simplerich

So, my Kindle Fire developed a weird screen thing where the screen would shoot vertical lines through it and then go black. In the dark you could sometimes see it was half the blacker-than-black from between scanlines on a TV and the other half was a dark gray. But the screen wasn’t viewable. Just the slightest tweak, or holding it ONLY on the left side would fix the problem stutteringly. Then it would stay OK for a while. Other times it’d be touchy and seemed not willing to stay on at all. Still other times it would go a negative so white was black and black was white. blue was red, etc. It was a negative… you know what that is. It got worse over time. I didn’t have a lot of time so I didn’t do much with it.

Finally tonight I went through the steps on amazon to do a return and got a message saying, “Can’t just return this item punk! You gotta talk to someone in a foreign country who is awake this late.” or words to that effect. With great trepidation I called the 800 number and got someone whose name I didn’t understand but his name was NOT “Peggy” and he did NOT tell me I couldn’t turn my airline miles into cash.

It was a guy, with an accent yes, but he was super friendly. Very helpful and never once asked if I’d dropped it, thrown it across the room, left it in a car overnight when it was eleven-degrees outside, shipped it across the country twice in a shoe box or anything else that might cause problems. He simply apologized for the problem and asked where to ship the replacement item. I told him and while we were talking an e-mail showed up with a link to print a shipping label. When the new one arrives I’m to put the broken one in the box, hand it to any UPS driver or store and toddle off to enjoy the replacement item.

No muss. No fuss. Free 2 day shipping to me. They couldn’t have been nicer, more solicitous, helpful, cooperative, or excellent to deal with. Seriously. I can’t imagine anything he could have done to make the experience more pleasant.

To answer your unanswered question: Would I still recommend someone get a Kindle Fire? The answer is absolutely YES if you have wi-fi at your home or work. If you don’t have wi-fi it’d be a harder sell for me. But with the wi-fi I have available to me at home, work, and the coffee shop it’s as good as always on for me.  I love it for movies, facebook, comics, and reading websites. I don’t love it for books because the battery doesn’t last 2 weeks like my Kindle 3. But I like it for books at night when the lights are out and I don’t want to turn on a table lamp.

Thank you Amazon.

I’m not sure what to do with this place. I’ve got posts out there. I’ve got them here and on my blogger blog and there are readers both places but Google+, somewhere I haven’t been more than  months I don’t think I have more readers and more interaction already than on both of my blogs combined.

I like the idea of my own blog, but the reality is I like interaction and readers and I have a LOT more of those, engaged readers, on Google+ than I have on either blog.

It’s the engagement of the readers that’s attracting me. Granted, I’m pretty careful about who I circle, and while over 2k people follow me I don’t follow that many at all. I’m just over 300 that I read, but I add more all the time, and sometimes remove people. There’s such a feeling of community, of conversation, of participation on Google+ I find I’ve spent far more time there than here.

I need to figure out what’s going to happen next obviously. Mirroring or merely importing those posts to here is a possibility but it seems like it’s diluting things. If you’re on Google+ look me up. If you’re not… the conversation there is absolutely incredible.

Jesup is my room mate’s cousin. I don’t know him well enough to say we’re friends yet but he’s not only really interesting, he’s going something really interesting and blogging about it so people can read all about it over at the aptly named Jesup’s Blog.

He’s a 20+ Iowan teaching in Chile. Here’s the thing… he went down there and THEN looked for a job! If you’ve read the 4-Hour Workweek I think it was? It suggests that the best way to see the world is GO where you want to go and get a job there. Become a local and see the sights. I hope I got that right. It seems especially timely with the death of Steve Jobs and his oft replayed and shared 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University.

(If you haven’t seen it go watch it. It’s worth it.) Jesup seems to be following Steve Jobs’ advice to do what he’s passionate about and it’s paying off in a rich and interesting story that he’s living. Go give him a read, add him to your news feed and let his example inspire you.
 

I’ve heard ads for SleepPhones on various podcasts out there and honestly… if I could remember which one I found them on first I’d have used their affiliate link or code or whatever so they got the credit for it. Because I really DID discover them through a podcast and I’m sorry I can’t give them the credit they deserve. I put off buying them for months. I just couldn’t convince myself they weren’t a gimmick. Really? A sweatband with earbuds sewn into them and I’m supposed to pay $40 bucks for that?

Yes and No. Yes. You should, and no, they’re NOT just a sweatband with earbuds sewn in. The speakers in these are wafer thin and flexible. They’re barely noticeable. When I put them on I can find the speaker best by turning the headband thing until I can hear in both ears. It’s well nigh undetectable through the material. I’ve fallen asleep with earbuds in and the discomfort has woken (waked, waken, awakened) made me wake up in short order. I sleep on my side, and the hard plastic nodule constantly mashing into my ear with a standard earbud was awful. That is NOT an issue with the SleepPhones. They don’t go in your ear. They are seriously, MAYBE the thickness of a silver dollar and are soft and pliable and are outside the ear, nestled in some sort of magic microfiber softness.

