In which i fail to think of a suitably witty title.

I really can't believe how well the E-Reader is working for me. i mean, i really really really can't! i am death to electronics, and if there is a way to screw something up on a computer? you bet i will find it. mostly just by looking at the thing. My poor computer, Mr. Donuts (yeah, don't ask) (no, really, i won't tell you anyway) is nearly 5 years old, and this year seems to be a challenging one. everything is breaking I tunes ate my library again, then tripled it, so now i have three or sometimes even more copies of most of my songs. Warcraft is nigh on unplayable, Firefox just will not start some days, and running a game on Steam is taxing to the point of total system crashage. But this sony E-reader and it's little slightly dumb library program? no problema. It's so weird that i just can't believe it.

However, unhooked and in the world, i do fear for the thing constantly. the cover is nice and posh looking, and has a small magnetic closure- but it is very weak. it comes open if i look at it funny. and i am pretty funny looking, so there you are. i'm terrified to put it in my backpack, and usually nestle it in with my knitting to somehow cushion it. also? i read a lot at night, as my baby still hasn't learned to sleep. no, it's only been 13 months of 4 hours of sleep a night- why do you ask? (HELP ME PLEASE.) and when she finally does fall a-snooze for an hour, and i can too, i tuck whatever book i am reading under my pillow. The Screamapillar likes to step on my head a lot, and now i am terrified that she will step where the e-reader is and crack! there will go the display just like my pacman digital wristwatch in 7th grade when i forgot to take it off during P.E. Damn that thing was so cool, but not compatible with volleyball.

In other news, i still have a few dollars left on my gift certificate, and am waiting until the first week of august for a particular book set in Caesar's Rome to come out. SQUEEEE.

In which we get tarted up a bit.

I broke down and bought a cord to charge the RoseReader with an outlet since my USB ports are all dead. $24.99, crap! But i had no other equivalent device to press in to service, sooooo. I figure it balances out since i get $25 of free books. Anyway, other than books, what can i put on this thing? And why would I want to? Because i can. So i did.

first i started off with a picture of the cat, as per Internet regulations, then i added a few pictures of the kids. One or two of the boy at his faerey wedding to his Kindergarten sweetheart, and one of screamapillar doing her thing. The pictures look like total shite; most likely as a result of my less than stellar photo skills, my cheapass camera, and that the RoseReader renders them black and grey. No white. So, um, yeah. i do not think i would ever use such a function if i owned this thing.

next, i grabbed a bunch of random music out of the library and plopped it on to the RoseReader;
The Grinderman album, a few tunes from Cibo Matto and 1000 Homo Djs, a William Shatner and Yoko Kano. The reader has no speakers, so i grab my headphones; the snazzy ones that match my i-pod Clarice and rosereader. these headphones rock socks. The sound quality is ok, but i am not a real connesiere anyway, but nor would i exclaim "is it real or is it Memorex?" while listening. Again, this seems like a feature i would not really ever use. I have an i-pod, who's capacity and sound quality is better.

So after a few hours of playing around with these features, i need to charge ms. rose up! So i plug her in to the outlet and time it. In two hours i come back and she is full of sparkly energy, like a little electrical vampire.

Also, my USB ports, broken as they are, seem to love her. They love her to the point that it seems her miraculous healing powers have allowed them to go on speaking terms with Clarice the i-pod again, and i sync her up for the first time in months. oh, man. that was good. Even The Boy was getting tired of Doctor Horrible. and that is saying something, as he plans to be the good Doctor for Halloween-(white costume, not red and black).

The Next day i set aside for only reading, no extraneous features like crappy pictures or music i have elsewhere. I read the whole of The Invisible Man, and make use of the bookmark feature, which i love so hard i wish i could do something similar in Itunes, so that i don't have to keep track of where i am in audio books with little post its stuck to my monitor. Maybe there is something like this in Itunes, but i'd never know since it doesn't really come with INSTRUCTIONS, does it? Mac bastards. Now i know that i almost never use instructions, but i like them to be there when i get stuck, or want to know about features that might not be obvious. Anyway, back to the reader; even though it spent much of the day on various counters and tables and a few hours in my knitting basket, it was always on. How many bars of battery did i use? NONE! wow. neat.

In which we become assimilated.

But first, our internet required cat picture. Don't want to get any fines, ya know. Sumi is here depicted snoozing on her knitted happy place bed, which is on the kitty condo that she only uses because i moved it under the mud room window, giving her full view of the back yard and that other black cat with the one eyebrow; her nemesis.

The E-Reader; Rose- well, she is a giving me the problems and oy and vey, i broke down and read the instructions!

First, a few months ago, the USB ports on the computer crapped out. All four. All at once. Weird, huh? Naturally, i assumed it was just Clarice, my I-pod, being awful. I-tunes is a program forged by Feklar himself, and my last I-pod; Edward- was a $400 paperweight and i have never let go of my hatred. But in bringing clariece over to The Husband's computer, i found that it was not so, as she connected straight away. Seeing how Rose needs to connect via USB, and i had not thought of that when i entered the contest, i emailed SB Sarah to drop out. However, she pointed out the SD option and all was good. OR SO I THOUGHT.

