Kindle Fire Review...Part Two

In my last post I reviewed Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet as a media consumption device, the use for which it was intended. When the Kindle Fire was first announced, however, I wasn't excited about it because I wanted to consume a lot of media. I was excited because--at $199--I felt the Fire could be an inexpensive alternative to other tablets (i.e. the Apple iPad) in an educational setting. When I read online stories about the Kindle Fire announcement, I conjured images of every teacher and ever student in my school district carrying a Kindle Fire device with them from home to school and back again. I imagined that for students it would make a terrific 1 to 1 solution, and I could see teachers and administrators using it for administrative purposes.

In my next review I'll look at the Kindle as a potential 1 to 1 solution, but today I'd like to look review it as a potential productivity tool for educators.

Review 2: The Kindle as a Productivity Tool for Educators
In my last review, I ended by giving the Kindle a "grade" as a personal media device. What I didn't do, though, was what every educator ought to do when evaluating something, and that is lay out in advance what it is that I'm expecting. We educators like to call those expectations a "rubric." So before I begin this review of the Fire as a productivity tool, I think it only fair to lay out those expectations in advance.

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Rubric for Scoring Tablets as a Productivity Tool

For my needs, a tablet for work should have

1. An email client that will work with a Microsoft Exchange Server
2. Some sort of office productivity program, with a word processing program, a spreadsheet  program, and a presentation program. It needs to be compatible with Microsoft Office, and needs to allow me to edit the files as well as read them.
3. A .pdf reader
4. A web browser that is robust enough to allow me to utilize the web applications necessary for my work.
5. An app store with the programs I need

A: 5 out of the 5 items above

B: 4 out of the 5 items above

C: 3 out of the 5 items above, and a partial on one of the others

D: 3 out of the 5 items above

F: Fewer than 3 of the 5 items above

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Other users might want a microphone and camera so that they can Skype, or a spot for a SIM card so that they can get a monthly data plan and have online access anywhere, but I don't really need those items to be productive. We have wireless access in every building in our district, and on the rare occasion when I'm at work and outside of the district network I can use my cell phone to stay in touch. So the above are my needs.

And out of the box, the Kindle Fire doesn't do so great...

1. Email Client
There is a native email client on the Fire when it comes out of the box, but that client can't connect to Microsoft Exchange environments. There are several apps in the app store, though, that CAN. The problem, though, is that none of them are free. After trying several of them, I've settled on a program called TouchDown. It integrates seamlessly with Exchange. I'm especially impressed by the calendar function of the program, which is so detailed that it even keeps the category colors that I put into my Outlook client. In fact, the TouchDown program looks more like Outlook than the real Outlook program I've seen on Windows phones. Cost of the program: $9.99 in the Amazon app store.  OUT OF THE BOX: Fail!  WITH SOME WORK: Check!

2. Office Productivity Program 
Installed out of the box on the Fire is a program called Quickoffice, a productivity suite that can open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. But the program is View Only--it can't edit the files. In order to be able to edit and create new files, I had to download the program Documents to Go from the Amazon app store. Documents to Go is normally $14.99, but every day Amazon makes one paid app free, and I checked the app store the day that Documents to Go was free, and grabbed the license key at no cost. Not everyone, though, is going to be so lucky. OUT OF THE BOX: Partial check (read only). WITH SOME WORK: Check!


3. PDF Reader
The QuickOffice program can read PDF's, so OUT OF THE BOX: Check!

4. Robust Web Browser
The Silk web browser works fine for me. I can access my work's Help Desk software (It's actually lightning quick for that), as well as several instructional applications I need to access. Our school district's Student Information System has limited success. Parts work and other parts don't. But I think that's a reflection of the SIS more than of the Kindle Fire, and no other Android tablet I've ever seen works flawlessly with it either. For that reason, I'm willing to say that OUT OF THE BOX: Check!

