Only in Japan would the Prime Minister think it's a fantastic idea to talk about doubling the consumption tax (Japanese equivalent of U.S. sales tax) three weeks before the national election.

Obviously his party lost control of the Upper House. It remains to be seen if he's going to resign over this, which BTW is the standard MO for 99.9% of Japanese prime ministers. He took over in June 2010. (No, that's not a typo.)

Outlook is a marvelous piece of software that not only takes care of emails and contacts, but also manages to-do lists and various appointments and tasks.

However, if you don't do some basic maintenance on your personal folders files (*.pst), you'll experience a significant degradation in performance even if you don't have virus or other issues on your computer.

In order to keep your Outlook running optimally, you should do the following regularly:

• Compact the pst and ost files. (Compacting the ost files isn't applicable for people who aren't using an MS Exchange server.)
• Scan the pst and ost for errors and repair them. (Again, the instructions on ost files aren't applicable for people who aren't using an MS Exchange server.)

Hope this helps!

Some people have asked me what my rating on Goodreads mean, so here's a quick cheat sheet. (This applies to fiction only.) I also put the baseball analogy in brackets.

1 star — Goodreads interprets this as “didn't like it”. I give 1 star to books that had mechanical, character, plot and/or craft issues to a degree serious enough that that I couldn't overlook them. They're obviously DNFs (did not finish). [Out]

2 stars — Goodreads interprets this as “it was okay”. I give 2 stars to books that were just okay. Many books that get 2 stars from me end up being DNFs as well. But others may enjoy the stories I rated 2 stars as they don't have any glaring issues the way 1-star rated books do. [Got on base, but may or may not come home.]

3 stars — Goodreads interprets this as “liked it”. I give 3 stars to books that were enjoyable enough, but that didn't have anything that would've elevated them to something better / more impactful. Basically they're the kind of books that did the job, but didn't do much beyond that. [Got on base, then made it all the way around to come home.]

4 stars — Goodreads interprets this as “really liked it”. I give 4 stars to books that were not only enjoyable but had that special something that elevated them — beautiful prose / style, clever plot twists and/or some other elements that made me go “wow”. [Wooo…some exciting plays, possibly a 1- or 2-run homer.]

5 stars — Goodreads interprets this as “it was amazing”. I give 5 stars to books with stories so well told that they shut off my internal editor. They're virtually flawless. [Grand slam, baby!]

Please note that individual tastes differ, and my 2-star books could be somebody else's 5-star rated titles. :)

How do you rate the books you read?

I don't even like cats that much (am very allergic), but this video made me want to get a Scottish fold kitten…

I've seen so many writers who got into difficult situations with their webmasters. It could be anything from the webmaster going MIA, doing shoddy work, whatever. In the eventuality that you want to break up with your designer / webmaster, you should always ensure that your website design (including CSS, graphics, header, buttons, everything) is yours to take with you, and that you don't have to continue hiring the designer / webmaster you no longer find “professional” in order to be able to use the template, etc. you've paid for.

BTW — don't let your designers register your domain for you. Domain registration is easy. A few clicks of the mouse and you're done. If your designers / webmasters did it for you, make sure to get it transferred to you as soon as possible. Transferring a domain name when your tech people go missing can be very time-consuming and stressful. Go to a place like 1and1.com and register it yourself. It's not that expensive, and 1and1 gives you free private registration.

P.S. In case you're interested, the ever-amazing Frauke from CrocoDesigns is doing a free author website workshop right here.

Jeannie Lin posed an interesting question over at Romance Divas: Which would you prefer — publishing one monumental book (like To Kill a Mockingbird) or publishing many lesser books (like one book a year or whatever)?

I wouldn't want the former unless the sole book I published was so significant that it won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nothing else could make the first scenario appetizing enough.

How about you?