a subject to adjust the focus and exposure. On the Moto X, you tap to focus and once focus has been obtained, the camera automatically takes a picture.
Practice makes perfect and with digital, you can practice as much as you want with very few consequences. Just show them how to throw away the bad photos so they don't fill their phones with hundreds of out-of-focus photos of cats.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Overextensions will occur when playing for too long, or playing an instrument that is too big. Personally, I've experienced this in my right shoulder where I'd lose feeling in my right hand after playing a little while. Dennis explains that when a person plays guitar, their forearm is down and the shoulder is rotating in. Instead of being in a notch in the humerus bone, the short head of the bicep tendon (on the inside of your shoulder) flips outward.
How do you fix that? Dennis says, "Hold your elbow in with your arm turned to the outside, and lower a weight out as you're lowering that arm down with your arm turned to the outside—this actually pulls that tendon back into place."
To illustrate, Lucy uses a Thera-Band Soft Weight to pull the bicep tendon back into place:
How to do it:
- Hold the elbow of your picking hand against the side of your body with a round, light weight in your hand held up near your shoulder, forearm turned toward your body.
- Holding the weight, extend your arm slowly until it is extended fully, keeping the elbow near your side and your forearm facing out.
- Repeat.
Sore Forearms
In addition to using a weight, guitarists can use a simple, non-weighted stick (think dowel or broomstick) to relieve soreness in the forearm. Dr. Dennis explains, "With the forearms, your left forearm is rotated out while your right forearm is rotated in, so that the muscles that rotate your right arm over (pronation) are going to be tighter than those that turn it out (supination)." To fix that imbalance, just grab a two-foot-long stick in the center and flick it back and forth about 20 times.
To illustrate, Lucy flips the stick back and forth several times:
How to do it:
- Hold a two-foot, non-weighted stick in a closed fist with your arm flat against your side, your elbow at a 90 degree angle, and your forearm facing down.
- Rotate only your forearm 180 degrees, so your fist and forearm are facing upward.
- Repeat at a brisk pace for about 20 rotations, then switch hands.


text:
Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts, illustrated by Lauren Castillo
Sierra loves to play soccer, especially on the field that is well maintained with a real soccer goal, not two garbage cans next to each other. But now that she plays on a team, her aunt can't come to her games because she has to work. Sierra's coach tells her he is glad to have her on the team and asks her if there is anything she needs, but Sierra always says no. When her aunt manages to get time off to attend Sierra's final game of the series, the game is rained out. Sierra knows that her aunt can't get two Saturdays off in a row, can't ask for two favors so close together. Sierra has to figure out how to fix this herself, because her aunt just has to see her play at least once this season!
Boelts has written this book poetically, with the lines in stanzas that make it read like a poem. She also uses phrases that turn it into poetry, repetition and spare but true language. Her writing has a great lilt to it, pointing to someone who speaks with an accent that makes their own phrasing dance. It's beautifully done, fully capturing the love between Sierra and her aunt and the fact that the two of them are a complete family.
Castillo's art adds to this feeling of family. The book is set firmly in an urban environment, one that is escapable by bus but also one that is home. The illustrations cement that setting. The thick black lines and bright colors also have a subtlety that is unexpected.
A celebration of a small family, an urban community and sports, this picture book glows with love. Appropriate for ages 5-7.
Reviewed from library copy.


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SAN RAMON, Calif. — When Sharoda Paul finished a postdoctoral fellowship last year at the Palo Alto Research Center, she did what most of her peers do — considered a job at a big Silicon Valley company, in her case, Google. But instead, Ms. Paul, a 31-year-old expert in social computing, went to work for General Electric.
Ms. Paul is one of more than 250 engineers recruited in the last year and a half to G.E.'s new software center here, in the East Bay of San Francisco. The company plans to increase that work force of computer scientists and software developers to 400, and to invest $1 billion in the center by 2015. The buildup is part of G.E's big bet on what it calls the "industrial Internet," bringing digital intelligence to the physical world of industry as never before.
The concept of Internet-connected machines that collect data and communicate, often called the "Internet of Things," has been around for years. Information technology companies, too, are pursuing this emerging field. I.B.M. has its "Smarter Planet" projects, while Cisco champions the "Internet of Everything."
But G.E.'s effort, analysts say, shows that Internet-era technology is ready to sweep through the industrial economy much as the consumer Internet has transformed media, communications and advertising over the last decade.
