The other night I was happily surfing the tubes, when my Mac Powerbook G4 started making funny clunking sounds. Before I could react, everything froze up on me and I had to shut the computer down. After waiting a few minutes, I tried turning it back on and to my horror, I could only get a blank blue screen and a funny whirring-clunk noise coming from the hard drive.

After doing some research (I still have my old Dell laptop, which still works fairly well) I found that the hard drive on my Mac is probably toast and will have to be replaced. Hopefully a new hard drive will do the trick.

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Join the conversation on these posts that have recent comments! It has been a while since I’ve posted a "recently commented on"-type post, but there has been a lot of commenting activity lately, so I figured it’s now or never.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Author smackdown: Stephen King disses Stephenie Meyer

Computerworld: Ebooks about to catch on fire!

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, ebooks and the definition of irony

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When something becomes too difficult or a burden, just ban it! That appears to be the philosophy that the city of Birmingham in the UK used when the city council decided to ban the apostrophe from all city signs:

The council said the move had been taken for the purposes of consistency and to avoid costs and confusion over whether place names should ever take an apostrophe.

As absurd as this story is, there is more:

However the decision was described as "absolute defeatism" by John Richards, the founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society.

"This is setting a terrible example," Mr Richards said. "It seems retrograde, dumbing down really. All over Birmingham, and in other cities, teachers are trying to teach children correct grammar and punctuation. Now children will go around Birmingham and see utter chaos."

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Now that President Obama is in office, maybe we’ll see the government finally take steps to promote, cultivate and nurture the arts (including literature) in the U.S., at least according to this article from the New York Times. The article notes that the various arts groups and non-profits contribute an estimated $167 billion to the economy each year – so even during this economic crisis, the arts remain important.

Even more exciting, however, is what President Obama campaigned to do for the arts once in office:

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I know this is non-literary related, but I can’t help mentioning this very historic day. Our 44th President, Barack Obama was sworn in today at high noon in Washington D.C..

President Obama has a lot of challenges ahead of him as the U.S. finds itself involved in 2 wars, a huge economic crisis and we are hugely unpopular overseas due to devastating choices the previous president has made regarding foreign policy.

As an interesting side note, President Obama is left-handed. After doing some intense research, I discovered that former President Clinton was also a lefty. Other left-handed presidents include George Bush (# 41), James Garfield, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford (source).

In a blow to the online retailing community, a judge in New York struck down two lawsuits by Amazon and Overstock, giving a new state tax code, which would require online retailers (such as Amazon) to collect taxes from their customers, the green light:

Things are not looking good for Amazon and other online retailers who have been avoiding collecting sales taxes from customers, and for customers who have avoided paying them. A fairly new New York state tax law—dubbed the "Amazon Tax"—has been given the green light as a judge dismissed two lawsuits alleging that the law is unconstitutional. The judge said the law isn’t unfairly targeted at certain retailers, and that online retailers who make a decent chunk of money off of New York residents should help shoulder the burden of tax collection.

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Now that the holidays are over and we are a few days into the new year, it’s time to sit down and get to work! For me, that means laying out a few goals for this blog for 2009. I decided to share them with you so that you will know what to expect from Brad’s Reader this year, and also to keep me more accountable for working hard to follow through with these goals.

Here are my goals for Brad’s Reader in no particular order:

1. Major blog overhaul. This includes a re-design of the blog and also a possible switch to a new platform, one that’s more flexible.

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I just want to wish everyone out there on the inter-tubes a Happy New Year! I hope 2009 brings you all joy and success! And I feel honored that you are reading my first blog post of 2009.

My hopes for the New Year are high and I’ve set some pretty lofty goals for myself (I don’t call them resolutions, I call them goals – but that’s another post for another day). I definitely want to write more and improve my writing. I’d also like to increase the number of freelance projects I take on.

What are your goals for 2009? Let us know in the comments below!

Have a safe and happy New Year!

I really debated hard about whether or not I should post about any issue relating to the arrest and indictment of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, as this is not a political blog (there’s tons of those out there for your daily fix of politics).

But his alleged effort to fire the editorial board at the Chicago Tribune is deeply disturbing and is a matter of free speech, which I discuss here frequently. According to this article from the Chicago Tribune website, Gov. Blagojevich wanted the Tribune’s editorial board removed:

A criminal complaint filed in federal court outlines wiretapped conversations between Blagojevich and his chief of staff—who also was arrested Tuesday—in which the governor said he wanted the Tribune to fire its editorial board, which has called for the Illinois House to explore impeaching the governor. In one wiretapped comment in the complaint, Blagojevich is quoted as saying the Tribune’s owner should be told to "fire those [expletive]."

Ouch! And what would the governor do if the editorial board wasn’t fired? He was allegedly going to make it difficult for the Tribune, which is suffering from some serious financial problems, to receive help from the Illinois Finance Authority with regards to selling Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs.

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One of the great parts about blogging is getting feedback from readers in the form of comments. Unfortunately, sometimes comments are left on posts that were written a while ago, so they often go unnoticed (except by me). Thus I have decided to, every once in a while, to showcase posts that have been commented on recently. Please, join the conversation and don’t be shy!

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