Of course, this was the perfect time for my Kindle to fail (look at the top of the screen):
As you can see, the top half-inch or so of the screen is goobered. I can’t see the battery charge icon or the signal strength meter. I had a look, and called Amazon, and (even though it’s a couple weeks past the warranty) they decided to replace it. Yay!!!!
So they sent out the new one overnight, I received it yesterday… and it doesn’t charge. I tried my old cable and the one they sent with the unit, on both the wall charger and the computer, no luck. On the phone again… and they quickly agreed they’d sent me a bum replacement. The third one (which I hope is the charm) would be here Monday, except that I doubt much of anything will go anywhere on Monday.
So I get to use the iPad as an eBook reader for a couple of days. It’s not as comfortable as the Kindle for reading, but it works.
Far, good luck with the snow. We have the store-stripping thing here too, but generally only for the first snow of the season, and after that people go back to ignoring the weather. The last serious run on the stores here was during the ice storm in Dec-2008, the one that knocked out electric power to whole counties from here to upstate NY.
ReplyDeleteWe've been about to get snow since Friday afternoon, but they keep shoving the forecast back by a few hours, so now it's supposedly going to snow later. Haven't seen much of it yet.
Err, about the Kindle .. is there any way to SSH onto the thing via wireless? Not sure if there's any way to address the charging issue (sounds like a hardware problem?) but it's good for geek cred points, right? :) And we know the thing's got to be running some *n*x variant, right?
Hey Nudge. Yeah, today might be okay for doing stuff — like I said when Daughter Dearest and I were talking yesterday, they've done the "panic now, avoid the rush" thing. The forecast hasn't changed appreciably, it's still coming in tonight and there's going to be around 5 inches of snow on the ground with a little crust of ice on top.
ReplyDeleteThe Kindle runs some variant of Linux. It can be rooted, and it's supposedly not that difficult. Since it has its own keyboard, SSH isn't necessary… good thing, as I doubt it presents an IP stack to the cell network. The newest models have wifi as well as 3G, but this one only has 3G. It's definitely a hardware problem, and the battery's already too far gone to do anything with it. :( Oh well, when the working one gets here, there will be plenty of time for hacking.
I have never understood the mentality that has people driving to the store in advance of a storm for bread. Seriously?
ReplyDeleteI mean, we prepare for a storm. We make sure the woodbox is full (so that we don't have to go out into the storm for wood to heat the house), make sure all of the animals outside are secure, make sure there's nothing lying in the yard that will get buried (in a regular winter, possibly for a few months ;), charge all of the batteries and fill the filtered water jugs. Other than that, if we don't have it, we figure we can do without for a day or two.
The ice crust is the worst! You may curse me when you see this, but I hope you just get snow - with no ice. It's much nicer ;). Actually, I wish you'd send all of the snow up here. I'm thinking I might have to move south for the winter to get a "real" winter ;).
Wendy, that's my mentality too. Get ready, not panic. I made some bread, made sure the generator would run, and did the things you mentioned, and called it good enough.
ReplyDeleteThere's a few million people here who will be glad to send you the snow we've got so far — about 4 inches, fluffy/powdery, no ice yet.