In recent months, Ms. Paul has donned a hard hat and safety boots to study power plants. She has ridden on a rail locomotive and toured hospital wards. "Here, you get to work with things that touch people in so many ways," she said. "That was a big draw."
G.E. is the nation's largest industrial company, a producer of aircraft engines, power plant turbines, rail locomotives and medical imaging equipment. It makes the heavy-duty machinery that transports people, heats homes and powers factories, and lets doctors diagnose life-threatening diseases.
G.E. resides in a different world from the consumer Internet. But the major technologies that animate Google and Facebook are also vital ingredients in the industrial Internet — tools from artificial intelligence, like machine-learning software, and vast streams of new data. In industry, the data flood comes mainly from smaller, more powerful and cheaper sensors on the equipment.
Smarter machines, for example, can alert their human handlers when they will need maintenance, before a breakdown. It is the equivalent of preventive and personalized care for equipment, with less downtime and more output.
"These technologies are really there now, in a way that is practical and economic," said Mark M. Little, G.E.'s senior vice president for global research.
G.E.'s embrace of the industrial Internet is a long-term strategy. But if its optimism proves justified, the impact could be felt across the economy.
The outlook for technology-led economic growth is a subject of considerable debate. In a recent research paper, Robert J. Gordon, a prominent economist at Northwestern University, argues that the gains from computing and the Internet have petered out in the last eight years.
Since 2000, Mr. Gordon asserts, invention has focused mainly on consumer and communications technologies, including smartphones and tablet computers. Such devices, he writes, are "smaller, smarter and more capable, but do not fundamentally change labor productivity or the standard of living" in the way that electric lighting or the automobile did.
But others say such pessimism misses the next wave of technology. "The reason I think Bob Gordon is wrong is precisely because of the kind of thing G.E. is doing," said Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at M.I.T.'s Center for Digital Business.
Today, G.E. is putting sensors on everything, be it a gas turbine or a hospital bed. The mission of the engineers in San Ramon is to design the software for gathering data, and the clever algorithms for sifting through it for cost savings and productivity gains. Across the industries it covers, G.E. estimates such efficiency opportunities at as much as $150 billion.
Some industrial Internet projects are already under way. First Wind, an owner and operator of 16 wind farms in America, is a G.E. customer for wind turbines. It has been experimenting with upgrades that add more sensors, controls and optimization software.
The new sensors measure temperature, wind speeds, location and pitch of the blades. They collect three to five times as much data as the sensors on turbines of a few years ago, said Paul Gaynor, chief executive of First Wind. The data is collected and analyzed by G.E. software, and the operation of each turbine can be tweaked for efficiency. For example, in very high winds, turbines across an entire farm are routinely shut down to prevent damage from rotating too fast. But more refined measurement of wind speeds might mean only a portion of the turbines need to be shut down. In wintry conditions, turbines can detect when they are icing up, and speed up or change pitch to knock off the ice.
Upgrades on 123 turbines on two wind farms have so far delivered a 3 percent increase in energy output, about 120 megawatt hours per turbine a year. That translates to $1.2 million in additional revenue a year from those two farms, Mr. Gaynor said.
"It's not earthshaking, but it is meaningful," he said. "These are real commercial investments for us that make economic sense now."
For the last few years, G.E. and Mount Sinai Medical Center have been working on a project to optimize the operations of the 1,100-bed hospital in New York. Hospitals, in a sense, are factories of health care. The challenge for hospitals, especially as cost pressures tighten, is to treat more patients more efficiently, while improving the quality of care. Technology, said Wayne Keathley, president of Mount Sinai, can play a vital role.
At Mount Sinai, patients get a black plastic wristband with a location sensor and other information. Similar sensors are on beds and medical equipment. An important advantage, Mr. Keathley said, is to be able to see the daily flow of patients, physical assets and treatment as it unfolds.
But he said the real benefit was how the data could be used to automate and streamline operations and then make better decisions. For example, in a typical hospital, getting a patient who shows up in an emergency room into an assigned bed in a hospital ward can take several hours and phone calls.
At Mount Sinai, G.E. has worked on optimization and modeling software that enables admitting officers to see beds and patient movements throughout the hospital, to help them more efficiently match patients and beds. Beyond that, modeling software is beginning to make predictions about likely patient admission and discharge numbers over the next several hours, based on historical patterns at the hospital and other circumstances — say, in flu season.
The software, which Mount Sinai has been trying out in recent months, acts as an intelligent assistant to admitting officers. "It essentially says, 'Hold off, your instinct is to give this bed to that guy, but there might be a better choice,' " Mr. Keathley explained.
