The SoapBoxers

This is my annual rant about college football ranking. The two major systems that are used until the 6th week when the BCS system kicks in, are the coaches poll and the sports writer poll. Both of them are based on the feelings of the voters and are heavily stilted toward the fashionable conferences. Admittedly, the major conferences do each have 3 or even 4 good teams. I also do not have a problem with the polls being the opinions of the voters. What I complain about the is the inconsistency that this method brings. A team can win and still drop in the polls. A team can get pounded and only drop a few spots. The thing that gets to me is when teams with several losses is still ranked above an undefeated team. Now we are only in the second week of the season, so there are no apparent problems yet.

When we finally get the BCS system results, the rankings get much more stable. An opinion pole is include in that system along with a computer poll and several statistical polls. As the polls progress, there is still a bias towards certain conferences based on “strength of schedule”. So if you play teams that are ranked, you go up in ranking. If a lot of the teams in your conference are ranked, you guaranteed a ranked position. The result of this type system is the insanity of having a national championship game featuring two teams from the same conference.

There are 12 conferences plus some independent schools eligible for the BCS. A true playoff would have the 12 conference winners contending for the championship. To be fair to the independent teams, there would have to be some “wild card” invitations for those independent teams that are still highly ranked. This would allow teams who are blocked out of BCS bowls because of the polls to have a chance. If there is that big of a talent difference, then the playoff games will just be warm ups for the big boys. If the opinions are incorrect, then the smaller schools will have a chance to prove them wrong.

Is there a perfect polling method? Probably not. My rant is a reaction to the ridiculous statements by sports casters with the new playoff proposal that two slots should be reserved for the South East Conference. One of the problems, or benefits, of the bowl system is automatic bids. For the national championship, all positions should be earned, not awarded. The four team playoff is a good start, let’s not mess it up immediately by determining who should be in it at the beginning of the season. The SEC is good right now, but that is the genius of the conference system, you determine a single champion. Then you have the various champions compete for the right to claim the top spot for the year, just like the pros.

I’ve been working on my first novel for a few years now.  I got the first draft to about 10,000 (not terribly long) before deciding to completely re-baseline.  It’s hard to basically throw that work in the trash, but when I wrote it, I was basically trying to get some words down, knowing that I’d be heavily revising.  Over the past couple of years, I’ve had a lot of irons in my literary fire.  Recently, I’ve decided to shelve many of these ideas in order to work on the novel.  Here are some of the challenges I’ve been facing.

Finding time to write

With a 5 year old and a 2 year old in the house, much of my “free time” is already spoken for.  Simply finding a spare 20-30 minutes each day to write can be quite a challenge.  NaNoWriMo is looming in November.  Although I don’t plan to birth and develop and entire novel during the month, I am aiming to make significant progress on my novel during the month.  My goal is to add 25,000 words in November.  That’s a relatively modest word count compared to NaNoWriMo winners, but it would push me to the point of being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Baseball winds down around the same time, which will remove one competitor for my time.

Slow down

I’ve always had a tendency to race ahead in my story telling, focusing almost solely on the action.  I’d rather write a kill scene than anything else.  It’s always been difficult for me to spend any time describing the scenes or daily life.  Lately, I’ve been doing a better job of this, trying to get inside the heads of characters and looking around to see what they see and listening to hear what they hear.  Essentially, I have to tell the story telling part of my brain to pause while I stop and smell the roses (and describe them for you).

Exploring my feminine side

Although I’ve had strong female characters in many of my stories, my novel is my first longer work to have a female driving the plot forward (although there will be shifting perspectives in the book).  I have to take care in how I develop the role of Marina, a female detective.  As a homicide detective, I want her to be strong, but not over-the-top like Dirty Harry.  While I can write from a male point of view fairly easily, I actually need to put some thought into how my female characters act.  Marina is going to have to deal with situations that her partner Jake won’t ever encounter – and I need to make sure she handles them in a way that makes sense to my female readers.  Then there’s the matter of female clothing, accessories and makeup.  Dresses, skirts, blouses, stilettos, flats, mules, foundation, blush … Just getting a female character dressed and out the door in the morning can be a job unto itself.

How many of you are working on a novel?  What are some of the challenges you are facing?

