Well, we opened the door a few decades ago when we instituted my Wonder Woman’s family’s tradition of opening Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. Slippery slope and all that. I slept in today (late night, got up early after a short nap and went back to bed before 5) and lo and behold! Son&Heir was around and really eager to open presents super early. OK, so Noon passed (barely) and we were opening presents for those of us who were… present. Son&Heir liked his stuff (especially the “stocking stuffers” as my Wonder Woman knew he would when she found them). And I? How was it for me? *sigh* I had thought I had family trained to standard, the standard being, “I have what I need. Focus on other folks.”
Son&Heir apparently believes in a sort of insidious disrespect of my values that precludes any cavils from me. My Wonder Woman kinda bent the standard by giving me a Moleskine cover and display protectors for a Kindle/Kindle Fire. “OK,” methought, “I can put $$ back for a Kindle/Kindle Fire. It’s not as though it’s not on my list anyway.”
Opened Son&Heir’s present to me. Yeh, you guessed it. “Well, when we got a couple of pallets of them in at work, I just figured… ”
Sucker punched me, he did. Xmas gifts are supposed to flow one way in my mind. Oh, well. At least he knows CPR. *heh*
Thanks bubba. Good one. I’ll get you back, though. 🙂
And, apologies, sweetheart, but I may not get much more detail work done on your Christmas present today… 😉
No, I’m not posting this with the Kindle. Sensitivity and size of the keyboard on the thing is something I need to become used to before I’ll be doing much of that. But I am listening to one of the Christmas albums I have stored on my Amazon Cloud account via the Fire. Nice sound from the speakers for such a small device, but simply wonderful sound via the ear buds I’m currently using. I’ll post other comments on the device later, perhaps, as I become more familiar with it. One thing: I don’t view the WiFi-only limitation as a limitation, and given the fact that I can store an unlimited number of mp3s as well as an unlimited number of other media purchased from Amazon on my cloud drive, I don’t view the storage limitations as anything that will concern me.
OK, so the Fire’s Silk Browser appeared to completely suck at displaying web pages. Found the fix here, in case a reader here has the same issue (only half a page displaying, other half blank screen). It seems Amazon customer service knows about the issue and has a workaround ready to go… for those who will look it up. I wonder how many folks will instead just say, “This sucks” and return their device, though. Amazon needs to push a fix for this.
OK, so I was planning on connecting a lil compy connected to the living room stereo to stream Xmas mp3s from my Amazon Cloud storage. The Kindle’s easier. Connected via the headphone jack. CLICKed on Music, my library of mp3s popped up, Bob’s your uncle. Nice. Currently playing the short list of Il Volo’s Christmas songs mini-collection (Silent Night; Panis Angelicus; Christmas Medley: Jingle Bells Rock / Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow / It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year; The Christmas Song; Stille Nacht). I can definitely tell the boys have had extensive coaching in English pronunciation, though their native Italian vowels and consonants do sound through.
OK, just watched The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009, the Swedish version) on the device. Used ear buds after the first few minutes. Big difference. Good flick, true to the book. Even the physical settings were very close to my imaginings from the book’s descriptions. And, it was a good movie-watching experience on the Fire. Amazon may actually have found a way to get me to pop for its Prime service.
Even better: all three Stieg Larsson books have been filmed by the same folks with the same cast. Watching “…Played With Fire” now.
…and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Three movies that faithfully represented Larsson’s powerful novels. In fact, because of the format, the movies may have told the stories slightly better, in some ways, as Larsson’s narrative sometimes bogged down a tad. Oh, there were large portions that were excised–whole swaths–from each of the books, but the material that was excised just leaned the narrative down to Lizbeth Salander’s story a bit more. Well-acted, directed in such a way that the direction was almost unnoticeable. Very well-done. And by the end of the third movie, I was picking up more and more of the Swedish dialog, even noticing where the subtitles elided over material that I had caught.
A very enjoyable experience. Thanks, Son!
