The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Summer Storms:

Caffeine, #74: I just think it's important to keep in mind that if you can afford to have never stepped foot in a Wal-Mart, you may not be grasping why people who shop there, do.

Erm, no. I have not set foot in Wal-Mart in several years, and I'm unemployed, with a husband who makes very little. We make a conscious choice to not shop WM. Granted, we have other choices, since we are in a large urban area, but it isn't that difficult to stay out of Wal-Mart unless you live in a town that ONLY has WM.

Groceries? Giant Eagle, a perfectly respectable regional chain. Or Aldi, which is cheaper for many items but has less variety. We frequent both.

Clothing? Goodwill, Salvation Army, other similar thrift stores, all of which are far cheaper than Wal-Mart, and you can get things that are both high-quality and nearly new in many cases. Oh, you meant new clothing? Target, K-Mart, hit up the fabric store and sew your own. (I do all of the above.)

Shoes? Payless, or the aforementioned Target and K-Mart. Heck, I've even bought shoes at thrift stores. Got an almost brand-new pair of Birkenstock oxfords there a couple of years ago, and some Rockport walking shoes, also in nearly pristine condition.

Toys? See above. I don't have much need to buy those, as we don't have kids.

Electronics, music, videos? Again, K-Mart, Target. Also Best Buy.

Books, music, videos? Half-Price, Amazon, the local library.

Around here we also have Discount Drug Mart, which stocks everything from typical drugstore merchandise to groceries, clothing, hardware and small appliances, all for prices comparable to those at Wally World. I'm in there at least once a week for some small item or other, usually milk or paper towels.

So really, unless WM is really the only retailer in or near your community, it isn't all THAT difficult to avoid them, and it isn't any more expensive to do so, either.

Paula @ 874: Here's the solution to at least get that crap out of your own computer (won't change the internet, but at least it will improve YOUR experience of it)...

1. Download and install Mozilla's Firefox browser (it's free and open-source, with no spyware, adware, or other nasty stuff; I've used it for years instead of Internet Explorer and it rocks.)

2. Once you've installed that, then surf on over to the Adblock Plus site and download and install Wladimir Palant's wonderful extension for Firefox that will get rid of ALL those irritating ads you see online. Once you have it installed, choose your filter subscriptions and you're all set. The ads will be gone and you will have a much more pleasant time online. You can even tweak it so that it WILL show you ads on sites that you may wish to see them on - you can personalize this quite heavily. Again, I've used this for years, and wouldn't surf the Web without it.

To protect against spyware, etc. I recommend either AVG Free or Avast Free.

I'm another who's never met either of them, but praying here as well.

At least, I think that's what it is.

Michael, happy (somewhat belated) birthday. I've got a couple of years on you, but I know what you mean.

Heresiarch, #582: Interesting. NPR said (on today's Morning Edition) that he was "a devout Muslim".

Elliott Mason @ 434 regarding Gabaldon: Actually the first book involves the 1940's and the pre-Culloden period. For those interested: The protagonist, a recently-discharged Army nurse on holiday with her professor husband, finds herself suddenly transported from 1945 to 1743, sans husband. The 1960's show up in the second book, in a parallel (and very related) storyline framing more of the 18th-century saga.

I found it quite useful to have read the first book in order to really grasp and enjoy the second.

I agree with you, however, on enjoying the books after #4 less than the others.

SPOILER ALERT: this link carries a reasonably good overview of the first four books.

Albatross, that would be interesting!

From the Sidelight about the "Chat room/Forum problem": In reading the entry linked, it appears on first glance that the author conflates chat room and forum completely, when in fact they are IME quite different both in form and in function.

So if I write a novel about cat vacuuming, it counts, right?

Of course, the cats may feel differently about it.

Soon Lee, #344: The "thus-and-such.exe" items are HTML-Kit plugins, installed to it after I installed HTML-Kit itself. I finally found the solution here, I think. Choosing "Run as Administrator" appears to clear up the problem. Odd, as the Vista account from which I am running it has Administrator privileges to begin with.