My only complaint about the Olympics is that they happen once every 4 years (or technically once every two years if you figure the alternating winter and summer games….but who is counting)

The games are well underway now in London, with many medals already handed out.

NBC has 7 different stations on my television availability to view differing venues from the Olympics. These dwindle throughout the day, as the events on these stations by and large are shown live as they happen. NBC in an attempt to maximize viewers and advertising revenue does however hold back not showing some of the events and keeps those aside for the telecast every night on the “main” network channel.

The time difference depending on what part of the United States you live is a minimum of 5 hours. That means by the time you are seeing any of the events in prime time television, the athletes are already asleep for the night. (Assuming they are not partying it up in the Olympic Village that is)

Many question in this age of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, if this is necessary. The athletes competing in the events posting pictures and sharing results immediately as things happen. Most all of the major web bases news sites – USA Today, Yahoo, Fox Sports, etc. all report the action as it happens, meaning anyone looking at their computer at work throughout the day is already going to know the outcome before they get home for the evening.

While many may like to know the results as they occur… I am too old school. I remember the excitement of watching the 1980 Men’s Hockey Team, seeing Bruce Jenner finish the mile and Nadia landing a perfect ten on our family’s less than perfect grainy console television set back in 1976.

These events were long done and over, but unless you had someone calling you from the event, or had a real fast carrier pigeon, you didn’t know any better until you watched in on television that night.

For that reason, I take a 17 day hiatus from any of the internet sites with the sole purpose of keeping it surprise for me and my family as we watch the coverage after dinner each evening.

I prefer to yell at the TV as if I am part of the action. I swear those swimmers can hear me in the crowd.

Speaking of yelling….

Was Jordyn Wieber robbed of a spot in the all-around finals?

One of the best interviews I have seen on Olympic coverage is Bela Karolyi being very outspoken about the fact that only two gymnasts are allowed from each country to qualify for the gymnastic all around finals. 24 gymnasts qualify to the all- around but only two are allowed from country. This on the heels of reigning world all- around champion Jordyn Weiber being knocked out by two of her other teammates,

“What a travesty!” Karolyi said in an interview. “How someone can afford to cut one of the best gymnasts?”

“But that is not the reason. How can it be a reason?” Karolyi, who coached teams from Romania and the U.S. to Olympic gold, said of the rule. “To eliminate somebody because a teammate beat her. Still among the first four gymnasts in the world, and still you’re eliminated?”

Bob Costas did his best to keep Karolyi from leaping out of his chair, but Bela is entertaining regardless if you agree with him or not.

Costas used the line to compare the “two per country” limit as not allowing the third best team in the ACC to make the NCCA tournament.

Maybe a bit of a stretch in terms of an analogy, but it is about the best I have heard.

Bottom line every Olympic Games has winners and losers. Great stories and colossal disappointments. Out of adversity many good things happen.

The remaining days of the 30th Olympiad are sure to bring us that if nothing else.

Until Next Time, Stay classy Jordyn Wieber!!!

Mike McQueary  (red hair) was the quarterback the last tiem the Nittany Lions won a game.

There has been plenty of chatter about the punishment the NCAA meted out on Penn State.  Did it go too far – or not far enough?  There are strong opinions on both sides.  I won’t get into that discussion in this article (although the topic is likely to be raised in the comments section) but will focus on what the actual penalties were.

$60 million fine – The money will be used to fund programs that helps victims of child sexual abuse.  If there was going to be a financial aspect to the penalty, then this is a logical use of the money.

Four year post-season ban – Penn State will not be allowed to participate in a bowl game for the next four years.  After the NCAA’s announcement, the Big 10 conference announced two related sanctions from the conference.  First, Penn State would not be allowed to participate in the conference title game (the winner of that game gets a berth to a BCS game).  Additionally, Penn State will not receive a share of Big 10 bowl revenue for the next four years.  The conference is taking that money and giving it to charities.

Allowing players to transfer freely – The NCAA will allow any current Penn State player or incoming freshman to transfer to another school and become immediately eligible.  In almost all cases, a student-athlete must sit out a year before becoming eligible at a new school.  This wasn’t announced as a penalty, but realistically it is, as it will likely cause many players to bolt.

