Digital Impulses

Seven days with a Kindle 2: A mini review

I'll save the suspense: I got my Kindle 2 on Thursday, February 26, and love the thing. As a matter of fact, the night I got it, I was up until 0215 in the morning reading “UR” the new Kindle-only Stephen King novelette until I finished it.

After spending a week with my Kindle, Here are the features I find invaluable:

READING, OF COUSE

I find that actual reading on the device does not tire my eyes, which is something that I was very worried about when I placed the order, since I had never seen a Kindle in person and had no idea what it would be like to actually READ on one for an extended period of time.

INTEGRATED DICTIONARY

I find reading on the Kindle less tiring than reading a book and the INTEGRATED dictionary just kicks butt.

You cursor over to a word whose meaning you’re not quite sure of and the definition of the word pops up in a small rectangle at the bottom of the screen. You can then hit return and get a full dictionary entry for that specific word. The Kindle has the New Oxford English Dictionary built right in.

UNIVERSAL SEARCH

The Kindle allows you to do searches for words across your entire library or in a single book. It pops up a list of the instances where your search term was found and you are a click away from going right to that specific instance in the book.

BOOKMARKS

As you move from item to item in your library, as you enter each one, you are taken right to where you were last reading.

WHISPERNET

Buying content for my Kindle, whether I do it from the Kindle itself or from Amazon's website has been absolutely flawless.  In my first week with it I've bought two Stephen King novels, Cory Doctorow's "little Brother" and subscribed to The Wall Street Journal and the All Things Digital blog. Every single transaction has been absolutely flawless and the content seems to appear on my Kindle in well under a minute, even "Bag of Bones" by Stephen King, which is a 762-page printed book.  

FREE BASIC WEB ACCESS

The Kindle offers 3G-speed *FREE* web access to Wikipedia and other sites. As a 16-shade black and white device, the browsing is admittedly very rudimentary, but it’s serviceable. Did i mention that the Web access is FREE? You pay no fees, there are no contracts to sign, etc.

CLUTTER REDUCTION

Also, an added side benefit is the clutter reduction in my office as the amount of space taken up by bookshelves and books starts to dwindle as I divest myself of obsolete computer books and reference manuals and start replacing them with current e-book ones.

In a nutshell, I for one and extremely happy with my Kindle and can see the device paying for itself quickly just in the amount of $$$ I will save in paying $10 for a book instead of the typical $18~$22 that most best-seller hard covers go for today.

Wil Wheaton's Sunken Treasure

Blogger, writer and actor Wil Wheaton recently released a new book called Sunken Treasure.  I ordered the book the moment it was available and I tore through in about a day.  I loved it.

This morning Wil put up a post on his blog with some images anyone can use to link to Lulu, where you can buy a copy of Sunken Treasure.  Because I enjoyed the book so much, I thought I'd support Wil by grabbing a copy of the image and linking to his book here on my blog:

If you are so inclined, click on the link above and buy a copy of Wil's book.  It truly will be worth your time.

If I were a superhero, I would certainly not wear tights

Batman.

Able to fight evil with all kinds of cool technology.

My ideal Super Bowl halftime show would include Metallica

Metallica
Pure, unbridled ENERGY

Thank you, President Bush

Thank you President George W. Bush for the last 8 years. 

Thank you for being a man of convictions, a man of integrity and a man of great personal strength and character.

I personally thank you for keeping me and my family safe since 9/11/01 and for not wavering in the face of great evil and relentless political and personal attacks both from abroad and from here at home, from people who should have known better and appreciated you more.

Thank you for never giving up on the War On Terror, for liberating a nation and a people from a brutal, cruel and egomaniacal dictator who didn't think twice about using Mustard Gas on his own people.

Thank you for having the stones to make the tough, bitter tasting decisions to do whatever it takes to extract the information we needed from the sworn enemies of this country.  I can well imagine that these are decisions that you did not make easily or without a lot of thought and sleepless nights.

But make the decisions you did, and for that we are safer as a nation and stronger in the face of an unyielding enemy that is willing to die in the hell-bent pursuit of the utter destruction of this country.