5. An App Store with the Programs I Need
I actually don't mind that Amazon has its own app store separate from the Google Android market. I've been in the Google Android market, and it makes me feel like walking into that bar that Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi walked into in the original STAR WARS movie. There are some really questionable apps in there, and I like knowing that the Amazon apps have all been checked before they were allowed to be put in there.

That said, though, I really needed only one application, and that was an app for my school district's walk through program. That app is free in the Android marketplace, but it's not in the Amazon marketplace. And considering the limited interest that would be in such an application, I can't imagine that it ever will be in the Amazon app store. There are also no apps related to any Google products, which seems an intentional snipe on the part of Amazon. So in this case, I'd have to say that the results are OUT OF THE BOX: Fail! WITH SOME WORK: Still Fail!

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Overall Grade


OUT OF THE BOX: The Kindle Fire is NOT a good solution for an office productivity tool. Out of the box it only meets my needs in two of the five categories (and SORT OF meets my needs in one other). With that in mind, out of the box the grade has to be...
Grade: F


WITH SOME WORK: After downloading a couple of apps, though, the Kindle Fire serves me a little better. I have my work email, an Office suite, a good web browser, and a PDF reader. The only thing missing is an app store with ALL of the apps I need. But I find that to be a minor annoyance more than a deal killer. I'd be willing to recommend the Kindle Fire as a potential productivity tablet for teachers and administrators, as long as they realize that in addition to the $199 price tag they may need to shell out an additional $25 for the apps they need to get up and running. That would bring the Kindle Fire's total price tag up to $224. That's still only 45% of the price of even the cheapest iPad!
Grade: B

Kindle Fire Review...Part One

Amazon's new Kindle Fire sort-of-tablet is expected to be one of the hottest holiday gifts this season, and I've been promising for a couple of posts now to give a review. I guess my review is kind of superfluous. A quick Google search of "Kindle Fire review" reveals hundreds of reviews already all over the Internet. I've read a number of them, and they're pretty good. Some have pictures and even video. I highly recommend them. I don't see how my review is going to match some of those really good reviews. Maybe I should just quit now.

Except...

I want to put a little bit of a slant on my review. After all, the reason I was very excited about the Kindle Fire when I first learned about it was not because I particularly wanted one for myself (though I did). I was much more intrigued by what a sub-$200 tablet could mean for education. After all, for years I've heard experts say that 1:1 computing initiatives (where every student in a school has a computing device that they carry around with them) becomes a real possibility once the cost for the device gets below $200. Have we finally arrived?

So I'm going to give three very brief reviews of the device. First, I'll review it as a personal media consumption device (which is how Amazon intends it to be used). Second, I'll review it as a possible administrative tool in an educational setting (Could it be a low cost replacement to an iPad for administrators?). Finally, I'll review it as a possible 1:1 instructional device.

Review 1: The Kindle as a Media Consumption Device
Let's get this straight: It's not Amazon that has been referring to the Kindle Fire as a potential iPad killer, or at the very least as the first serious threat to the iPad in the tablet market. That's been all the doing of journalists. Amazon has been saying since the beginning that the Kindle Fire was about media consumption, about driving people to Amazon's content.

And at that, the device gets high marks. As an almost-tablet for watching movies, listening to music, or reading books, the device is great. It's easy to set up, it's mostly bug free, and since I purchased mine from the Amazon website, it came to my house preconfigured with my settings in it, so it was ready to go almost as soon as I got it out of the box (I did have to put in my Wi-fi settings, but that's true for any wireless device). If I'd purchased the device at Best Buy or some other place other than Amazon, I would have had to link it to my Amazon account, but that takes no more effort than typing in the email address associated with your Amazon account and your Amazon password (I know because I deregistered the device as soon as I connected to the Wi-Fi so that I could see what registration was like).

Once setup was complete, all of my previous Amazon digital content (about 80 MP3's, all five seasons of DEXTER, and a couple of books) was available on my Fire to browse in Cloud mode or download for offline consuming. It was a breeze. And since I'd already signed in with an Amazon account, there was no need to register for the Amazon app store. I was ready to go.