At a hospital like Mount Sinai, G.E. estimates that the optimization and modeling technologies can translate into roughly 10,000 more patients treated a year, and $120 million in savings and additional revenue over several years.
The origins of G.E.'s industrial Internet strategy date back to meetings at the company's headquarters in Fairfield, Conn., in May 2009. In the depths of the financial crisis, Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.'s chief executive, met with his senior staff to discuss long-term growth opportunities. The industrial Internet, they decided, built on G.E.'s strength in research and could be leveraged across its varied industrial businesses, adding to the company's revenue in services, which reached $42 billion last year.
Now G.E. is trying to rally support for its vision from industry partners, academics, venture capitalists and start-ups. About 250 of them have been invited to a conference in San Francisco, sponsored by the company, on Thursday.
Mr. Immelt himself becomes involved in recruiting. His message, he says, is that if you want to have an effect on major societal challenges like improving health care, energy and transportation, consider G.E.
An early convert was William Ruh, who joined G.E. from Cisco, to become vice president in charge of the software center in San Ramon. And Mr. Ruh is taking the same message to high-tech recruits like Ms. Paul. "Here, they are working on things they can explain to their parents and grandparents," he said. "It's not a social network," even if the G.E. projects share some of the same technology.


text:
By Ben Eisen, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Investors ditched the Treasurys most sensitive to rising interest rates while gobbling up longer-term securities on Monday, sending the differential between their yields to the narrowest since 2009.
The market began pricing in earlier-than-expected hikes to the Federal Reserve's key policy rate after Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said the central bank likely would begin raising rates about six months after it ends its bond-buying program. That timeline was somewhat sooner than investors had expected. The middle of the yield curve, which is most sensitive to shifts in central bank policies, has sold off the most in response.
Meanwhile, the Fed said that even after the economy meets inflation and unemployment targets, it expects the lending rate to remain below normal by historical standards, which has helped push long-term yields lower in recent sessions. ( Read Jon Hilsenrath's take .)
The 5-year note yield, which rises as prices fall, was up 1.5 basis points Monday at 1.731%. The 30-year bond yield fell 4 basis points to 3.570%, according to Tradeweb. The difference, or spread, between the two yields was 1.84 percentage points, the smallest since October 2009 on a closing basis.
The flatter yield curve reflects the fact that the Fed will begin hiking rates as the gaps, or slack, in the economy diminish. But it's likely to keep its "equilibrium" rate below the historical average because of "other conditions residual of the financial crisis," said Gene Tannuzzo, senior portfolio manager at Columbia Management.
"The near-term decision to taper and raise short-term interest rates, that's about the fact that gaps are shrinking, not about growth," he said. Tannuzzo added that over the next 12 months, he expects a "higher, flatter yield curve."
The benchmark 10-year note yield fell 1.5 basis points on Monday to 2.734%. The 3-year note yield rose 2 basis points to 0.924%.
"To the extent that the Fed is successful in calming markets about how high its policy rate will go, it will be conducive toward keeping financial conditions loose enough to support the economic recovery," said Tony Crescenzi, market strategist and portfolio manager at Pimco, in e-mailed comments. ( Read more of his outlook here .)
Hilsenrath: Fed struggling with rate hike timeline
The Fed has struggled to explain its plan to keep short-term rates below what it sees as appropriate for a normal economy even after the unemployment rate and inflation revert to typical levels. WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath joins the News Hub. Photo: AP.
San Francisco Fed President John Williams said statements from the central bank last week were not hinting at earlier rate hikes on the horizon. While expectations about the path of the funds rate shifted slightly, it's a reflection of an improving economy not a shift in Fed policy, he said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Traders who bet on the future path of the policy rate using fed funds futures contracts put a 53% chance of the first rate hike occurring in April 2015, according to CME FedWatch.
Weaker preliminary manufacturing data helped boost Treasurys Monday. The Markit "flash" reading of its U.S. purchasing managers index fell to 55.5 in March, from 57.1. in February. A reading over 50 still indicates growth. In the euro-zone, the PMI fell to 53.2 in March from 53.3 in February, though it showed continued expansion. In China, the HSBC manufacturing PMI fell to an eight-month low, data showed Monday.
The market will absorb new supply this week, including auctions of $32 billion in 2-year notes on Tuesday, $35 billion of 5-year notes on Wednesday, and $29 billion of 7-year notes on Thursday. The Treasury Department will also sell $13 billion of 2-year floating-rate notes on Wednesday, it's third sale of such securities.
