My tech skills have really slipped since I left work at The Valve Store® and stopped being the group’s informal IT Guy. Question: What is the first thing you should do when any piece of technology stops working correctly? Reboot! OK, maybe the third thing right after making sure it is plugged and turned on, but that is all it took to make the PC talk to the Kindle.
1. Over the last weekend I went to add a book to my Kindle using the software called Calibre. I have used this program for several years on both our laptop and desktop PCs with great success. But for whatever reason, now, it did not recognize that I have the Kindle connected to the PC. Searching the internet reveals solutions that may or may not have worked a decade ago, but nothing of help for me. Most are hopelessly outdated as to software or hardware. Wait, I just had a thought, I should try a third USB cable…
2. Regular readers will remember that I am re-watching the 2018 Boston Red Sox baseball season. It has been our, well mostly my, after breakfast entertainment for the past several weeks. I watch it using the MLBTV app on the Roku Premire attached to the living room TV. On Monday when I went to watch Game 1 of their series with the Atlanta Braves and an error message popup up saying, “The content I selected is unavailable.” I tried selecting “jump to an inning” instead of “start at the beginning.” no dice. I selected a different game, “Unavailable.” I selected the game I watched just the day before. Nope, still unavailable. My first thought was, “Well, I guess they decided to stop access to the archives.” I tried using the app on my phone and, what do you know, the game was watchable. Went over to the PC and tried from there, available just fine. Fortunately, the MLBTV app that I downloaded for the TV works, so I don’t have to watch it on the phone or PC (my mid-range phone cannot cast to the TV.)
3. We went out and did a bit of driving to do some geocaching today. Loading caches to our GPSr turned out to be a big hassle. Just like the Kindle problem in #1 above, software and hardware that communicated reliably for years and years suddenly stopped cooperating. Suddenly GSAK will no longer send the .gpx files to our Garmin eTrex Vista Hcx. I tried updating drivers, but that was no help. So my work around involves transferring the cache files to a Garmin based bit of kit, BaseCamp (which I hate), that then will load the info onto the GPSr.
When I bought my Kindle Fire last January1 it came with a free six month subscription to the Washington Post. Turned out this was not totally altruistic, the same dude that owns the Kindle company, owns the newspaper too, so he’s hoping I would subscribe once that trial period ran out.
Well, I fell for it. I did, but only because they used the same model as satellite radio did, another 6 months for like the price of the one month. When that ran out I thought I might try a different major paper, the failing New York Times maybe? How about the Boston Globe? But all the biggies were priced 2 to 2-1/2 times the cost of the WaPo’s $3.99 a month. Jeff beat me down, I had become used to reading the Post, so I gave them him my credit card and subscribed.
But the experience has been wearing thin. My big problem was they way it updates. You pick up an actual paper and you get what you get, but electronically with the Post you’ll be reading along article after article, swiping to advance and all of a sudden you’d find yourself 5 articles back. What happened? You’d guess that maybe something new has been added in front and maybe it is newer news. Nope. WTF?
You know when something has been updated on the “paper” because a small semi-transparent balloon appears over whatever you are reading to let you know. The only way to get rid of the balloon is to click on it. And instead of trusting you to remember to go looking, you are taken all the way back to the very first article.
Today I decided that I had enough and decided to just go back to getting my news from my Google News feed. It’s free and I’m a cheapskate at heart. I cancelled subscription.
It wasn’t easy and that is a whole other post…
Seeing as I’m just now discovering my way around this Kindle Fire thing, I have lots of questions. So when faced with something I don’t anything about I fall back on my training received while member of Uncle Sam’s Yacht Club – RTFM. Trouble is the help files or user’s guide is only available while online. Searching the internet finds no downloadable guide either, so I thought I’d ask for some help from the person who sold me the device.
Initial Question: Would like a PDF of the users guide instead of online only.
Amazon: Hello, my name is Sivasankari. I’m here to help you today.
Hello Brian, can you please elaborate your issue?
Me: The user guide for my Fire (2015 edition) is only available while connected wirelessly. My paperwhite has a PDF that can be read anytime, anywhere.
Amazon: I understand that.
Just to confirm are you referring to this “Brian’s 1st Fire” ?
Me: Yes
Amazon: Thanks for confirmation.
The user guide will be available for your Kindle paperwhite as PDF. But it’ll be inbuild for fire devices. So if your device is not connected to WiFi it’ll not be available.
Me: Why?
Amazon: It is set by the
I’m sorry for the previous response.
The software developer for the fire device set this user guide as inbuild app.
Me: So, it is too much trouble for the software developer to create one?
A PDF I mean.
Amazon: In this case I’ll take this as a feedback from my end. They’ll create user guide as pdf.
It is due to better reading experience, Brian.
I’ll be sure to pass your message on to the technical team in our company.
Amazon: Customer feedback like yours helps us continue to improve the service we provide, and we’re glad you took time to write to us. The Kindle Team will carefully review your suggestions.
Me: Thank you. I understand that after a while the user guide is not used so much.
Me: But as a first time tablet buyer I find myself referring to it often.
And sometimes I am nowhere near any wifi signal.
Amazon: I understand that. You are making some real valid suggestions and I’d certainly love to see them implemented myself.
