yay, there are 20 1/2 to read! boo, dead authors don't write more books.

i have just a couple pages left in The Mauritius Command, and no library copy of Desolation Island in sight. SPL is usually remarkably swift with hold requests; if there's a checked in copy in the system and i'm at the top of the list, i can bet on getting it within three days of the request.

unless it's part of the Aubreyad. HMS Surprise took a week and a half (and SPL is open and moving books seven days a week), during which i certainly could have driven over to the gorram branch and checked it out myself. i read too fast for that kind of turnaround, so i decided to start hoarding. instead of ordering the next book as i checked out the previous one, i would order the next five! like clockwork, three of them rolled in within three days. (i'm in line behind a couple other folks for the fifth. no surprise; the entire city of Seattle shares one copy of The Ionian Mission. perhaps this is the spot where everyone admits they're addicted and buys them.)

here i am on day seven with the two books *after* the next book, waiting.

EDITED TO ADD: yay! SPL has an electronic copy of Desolation Island as an audiobook. boo, while i appear to have succesfully downloaded it, i'm now on my third attempt at getting the right Windows Media codec to play the damn file. gorram DRM. i have given up and will install Media Player 11. I HAVE NO OTHER NEED FOR THIS SOFTWARE. yay! perhaps i will be able to listen while i quilt. boo, i left my transfer cable at the office, so i will not be listening on my way to work tomorrow. (also, i noticed that M$ doesn't even bother to say "browser," they just say "explorer." as a literal-minded consumer, i guess that means that i don't have to close my browser for this install...)

love your employees, hate your semifunctional products

after more than three hours of effort, i was finally able to get the audiobook mentioned previously to work by deleting my entire WMP DRM folder.

i just want to point out that i get paid to write instructions for using audio files with DRM. you would think it might have taken me slightly less effort to figure out how to deal with the recurring error messages.

a large chunk of that time was spent figuring out how to access *any* of the settings for WMP 11. because you need to know the secret handshake to see the menu bar. you know, the one with Tools>Options, or even Help. Help, where you go when you can't figure out how to do something with your new software. fortunately, i thought of seeing if the F1 button would open Help. which it did, where i learned how to bring up the menu bar. (right-click on the top edge of the window, if you must know.) because every confused and frustrated n00b knows to click F1.

i still don't know what caused the problem. the SDK essentially says i had a bad license. the error message text encouraged me to call Windows Support. (which costs money by the minute? WTF? evilevilevil.)

EDITED TO ADD: and it turns out "Windows Security Upgrade" has nothing to do with updating the software or adding codecs. it's logging your machine id.