Kindle 2 Review

I've had my Kindle 2 for a couple of weeks now, and have decided to post a brief review.  Firs, I just want to say that I love it.  Not only did it meet all of my base expectations, but I found little nuances about the Kindle that made me like it even more. 

 

Many other reviews cover the basics of the Kindle.  I'll reiterate a few for convenience:

• E-ink is great.  It looks like ink on paper.  Its not backlist like an LCD screen so its very easy on the eyes and easy to read even out in the bright sunlight.
• Its very slim and portable.  It seems to have the perfect weight to it and its very thin.  I use the Kindle cover/protector so mine feels a little different than holding it bare.  However, the cover is pretty low profile and is really easy to hold.  I do recommend it to keep the screen safe, especially if you have kids or pets.
• It has free cellular wireless access through Sprint's Whispernet service.  This is a really nice feature that really sets the Kindle apart from the other e-readers.  I have a newspaper description that just shows up on my Kindle each morning, delivered wirelessly via Whispernet.  Obviously the biggest reason that Amazon provides the free wireless connectivity is so you will shop at Amazon's store to buy new books, magazines, newspapers, etc. for your Kindle.  The shop is easy, intuitive, and tempting.  Oh yea, you can use the little built in browser to get on the internet if you need to.  The Kindle was not built for web surfing, but it certainly works and can be useful in a pinch.
• The Kindle 2 has lots of built-in memory.  There isn't really much more to say about this feature other than - it's way more than enough memory for reading material.  If you ever get to the point of filling it up, you can simply archive your older stuff to free up room.

The above features are what made me want the Kindle when I first learned about it.  However, after owning one for a few weeks, I discovered other small nuances (not necessarily 'features') that make me love my Kindle all the more.

• The kindle sits nicely on a flat surface.  I never really thought about it until after I had one.  But with a normal book it is difficult to lay it flat and read from it without it closing or flipping pages automatically (unless it's a large hard-backed text book).  The Kindle of course doesn't have this issue.  I quickly discovered how useful this was when I was at home eating lunch and decided to read a bit while I ate.  I simply woke my Kindle form sleep mode and began reading; tapping the page-turn button every now and then. 
• The Kindle remembers where you stopped reading.  I knew that it had this feature, and I would have expecting nothing less from a $360 e-reader.  However, I didn't fully contemplate how convenient this was.  Its so easy to just wake the Kindle from sleep mode and start reading that I find myself not hesitating to read with I have a spare 5 minutes or so.  With a normal book I always felt like I had to get the book, relocate to a sofa or relaxing chair, and sit back holding the book with two hands while I read.  This pretty much precluded me from reading unless I had at least 30 minutes to spare.  I know that sounds ridiculous - but I'm just telling you like it is (for me anyway).
• I don't have to turn off the Kindle.  Basically, the Kindle uses no power while its displaying a screen.  It apparently only uses power while refreshing the screen (turning a page or loading a new menu) and when wireless is activated.  This means that I read and when I need to stop I just stop.  No bookmarking the page or turning off the Kindle.  Just stop reading, get up, and leave.  When you come back, wake it from sleep mode and there you go.  Just to be clear, it remembers where you last left off in every book you have on your Kindle, not just the one you are currently reading.  Additionally, you can set multiple bookmarks in a book.  Just add a bookmark with a description and you can jump to that particular page anytime you want, forevermore.
• The Kindle has a built-in dictionary.  Another feature I knew the Kindle had but did not realize how much I would appreciate it.  You simply move the cursor in front of a word and it pops up a brief definition at the bottom of the screen.  If you want a bigger, more detailed, definition you simply push a button and it takes you to a full screen definition.  Hit the Back button and you will be right back on the page you left off of.  Admittedly, my vocabulary is not that good.  Sometimes I get obsessive about using the dictionary and it breaks up the flow of my reading.  Regardless, you will find it very helpful when enough context clues are not there to adequately satisfy your thirst for an expanded vocabulary.

Those are the major points that, after a few weeks, I feel are worth mentioning.  Before I finish, I do want to point out that I think the text-to-speech feature is not that good.  It is one of those things that sounded "neat" when it was highlighted as a new Kindle 2 feature, but that in reality is next to useless.  If you are impaired and need to hear book being read, then you are most likely going to find a better product than a Kindle to read books to you (like an mp3 player and real audio books).  For anyone else, why would you want books read out loud to you in a computerized voice?  If you find yourself needing this feature, then you too may want to look into real audio books since they are nearly infinitely better than a book being read to you using a text-to-speech computerized voice.

 

 

9 coffee mugs...