I appreciate your thoughts, and will be sure to pass your suggestion along.
Me: Thanks. I hope it will happen for some future users.
Bye.
Amazon: Sure, thanks for your patience and understanding.
Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Me: No.
Amazon: Thank you for contacting Kindle support. We hope to see you again soon!
I know, I know, such a little thing, but it is still kind of chintzy on their part. Yeah, they don’t have to spend the money on creating it or the upkeep when something changes, but I’m betting that is not the primary reason. They want you online where you are more apt to buy something from their store, be it a book, an app, some music or whatever.
And a cheap camera too.
Way back on Black Friday, Amazon was offering their their new bottom of the line tablet, the Kindle Fire, for a mere $35 instead of the usual $50. I thought, thirty-five is near impulse buy territory, but I was perfectly happy with the Kindle Paperwhite, so I passed.
The following week I was chatting with a co-worker about the near purchase, when she mentioned that she bought two of them. Curious, I asked why, knowing she has and has had several. “To give as Christmas gifts of course” she said. There were a couple of young relations in mind, one she knew was fine, but for the other she was unsure whether the mother would let her give it to her daughter.
I said if it doesn’t work out I’d give her thirty for it. She countered with forty. We agreed on the $35 she spent on it. I forgot all about it until last Friday when she asked me if I still wanted it. Taking this as some sort sign, I said yes. So now I’m the proud owner of a small Android based tablet locked in the orbit of the planet Amazon.
The above picture is a small portion the interior of the Purple Whale through some lens flare cropped from a larger image. I took it with built in camera on the Fire while waiting for Donna to come out from getting her allergy shot. Yesterday the Sonata passed the 59,000 mile mark while on a bagel run.
Happy Birthday to Me. Ordered on Sunday and arrived on Tuesday, one Kindle Paperwhite (w/ Special Offers) and a trick Fake Leather/Plastic Cover.
When I opened the box from Amazon there were two boxes inside and some bubble wrap. The Kindle box was so much larger than the one for the cover, that I first thought the cover was folded somehow. But when I opened it up it wasn’t folded, it couldn’t have been, it was made of thin hard plastic. The Kindle could have fit in the cover box, but the box it was in was made for a nice presentation of the device, so there was a lot of dead space.
I was originally thinking of getting the base $69 dollar Kindle, then graduated to the $89 no ads version because although the ads are described as unobtrusive, I rather liked the random authors that showed with BIL Paul’s Kindle 2. After more consideration I then settled on the Paperwhite for the touch screen interface and the backlit screen allowing for nighttime reading. I went with the Special Offers version to save the $20 (that’ll buy a quartet of average priced eBooks) and if the ads do get bothersome, I found instructions on the web on how jailbreak the device and load your own screensaver images instead.
Right now I haven’t gotten any special offers displayed, no authors either, just random images. I wonder if they are going to be like commercials on the evening news or basic cable movies in that there are none for a big chunk of time to get you hooked and then they come hot and heavy to the point of frustration?
Last weekend when we went to Florida I still had a couple hundred pages of “Outlander” to read, so I took the book along, not figuring I would finish it. Well, by mid morning Saturday I had. Facing the all day drive home on Sunday (half of which would be spent in the passenger seat) without anything to read, I asked if they had a used bookstore nearby. BIL Paul said, “You like science fiction, right?” “Sure”, I said. “You can borrow one of my Kindles, I have plenty of books on it.”
Every since Kindles arrived on the scene 5 or 6 years ago I have been curious to see what the reading experience would be like as compared to a physical book. And actually, in the intervening years at birthday or Christmas time when Donna would ask what I’d like as a gift, the thought of buying one would pop up, but I never pulled the trigger though, as I saw no real need.
Up until now my book reading needs have been taken care of by weekly (or so) visits to the local used book store, an occasional visit to the Book Warehouse in Savannah to get last year’s off-lease library hardcover books and the rare current bestseller picked up at Books-A-Million or Barnes & Noble.
That local used book store recently closed down, so the $1.99 and deeply discounted eBooks available for the Kindle could possibly replace that, but owning one of those things would never be able to totally replace the second two of those spots because there is something about holding a physical book and visiting their physical stores that cannot be replicated digitally. Best I can describe it; to me it is like the difference of driving the automatic transmissioned Sonata compared to the Miata’s manual transmission with a clutch, there is more of a connection.
The availability of all the free books out there for the Kindle are no interest to me, as most of them consist of the “classics”, or better known as the books they tried unsuccessfully to get me to read and appreciate in high school. There is one place where they do have free eBooks that I might be interested in…the library. The Aiken Regional library loans ’em out. This is cool for a couple reasons, you never have to worry about losing a book (you may lose the Kindle, but the book isn’t really in there) and no late fees (you can’t forget to return it; they just electronically yank it back.)
Paul’s second generation Kindle with the leather cover gives a pretty good approximation weight-wise of holding a nice hard cover book and the smaller than a page screen size means there is more page “turning”, but the buttons to accomplish that fall easy to your fingers while holding the “book.” While I didn’t think I’d hate using a Kindle, I didn’t think I would like it as much as I do. My birthday is next month and when Donna asks this time, I’ll more than likely buy one.