Tech Geek

Thanks to the Florida-Bahamas Synod Resource Center, I discovered a new way to buy (and sell) books online. For a reason that's not entirely clear to me, although it may have something to do with having taken a youth group from Alaska on a servant event there, I am on the FBS electronic mailing list. I could remove myself, but I find these little enjoyable tidbits from their newsletters, so I've just stayed on.

The most recent newsletter that I received (see it yourself at http://www.fbsynod.com/newsletters/resourcecenter/oct09.html) contained this tidbit under the heading, Green Idea of the Month.

Next time you want to buy a book, instead of going to Amazon.com, what about trying Better World Books? Better World Books is a for-profit social enterprise that collects used books and sells them online to raise money for literacy initiatives worldwide. They have over 6 million used and new titles with free shipping in the U.S. What’s more, used books are cheaper for you, and when you buy used, you save books from landfill and conserve resources. To find out more and to order your next book go to www.betterworldbooks.com

This struck me as an interesting idea. I know that I have many books that I've read and am not likely to read again or even refer to again. But they are the kinds of books that are not likely to be at my local public library. So I buy them from a jungle-ish bookstore online, read them once, and keep them on my shelves forever because I've paid for them and I'm not going to just throw them out! They claim to have raised over $7 million for global literacy and saved almost 30 million books from being thrown into landfills. You can see the list of literacy partners that Better World Books works with at http://www.betterworldbooks.com/info.aspx?f=partners.

They both buy and sell books, so if you have books that there is a used market for, you can enter in the ISBN numbers and they'll give you a price quote. Even if they aren't willing to pay for your books, if you are sending three or more books, they'll pick up the shipping. Just for fun, I entered my set of 4 Lutheran Handbook books into the system, but they aren't paying anything for them. They did all show up with the proper covers!

The next time I'm looking for a book or cleaning out my office, I'm going to be sure and visit this site and reduce the environmental impact of my book collection!

There are similar programs available for electronics and gadgets. http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-transport/ecycling-guide.html has a list of buyback, takeback, and recycling options available for your old electronics and computers.

Is your anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-malware software up to date? Now's probably a good time to check. If you're running Windows and don't have anything installed, or if it's time to upgrade your subscription and you don't want to pay, Microsoft has now made their Security Essentials free. Well, free with validation that you are running a genuine version of windows.

Visit http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ to download the program for your system and be protected from all sorts of nasty stuff. I've been running AVG for a few years, but recently it has been getting more aggressive about wanting me to buy it and Windows has been telling me I don't have virus protection, even though I do. So I switched over to Microsoft Security Essentials and have been happy with the fact that it doesn't slow my system down and that it runs a scan at scheduled intervals and updates itself before each scan.

If you've been around the Lutheran church for awhile, you've seen the Augsburg Fortress Little Red Books. They are the smaller cousins to the Thrivent Big Red Books, also known as the Lutheran Pastor's Desk Diary. Go to a meeting of any Lutheran clergy and you're sure to see someone reach into their shirt pocket or briefcase and pull one one of these Red Books out to scribble a note or write down an appointment. Both of them have info about the lectionary texts assigned for each Sunday, which saints go with which days, and when Easter and Ash Wednesday actually fall this year! Both of them are very paper based, and not all that useful for people like me, who haven't used a paper based calendar in over 15 years!

Today I received this tweet from @bethalewis: Free downloadable "Little Red Book" is available for 2010. http://www.augsburgfortress.org/redbook/ (Beth is the CEO of Augsburg Fortress, along with being a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister,  and KY Wildcats basketball fan.) I didn't think I'd have any use for a downloadable book, then my curiosity got the best of me, and I clicked the link.

Augusburg Fortress has provided a DBA and a CSV file that can be downloaded and used within Palm Desktop (DBA) and Microsoft Outlook (CSV). There is a helpful link for additional instructions on how to insert the dates into either of these software programs. Great! But I use Google Calendar. Can I use them too? Yes!

I downloaded the CSV version of the file to my computer and saved it on the desktop as Year_C_2010.csv. I opened my Google Calendar and Click Add --> Import calendar at the bottom right of the Other calendars box at the bottom of the left column. This brings up a new window which asks for the file name (the Year_C_2010.csv file I just saved) and what calendar I want to import the file into. I used my daily calendar. After clicking the Import button, I waited a few seconds, and then my calendar had lots of new entries. Some of these are duplicates to things I'd already put there, but most of them are new entries. You could also create a new calendar (before starting the import process) and import all of these dates to that calendar, if you wanted to keep them separate from your regular events.

Updates:
Paul Amlin has provided this comment below, but so you don't miss it, I'm moving it up here.
Hey gang, for the mac users out there who are google challenged or don't use that amazing tool, but who wish to use the LRB calendar in iCal, I've converted an iCal friendly version and posted it for download on my website: http://www.paulamlin.com/downloads/ This has been a popular request by many on the facebook group I admin, hope it's helpful to others here as well. peace, Paul :o)

Beth Lewis, who I mentioned above, also posted some more information on her blog, available at http://blogs.augsburgfortress.org/?p=210 .

Thanks to Rev. Matthew A. Smith (Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lansing, MI) for compiling this information for us into the Downloadable Little Red Book.