I'm very happy with my Kindle as a personal device. Some people have complained that it's too small, as it's only about half the size of an iPad, but I actually LOVE its small size. Any smaller and I'd have trouble reading the text, and any larger (as in the size of an iPad) and I think I'd find it cumbersome to carry around. This Fire is right about the size of a cheap paperback book. It would easily fit in a purse (not that I have one). Heck, it would probably fit in some of my pockets. Others might prefer a bigger screen, but I am very happy with this.

Other people have complained that the screen responsiveness isn't as exact as an iPad. I wouldnt' know. I haven't spent a lot of time with an iPad. I can say it's on par with the screen of pretty much every other Android device I've ever played with. It works fine for me. Others have said that the Kindle Reader app, the thing that Fire ought to excel in, is a little buggy. I'd say I have seen that. There have been a couple of times when I've had to touch the side of the page more than once or twice to get the page to "turn," but it hasn't been a huge deal to me.

Others have complained that the Silk browser is buggy and slow. A couple of blog posts ago I wrote about how, indeed, the browser is slower when Amazon's "Accelerator" caching is turned on. I've since turned my caching off, and I'd say the browser is fast enough for me. I'm not bothered by the little bit of a wait, and I haven't found a web page yet that didn't display correctly.

I will say this, though: I am more bothered than I thought I would be by the lack of a microphone and a camera. When I first read that they weren't included, I thought, "No big deal. I don't plan to Skype with this thing, and I have plenty of other devices that can take digital pictures." But I wasn't thinking big enough. I went into the Amazon app store a couple of days ago looking for a bar code reading program, and there wasn't a one to be found. I had to think about that for a moment before realizing that without a camera the app would be useless. I did the same thing the next day looking to see if Shazaam was in the app store. Shazaam is pretty useless without a microphone, so what's the point? I'm assuming that I'll continue to find apps that aren't going to do what I want because there's no microphone or camera. Or GPS for that matter (The Fire is the perfect size to function as a GPS navigator).

I understand why Amazon left those items out, and they were right to do so. Adding all of them would probably have increased the price of the Fire by a good $100 or $150, and that would have impacted my decision to purchase it. At $199, I purchased the Fire immediately, almost as an impulse purchase. If it had been priced at $349, though, I would have been much less impulsive about the purchase, and I would have started to question why I shouldn't just go ahead and fork over another $150 and get a low end iPad. So Amazon had to drop some things to get to that affordable price point, but I'm finding the missing items are bothering more than I expected.

All that said, I don't regret the purchase. I love the Fire, and I love even more what it and devices like it could mean for the field of education. I'll write about that, though, in a later blog post. For now, I'll close out this post with an overall verdict on the Fire as a personal device. And as I'm an educator, I'll use a report card analogy...

Grade: B
Teacher's Comments: Love the price, the ease of setup, and the size. Hate that there's no camera, microphone, or GPS, but considering the price and what you DO get, this device is worth considering, especially if all you're planning to do with a tablet is browse the Internet, check Facebook, and watch a movie.

Thanksgiving Eve

Today is the day before Thanksgiving. A year ago today--the Wednesday the day before Thanksgiving--was a regular work day for me. While the students and teachers in my school district don't work the day before Thanksgiving, it IS a work day for the office staff, and I got up as I do every work day at 5 AM to exercise. If the weather is nice enough (not raining and above 40 degrees) I go running. If it's not, I use the elliptical and the universal weight machine in the basement. Last Thanksgiving Eve morning I had just gotten on the elliptical when I heard the phone in the basement ring. I leaped off the elliptical machine and sprinted to the phone. I was the only one awake in the house; everyone else had started their Thanksgiving Break, and I didn't want them to wake up.

I grabbed the cordless phone off its dock and looked at the name on the caller ID. I expected it to be the board of education phone number, or some cell number of someone from work, someone calling to let me know that the Internet was down or the electricity was out or something of that sort. The phone number wasn't local, though, and the name on the Caller ID said "Black, Ann." My sister. My head was spinning as I answered the phone. My sister never called me pretty much ever, much less at 10 minutes after five in the morning. I knew something was wrong.