Soon Lee, #276: Just tried that; same problems, no change. Thanks, though.

Apropos of nothing seen here: has anyone tried using HTML-Kit on a system running 32-bit Vista Home Basic? I could run it on my old XP laptop just fine, but that laptop is currently sitting in the repair shop with a nonfunctional motherboard, and I'm stuck using my husband's Vista laptop. I need to do a bit of work on a website I made back when my computer was working, but every time I try to start up HTML-Kit, I get error messages from Windows stating that "thus-and-such.exe has stopped working" and offering "close program: as my only option. After about five of these, the screen dims and I am asked whether or not I mean for a program to continue. Answering "Yes" does get HTML-Kit open, but with what appears to be reduced functionality. The programs that stop working appear to be some of the plugins I am used to using in HTML-Kit.

Anybody have experience with this?

DanR, #390: I don't see it as a "skill"; for me it's something that just is. The letters and numbers have always been colored, and so are some musical tones. It's just how I perceive the world. It wasn't until fairly recently that I even realized that other people don't all have the same sort of perception.

Mark, #179: Wouldn't he have to have gonads before they could be stripped?

DanR, #355: Visual in my case, definitely. And in Technicolor. (Yes, I've got a bit of synesthesia.)

WRT singing voice vs. speaking voice: My singing range runs from second (low) alto to first soprano - I could hit high G in high school, nowadays my upper limit is more like high C or D - but my usual speaking voice is in the low part of my range. This is partly due to having trained myself to speak in the low range, as a result of my years of doing college radio. Early on, I'd listened to one of my own air-check tapes and been chagrined to discover that I sounded about twelve years old on tape, so from that point on I made a conscious effort to lower my voice when speaking on the air. It carried over into everyday life, and I think I began to be taken more seriously as a result.

Jenny Islander: Cereal boxes! Yes! Been there, done that, still do. Nice to know I'm not alone.

Also, hyperlexia: I was talking at a very early age (before I walked, in fact) but took to the printed word early on. I like to think both were due to having been read to every day from very early infancy. At the age of two I did have several of my little books memorized, and could sit there and recite them to myself while turning the pages. At three, I had figured out the link between the characters on the page and the words of the story, and was working on the mechanics. I think I got the gist of basic phonics on my own at age four, and only needed that last little push for it all to crystallize into actual reading. This happened while I was in kindergarten and I remember the event: I was sitting in my room with a book I knew well, and suddenly I could see exactly how the letters on the page made the particular words of the story. I immediately got a different book that I didn't have memorized and tried that. Yep, I could read it. Few things have excited me that much since.

Note that this all occurred in the late 1960's when schools (or at least my local school) exhorted parents NOT to attempt to teach their children to read at home before starting kindergarten, for fear the parents would teach them the "wrong" way and the school would have to undo the damage. (What a load of crap.) So my parents, despite being aware that I was well on my way to figuring it out on my own, didn't actively step in to help. When I got to kindergarten, most of my classmates could not read yet, so those few of us who tweaked to it early in the year got sent to the first grade room for reading group each day to keep us from becoming completely bored and disruptive. The following year had me going back to my kindergarten room and reading story time to that year's crop of five year olds from my Dick and Jane reader. Good times.

Albatross @ 179: I have the problem that if I am watching television or listening to the radio (or even someone in the same room speaking to me) and the printed word comes into view, I wind up "tuning out" everything except what's in print. Oh, I still hear it, I just don't fully process it. This is, however, actually a relatively recent development - sometime within the past decade or thereabouts, I think - as I distinctly remember being able to, say, watch television and read a book simultaneously in my childhood/teens/twenties and follow both just fine. It's an ability I'd like to get back, if only I could figure out how.

David Harmon @ 146: Good grief, were we separated at birth or something?

Comment statistics for Summer Storms on the Making Light blog

Total: 246 comments. View all these comments on a single page. (May take some time to load.)