Mikes Place

By Michael L. Craner

This month since I have spent nearly all of my free time exporting the archive volumes to Acrobat format and getting the site ready to offer them, I am dedicating my column to their announcement.

So, without any further ado...

In our never-ending efforts to raise enough cash to keep publishing Pencil Stubs, we are now offering our archived volumes in Adobe Acrobat format. The Acrobat Reader is a very common application, most people already have it, and if not it can be downloaded for free from http://www.adobe.com. In exchange for a donation that goes to support the costs of webhosting and our domain name we will grant a one year membership to our download section for donors to download Volumes 3 & 4, plus any additional offerings we make throughout the year. $15.00 will give you access to Volume 4 (last year), $20.00 for Volumes 3 & 4, and for $25.00, I'll put 'em on a CD and mail them to you!

We are also offering to authors who have contributed several times with their writing, a "portfolio" in PDF format of everything we have published for them. These will be available by request, and will cost $10.00 for my time in converting and emailing them, these funds too will go towards the site, not my own pockets. (Most portfolios will be under 1 MB in size.) Email me for details @ mike@pencilstubs.com.

One more thing I would like to tell you about this month is NetFlix. I like to watch movies, but going to Theaters with three kids just doesn't happen, and there aren't many people I would trust my kids with, so we usually grab a couple videos from the video store. Pay-Per-View on satellite was ok, until they raised their prices last year to where they cost as much or more than a video rental, and they get the movies a month or two behind the video stores anyway. The problem with renting is remembering to go back to the store to drop off the movies. Sometimes it's just not convenient.

All that has changed for me now. With a DVD player (much better than old VHS tapes, and bonus features to boot!) and a $19.95 a month membership to NetFlix, I get to watch as many DVD's as I want each month, with NO late fees, and I only have to go as far as my mailbox. They ship you your choices, and pay for the postage to return them.

If that wasn't already an outstanding deal, you can get a free two week trial just to see if it works for you!

Now I know what you're thinking, ah, sure, mail order. That will take a week to get my movies! WRONG! I signed up for, and selected a few movies on a Friday afternoon. They shipped THAT DAY, the email they sent said I would get them around Wednesday. I had them on MONDAY. That's just 3 days that the mail service runs, and they might get out quicker if ordered at the beginning of the week.

Now you're probably thinking they have a small selection, and they don't get the new stuff right away, right? WRONG AGAIN! On January 29th, the day Disney's "Atlantis" was released on DVD, I was watching it. As for selections, does your local video store have over 10,000 titles available on DVD?

So far the only catch I have found is that for the $19.95 plan you can only have 3 titles out at a time. You can upgrade your account to have out more though for a higher fee. At any rate, I can rent more movies a month with NetFlix than I can at any of the 3 local stores I have an account with on $20 bucks. And I don't have to go any further than my mailbox!

Their website is excellent as well, making it easy to find what you are looking for, even rate the movies yourself or see what other viewers have rated them.

All in all it is such a great deal, that I have joined their "Affiliates", where we show their banner, and for every referral we send them that joins we get a $7.00 referral fee. These fees will go into the Pencil Stubs coffers to support the site, and you'll get a risk-free two week trial of the best video store around.

I'm so excited by NetFlix, if you sign up from following their banner link in the navigator bar on the left of your screen, then forward me your "welcome" email from Netflix, I'll give you access to our Volume 4 archive for a year for free, as if you donated $15.00 to Pencil Stubs. Of course you're still welcome to donate anyway. Donations are ALWAYS accepted, of ANY amount. If you would like to donate more or less than the required amounts to qualify for the downloads membership, you can use the "Donate" button in the navigator bar at anytime. Any donation made exceeding the required amounts will also qualify for the download membership.

More details regarding the archives as well as signing up can be obtained in our "Archives" department.

Have a great month!

--Mike