I went to the Sony bookstore, very like Itunes, and grabbed a bunch of freebies, just to test things out. I also got a couple of the Google freebies for comparison. Downloading was easy peasy one-two-threesey for both and i saved them to an SD card which i popped into RoseReader, flipped the switch, and saw that there were the books! WIN! OR SO IT SEEMED.

But i could not read the books, neither the google nor the sony. Ok, i figured, it has got to be some sort of authorization issue eiyther concerning the files or the reader. I went back to the 'puter to fix this and found no obvious way to do so. right~clicked every bloody thing i could. nada. zip, zero, zilch. Huh. So i try another file i had, a PDF book a freind bought and sent to me so i could 'enjoy' it with a Ravelry-based book club called Comedy of Errors. (So NSFW your head will spin and pop right off into hyperspace.) It is of course the infamous Knight Moves by Jamaica Layne, which i mentioned last post. This i can read no problem. right from the SD card. In a desperate move i took rosereader and jammed that cable in the USB port, and got my same dumb error message. ah well. OR SO IT APPEARED.

Yet, she was recognized by both calibre and the sony library! Awe Hell Yeah! So i drag and drop the books on to the reader from the Sony library and repeat the previous step. Now i can read the Google books, but not the sony ones! So i drag and drop them to rosereader from calibre, same thing! i can read the googlebooks but not the sonybooks! I post a long ranty email to the readers' test drive group, and consult the help file, and eventually find the bassakwards way that the deauthorization process needs to be taken care of. it seems that in trying to make the library program simple to use, a lot of functionality is nerfed. AND THAT IS THE SO.

Now, the USB ports are still recognizing rosereader, wow! and i think i will take my mad money to the store and use my one~handed reader to get some one~handed reads. ooooooh yeah.

In which the blog is consumed by the Sony E~Reader 505.

w00t~! I got home from the dentist; grabbed the baby to nurse her, wrangled the boy into clothes, and was saying goodbye to The Husband as he went to catch a train (I pick *early* appointments) when the postman knocked on the door, his arms full o' crap! Packages! Junk mail! Magazines! More junk! A Bill, maybe three! The first of the packages was my Sweet Libertine order, awesome (eleventybillion). The second was Not For Me. The third was the E-Reader; huzzah! I unwrapped it best I could while eating Husbandmade Waffles with blueberries and cream while still nursing the Screamapillar and once I had it free i just turned it on. Instructions? pfffft. What do you know, it had a full battery charge. Also? It's RED...ooooohhh...fancy. Just like my wee I-pod clarice. In fact, almost the very same red. spooky. The other thing i notice right away is how small it is, and how this totally blows for the cozy i had been knitting it that looks like a TARDIS. Ah well, she won't mind. Oh yes, it's female, i know that much right away. Like i knew my oven was male, and named carl. The name will come to me, i thought as i flipped through various files on the reader (Amanda? Like Amanda Palmer?) while still nursing and eating breakfast. O. M. G. Normally it is hardly compatible to nurse and do anything, since feeding Screamapillar is like trying to feed a RAGE infected monkey from 28 Days Later, oh and there go her feet, all in my blueberries....

BUT! Back to the Sony. It has quite a few book excerpts, that if i was in my right mind, i could read and even possibly make sense of. Warren Buffet! Richard Dawkins! A NY Times thingy of some sort! But i am not in my right mind have have not seen hide nor hair of it since the advent of children, so i look for something, erm, less challenging. Marley and Me? Oh, no frakking way. Here we are, George Martin. niiiiiice! About 40 pages from the first song of fire and ice book.

So i flip pages, yeah- one handed, that's right beyotches! that's how i roll! And i am really pleased that i can hold the reader firmly enough that i have no fear of dropping it on the Screamapillar's head, yet i can exert a bit of extra pressure with my thumb to make a difference with the page forward button at the lower left hand corner. BRILLIANT!

Also included along with book samplage are lovely photos of some models and a lamp post, two musical tracks that i realize i need my headphones to listen to, so whatevers, next- the user guide-pffffft, and a whole bunch of other settings and things to poke at. No lighting for the screen is a bit disappointing, but i notice there is a dock at the bottom that i just know my worm light from my game boy will fit in to- bonus!

So far the only negatives are that it's a bit heavier than i expected, and WTF is up with the mini seizure it has when turning a page? ug. really unpleasant to look at.

This is getting to be a bit much now, it's time to make some @lilithsaintcrow Cookies Of Doom and i'll get back to this business in a moment.

July 6, 2009; a Monday!

Well, crap, there's just so much that's been going on this past year, but really? Nothing at all. The Baby, Screamapillar, turns 1 tomorrow. Gosh it would be awesome if she decided to stop sleeping like a newborn, but i suppose that's just too much to hope for. It is her birthday, after all.

Most everything that is interesting has been talked to death by me on Ravelry or Twitter, and cobwebs are thick on this little corner of the internets. That will be changing somewhat, as i plan to write up a bit about something non-knitting, the Sony E-Reader i will get to play with courtesy of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. I entered a contest! i won! holy hell!!

First things first, i need to make that shit a cozy. for realz.

Also, it is WIP wrestling month, and i hope to get at least two critical projects done; Ms. D's sweater that has taken three bobdamn years, and the fair isle socks. Oh, and the Little Big Planet Dude Who's Name Absolutely Escapes Me.