More news from MarketWatch:
El-Erian: Markets should be worrying about Ukraine
Stock buybacks likely to peak with end of cheap debt
Jeff Reeves: Is it time to give up on gold?


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Rev. Dn John El Massih
Rev. Dn John El MassihLecturer in Liturgical Music
Rassem El Massih was born and raised in Anfeh, Lebanon, where he studied Byzantine Chant under the tutelage of the renowned teacher Fr. Nicholas Malek, receiving his certification at the age of 18. After immigrating to the United States, Rassem enrolled in Hellenic College in Brookline, MA, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies. He continued on to Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, where he will graduate with a Master of Divinity degree in December of 2013.
During his time at Hellenic College and Holy Cross, Rassem continued to study Byzantine Chant under noted instructors Photios Ketzetzis and Dr. Grammenos Karanos. He also was a key member of the school's Saint Romanos the Melodist Choir, as well as a member of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Choir, the Choir of St. Mark, and Duniya.
In 2009, Rassem directed a CD project entitled "The Voice of the Lord: Selected Hymns from the Feast of Theophany." He served as the Protopsalti of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Boston until his assignment in summer of 2013 as an assistant and chanter for His Eminence Metropolitan Philip. This assignment includes teaching Byzantine music to the seminarians of the Antiochian Archdiocese studying at St. Vladimir's Seminary.


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Foals – 'Red Socks Pugie' (Transgressive)
Picking a standout track, singular, from Foals' Antidotes is tough, but put us against a wall and wave a fist our way and we might settle on 'Red Socks Pugie'. Insistent, incessant, full of intricacies and yet oddly affecting, the song was an obvious single from the moment DiS received the album sampler months ahead of its eventual release. This isn't rock to do your weekly calculus homework to; it's rock to fall in love to, to collapse into the arms of an across-the-room admirer at the end of a smiles-and-sweat gig to, and to go home for the night with their hand in yours to. Proof, if any was really needed, that this Oxford five-piece are one of the few hyped acts (the only one, perhaps?) of the turn of the year to have produced goods of a quality to back up the head of steam built for them by eager-beaver press types.
The Kooks – 'Shine On' (Virgin)
Somebody, somewhere, is singing along to this song and its beyond banal lyrical stream of shite from head Kook Luke Pritchard. That somebody could die tomorrow and, probably, not notice the difference in their pulse. What does "shine on", used in a verbal sense, like to run or to leap, actually mean? Does a body burst open and blind all around them with secretly stored sunlight? We are all descendents of the Sun in a very tenuous sense, I suppose. Sorry, distracted: comes easy when a song's as forgettable as this.
We Are Scientists – 'Chick Lit' (Virgin)
Capable of making deaf and dumb baboons dance like they're Pans People, We Are Scientists' latest is basically the same old song with different words, but nobody at DiS is complaining. If it ain't broke, et cetera, and 'Chick Lit' is 2008's 'Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt', guaranteed to be a fixture in indie DJ setlists for the rest of the year. Not quite as boisterous, but if you were thinking the boys have gotten a little more reserved with age, watch the accompanying video.
Video: 'Chick Lit'
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Connie Talbot – 'Three Little Birds' (Pebble Beach)
She's seven now, but we still can't really badmouth Britain's Got Talent loser Connie Talbot, beaten in last year's final by a rotund mobile phone salesman with a penchant for Pavarotti. Gonna have to wait 'til the girl's eight before rounding on her, hanging her out to dry. This cover of Bob Marley's original is, essentially, The Joss Stone Formula taken to its most extreme degree. Coming next week: a Caucasian foetus drops a banging cover of 'Simon Says', with the Godzilla sample.
Feeder – 'We Are The People' (Echo)
Back with rather more crunch than much of their new-Millennium material, Feeder's first single from new LP Silent Cry is lyrically weak, dross ambiguity dressed up as delectable grandeur, but ultimately will sit pleasantly on daytime rotation without offending the public en masse. It's certainly more appealing a listen that, say, OneRepublic, fans of whom have likely forgotten this British trio ever existed. Not exactly welcome back, then, but it's nice to hear a band genuinely trying to reinvigorate themselves at a time when bland sells so magnificently well.
