My maternal grandfather did pretty well for himself, for a Dakota farm boy. His family had no money for college, so he enlisted in the Army. He always said that if they told him to dig a ditch, he dug the best ditch he could. It must have paid off. They taught him to fly, and he joined the Army Air Corps, which became the US Air Force, and by the time he retired, he was a full colonel.

He and my grandmother raised two girls who in turn gave them five granddaughters and four grandsons. My grandpa was the only person I can remember who complimented me on my physical strength. I don't recall what project we were working on— there was always something, whether it was fixing the back steps so the rainwater couldn't come in the house, or making a frame to block off the door of his Airstream-style house trailer (which he built himself) so he could let his pet hamster loose for a run. But at some point, Grandpa expressed the opinion that muscles were a good thing for everyone to have— not something girls heard often in the 50's and 60's.

The other thing I remember my grandpa saying, whenever any of us tried to carry too much at once in an effort to minimize the number of trip we had make, was, "That's a lazy man's load."

This has been a roundabout way to lead up to the fact that today's blog entry is a lazy man's load. I have seen several interesting posts about publishing and technology, but have not had time to write about any of them, so here, with no further ado, are the links:

iPad strategies for publishers

Start-up companies are forming to make iPad apps

Suggestions for publishers from the South-by-Southwest (SXSW) Conference

A push to use web standards (HTML) for ebooks

Blog post about the Kindle's future prospects