Schools that take a Penn State “refugee” are allowed to exceed the scholarship cap (85) in 2012 as long as they reduce 2013 scholarships by the same number.  In other words, if you take 2 Penn State players to boost total scholarships to 87, you can only have 83 scholarships in 2013.  No doubt some top schools will cherry pick the best talent, but this could also be a chance for a mid-level school to make a one year splash.  A team could add some good depth by taking on 10 of Penn State’s players, for example.  They’d be taking the field with 95 scholarship players in 2012, whereas their opponents would have 85.  Sure, they’d be forced to cut back to 75 in 2013, but it might be worth it.  Instead of being 6-6 both years, maybe the team could go 9-3 and get a bowl win this year, and then fall back to 4-8 next year.

Reduction in scholarships – For the 2013-2016 seasons, Penn State will not being to exceed 65 total scholarships (85 is standard), nor can they offer more than 15 new scholarships (25 is standard).  Penn State will probably wish that this penalty started in 2012, as the number of defections may leave them below this number.  My advice to Penn State this year – if you have extra scholarships left due to people leaving the program, reward some of the senior walk-ons with a scholarship.

Vacated wins – All wins between 1998 and 2011 are vacated.  This is a total of 112 wins, 111 of which were Joe Paterno’s wins.  Paterno is no longer the all-time winningest coach.

Penn State is also on five years probation and must work with the NCAA on corrective actives to ensure that this never happens again.

I’ve had my Kindle out quite a bit lately, and I’ve found some pockets of time in which to read.  Here’s a rundown of my past, present, and future reading.

Past

I’ve written about my favorite author, Lawrence Block, on many occassions.  He’s primary a mystery writer, but he also writes a monthly column for Linn’s, a stamp collecting magazine.  Block has collected many of these columns into a Kindle book, Generally Speaking.

I’ve been snapping up pretty much any Block Kindle book that’s avaialble for a good price, and I think I got this for $2.99 (it’s $4.99 now).  I don’t actually collect stamps, but I don’t collect baseball cards, so I assumed there would be enough parallels to make the book interesting.

Generally Speaking is an interesting insight into the hobby itself.  While it does cover topics related to the stamps themselves, there’s also a bit of travel, geography, history, and zoology included, as Block shares his experiences as a collector.  One interesting tidbit is that Block and his wife are world travellers and make an attempt to buy a stamp and have it canceled at the post office of each country they visit.

I learned quite a bit about stamp collecting while reading the book.  More importantly, though, it was a very interesting read.

Present

I bought Water for Elephants several months ago, and it had languished on my digital bookshelf (digital end table?) since then.  I read the first few pages, didn’t particularly like the way the book started and stopped reading it.  Recently, I decided to give it a second chance to plowed through the first few pages to see if I could get to a part of the book I liked.

At this point, I’m about a third of the way through.  Based on what I’ve read, and some foreshadowing in the beginning, I have an idea how this may turn out, but there are a lot of unknowns that have to unfold.  While most of the book occurs 70 years in the past, we occassionally get a present day scene of the narrator, who is now in his 90s.

A very interesting tale so far, and I’ve found myself peeking ahead on my Kindle.

I do wonder, though, why the Waterford Crystal company didn’t introduce a line of Waterford Elephants around the time the movie came out.

Future

Once I finished with Water for Elephants, I’ll likely sit down with an old favorite, Lawrence Block’s Burglars Can’t Be Choosers.  The Burglar books are funny, and I just realized that it’s been a while since I’ve read one.

I’m also being tempted by the siren call of The Hunger Games.  I very rarely re-read books so soon after reading them for the first time, but I may make an exception in this case.

What about you?

Now it’s your turn – what are YOU reading these days?

Antonin Scalia

A trendy right-wing talking point that was very popular around the times of the Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings was how deplorable the concept of “legislating from the bench” is, or how horrible a “activist judge” is. Essentially this means that a judge has not applied existing law or legal history and has instead applied their personal or political views and feelings to decide the outcome of a case. In fact, Justice Antonin Scalia has claimed that judicial activism upsets the balance of power between the three branches of government by granting drastically more power to the judicial branch.  Ironic, considering his recent opinions.