Video: 'We Are The People'
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Little Man Tate – 'What Your Boyfriend Said' (Yellow Van)
Sometimes there's just no explaining the appeal of a band. If you're a fan of sketchy indie-popsters Little Man Tate, whose shelf life must've passed with the rising of the Mary Rose, then please do outline their selling points in the comments section below. "Explosive return" states the blurb, "Sheffield's beloved sons". Perhaps it's music PR types who're buying enough Little Man Tate records to keep the four-piece in stripy polo shirts? Yeah, that'll be it.
Laura Marling – 'Cross Your Fingers' (Virgin)
Quietly making her way, Reading songstress Laura Marling follows her recent guest turn on Mystery Jets' 'Young Love' with a wonderful little single that shows off her maturing talents excellently well. It's a shuffle, a sweet saunter, of a song that doesn't oversell its protagonist's vocal abilities a la certain other domestic females doing the critically acclaimed rounds, and feels better for it. No doubt Marling can, if requested to, 'belt them out', but it's softer-edged, slow-release numbers like this that are essential in making her an artist of considerable longevity. If you've pennies enough for a pair of singles this week, consider this our runner-up.
Video: 'Cross Your Fingers'
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Mirror! Mirror! – 'Wolfgang Bang' (Tough Love)
Nuneaton's answer to !!! tsk-tsk-tsk their way through widdly guitar lines and yelpy vocals without actually telling us a damn thing about them, save for the fact they most probably like !!!. If you like !!!, suggestion is that you seek this out, have a dance for a wee while, then accept that Mirror! Mirror! aren't the shout their name aloud act that such exciting grammar initially suggested. Oh well.
The Duke Spirit – 'My Sunken Treasure' (You Are Here)
The Duke Spirit's Leila Moss possesses the sort of voice that could melt the heart of the most hardened critic, but her band's output of late has been best assessed as tame, the wild spark of their 2005 debut LP Cuts Across The Land. This single's nicely paced in a weird '60s girl-group fashion, all harmonious group vocals and barroom piano clinks, but struggles to be anything more than the simple sum of its parts. There's no charisma, no character, nothing that grabs. It's just pleasant enough sound fit to fill a silence.
Hercules & Love Affair – 'You Belong' (EMI)
The one that sounds most like a level from Streets Of Rage II is plucked from its album placing and given the standalone treatment to decent effect – its self-titled parent LP is more a collection of potential singles than any sort of coherent album in a single-body-of-work sense, anyway, a la Simian Mobile Disco's debut of last year. Antony Hegarty croons above crisply retro house beats, folk on the dancefloor get their pits damp in appreciation, and everyone crawls home happy.
Video: 'You Belong' live at Heaven, London, June 5
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Yes, more singles than these ten can be found today at your local record emporium of choice, but my tea's getting cold.


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Glen Metropolit couldn't find the puck.
Less than half a minute into the game, Matt Bradley had already had a fine scoring opportunity. The puck came out of the
That might have been the high point of the night for the Bruins…it was still a one-goal game. By the time the final horn sounded, the Caps had nine more goals – three of them by Alex Ovechkin, who certainly had a flair for the dramatic in notching his second 50-goal season in three years – and the Caps had a 10-2 win at the expense of the visiting Bruins.
We won't describe the goals…you can go to NHL.com and catch the carnage on video highlights. There were, though, a lot of interesting numbers. It reads like "The 10 Goals of Caps-mas"…
On the 3rd day of March, my Cappies gave to me…
- 15 skaters with points
- 11 skaters with hits
- 10 skaters with blocked shots
- seven skaters with multi-point games
- six skaters with goals
- three skaters with multi-goal games
- two Donald fights
- and a hat trick in only 9:13
In case you're wondering, no…
- Ovechkin did not set a record for fastest three goals by a Caps player (Ovechkin: 9:13, Peter Bondra: 2:06 in 1994 against Tampa Bay)
- Ovechkin did not set a team record for goals in a period tonight (Ovechkin: three; Caps record: four by Peter Bondra in 1994 against Tampa Bay)
- The Caps did not set a record for fastest five goals (tonight: 12:25 for goals two through six in the first; Caps record: 3:03 in 1987 against
- Nicklas Backstrom did not set a rookie record for points in a game (1-3-4 tonight; Caps record: five by Greg Theberge in 1981 against
- Backstrom did not set a Caps rookie record for assists in a game (tonight: three; Caps record: four by Rolf Edberg in 1979 against St. Louis, tied by Backstrom this year twice against Pittsburgh and Florida in consecutive games)
- The Caps did not set a record for most goals in a period (tonight: six; Caps record: eight against Tampa Bay in 1999
- They did tie a team record – assists in a game (20, first set against Quebec in 1990)
It just seemed as if the Caps were setting records because of the stunningly swift and surgical way they dismantled Boston – who looked slow and out of sorts all night…
6-0 after one period. Wings for everybody, drive safely.