You faced the consequences of the nearly impossible choices you had to make like a man who realizes that there are sometimes terrible sacrifices to be made for the greater good of a people who elected you TWICE as President.

As you ride off in to the future, hold your head up high and bask in the heartfelt appreciation of those of us who understood the reasons behind the choices you made.  America is a stronger, and better place for having you defending it and as its steward the last 8 years. 

Mr. President, try not to worry much about your legacy or your place in history.  When the next inevitable attack(s) happens upon our soil, historians will have no recourse than to harken back to your vision and your words that there was simply nothing more important during your era than keeping up the relentless fight against those that would annihilate us.

With the passage of time, History will vindicate you because you did WHAT YOU HAD TO DO, WHEN you had to do it.

Thank you, Mr. President.  Tonight there is at least one person in this great country of ours who feels that you were treated most unfairly and greatly under appreciated. I'm sad to see you go, but happy that you are free of the burdens of the Presidency.

Let the Jackals on the Left find another carcass to gnaw on. 

For as they smoke their "HOPE-ium"-filled Hashish pipes, you can be certain that they sure as hell won't see, write or talk about your successor as anything other than the Messiah. What a sick joke.

God Speed and Good Luck, Mr President. I wish you and your family the very best.

Lawndale, CA
1/20/2009

Wednesday, 7 January, 2009

• Breakfast at Piggies at 0808.
• Worked from Carson.
• Home at 1200.
• AJ and I drove over to the AAA office on Aviation in Manhattan Beach to see about getting a copy of his registration and a new sticker for his car.  That went well and only cost us $18.00.  We were in the office less than 10 minutes.  I applied the sticker to the license plate of AJ's car as soon as we walked out and put the new registration card in the little booklet in his glove compartment.
• Had a work-related phone conference from 1400 to 1430 related to the possible deployment of some new software.
• Dad came over again today to get the $$$ for the replacement Juicer machine blades and he also cooked for me while he was there.  He ended up selling some additional cooking pots to the wife.
• We had dinner with the Kids at Olive Garden in Manhattan Beach.
• After dinner, I was dropped off at Mom's where I had a really nice visit with her and watched (2) episodes of our favorite show, Bones

Tuesday, 6 January, 2009

• Worked from home.
• In my home office all day.
• The wife and I drove over to Pacific Sales in Torrance to look at the kitchen range hoods and at some of their ranges.  We did not see anything we really liked.
• We had dinner at El Pollo Inka in Lawndale.
• I won a $100.00 gift certificate card from Microsoft for taking an on-line survey.  I bought 2 IDE HP DVD optical drives (with Lightscribe) and a 1GB Video card from Amazon with that gift card and a little extra cash I added.
• Nice, relaxing visit to mom's house to watch a little TV and talk.

Monday, January 5, 2009

• Worked from Carson.
• Spent the rest of the afternoon in my office.
• Dinner with Isa at Piggies.
• Spent 3 horrible hours at Isa's house, setting up, configuring and getting Isa familiar with her new Dell laptop.  There is VERY BAD tension between David & Isa inside that apartment.  I could not wait to get out of there.
• I was home by 2145 and asleep not much longer after that.

Sunday, 4 January, 2009

• Bought some plastic storage cases at Staples.
• Lunch with Reyna at Benihana at 1300.
• Bought a new Refrigerator ($2,899) and a Trash Compactor ($649) plus 2 year extended warranties on both units ($99 a piece) at Home Depot for the kitchen remodel.
• Working with dad on my diet.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

• Breakfast at Piggies at 1000.
• Bought an HP LaserJet P2035n network black & white Laser printer at Staples for $364 including an extended 2 yr Warranty.
• Installed new new network laser printer.  Worked great.  Zeus, Hermes and AJ's iMac connected to it perfectly.
• Dad came by and setup Juicer machine for me with a blade from his juice machine.
• I took David a carton of cigarettes and $20 in cash.
• Scrabble was good.  We played 4 games and I won 2 and tied another.  I should have won the TIED game, but Bert acted like a fucking asshole and blacked out my Karma to the point where I put down my remaining tiles to tie the game and I could have won if I had just looked a little closer.