Newbery Winners: Shen of the Sea

The fifth book to win the Newbery Medal, which it did in 1926, is Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman, a collection of short stories set in China. The tales are not at all connected. I suspect this would be a hard book to get published today, as some aspects of Chinese culture that it depicts have not aged well. But it's also not horrible, either, and holds up a lot better than many other books of the time, I'm sure. (And let's face it, just about anything written for children nearly a century ago is going to feel quaint and dated anyway.) Although I gather these stories were originally created by Chrisman, they read like old folk tales. Some are just little slice-of-life stories, but others delve into the origins of aspects of Chinese culture (printing, chopsticks, pottery, kites, tea, gunpowder), and others show people thinking outside the box, or tricking demons, or just being clever. It's a fun, light read, and I enjoyed this one a lot.

Computer Issues.... again.

I have fiddled with my laptop to the point where, with a generous helping of electrical tape and the occasional tap on the screen, I'm able to usually not have monitor problems, huzzah. I ended up having to take off the screen itself, which I was loathe to do. I managed, but it was annoying and I broke a few more little pieces of plastic and basically I just need a new computer.

Which isn't going to happen soon.

Still, my computer was working and the monitor is now mostly behaving. Then yesterday morning, after a three-hour power outage in the middle of the night, I noticed that the computer wasn't charging. I got the message "Plugged in, not charging" when I looked at the battery icon. Um. Ok.

I generally use the computer plugged in, although I frequently take it downstairs unplugged... so it's not a thing that would completely break the computer for me. But it's worrying. What if the battery has gone bad, or I somehow damaged it during my efforts to fix the screen? A visit to Google and I learned that Windows 10 laptops have this problem A LOT. Not just a little, but so frequently that there is a lot of information and misinformation out there about it.

I found the solution that finally worked for me on HP's website, after trying a number of different things and having every one of them fail. I had been using the HP diagnostic tools to see if the battery itself was failing, but got lots of green lights as far as it was concerned. It even started charging for a brief moment during the testing! To fix it "completely" (as far as I can tell), I ended up following these directions:

Perform the following steps to isolate the issue and arrive at a fix:

Power off the laptop.

Disconnect AC adapter from the laptop.

Press and hold the power button for 15 seconds.

Plug the AC adapter back in.

Power on the laptop.

Uninstall the battery drivers and then reinstall them:

Open the device manager.

Expand "Batteries". Right click on the ACPI drivers and select uninstall.

Close the device manager.

Restart the laptop. While restarting, Windows will reinstall the battery drivers.

Thank goodness, removing the ACPI drivers fixed it. I have no idea what ACPI drivers are or any interest in learning, but they apparently have something to do with battery charging. I was ready to do the next step, a BIOS flash, but was not looking forward to it since there are so many things that can go wrong when you get down to the firmware level.

As I was working through these steps, hubby-Eric told me about a lovely video promo for a Supernatural/Scooby-Doo crossover, so I of course had to watch it... and there was no sound. In fact, every single attempt I made to turn up the volume, it reset itself down to "2" and didn't move. Guess who had to reinstall sound drivers right after reinstalling battery drivers?

Doing all this with a nasty cold and barely any brain power was difficult as well. I suppose I thrive on it, though. I love troubleshooting. I just wish I didn't have to do it quite so often. And I wish I could run more things on my computer (like Fallout 4, which I could eventually get through Steam via Swagbucks). I want to buy myself a Dell gaming laptop, but the cheapest ones that will run what I want are $800 or more. First-world problems, I know. At least with my repairs I'm still able to play DC Universe Online, which I now have ALL the downloadable content from, thanks to Swagbucks, and enough left over to buy the Aquaman DLC when it comes out later this month.

A Sunday Comic Books Review

Here are reviews of the DCBS comic books that I've gotten around to reading and reviewing, sorted by the original shipping date:

• Jan 3rd
• Justice League #36 - This is confusing. First off, I can't figure out where in Aquaman's timeline this is supposed to have taken place. Second off, Batman killing someone wouldn't just be front page news - everyone who knows any superhero would be asking about it. This seems like we're getting an extremely limited view of what's going on. As a result, it feels like the story is leaving too much out. I guess I'm used to decompressed stories after all, because this one is moving too quickly but in all the wrong ways.
• Green Lanterns #38 - Well, that's not good. So she admitted her crime and Simon immediately told on her. That's good. Then she's allowed along on the fight against the stronghold of the people she claims she was led astray by. Fine. But then the standard twist happens and we get a somewhat disturbing cliffhanger. Yikes. Not a perfect story, but still engaging.
• Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands #3 - So the cliffhanger from last week, when two boys used one of the new street weaons accidentally to blow out a wall of their home, is resolved painfully and sadly in this issue. If nothing else, this comic is delivering the feeling of hopelessness and rage that people who are being unfairly picked on by police feel. It can be difficult to read. That's probably a good thing.
• Bombshells United #9 - Ah, so that's what Cheetah was up to. And just for kicks, we also get the origin of Bombshell's Black Adam, who became so nasty his girl killed herself. Lovely. As always, interesting stuff, but I can only wonder where it's leading. One strange bit, the rules of this Lazarus Pit seem a bit different than the rules of such things in the regular DCU.
• Jan 10th
• Titans #19 - How can this story possibly be a thing with the current storyline in the Justice League? I mean, seriously. The Justice League, particularly Batman, are under investigation and in this book they are putting the Titans under the microscope? No, this doesn't fit. The two storylines clash badly. That said, Garth is living up to his old tradition of being a bit of a hothead, and I like it.
• Scooby Apocalypse #21 - Well, it seems the answer to my question after what we learned last time (there's no cure) is that they'll wander around for a couple of months then get a bright idea to settle down and create a base in a mall. I personally would pick a building that has fewer access points, but whatever. I guess Velma is intent on the potential supplies in such a place, but that's not going to help much if the place is overrun by monsters. We'll just have to see in the next issue.
• Spongebob Comics #76 - Only a small Mermaid Man reference while SpongeBob is procrastinating. The main story is part one of a longer story - all the water is gone from Bikini Bottom and Pearl is missing. Who will save the day? And who screwed up the day in the first place?
• Saucer State #6 - Ok, I really liked that character and I'm not happy with this issue. That said, I was clearly pulled deeply into the issue since I had such an extreme reaction to it. I find it very interesting how the relationship with the Russians is going, as well. This is mind-bending stuff.

I've finally mostly caught up. Yes, there's a small stack of comics still to be reviewed next to my desk, but it's small, and only covers a few weeks, instead of knee-high and covering nearly a year. I'll continue to do multiple weeks until I'm actually caught up, then I'll just focus on the previous month, since we get our books shipped to us monthly. Unless we move back to civilization or suddenly get rich enough to pay for weekly shipping, I'll never be posting as the books arrive in stores each week. I suppose I could go all digital, but I really don't like reading comics on my computer or tablet, I guess I'm old-school...