I currently have 9 coffee mugs on my desk.  They are comprised of various shapes and sizes ranging from a small, glazed, ceramic, green mug with a bass on it, to a 32oz plastic thermos-style mug.

 

The mugs appear to be perched in eager anticipation of my next sip.  Most of them don't realize that the beverage which they contain has given up hope and has initiated the mold-growth stage.  No, I have never accidentally drunken mold.  Is "drunken" even a word? Drank? Drunk? Drinked? Whatever.

 

 

 

 

More twisting of facts and figures

It is bugging me that politicians against the stimulus plan speak to the American people like we are a bunch of morons.  Don't tell me that the stimulus plan that aim's to create 3 to 4 million new jobs is merely a "spending plan" because you calculated that the cost per job is around $900,000.  What kind of fact is that?  First of all, even at 4 million jobs for $1 trillion, you are looking at a number between $200k and $300k per job.  Second, what the hell kind of point is that supposed to be making anyway?  We aren't doing this to create jobs solely for the sake of creating jobs.  We are doing this to stimulate the economy.  This is by creating jobs and investing in the country's infrastructure (in many way). 

 

Would you rather create jobs at $250,000 per job and have new roads, bridges and schools to show for it - or would you rather create jobs at $100,000 each and get nothing in return for your investment?  Sure you can pay people to rake lines in sand and employ three times as many people and the economy will grow - temporarily.  Or you can pay a little more for tangible assets that will provide value to the country for many decades to come.

 

They throw numbers out there like $900k per job that aren't true and even if they were - like that is supposed to mean anything to the average citizen.  Ask the average person what the "ideal" cost should be for each new job created.  Not only would they have no basis for answering the question, even if they did - there is no right answer.

 

Try this analogy.  A new Interstate interchange was constructed by the DOT in my town for a cost of 50 million.  The project created jobs for approximately 120 people for 8 months.  The cost per job for that project was $416,000 per new job.  Pretty high number, right?  But who cares?  That is a useless statistic.  The point is that a bridge was purchased for 50 million dollars and it created 120 new jobs.  If that same 50 million dollars was used to pay people to rake circles in the sand you could employ 1500 people for 1 year to but when it was over you still have a collapsing Interstate interchange to go fix.

 

The stimulus money is not going to waste.  Not only will it create jobs, but it will get us caught up on critical infrastructure work that has had funding put off for a very long time.  As we come out of the recession of the forthcoming years, we will be able to focus on paying down our nations debt by running a budget surplus for awhile since our infrastructure needs will be at an improved state.

 

 

Balancing your checkbook

Ok, so I guess most people don't have checkbooks anymore - or at least don't use them regularly.  But surely you still have to keep your checking account register balanced?  I have not taken a survey on this, but as time passes I am finding out that more and more people I know haven't balanced their accounts in years, or even over a decade!

 

Am I the only one that still bothers with maintaining a balanced account?  Perhaps I am behind the times.  After all, with check card purchases the transaction clears the register in a day or two - so you don't have to worry about transactions outstanding for weeks or months.  I will point out, however, that I use very few checks, yet there is always at least one that hangs out there for months before being deposited.  It doesn't usually amount to much, but is still mildly annoying.

 

I guess I am just stubborn when it comes to this type of stuff.  I want to know that all accounts are perfectly balanced to the penny and I like to know where all money goes.  It's not that I am trying to be cheap (although I am frugal - there's a difference!), I just feel that it is good financial house keeping.  How else can you budget a savings plan or other expenses if you don't even know how much money you are making and spending?  Maybe everyone makes so much money now that they always have thousands of excess dollars hanging around in their checking accounts.  Even in that case I would argue that the accounts should still be balanced and maintained in order to more effectively utilize savings or investing plans.

 

 

The Man Time Forgot

I have to say, this was one of the most captivating books I have yet to read.  I realize that having read an unrespectable finite number of books this may not mean much, but alas it was also a NY Times Best Seller.

 

The story is of Briton Hadden, the lesser-known founder of Time Magazine (Time Inc.).  His partner, Henry Luce, lived much longer than Hadden and apparently made a concerted effort to take credit as the founder of Time.  Hadden is cast as an energetic, youthful, fun-loving, brilliant journalist who changed the style of American journalism forever.  Everyone who met Hadden loved to be around him.  He was always joking, pulling pranks, and was the center of attention everywhere he went.  It was his childhood dream to create a news magazine that would summarize the news every week in a clear, concise collection of stories and articles that told a tale of people and events like never before.  Even as a young school kid he talked about a weekly news magazine that could be folded twice and would fit in a shirt pocket.  Hadden was a brilliant writer even as a child.  He would become the editor for the Yale paper and be elected most likely to succeed by his classmates.