And it was great to see the guys who don't get the ink making a splash on the scoresheet…
Donald Brashear had two scoops of Bruins on his way to a Heavyweight Hat Trick (a goal and two fights). He bull-rushed Zdeno Chara to the ice when Chara thought it might be a good idea to give his somnambulistic teammates some inspiration in the first period (and hey, big guy…wearing the "C" is not license to whine to every passing official) in the first bout, then pummeled Shawn Thornton into submission in the second.
Matt Bradley had a two goal/three-point night. It was his second three-point night of the season and his first two-goal game since October 2005. He tied Ovechkin for the team lead in shots with five.
Eric Fehr set a career record for assists (three) and points (three). It was his first multi-point game for the Caps.
Brooks Laich had two more goals to add to his career best season (he now has 15); it was his second two-goal game in the last four contests.
Matt Cooke was 1-2-3 and drew a penalty by annoying Glen Metropolit into a slash. Ovechkin capitalized 61 seconds into the penalty.
The Caps had four power play goals in seven chances, the four successes being their season high in a game.This was payback for a lot of frustration over the past three years at the hands of the Bruins in general and Tim Thomas in particular. Thomas really never had a chance.
Two of the goals were clean breakaways – a nice symmetry of Backstrom sending Ovechkin free on one, then Ovechkin returning the favor. But the rest were just a case of the Capitals getting in tight into high-probability scoring areas for slam-dunk scores. Thomas (and later Alex Auld) never really had much chance on most of the goals. Compare that to the
For the Caps, they now have the league's top point-producer (Ovechkin), top goal-scorer (Ovechkin), top goal-scoring tandem (Ovechkin and Alexander Semin), top goal-scorer among defensemen (Mike Green), top rookie in assists (Backstrom), and top rookie scorer (Backstrom). Six goals in tonight's game were scored by players 24 and younger.
The only bad news tonight was on the injury front. Cristobal Huet was relieved by Olaf Kolzig for the third period when it appeared Huet took back spasms after making a somewhat awkward save against the post late in the second period. And Tom Poti took a puck right in the chops on an errant pass from a teammate. He skated off under his own power, which was encouraging.
You look at a game like this and think, "save some for next game, boys." But the Caps have 20 goals in their last four games, 18 in their last three wins. They are capable of such explosions – not necessarily ten goals worth on a nightly basis, but they have a lot of bullets in their clip at the moment. The trick is bringing that level of effort and urgency every night for the last 15 games. Do that, and there will be hockey after the first week of April.


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Tonight TNA will tape the two more "One Night Only" pay-per-view events, which will air later this year.
* TNA will tape a hardcore match-themed Hardcore Justice PPV at 1PM.
* TNA will tape a tournament based around former TNA champions at 7PM.
After the events, the Impact Zone and surrounding areas utilized by TNA for production at Universal Studios will be broken down, with TNA departing the facilities that have been their home base since 2004.


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After reading Janie's at Southern Lagniappe's post about what she would save in case of a fire, and the one she posted the other day about getting a new computer, I made sure my picture and other important files were backed up! It had been a few weeks since I did this. I think I'll start backing them up the first of the month, so it will be done on a regular schedule.
I bought this My Passport Essential by Western Digital to use to back up files. It is so easy to use, and plugs into the USB port in front of the computer. It is so easy to transport files and it holds quite a bit! It holds 320 GB...so there is plenty of room! It's like having 320 thumb drives all in one compact case.
I have literally thousands of pictures. I can't even bring myself to delete the ones that are not so wonderful. I am in the process of scanning my favorite old photos and backing them up digitally with this product. It has made it easy to transfer pictures both old and new to my daughter's computer and pictures she takes to mine.
How do you back up your files? Do you do it on a regular schedule? Share your tips with us!
For other Works for Me Wednesday posts visit Rocks in my Dryer.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Backing up important files: Works for me Wed.
After reading Janie's at Southern Lagniappe's post about what she would save in case of a fire, and the one she posted the other day about getting a new computer, I made sure my picture and other important files were backed up! It had been a few weeks since I did this. I think I'll start backing them up the first of the month, so it will be done on a regular schedule.
30 comments:
- Dawn said...
I don't back up on a regular schedule and I should. I have a Western Digital external hard drive that I use.
