Kindles

In the fall of 2014 I was sitting in our family room staring at the bookcase which held quite a few unread novels.  Years ago I did a great deal of reading but lately had rarely even picked up a book.  I was a fan of Stephen King and had read many of his books.  My daughter Mary Ann is also a huge fan and has a collection of hard cover versions of his novels. Two of his novels were the subject of my staring.  Both were ones I had not read and had been avoiding starting them.  Why?  Because they were huge.  I enjoy reading in bed before sleep but no way would I be able to hold up those thousand page monsters for long.  That’s when I began to consider investing some money in one of those newfangled things called a “Kindle”.  Eventually I broke down and bought one.

It was amazing.  I downloaded those thousand pagers in what seemed like a minute…unbelievable. Long story short I fell in love with my Kindle.  Especially loved the fact that many of the old classics I had never read were available free of charge.  Began to read all those books that our high school teachers were never able to convince us to read. In no time at all polished off Treasure Island, Phantom of the Opera, all the Sherlock Holmes, even Dracula.  Even knocked off both Stephen Kings.

Since September, 2014 I’ve read 797 books…all kind.  You would think I spend all day reading, but that’s not the case. In addition to being now able to comfortably read in bed, I’m now able to carry the Kindle in my pocket and take it on all the doctor’s visits the average 83 year old is subjected to.  For some unexplained reason it seems that we spend a great deal of time waiting to be called in for our appointments.  Now I don’t have to read those germ laden, outdated magazines so prevalent in waiting rooms.  Even Television is contributing to my reading time by continuing to offer us such a lot of crap that can’t hold a candle to a good book.

Writing these occasional Blogs has given me a great deal of respect for those that are able to publish an entire book.  I have trouble coming up with these small pages of prose while thousands of authors are cranking out 300 and 400 pages.  Many of the books I enjoy are mysteries and I marvel at these authors ability to develop so many different plots and be able to keep all the characters straight while weaving their tales.  Anyway I’m very happy that the Kindle has enabled me to get back to a forgotten love…reading.  Get yourself one and give reading a chance, you’ll love it.

So long as I’m writing this tiny blurb I’m going to take the opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year.

God Bless,

Bill

Happy Wednesday

I’m so looking forward to Wednesday, November 3^rd.  What’s exciting about this day?  This is the day after the elections and maybe, just maybe when the phone rings, it will be a real call from a friend or relative, not a political one.  And when I make my daily trip to the mail box at the bottom of mount “Wisk” there will finally be an absence of political propaganda.  Believe me there is nothing anti American about my dislike for the above, but the whole process is just too damn long.  I’m not surprised when voter turnouts are low…..people are just tired of it all.  We all want to make good decisions when we finally sit down and vote, but we learn so little from the ads.  Candidates from both sides tell us that if they are elected great things will happen, but the unfortunately never tell us how they will accomplish it…..I never see the plans.  And please stop telling us how ineffective or bad the other guy or gal was.

A few years ago while on a bus tour in Nova Scotia, Canada, the bus driver told us about the election process in Canada.  It seems that there is a definite time limit to campaigning prior to election.  I guess they are confident that people in Canada do not need to have candidates messages pounded into then for months and months.  I for one would be happy to see us latch onto that procedure.

Maybe we could then reduce the 5.2 billion dollar cost for the midterm election somewhat put some money to better use.  I promised that these Blogs would not be political and since there are no sides involved here I’m still living up to my promise.

"If it ain't broke"

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.  My hats off to whoever coined this phrase.  It should be hanging over every engineer’s and designer’s desk as a reminder.  If your company is hounding you to perform with the talent you wrote about in your resume, please do so, but don’t monkey with stuff that already is working quite well for me.

For example:  Since Marge and I have a salad almost every day for dinner so I am quite familiar with the dressings available in the market and have a few favorites I use on a regular basis, but always willing to try others.  Recently I was attracted to a bottle of Italian dressing by Kraft that was plastered with labels that told me it was “New”.  Ok, time to try because my beautiful salad and precisely timed dinner was waiting for the application of this new delight.  Well, easier said than done.  Some idiot decided to wrap the top with some sort of indestructible plastic.  All I wanted to do was release the little flip top and taste my new found dressing.  I tried to turn it to break the seal. No luck.  Well, let’s see if my fingernail will do it.  Still no luck.  I next tried plyers.  You guessed it, no luck.  Ahah!  I think I may be able to use a razor knife.  Even that was still unable to remove the now famous indestructible plastic.  Took the razor knife and slit it across the top tab…….success finally.  I flipped the top and prepared to pour it on my now wilting greenery.

Wait!  I see another problem.  Since I usually have a bunch of bottles of dressing with small amounts in them, quite often I remove the top plastic tab and combine several of the partial accumulated dressings so to create a brand new culinary delight.  Mr. “New” design won’t let me do it using this bottle.  The same idiot, I have no doubts, decided to widen the top insert and also made the pouring hole bigger…I guess he decided it wasn’t coming out fast enough.

I know it’s silly for me to get pissed over such a small event, but there are many other examples of changes being made that are not improvements to the item or function.  I did, however, think of one recent change that I can soundly applaud.  The change has probably saved me a great deal of future arthritic pain in the fingers of my right hand  With my recent vehicle purchase I no longer need to worry about things like carpel tunnel syndrome due to the significant strain created by turning the key to start my car….what a relief.  It’s been a real concern for me over the years and I can’t tell you how excited I am to merely push that big button and hear the engine engage.  I wonder what my dealer will charge if a replacement is needed.  You had to figure there would at least be a little sarcasm in the blog.

I could really go on and on, such as the fact that there are probably many starving seniors because they are unable to open containers of food…..all caused by the bastard that poisoned Tylenol bottles years ago.  Packaging might be my Blog’s next bitch.

Till then, I remain your least important author.

Thanks for reading

Bill