She told me, in a pretty matter of fact, unconcerned voice, that our dad had been taken to the hospital overnight with a burning in his chest and pains. She also said, though, that he had just changed his blood pressure medicine two days before, and that he'd been feeling bad ever since.

"Oh," I said, feeling relieved. "That's probably all it is, then. He's having a reaction to his new medicine. They'll keep him for a day or two just to check him and he'll be fine." She told me she'd keep me informed, and then we hung up. My wife, who HAD been awakened by the phone ringing, had also seen the name on the caller ID and had also had the same feeling of dread I had. She'd picked up the extension in the bedroom and heard the conversation I'd had with my sister, and she came downstairs and asked me if I was going to stay home from work and drive down to Frankfort to see my father. I told her no, it didn't sound like it was really all that serious. I was going to finish my workout and go into work, and that's just what I did.

I'd been at work for just a couple of hours, though, when my other sister called to tell me that my father had had a heart attack, a pretty serious one, and he was being transferred to a hospital in Lexington. I bolted out of work quickly, telling the receptionist at the front desk as I whizzed past her, "My father's had a heart attack. I won't be back in today. Wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and I'll keep you guys informed." And I took off for Frankfort.

The rest of the day is really fuzzy for me. I was thinking about writing this post earlier, and it occurred to me that I don't remember whether--that first time I drove down to Lexington--my wife was with me or not. It seems to me that maybe she was, but I can't imagine what we would have done with the kids, and I also can't imagine that--with our house being in the opposite direction from my work as the hospital in Lexington--that I would have been composed enough to turn north on the Interstate and go home rather than turning south and immediately heading for the hospital. I do remember being in the hospital with most of my family, and I remember my older sister and me going into a consult room to talk to the surgeon who said that, as soon as my father stabilized, he'd operate. He said it would most likely be Tuesday, but then my father's doctor came in and said he wanted the operation to happen sooner, Sunday if possible. Both days seemed so far away to me, but when I saw my father that day he looked pretty good, and I know that I went home that night and came back down the next day with my entire family.

I don't mean to give you a point by point of the day. All I'm trying to say is this: My father died the Monday after Thanksgiving, and from Wednesday until then is all kind of a mush of memories in my brain. And I'll be thinking about my father a lot today. When my alarm goes off in just a few minutes at 5 AM, and when I get on the elliptical and start my morning workout, that phone call from my sister last Thanksgiving Eve will be large in my mind.

The Kindle Fire's Silk Browser

A couple of posts ago I promised a review of the Kindle Fire coming soon, and I still plan to write that review. In fact, I plan to basically write THREE reviews: 1) The Kindle Fire as a personal media consumption device (for which it was intended), 2) The Kindle Fire as a productivity tool for educators (taking the place of--say--a Smart phone or an iPad, and 3) The Kindle Fire as an instructional tool for use with students. Before I do that, though, I want to write about one part of the Kindle Fire that I am truly disappointed about, and that's the Amazon Silk browser.

When the Kindle Fire was announced several weeks ago (and by the way, I bought my Fire less than an hour after it went on sale that day), one of the items promoted heavily was the web browser built into the Fire. It was called "Silk," and it was going to revolutionize the Internet web browser experience by taking the processing power out of the hands of the local machine and putting it in the hands to Amazon's massive cloud of servers. It was SUPPOSED to speed up web browsing on the Kindle Fire significantly.

But then, once the Fire was released last week, reports started coming in that the Silk browser was pretty slow, and that it actually was SLOWER when the Acceleration was running. I didn't believe it, and so I set out to see for myself. And what I found was...all of those websites were right. The browser is slower when the Accelerator is running!