I can't delete my not so good photos either.
take care,
- September 24, 2008 at 5:02 AM
- Southern Lady said...
Diane, I can't believe that we included each other in our posts today.
The Passport Essential thing sounds interesting. I'm going to ask my husband about it. He has a backup on his computer and links mine to his, but I'm not sure what kind of device it is.
I, too, can't bring myself to delete the "bad" pictures. Of course, I don't think there's such a thing as a "bad picture" of Avery ... so I have 1000s of her with her eyes shut, or making a face, or just a blur ... lol
- September 24, 2008 at 5:23 AM
- Bo said...
Hi Diane...uh, what language are speaking on your post today? I am so computer illiterate I have no clue...LOL...so far, my entries & photos hardly seem garbage worthy, much less worth saving...maybe someday...sigh! ;-) Bo
- September 24, 2008 at 6:29 AM
- Theresa @ Take A Sentimental Journey said...
I don't back up. I keep putting it off. I am a great procrastinator.
- September 24, 2008 at 6:31 AM
- Anonymous said...
Thank you so much, Diane, for this post. You answered a question I needed answering. Making a note of this gadget and intend to pick one up soon!
- September 24, 2008 at 6:51 AM
- Shell in your Pocket said...
I should back up my stuff, too! Great reminder...thanks!
-Sandy toes
- September 24, 2008 at 6:57 AM
- SmilingSally said...
Yipes! I don't backup a thing! If I had a fire, I'd have nothing.
But, if you back it up, where do you keep the backup?
- September 24, 2008 at 7:18 AM
- Anonymous said...
Out blogging hopping and found you. I use the Mac Time Machine software to automatically back up my computer. But I burn my photos to DVD every so often and take the DVD over to my mom's. I mean, God forbid I'd have a fire...or someone break in and steal the computer and external drive, I sure don't want to lose all my photos!
- September 24, 2008 at 7:44 AM
- Anonymous said...
Diane, I just asked my dh if he backs up our files and he said no. As for myself. I have no idea how to accomplish a back up file. I am thinking about this seriously. Thanks for posting food for thought.
I am very good to delete bad photos' Especially of myself. lol. When it comes to people I love, that is another story. Smile
Hugs, Jeanne
- September 24, 2008 at 7:47 AM
- Georgia Girl said...
I put my photos on Shutterfly.com. It is a free site and I have pics there from 3 or 4 years ago. I love that site...now the ones I order I put in a fire safe box. Good idea to blog about. We don't think about things in this matter like we should cause we never know.
- September 24, 2008 at 8:02 AM
- Pat @ Mille Fiori Favoriti said...
Good reminder! We ahve an external hard drive we back up to but I haven't done that in a few months.
We learned the lesson to back up the hard way a few yeas ago -- our computer crashed and we lost everyhting! Thank goodness it happened before we entered the digital age.
I think making a DVD of your photos as Kacey said is an excellent idea and you could put them in a bank safe deposit box if you have one.
There are also some web services that you can pay a fee to and they will automatically back up your files for you once a month on their servers, so it is really external.
I'm going to back up tonight --thanks again for the reminder!
Hugs, Pat in NY
- September 24, 2008 at 8:11 AM
- Debra from Bungalow said...
Gosh, thanks for reminding me about this. I want to back up but haven't yet. I'd be so sad if I lost all my pix! Guess I need to get to it.
Take Care, DebraK
- September 24, 2008 at 8:40 AM
- Missy Wertz said...
External and CD's.
- September 24, 2008 at 8:53 AM
- Empty Nest Full Life said...
My husband is good about doing this, that looks like some great bargain clothes, and the trip will be wonderful I am sure. Have a great day! Jackie
- September 24, 2008 at 9:03 AM
- Nola said...
I don't do it as regularly as I should, but every couple of months I burn my photos onto a disk and put it in the safety deposit box at the bank for safe keeping.
- September 24, 2008 at 9:22 AM
- Anonymous said...
Morning Diane! This is something I'm terrible about. I can't stand paper filing and backing up is another thing I forget! But I really need to (get my husband) to show me how on this computer? Can you believe all these years working on computers and this still gets me confused?Lol I need to hit the sales for some clothes, I always buy at end of season for next year although I don't go anywhere except Walmart!!!lol Looks like it will be a fantastic trip! Somethin to work for! Have a great day - Jeannette
- September 24, 2008 at 9:25 AM
- Grandma Faith said...