The material is as unlike sweatband material as the speakers are unlike earbuds. Where sweatbands are rough absorbent terry material the SleepPhones are soft, super baby-blanket microfiber soft and they just feel good. I can imagine wearing them even if I’m not listening to anything. They’re comfortable and comforting. I had no idea I’d like how good they fit. I got the medium because while I have a giant ego I efficiently pack it into a medium-sized noggin… unfortunately all my brains take up a bit more space than I thought. I seem to be just a little too big for a medium as the seam in the back stretches a bit… but it’s in the back so I can’t see it. I suspect a large would fall around my neck like a muffler/scarf so I have the right one. I just need a less magnificent brain so it’ll fit better.

My biggest worry when I got it was that I wouldn’t hear my alarm clock or phone. Fortunately for me, my assistant manager drunk dialed me at three in the morning and I woke up just fine to take the call. Unfortunately for him the next morning… I woke up just fine to take the call lol. Later that same morning when my alarm went off at six am I heard it as well and woke up. I’ve worn the SleepPhones three nights now and all three nights it has stayed in place, neither falling off my head nor turning so one speaker is on my forehead and the other on my neck.

My second biggest worry was that the cord was too short. I listen to my laptop and I don’t really want to roll over and jerk my macbook onto the floor since the laptop sits on my nightstand. Luckily that hasn’t been a problem for me, but only just barely. If I had a queen sized bed or was a big mover in bed it might be an issue. I don’t move much when I sleep. I’ll switch from side to side a couple of times but that’s about it… and evidently I wind and unwind an equal number of times since I haven’t yet awakened to find the cord wrapped around my throat. That is good. Remember my gigantic brain? It evidently keeps track of which way to roll when I move in my sleep for me. Very nice of it. Self-preservation, thy name is well… it’s self-preservation actually. Stupid giant brain wrote me into a corner and then snuck off to have coffee and I couldn’t write my way out! Honestly though, if you’ve got a giant bed and the music source is going to be a distance away you might consider an extension for the cord.  They’re available everywhere, SleepPhones has them on their site, Wal-Mart has them. If you think it’ll be an issue get one. They’re not that expensive and the SleepPhones are worth it. If you’re using an iPod or music player this won’t be an issue.

After the first night with the SleepPhones I knew I wanted to wear them while running but didn’t want to wear the same ones… I don’t want to wear a sweaty headband thing to bed. I love ‘em, but not enough to wear ‘em wet. Bleargh! So, I toddled on over to their website sleepphones.com and looked and what do I see? They make them for running! SQUEEEEEEE! I won’t put off getting my runphones at all! I’m ordering a pair very very soon. I can’t wait.

It’s possible you’ve never considered listening to something while you sleep but I do. I listen to audiobooks (just one so I sort of equate it with sleep time. I don’t listen to that book while driving lol) I also sometimes listen to some classical music or ambient stuff. I do it mainly to not hear any other TVs in the house or if it’s a UFC Fight Night and I go to bed I don’t hear the party in the other room. If you sleep with a snorer, if you’re in an apartment and you don’t want to hear the neighbors, if you live near a street and don’t want to hear traffic SleepPhones are perfect. I’m not getting paid for this, and odds are really good the ppl over there don’t know I exist but you should know their product exists, and if you’re in any of those categories I heartily recommend you give a set a try. They’re way better than I thought they would be. They’re NOT just earbuds stitched into a sweatband.

(Full Disclosure: If you buy from one of my links that goes to amazon I’ll get pennies on the purchase… but SleepPhones didn’t pay me a cent for this and if I remembered which podcast had introduced them to me I’d give them the credit anyway so the folks at SleepPhones would know their ad campaign worked.)

I’ve set a goal to read 40 books this year and this is one of them. Now, it’s not a management book at all. It’s fiction so if you’re expecting something along the lines of “Who Tipped My Purple Cheese At A Higher Level Like The Navy Seals” you’re barking up the wrong tree here. This book was too fun, too page-turningly-exciting to not suggest though. I gave it 5 out of 5 stars on goodreads.com and here’s my review.

I’ve never read any of the Dexter books. I’ve seen the show a couple times. There are tons of comparisons between the two, Dan Wells’ books and the Dexter books. I can watch Dexter or not. It doesn’t bug me. Never read one of the books. I Am Not A Serial Killer was a book I couldn’t put down. I wanted to call in sick to work to read it. It grabbed me and held me, tight, by the throat and I loved every minute of it!

There’s a bit towards the end where I found myself holding my breath, literally, not figuratively, holding my breath while I turned the pages as fast as my eyes could cram the words into my head.

It’s the story of a 15 year old sociopath who has no empathy. He doesn’t connect with people at all and he feels like an island, an observer of those around him. That in itself is something I think people can empathize with… everybody feels disconnected at times, like they’re watching life go on around them and they just aren’t “clicking” with what’s going on around them. Most of us haven’t taken animals apart to see what makes them tick though. As creepy as it sounds to read it… the protagonist, and the book is written from the point of view of the sociopath so you spend the whole book in his head, is likable. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. I want him to be OK.

A lof of times I find myself saying “He’s a good kid but…” about someone who maybe got in trouble with the law or with their parents. That’s hard to say here. He’s not kind of a troubled kid at all. He’s not troubled at all, and that’s the trouble. He referred to a person he got along with as “it” once and it shocked him. Not because they should have been a “she” or “he” (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here) but because he has studied serial killers and knows they refer to people as “it” to make the things they do to them easier. It’s easier to eviscerate an “it” than a “him” or a “her.” He’s not appalled by what he said so much as by what it means.

Really good book. Really disturbing. I can’t wait to read the next one.