Just a little bit on Scalia history, he was appointed by the Republican Bronze Idol himself, Ronald Reagan, in 1986, and his nomination came shortly after a highly contentious SCotUS confirmation hearing – thus he faced much less scrutiny than many other prospective SCotUS judges have. He has criticized his fellow Supreme Court judges before in highly hyperbolic fashion, calling colleagues who disagree with him “perverse” or “irrational.” He’s also had controversial cases where he’s refused to recuse himself, most notably in a two cases; the Sierra Club vs. a federal fossil fuel task force headed by Dick Cheney, Scalia’s duck-hunting partner, and the now infamous Citizen’s United case where he was a personal guest of billionaire Charles Koch who was a zealous vocal and monetary supporter of Citizen’s United.

While behavior like that can be overlooked as it technically falls within the boundary of established guidelines and SCotUS precedent, two recent dissenting opinions written by Scalia show he has clearly decided his personal political feelings outweigh his responsibility of being an impartial reviewer of established law. In June Scalia penned the dissent in Arizona v. United States and said that the role of the state should outweigh the role of the federal government in immigration cases because in the first 100 years of our country’s history states had vast experience in dealing with non-citizens crossing state lines. Lest you be behind on your history, let me remind you that a massive percentage of “immigration” in the US from the late 1700’s to the mid 1800’s dealt with African American slaves moving throughout the Southeast US. Even if he had cited specific non-slave times when states where better equipped to handle immigration than the Federal Government, article 1 section 8 of the US Constitution states Congress is responsible for naturalization, the most commonly used term for immigration in the 18th century.

Second was his dissent on the Affordable Care Act, widely known as “Obamacare.” In the dissent he says that the Supreme Court accepts Congress’ power to tax those who don’t have health insurance yet can afford it (the individual mandate) is akin to Congress having power to “force” you to participate in Social Security simply because you “breathe in and out.”  I.E. Scalia is taking a widely accepted and proven safety net from the time of the Great Depression and more or less calling it totalitarian. I suppose he forgot that political and economic misfortune caused hundreds of thousands of elderly to die a lonely cold death before Social Security existed. Later in the dissent he says that because the individual mandate should be thrown out, the whole law should get thrown out. The last time I heard an argument like that was in the movie “Animal House” when Otter was arguing Delta’s right to exist in front of the Student Court.

If Scalia keeps this up, I’ll hold him in about as high intellectual regard as Delta House.

I’ve always been a huge baseball fan.  In recent years, however, I’ve begun focusing even more on the sports, while losing some focus on the other sports.  I haven’t followed the NBA much since Magic retired, and my interest in the NFL has waned in recent years.  I have baseball thoughts 365 days a year.  There has never been a better time to follow the sport, as technology lets fans get up to the minute information.

Here are some tools I used to follow baseball.

MLB Extra Innings

I subscribe to MLB Extra Innings on Direct TV.  I actually think the price point is pretty decent.  You pay roughly $200.  Compare this to the $300+ that the NFL package costs – for 1/10 the games – and Extra Innings seems like a pretty good deal.  Next year, I’ll drive the price down a bit more by getting MLB.TV instead of Extra Innings.  For about $50 less, I’ll watch the games streaming through my net-enable Blu-Ray player (upstairs) or Roku (downstairs).  A benefit is that I’ll also be able to stream audio on my Palm Pre.

I like MLB Extra Innings, but it’s not without flaws. 

First and foremost is MLB’s archaic blackout policy.  Baseball teams have territorial rights, and if you live in that team’s territory, the games cannot be viewed through MLB Extra Innings (and can only be viewed on a delayed basis on MLB.TV).  The basic idea is that the local cable affiliate has rights to the games, and that you can view the games there.    That’s OK if you’re in Boston and only the Red Sox are blacked out.  But if you’re in Iowa, the Cubs, White Sox, Cardinals, Brewers, and Twins are all blacked out (until recently, the Royals were also blacked out).  The Cubs are often available on local channels, the White Sox are sometimes available, the Cardinals are rarely available, and the Brewers and Twins are never available.  It’s frustrating to have a Rockies game blacked out because they happen to be playing the Brewers.  Even though the Brewers claim Iowa as part of its home territory, there are absolutely no Brewers fans in Iowa.  MLB need to re-draw territorial rights boundaries soon.  They are leaving a lot of money on the table.  Just in Iowa, there are tens of thousands of Cardinals fans who are unable to watch any of their team’s games.  It’s likely that a significant number of these people would pay $200 for Extra Innings if they could watch Cardinals games.  I fail to see the downside to this.

