I was thinking, you know, maybe I should just get a tablet instead of a kindle, even though I don't really need one. I mean, I WANT one. I adore gadgets. I'm sucha girl-nerd. But what I love about my kindle is the lack of a backlight. It's so much softer on my eyes. I love that 'real-book' look - if books had keyboards. And batteries. And adjustable fontsizes, which comes in handy when I take out lenses at night and just want to read one more chapter. The long battery life is nice too. Maybe I should just try to replace the battery first. It could be that, right? It's been needing a charge more and more often lately, and I HAVE been using it since 2011. It keeps freezing and refuses to reset. I've taken off the back cover and unscrewed the battery and took it out (like you do with a blackberry on a daily basis) but it didn't help. It unfroze for a few minutes once, reset itself, and promptly froze again on the index screen.

So, thoughts? Tablets or kindle? Whichever I decide on will have to wait, since I don have money. I have a small bonus in December that I'll use, so think of this as an advance on my 'Dear Santa' list.

Oh, and I also need a new phone. You might have noticed the word 'Blackberry' somewhere in my musings.

 

For a girl with a teeny-tiny purse you sure do have a humongous cyclops eye in the gadget store.

But... wait. So like the dog didn't eat your kindle? Nor did you drop it into a bowl of tapioca pudding? It might be the battery?

Sheesh, is all I have to say.

Oh, and also this.

http://www.amazon.com/Dekcell-Replacement-Battery-Amazon-Kindle/dp/B002E1Q2H8

 

It might be the battery. It might be the screen. It might be the calories i ate during the day, getting their revenge on me where it hurts the most. I just don't know. Personally, I suspect it isn't the battery - it just stopped too soon, too suddenly. It give me a 'Blank Ringo; No Driver Detected' error message when I plug it into my laptop. From everything I've seen from my google scouting, the other people to whom this happened all ended up replacing their kindles.

So. I'm going to HOPE it's the battery, but I'm keeping my eyes open for other options, that's all.

Thanks for the link. It's a place to start looking. Sigh. Why do things hit at once?

I guess things fall apart.

 

Hah!!!

Indeed they do.

One of my favorite poems.

And also an extraordinarily excellent novel. Being from Africa, of course you know that. (Though the author is Nigerian, which I suppose is as far from you as Boston, Massachusetts is from Mexico City.)

 

I've never been there, but it's a stunning (if, for me, slightly boring) book. Chinua Achebe's depiction of what happens when the center doesn't hold... Yeah. I can't say I liked the book, or even that I enjoyed it, but I certainly found it to invoke thoughts and ideas and emotions. For some reason, the one thing that stands out most is where they spoke about babies - twins, especially - that were killed. To be honest, I only read the book once - In college, and only because I had to. It's one of those pieces of 'great literature' that I'm just not sophisticated enough to enjoy. Sort of like 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Sons and Lovers'. I can appreciate and understand WHY people love it, but that doesn't make me enjoy it. I'm to plebeian in my tastes - give me Nora Roberts or Kristan Higgins any day. I don't mean Mills and Boon stuff - or formula stories, like, 'The millionaire's secret baby', or 'The Playboy Tycoon meets his match' or 'their dads were enemies and now they hate each other too though secretly they want to rip off each other's clothes.' You know the type. Thirty years ago and Fabio would have graced the cover in half-naked, semi-Italian-Irish-Greece-Spanish-medieval glory.

One book of literature that I DID enjoy was Heart of Darkness, which reminded me a lot of Lord of the Flies, except for being better. I always wonder what would happen if we could strip away the veneer of society. I think we would be so surprised at who we really are.

 

Clarise is right. Call amazon, cry, whine, blame, scream, and even offer sexual favors. ( though that last didn't seem to work for me. ) They will send you a new one. Especially if you are just wanting the same old model. (probably discontinued, and there are thousands just laying around.) Probably want you to pay for shipping, but $10 bucks, ( not sure what currency you use ) for all the love it will give you in return?
I prefer the older models, with no bells and whistles. Don't need it to play movies, go on-line, or give me a new app. Just a screen with my books. If a tablet is what you are after, then go for that.

 

I also got my first introduction to Achebe at college, and I had the benefit of receiving it from a brilliant African poet who explicated the parallels between the cyclical worldview of many African tribes with the similarly periodic philosophical system of Yeats (for indeed the Yeats poem that inspires the title of the novel begins with, turning and turning in the widening gyre / the falcon cannot hear the falconer.) That professor also introduced us to the plays of Wole Soyinka and the brilliant poesy of Christopher Okigbu, T'chicaya U'Tamsi, and others. I suppose the full immersion approach helped to put Achebe in context.


Heart of Darkness of course is a book for adults, while Lord of the Flies is juvenalia. Hard to believe, eh? These days Lord of the Flies would challenge English post-docs. Just goes to show how far we've come.

 

Or rather, how far we've gone. As a whole, society isn't really making great strides in the evolutionary process. Of course, there are always individual exceptions, but overall, humanity seems to be growing dumber with every new generation.

 

​

 

And now for a bit of science.

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Why does everything have to be so expensive?

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ain't it the ever-loving truth

 

How sick am I that I saw the picture and immediately thought, "look, lean bacon!!"

 

Your not sick at all, I was thinking "Ham and eggs."

 

A story of Elephant v car (needless to say you already know the outcome)

http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/nature/post/itch-scratching-elephant-terrifies-occupants-car/

 

As for that thing with the elephants... I've been there before. Not in that situation, really, and certainly not in that car. But in Pilansberg. It's a lovely area. If you ever visit South Africa, try to go there. It's worth it.

But, if you have to choose between there and the Kruger National Park, it's a no-brainer. The Kruger park is famous for a few very good reasons.

 

OK Snow, where do I start? Is the elephant humping that poor car? That first picture sure looks like it! Is this Bestiality/auto-erotica? If so... that car is no way 18 years old. I'm not sure if this is a banning offense, but someone should at least give you a stern warning!

 

I meant to ask about elephants in South Africa doing this to cars, but forgot to in my post.
I could imagine some American trying to explain to his insurance company: "Uh, yeah, the car was sitting there and this gigantic elephant came along to use it as a scratching post..."

 

This is why I love books.





I have a LOT of books. Anybody willing to be part of my shelving system? I'll even use the Dewy Decimal system...