 

He followed through with his dream, and chose Henry Luce to start the company with him.  Luce was his friend and most competitive rival throughout his days at Hotchkiss and Yale.  Hadden always bested him and Luce often seemed quietly bitter about it - though he loved Hadden as a friend.  However, apparently Luce's unyielding competitive drive and determination to be successful would never allow him to treat Hadden like a true friend.  Twice while Hadden was alive Luce had betrayed him to advance his own agenda.

 

Hadden died at the age of 30, only a few years after starting Time.  He had become a millionaire the same year and Time was well on its way to national prominence.  Though visibly torn up by Hadden's death, Luce rarely ever spoke a word of Hadden for the rest of his life.  Luce was a brilliant business man and carried Time to where it is now as well as founding other successful magazine ventures like Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated.  But Luce never really spoke of Hadden as the creator of Time. He never mentioned that Time was Hadden's idea originally and suppressed the fact that Hadden was the early genius behind Time and wove its early success.  Without Hadden, Luce would have never experienced life the way he did.  Hadden catapulted Luce into stardom, died at 30, and Luce never looked back.

 

I found the book to be sad towards the end.  It was hard not to love Hadden throughout the book.  He befriended the outcasts, took in stray animals, and was the life of every party.  To read about him laying on his deathbed, helpless, but still making jokes about it left me sort of empty.  I wanted it to somehow end with Hadden realizing the success of his dream and be quietly satisfied that he accomplished his life's dream.  Instead he died wanting much more out of life and left Henry Luce to steal his dream and take credit for it all. 

 

 

Is it the new year yet?

Just like that it's January 2nd, 2009. It's not that I expected some kind of hazy aura of change to sweep over my town; Yet, the the current state of my environment is slightly unfulfilling. Although my calendar changed, and I will inevitably have to strike through "2008" (as I am a creature of habit) on documents for 4 months, nothing has really changed.

I suppose this is one reason that new year's resolutions are so hard to stick with. Something prevented you from making those changes in 2008. You knew they were worthy of pursuit, yet fell into a routine that shunned complete efficiency in productivity. Whatever it was about you, or whatever it was about your life, that caused you to sink into a rut... well, it's still there in 2009. Of course when I say "you", I mean "I".

Nearly 14 years removed from my last physics course, I think the word I am looking for is inertia. I bet Isaac Newton was really good at following through with his new year's resolutions. After all, he was the first to discover the law of inertia, which is apparently what keeps our resolutions from fabricating. The law of inertia pretty much says that things don't change unless acted on by an outside force.

"When a force acts upon an object to cause a displacement of the object, it is said that work was done upon the object"

And therein lies the problem: work. Nothing will change without an outside force acting on it. Producing that outside force requires work to be done. Bummer.

Physics and experience tell us that it takes energy to do work. So all we need is additional, or better, ways of creating energy and our new years' goals and resolutions will be a piece of cake.

So what's my point? I really didn't have one when I started writing this post - but if anything, I guess my point is that just because the year changed from 2008 to 2009it doesn't make it any easier to do the things you know you want to do (or should be doing). Those things are still going to require the same amount of energy and effort to accomplish that they would have a couple of months ago. The only real thing that we have going for us now is motivation. And motivation can be a pretty good source of energy.

Reading regrets

Whenever I am asked to list my hobbies, or interests, I typically include "reading" on the list. I mean, I like to read. At least I think I do. I don't recall an instance when I sat back, cracked open a book and had a miserable time reading it. However, earlier this year I started inputting the books I read into a Facebook application that lets you review and recommend books - and I immediately realized that my list was very short for someone who claims to enjoy reading.

After scanning my bookshelf for awhile, and brainstorming for awhile, I realized that most of the books I own are not real books. I mostly seem to purchase informational, or reference type, books related to computer stuff, poker, home improvement, or investing. While these types of books are valuable to me, reading a reference book is not the same as reading a good biography.

When I trimmed my book list down to the real books that I have read - the list was shockingly short. Coincidentally (or not so much so), a significant number of the real books I read this year. It was at this point that I realized I have done myself a great disservice by not reading more for the first 32 and a half years of my life.

I should point out that I do indeed spend large portions of my day reading. But most of my reading comes from internet forums, blogs, news sites, etc. Regardless, nothing really compares to reading a dynamic, well-written biography, memoir or narrative history book.

I admit that I am not a big fan of fiction. While I do enjoy and occasional work of fiction, I feel like I am using up valuable reading time that I could be spending on a book that would have more meaning to me. So for now, I tend to fulfill any of my fiction cravings with movies (although I probably average less than 6 movies per year).

Call them goals, resolutions, or whatever - but one of mine in 2009 is to read more real books!