My five-year-old has spent time watching Youtube videos featuring awkward teens with hairy legs talking about Beyblades. He, naturally, wants to make his own awkward videos, albeit with less hair and a much cuter voice. This is the latest in his series.
By day he is a mild-mannered e-reader. By night he is a fully functioning Android tablet. Well, he can do that during the day as well, but you get my point.
How did this happen? Well, it was quite easy, actually. Nook Color fell into a glowing otherworldly substance which turned his meek e-reader technology into something much more powerful. Or, truth be told, I rooted it.
Now, this process is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t follow the directions to the letter your device will literally explode like that one episode of Lost where the freighter blew up and everyone thought Jin was dead only he was really floating on a log. Kind of like that. It will also send you traveling through the space-time continuum, but that’s less important.
In case you’re wondering why I should attempt such a risky endeavor – well, that answer is easy. To play Angry Birds. Isn’t that the reason people have gadgets these days, anyway?
I have been trying to get into the Christmas spirit this year by listening to Christmas music, but oftentimes I just find myself getting irritated. Some reasons why:
1. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
“He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so you better be good for goodness sake.”
Why more children are not terrified of Santa Claus is beyond me. This is a 1984-ish omnipresent entity who knows exactly what you’re doing at any time of day, and will punish you accordingly if you break ranks.
2. “Do You Hear What I Hear?”
“A child, a child, shivers in the cold. Let us bring him silver and gold.”
Do you really think the hypothermic newborn baby needs silver and gold? He needs a blanket, genius.
3. Baby It’s Cold Outside
“I oughtta say no, no, no sir. -You mind if I move in closer?”
Dude, no means no. Let her go already and stop singing about it before you cross some sort of line.
4. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
“I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus.”
Traumatic on two levels. First, because the kid’s mother is fooling around with someone not his dad, and second, because it makes Santa Claus look like a real a-hole. What kid could get over something like that?
5. Do They Know It’s Christmas?
“There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas.”
No, there won’t, because it’s hot there. Is that really what’s important here?
Hi. It’s been a while. Since I got a job a couple of months ago, it leaves me precious little time to waste time.
But I couldn’t let the holiday season go by without discussing what I want. After all, that’s what Christmas is all about. So let’s get started.
1. iPad.
2. Nook Color.
3. Labradoodle
However, as I understand it, if you’re a grown-up Santa doesn’t just give cool things away, like Google does. And there are supposedly quarantine regulations that prohibit the importation of puppies from the North Pole.
So that leaves me with the less desirable:
1. Socks
2. Fruit Cake
3. Humidifier
See, the key is to keep your expectations low. If you go in expecting a new 52 inch 4D TV with augmented magical abilities and a sentient remote control, and then you get a single Lego in a large box, you will be undoubtedly disappointed. My motto is: always think fruitcake.
Dear Audience of 4 (Hi Dad!) -
My dad reports his computer to be slow. I am heading into the trenches with the following items:
One screwdriver.
One roll of packing tape. (We are all out of duct tape.)
One can of air. No huffing.
One Silly Band.
And this guy.
Wish me luck. I shall report my findings.
So what do you do when you feel the overwhelming desire to be totally connected to the internet at every conceivable point in time? “Why, get a smartphone, of course. Duh.” may be the most accurate response. But there may be some occasions where a smartphone isn’t really up to the task. Just don’t tell my Droid I said that, because I’m beginning to suspect it is self-aware.
A netbook is the perfect in-between device between a smartphone and a regular laptop. Its main appeal is that it is tiny. You can even fit it into a purse if you have one of those extra-large, kids-no-longer-in-diapers-but-you-still-need-to-tote-a-lot-of-stuff-around, not-a-diaper-bag bags. Or a diaper bag.
Netbooks can run full operating systems like Windows XP or Windows 7 (most of them cannot run Vista, but who really cares anyway? Vista is Microsoft’s version of Cousin Oliver). Or even Ubuntu, if you want to walk on the wild side. 
On a netbook you can do almost anything you would do on a standard sized PC. I say almost because if you are into World of Warcraft you’ll probably be out of luck. Any graphics-intensive game would be better suited elsewhere, but if you really dig Farmville on Facebook you should be okay. Netbooks typically don’t have optical CD or DVD drives either, which is why they can be so small.
I have a Dell Mini 10v myself, and it’s been handy for keeping in front of the TV for when my husband is bogarting the TV with his 1000th episode of How It’s Made, or when my kids are in their drama class at the Y and I am too lazy to exercise, or when Comcast internet fails yet again and I have to go to the Wegman’s to use their free WiFi to get my work done by the deadline, or when I leave the country.