To test this theory, I loaded two websites (THIS website and http://cincinnati.com, a site which--in my experience--takes a VERY long time to load) with 1) my home computer (2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo Windows 7 machine with 3 GB of RAM) and with the Fire both 2) with the accelerator turned on and 3) off. I loaded each site  five different times for each, clearing the history and cache of all three after each site visit. I then used a stop watch to see how long it took each site to fully load. Here's what I found:

Site: Sweasy.net

Attempt	Computer	Fire w/ Acceleration	Fire w/o Acceleration
1	5.9	9.2	7.3
2	3.6	14.4	8.0
3	3.7	7.4	6.3
4	3.7	11.7	7.4
5	3.7	7.4	8.2
Average	4.12	10.02	7.44

Site: Cincinnati.com

Attempt	Computer	Fire w/ Acceleration	Fire w/o Acceleration
1	4.5	11.9	12.4
2	4.9	12.8	12.1
3	4.4	11.6	11.4
4	4.1	12.3	10.9
5	3.7	11.1	10.7
	4.32	11.94	11.5

I would describe this website as taking a moderate amount of time to load (It has a Twitter feed and an eschool news feed which slow it down, as well on this day as a YouTube video on the home page which took a few second to load). After five tries, my computer loaded the page in an average of 4.12 seconds. The Kindle Fire without acceleration turned on loaded the page in 7.44 seconds, taking almost twice as long. When the accelerator was turned on, though, the Kindle Fire took more than 10 seconds to load! That's much more than twice as long as it took my computer to load, and it's 25% longer than it took the Fire to load in its "slower" mode with the accelerator turned off.

When I ran the same test at Cincinnati.com the results were a little less dramatic. There's a LOT of loading of secondary content on that site (ads and video and external news feeds), and while loading the page on my computer only took a few tenths of a second longer than this web site did, both the Silk accelerated and Silk non-accelerated tests took more than 11 seconds. The accelerated browsing still took a little longer, but this time was only .44 seconds slower than the Fire was when it had acceleration turned off.

But I guess that's missing the point. The browser is supposed to be FASTER when the accelerator is turned on, not "just a little bit slower." So regardless of whether or not the Amazon Kindle Fire is a success, I'd have to call their Silk web browser a failure. A big one. 

What I Have to Live With at Home

For some reason I can't explain, the rest of my family has become obsessed with this song and is singing it continually, to my chagrin. This afternoon my younger daughter walked up to me while I was cooking, held up her digital camera, and said, "Dad! Can I get a quick picture of you cooking?" It was a strange request, and I should have been suspicious, but I dumbly smiled, and when the initial flash went off I turned back to cooking, only to have the red eye flash fire a second time, catching me with a dumb look on my face. My daughter squealed in delight and began singing the chorus.

I'm ready for them to move on to something else...



(I can't see the video.)

A Tale of the Travels of My Kindle Fire

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm very excited about the imminent arrival of my new Kindle Fire, an Android tablet that many people are calling the first significant competitor to the Apple iPad (mostly because of price--the Apple iPad starts at $500, while the Kindle Fire is only $200). I'm mostly excited because of what the device could mean from an educational standpoint. If a Kindle Fire-like device can provide for web browsing, ebook reading, minor document creation, and some educational apps, it could actually become a viable 1:1 option for schools. After all, a new textbook can cost $200, and a graphing calculator is another $100. But the Kindle Fire can download a FREE app that makes it function as a graphing calculator, and hopefully textbook manufacturers will get some sense about them and start charging steep discounts for digital textbooks. In that case, the Fire practically pays for itself if it works, and I can't wait to get ahold of mine to start seeing how it fares.

But I'm not here today to write about that. I'm here today to talk about the whirlwind travels that my Kindle Fire is taking. The Fire was supposed to be released on Tuesday the 15th, but I got an email Monday the 14th from Amazon saying that my Fire had shipped a day early. I hadn't forked out the money for overnight shipping, so I didn't expect it to arrive right away...at least not at first. I logged onto the Amazon website in excitement and clicked the "Track Package" button. After a few seconds wait, a screen popped up that said that my Fire, at 4:06 AM on the 14th, had been in Hebron, Kentucky. Hebron, Kentucky! That was about 10 miles from my house! I got excited. Maybe Amazon was working on the "Underpromise and Overdeliver" philosophy and was going to get my Fire to me on the next day when it officially became available. If not, I'd at least get it on Wednesday the 16th!