Thanks for giving me a wake up call. I am so naive about technology. I need a back up plan. I am having so much fun with blogging, I would be heart broken if I lost it. Have a great day. Take care.
- September 24, 2008 at 9:32 AM
- Beth at Aunties said...
We must be thinking a lot a like because I just picked up a Flash Drive from Costco this week. But I am a little (NO! a lot) computer illiterate and don't quite know how to do it! LOL... Thats what kind hearted kids are for...right?
I too can't delete the bad pictures.
Thanks for your visit this morning & for your comments.
- September 24, 2008 at 10:25 AM
- Lisa Nelsen-Woods said...
I've been really lazy about backing up my computer since my external hard drive kicked it and my backup files corrupted a year ago. Last week scared me back into a schedule when I had a combination of software issue and possible hard drive failure (the upside was that I got to upgrade one of my hard drives!)
- September 24, 2008 at 10:26 AM
- Darlene said...
My husband does this for us about once a week.
We had a computer malfunction last year and lost about a month's worth of pictures one time and we learned our lesson from that.
- September 24, 2008 at 11:41 AM
- Nancy Rosalina said...
Diane, I have NEVER backed up a file...I don't know how. My kids no how but I am one pittiful case with a computer!LOL I really need to learn how to do that! Nancy
- September 24, 2008 at 1:17 PM
- Ribbonwood Cottage said...
Thanks for this info, I need to do this right away!
- September 24, 2008 at 3:45 PM
- Anonymous said...
ooh I never back up, eeeek!
can't believe your finds for $72, there are never as good sales as that in Aus, whenever I'm in the States I am in sale heaven, can ya imagine lol!
oh and the Greece trip, woohoo what a wonderful way to utilize the extra cash - we are going on a big trip next year on a round the world ticket, we are saving like crazy...
- September 24, 2008 at 4:27 PM
- One Shabby Old House said...
I will be backing up my system now thanks to your advice.
- September 24, 2008 at 7:52 PM
- Picket said...
Girl I don't even know what you are talking about! lol Seriously...I am so computer ignorant it is not funny! Is there a button somewhere that I should click that says backup? Man..Now I gotta go on back over to my blog and feel inferior...maybe I can find some chocolate! lol
- September 24, 2008 at 7:57 PM
- Sue said...
I'm glad I'm posting right behind Picket....we're together in this. I know I need to backup but sure don't know how.
- September 24, 2008 at 10:07 PM
- Anonymous said...
I sure need backup...but I'm not sure if I know how...Stopping by to tell ya Hi! Sorry I haven't visit lately...just been busy the last two weeks. You have a wonderful day Katherinellen
- September 25, 2008 at 1:00 AM
- Brenda Pruitt said...
Oh, I'm so glad you posted this! I've been telling myself to get one of those portable drives to back mine up! And I just had a computer problem too!
- September 25, 2008 at 7:15 PM
- Alyce said...
My husband is a computer programmer, so I tend not worry about any of these things. I do know that he has a portable hard drive that auto-backs up everything once a day. It's so nice not to have to worry about it!
- September 27, 2008 at 10:57 AM
- BPOTW said...
My husband's kind of anal about this :) We try to back up once a month on an external harddrive and then once a quarter or so on CDs/DVDs.
I'm with you, I can't delete a picture unless it's total blackness. I have lots of stuff on the computer that I'd hate to lose.
Thanks for submitting your post!
- September 27, 2008 at 8:24 PM


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About Contemporary Glass
Art glass is a glass or an item from glass that has been worked into a form that is considered as such artistic as well as being functional. Various techniques can be employed to produce these objects and listed below are some of the methods of production and technique.
• Blowing Glass Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble through the use of air and a pipe.
• Hot Casting Glass Hot Glass casting is the process in which glass objects are cast, by pouring molten glass into a mould where it solidifies.
• Kiln Formed Glass Kiln casting is a general-purpose term that refers to the melting of glass in a mould inside a kiln at high temperatures.
• Fusing Glass Fused glass is glass that has been fired (heat-processed) in a kiln. Most contemporary fusing methods involve stacking, or layering thin sheets of glass.
• Stained Glass The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass, often in sheet form, as a material or to works produced from it.
• Architectural Glass Architectural glass is glass that is used as a building material or as a material in the building envelope.
• Sandblasting/Engraving Glass Glass can be decorated by sandblasting or engraving the surface in order to remove a layer of glass to make a design stand out.
• Jewellery Glass that can include glass pendants, earrings, bracelets and other unique glass jewellery pieces.