A netbook is also a good deal if you want to get your kid a computer but you don’t want to spend a lot of money on it knowing that it would be one cup of milk and a screwdriver away from doom. Dell even makes a green slime version of the Mini if you would be so inclined.
Once upon a time there was this girl named Princess Fluffypants* who had a bunch of computers attached to a wireless network. She thought it would be groovy to have a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device/dragon upon which she could throw all of her pictures. So every time she took a picture of her kids, she would feed it to the dragon to hold, and then ask the dragon to show it to her no matter what computer she happened to be on.
But alas, one day she thought, hey, what am I doing? I shouldn’t put all my pictures in one dragon. That seems risky. So she got the dragon a mate, paired them together, and the dragon promptly decided it hated the new dragon, and ate all the pictures before they could be replicated.
Princess Fluffypants cried a bajillion tears. Then she took the NASty dragon to a computer guy, who for $200 retrieved some, but not all of her beloved pictures. Unable to face the heartache of a photo like this:
"Woe is me!"
… being gone forever, Princess Fluffypants locked the rebellious dragon away and tried to forget his betrayal. Until one day, months later, she woke up, ripped the dragon open and removed his internal organs, attached them directly to the motherboard of Old Faithful (her trusty elderly desktop), downloaded DiskInternals Uneraser, paid the forty bucks, let it run for eight hours, and all of the glorious photos were returned good as new.
There was much rejoicing, and Princess Fluffypants learned a valuable lesson about never trusting dragons who don’t play well with others.
The title of this post is actually a lie. I have never touched a Kindle so I really have no opinion on it. But it sounds so dramatic to have a “versus,” like the two ebook readers are warring adversaries, each hellbent on the destruction of the other. I always wanted an arch-nemesis myself. Everyone should have an adversary to spice things up.
So on to my story: Once upon a time, I loved to read. I even went to college just to read, at one point a novel a day to keep up with all the literature classes. So you know what happened next – “Ugh, not another post-modern novel about the inner workings of the soul of some jerk that no one likes! Arrrgh!” My reading slowed down considerably post-college, and then stopped altogether when I had kids, except for the occasional Dr. Seuss.
But anyway, a few months back I got a Barnes & Noble Nook. Now I like to read again. I read so much that I haven’t even watched TV in months. It’s amazing. It’s like once Lost ended this whole alternate universe opened up.
And instead of the lengthy process of wrangling children, getting in the car, driving to the bookstore, getting overwhelmed with the sheer number of books and having no idea what to look for, I simply look up whatever I fancy at the moment and download it to the Nook in seconds. Like at first, I was all about dystopic or apocalyptic fiction for young adults. (I am no longer a young adult but they seem to get all the good books.) So I read like 10 novels about the end of the world. It was great. Kind of a downer, but hey, so is Mad Men.
About the Nook – it can hold a bunch of books. More than you will ever read so an exact number isn’t even necessary here. It has no backlight, so it’s as if you are looking at paper, not a computer screen. You can change the font size if your eyes are giving way, like mine are. It can read other ebook formats (not the Kindle’s though) so if B&N doesn’t have the book you want, there’s a good chance Sony’s ebook store will. If you get one you should get a cover so it feels like you’re holding a real book, like this:
That will also partially disguise it so you don’t feel like a dork reading it in public, or if you feel inadequate near iPad people. Speaking of which, you can also use it to browse the internet in a pinch if you’re connected via WiFi, but I don’t usually bother because the browser kind of sucks. But since that isn’t the main purpose of the Nook, I can overlook that flaw. I love this thing. It is literally my second-favorite gadget purchased in the last year.
Now that I’ve said all that, however, you probably should get a Kindle.
My husband looked at this website and said, “What does ‘semite chie mom’ even mean?” I have to admit, I don’t really know. That doesn’t make any sense. I do know I started to feel bad for all the people who have domain names containing the word “assassin.”
So here’s a tip, if you ever feel the need to register a domain name, make sure you sound it out in all possible ways first. For example, if your website would be named any of the following, you may want to reconsider:
- Kung Fu King
- Pen Is Mightier Than Sword
- Shoo, Told Ladies
Okay, that last one makes as much sense as “Semite Chie Mom” but you probably get the point.
Sure, you’ve seen the commercials with the ominous robot voice, probably. You also may or may not be aware of the slogan – Droid Does. If you don’t have a Droid, you’re probably wondering… does what, exactly? Here, I’ll tell you.
Droid Does Windows…
Droid Does Make Smoothies… and drink them!
Droid Does Fight Crime…
Droid Does Remember to Send Thank-You Cards (which is good, because I don’t)
It does some more stuff too, depending on its mood. But it’s a bit of a diva and had enough of the paparazzi for the night. Droid Doesn’t… get along with Purple Camera.