It’s great that you can choose to watch either the home or road team’s broadcast of the game – unlike the NFL, where you get stuck with only one option.  I really can’t figure out why DirectTV doesn’t simply dedicate one channel for each team.  Foe example, make channel 742 be the Rockies channel.  On any given day during the season, I could just flip to channel 742 for the Rockies game.  Having to scroll through the list of available games to find the one I want is mildly annoying.

Finally, Extra Innings gives you only the game – none of the pre and post game coverage and interviews.  Seriously, throw the viewers and bone and include these features.

Palm Pre

A while ago, I purchased a used (and slightly battered) Palm Pre for a good price, and have used it as a portable WiFi device (the phone portion is not activated).  This has been a great tool for keeping up to date on scores and stats.  I use a premium app (meaning that it cost a whopping $1.99) called Baseball Live.  The home screen of the app lists all the games.  You can easily click to get to a detailed information about the game.  Based on your settings, you’ll get either the MLB.com or ESPN widget for the game.  You could get the same end result by going directly to MLB.com or ESPN, but the Baseball Live app provides a more convenient interface.

Podcasts

I’ve only recently begun seeking out podcasts.  I complain (a lot) about the lack of baseball coverage on sports talk radio.  There are several baseball podcasts that can alleviate this.  By far the best is the Up and In podcast from baseball think tank Baseball Prospectus.  Baseball Prospectus is a serious organization, published several books every year.  Up and In throws this aside and is a very informal (and often R-rated) chat between two colleagues (and occasional guests).  Baseball Prospectus managing partner Kevin Goldstein hosts the show with Jason Parks.  They cover a variety of topics in both Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball.  The show generally rambles on for about two hours (with frequent detours to random non-baseball topics).  I’ve enjoyed Up and In so much that I decided to purchase a membership to BaseballProspectus.com – mostly to get the minor league insights from Goldstein.

I also listen to the ESPN Baseball Today and Fangraphs podcast.

Lawrence Block (left) & Robert Silverberg

Regular readers know that my favorite author is Lawrence Block.  Block has been writing since the 1950s, and continues to write new work.  About a decade ago, a friend gave me Burglars Can’t be Choosers, and I was hooked.  In pretty quick succession, I read all of the burglar books and also started working my way through Block’s Matt Scudder books.

There are ten Burglar books and seventeen Scudder novels (plus a short story anthology).  I’ve put more than a few dollars in Block’s pocket over the years.  I’ve also read some of his books on writing, and of course his short story omnibus Enough Rope.

Block also has three series of novels based on the following characters:

• Evan Tanner – Tanner has the sleep center in his brain destroyed as the result of a war injury, and is now incapable of sleep.  He uses the extra eight hours of each day to learn about a myriad of topics, and manages to get himself involved in a lot of international escapades.
• Keller – A professional hit man who actually had a conscience.
• Chip Harrison – A private detective who works a boss who is infatuated with Nero Wolfe.

On the surface, I should love two of these characters.  The destroyed sleep center aspect of Tanner is cool, as well as his interesting take on politics.  Keller is a hit man who spends his spare time (and money) collecting stamps, of all things.  I’ve never read Nero Wolfe, so the Chip Harrison novels wouldn’t be something that would necessarily be my cup of tea.

So I bought a Tanner and Keller book.  I hated them and wasn’t able to finish them.  I was disappointed that I was unable to appreciate books written by my favorite author, but fiction is very much a matter of taste, and I simply didn’t like them.

Fast forward five or six years.  I was in the public library looking for some audio books to read.  I saw a Keller book.  On a whim, I decided to give it a shot.  I was surprised to discover that I enjoyed the book immensely.  I read the other Keller books and liked all of them.  I liked them so much that I pre-ordered the upcoming Keller book, Hit Me.  The book doesn’t come out until February, but I’ve had my pre-order in for a couple of months.

I also rediscovered Tanner.  My rediscovery in this case was two-forked.  It turns out that Tanner was a favorite character of a good friend’s dad.  The friend’s dad served his country in Vietnam, raised his son alone after his wife deserted them, and fought a courageous battle against cancer – an outstanding role model for his son and the community.  After he passed away, I often thought of reading some Tanner books, just to see if I could see the same things he saw in them.  A bit later, I read Lawrence Block’s Afterthoughts, a collection of the forewords and afterwords from his books.  Block’s thoughts about the Tanner books were the clincher – I needed to give them a second chance.  I found out that I liked the Tanner books as well.

I have yet to read the Chip Harrison books … but I’m sure that in time I will.

If you have every given up on an author, or on a book, I urge you to give it a second chance a bit later.  The years won’t change the text in the book, but they will change you, and you may appreciate the book more.
 

It’s a common scene – you’ll come out of a movie and someone will say “It was OK, but I liked the book better.”  It’s far less common to hear someone say that they liked a movie better.  Why is this the case?  There are several reasons.

Budget

Cost to use this house as the setting for your novel? FREE!

Writers can just make up shit with no regard to any sort of budget.  Want a fighter jet flying over a, erupting volcano and having the pilot eject before it crashes into the ocean?  Give a talented writer a thousand words or so, and she can set this scene and you’ll be able to visualize the scene in your mind.  Total cost to the writer?  $0.  It doesn’t matter if the main character lives in a weather-beaten shack or a huge mansion – the cost to use the home is the exact same to the writer.  

Additionally, the writer is actually offloading a big chunk of the work onto your brain.  She’s making use of your own imagination and prior knowledge.  You already know what a jet, volcano, and ocean look like.  There’s not need to spend time on the most basic descriptions. 

On the other hand, the movie is a visual (rather than abstract) presentation.  The director can’t simply describe the jet, the volcano, and the ocean.  He needs to actually procure the use of a jet, get footage of an erupting volcano, and find a way to fake a crash landing into an ocean.  This costs money.  In modern film making, an even bigger cost is special effects.  Effects that a novelist can describe with a few pages of well-crafted text can cost millions of dollars to bring to life on the screen.

In the end, the film maker is forced to make some concessions.  To bring every single detail to life could cost hundreds or millions – or even billions – of dollars.  At some point, a line has to be drawn in the sand.

Casting

When Tom Cruise was selected as the actor who would portray Lee Child’s Jack Reacher character in the upcoming film One Shot, many Reacher fans were aghast.  Reacher is a big guy – 6’5″ and 200+ pounds of pure muscle.  Tom Cruise is officially listed at 5’7″.  It seems to not be a great fit for the role.  Lee Child’s comment on the selection was that Reacher’s size was more of a metaphor than to be taken literally.  One can’t help but wonder if financial considerations came into play.

We’ve all seen movies where actors were a bad fit for a role – or simply had poor acting skills.  Again, a novelist offloads work to your brain when it comes to casting.  While every novelist will describe physical features of a character – some more than others – no author is going to describe every single aspect.  Much will be left to your imagination, and your can mold the characters to fit your preferences.  With a movie, you’re stuck with the bums who were cast for the roles.

Surprise!

Finally, the book has the element of surprise on its side.  While I thoroughly enjoyed watching The Hunger Games and even enjoyed the casting, I definitely wasn’t surprised at various twists and turns during the movie.  How could I be?  I had read the book, so I always knew when they were coming.  In fact, I used my knowledge of the plot to time my mid-movie pit stop (long movie + previews + large soda) so that I didn’t miss any good parts.  When I read the book, these plot twists were just that – surprises.

I’ve come to accept the fact that most movies are not going to be as good as the book – through no fault of the director.  If a movie is “almost as good” as a book, I consider it to be a pretty good movie.
 

 

Note: this article originally ran on September 29, 2011

Yesterday, Amazon announced a new family of Kindle devices, including the Kindle Fire with an advanced web browser and full color screen, the Kindle Touch (obviously, with a touch screen), and a low cost $79 model. It’s mere coincidence that I happened to write about the Kindle for another article that appears on the site today. That article (What I like About My Kindle) was written prior to the Amazon announcements. Let’s take a moment to review the new models.

I listed the prices for the “With Special Offers” and without special offers. For example, the Kindle shows a price of $79 / $109. It’s $79 With Special Offers or $109 without. What are “special offers”? These are offers that appear on the screen saver and home screens of the devices (but not within the text of a book). The “with Special Offers” versions of the devices are $30-$50 less than the standard version. The general consensus seems to be that the deals that appears are good deals (I heard of one person getting a “20% off the purchase of a laptop” deal), so my thought is that most people will want this version. A friend of mine who owns a previous version complained that he couldn’t get Special Offers on his Kindle …