But that was not to be. I tracked my package again early on Tuesday, hoping to see that it was "Out for Delivery" or something like that. Instead, at 8:04 AM on the 15th, the package had moved from Hebron (Again, only 10 miles from my house) to Grove City, Ohio, which is just outside of Columbus. My Fire had left me and gone more than 100 miles to the north. Maybe it was an Ohio State fan and was headed up there for an early basketball game or something. I don't know. In any event, it was pretty apparent that--if it were in Columbus at 8 AM--I wasn't getting it on Tuesday.

I checked again Tuesday night, and Tuesday evening at 7:03 PM it had moved a little closer, from Grove City, Ohio, to downtown Cincinnati. Again, it was only about 10 miles from my house, just now a little north of my house rather than a liitle southwest. Maybe I'd get it on Wednesday, I though to myself.

I got up yesterday morning and checked, and at 3:03 AM the device had left Cincinnati and at 4:55 AM had arrived in Lakeside Park, Kentucky, which is where the post office that services Fort Mitchell sits. I was excited! 4:55 seemed a little late to get the package on the truck for delivery, but there was an off chance that it had gotten there early enough for me to get it Wednesday. Maybe, just maybe.

But the mail came yesterday afternoon and there was no Kindle Fire. I looked online, and at 12:06 PM the package had moved from Lakeside Park, Kentucky to Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, which was ridiculous, since--as I said in the previous paragraph--the same post office (which I think is actually in Crescent Springs, but that's an issue for another day) services both cities. That means that in 7 hours the package had moved from one basket in the back of the post office to another basket. That's all.

There have been no updates today. However, when I got home today there was the Kindle Fire sitting on the front porch. All told, he traveled about 250 miles to get from Hebron, Kentucky to my doorstep. I hope it was a nice trip.

Now that I have a chance to actually hold the device in my hand, I'll be trying it out both as a personal device and as a potential instructional device. I'll write a review on both counts later.

I'm Not Dead (But one Presidential hopeful IS)

It's been a week since I've written anything on this blog, and I'm writing mostly so that no one thinks I've died.

There are two main reasons I've been remiss in writing: 1) I've been busy at work (district technology plan being written). 2) I've been busy at home (kids finishing up marching band season). When I'm busy either place I find it pretty difficult to find time to write. When I'm busy BOTH places it's pretty much impossible. This last week it would have been almost impossible to write.

But if I HAD written, here are some of the things I MIGHT have said:

• Rick Perry: Pack it up, man. You're done!
• National Champs: Speaking of marching band, my kids' marching band won the national Class A marching band championship this past weekend! Awesome!
• Cell Phone Withdrawal: I was reminded this weekend of how much I'm attached to my smart phone. Its battery died during said marching band championship (apparent cause: an app that wigged out and drained the battery), and a number of times I wanted to post an update to Facebook to keep family and friends up to date about the competition, or to post a picture or something, and I couldn't. But more than that, I found myself, during awkward moments, reaching for the phone to check to see if I had an email, and I realized it had become a crutch. When I first got contact lenses and lost my glasses, I found myself for weeks reaching up to my face to adjust the glasses that were no longer there. I had that same feeling with my dead smart phone. I'd reach for it, get it halfway out of my pocket and think, "What am I doing?"
• Colts Stadium: The marching band competition was in the Indianapolis Colts stadium, and as a prop parent I got to go down into the bowels of the stadium several times. While in there I got to see the press room, the coaches room, a classroom (where presumably the Colts learned how to lose), and a group of referees reviewing for the game the next day.
• Quick Turnaround: Speaking of that, the marching band competition ended after midnight Saturday night / Sunday morning, and there was a home football game at 1 PM that next day. I was amazed at the amount of work that had to be done to flip that stadium to get it ready for a game in 12 hours. There must have been an army of workers who started as soon as the band thing was over and worked through the night.
• Enjoying the Moment: One of the things that I'd say I haven't always done a good job of in my life is enjoying the moment. I made a conscious effort during the marching band competition to do just that. My daughters got to compete on the Colts' field three times, twice in competition and once just in exhibition as the winning Class A band. The first two times I hustled my props onto the field, and then sprinted off the field quickly, and once the performance was over I hustled back onto the field and quickly pulled and pushed the props off the field (The band has 15 minutes from the time we're told "Go!" until the last prop or instrument or band member has to be off the field) and didn't really get a feel for the moment. It was a whirlwind. That final performance, though, when there was nothing really on the line, I took my props out, got them set, and then turned around to face the audience in the stands at Lucas Field, and I soaked in the sight of seeing the filled stands from the field. I'd seen the reverse (a field from a packed stand) many times before, but I'd never really seen it from that point of view, and I stood and enjoyed the view for what felt like a very long time (It was probably about 4 seconds) before sprinting off the field to watch my daughters perform one more time.
• Kindle Fire: My Kindle Fire is shipping tomorrow, and I'm so excited! I'm like a little kid. I can't think of a time when I was looking this forward to getting what basically is a toy for me. Maybe when I picked up our Nintendo Wii when it first came out. But I hadn't PLANNED to buy that. It was back when you couldn't find the darned things ANYWHERE and everyone wanted one, and I just wandered into a Target and saw two sitting on a shelf. I bought it, and the clerk said to me, "Who told you?" When I asked him what he meant, he said, "These only arrived about 10 minutes ago. We got 30 of them and they're gone already. Somebody leaked that they were here." I assured him that I hadn't known; I'd just stumbled upon them. He said I was a pretty lucky bastard and gave me the device. That's not the same, though, as waiting for the Kindle Fire.
• Kindle Fire II: Okay, that last paragraph ended up not being about the Kindle Fire but about the Nintendo Wii. Maybe I could go back and edit the paragraph and cut that out, but I'm in rapid fire, non edit mode and I'm not going to do that, so I thought I'd just make a second bullet about the Kindle Fire and take it from there. So here it is. Uh...
• Kindle Fire III: Okay, that last paragraph ended up not being about the Kindle Fire but about why the first paragraph wasn't about the Kindle Fire. This one really IS going to be about the Kindle Fire. All I wanted to say about it was that I'll write a review of it once I get it. I'm too cheap to pay for standard or overnight shipping. Instead I got the free Super Saver shipping, so I'll probably receive it sometime in March, but once I receive it I'll write the review.

My Time is Here ( or "One day at the Opticians")

The last time I had my vision checked by a professional (which I'm a bit ashamed to admit was probably more than two years ago) I went through the same rigmarole I always go through. Before seeing the doctor, a young assistant took me back into the bowels of the office and put me through a number of tests for which I've always only had a hazy understanding of the purpose. She made me look into this eyepiece and a hot air balloon on the horizon went in and out of focus. She then had me look into this other device, told me to keep my eye open wide, and then blew air into my eye (The purpose of this test, I'm assuming, is to see if I'm dumb enough to keep my OTHER eye open wide when she does it to it, too!). She then had me stare at a red, shiny light for a long time (the purpose of which, I guess, is to see if I can be trusted with those hand scanners at the self checkout lanes). Finally, she had me read the eye chart on the wall, and then read a little book of colored dots with numbers inside of them, designed to see if I have color blindness. Finally, she handed me a piece of paper with tiny, tiny print on it.

"Please read the smallest line you can comfortably read," she said to me as she entered the results of my color blindness test into a computer.

Without hesitation I said, "Oh, I can read them all," I said. "No problem". I looked at the bottom line, which had 20/10 written beside it. "The bottom line says 'E-G-D-O-U."

The assistant hesitated before looking at me quizzically and saying, "Really? You can read that?"

"Yeah," I said. "Without issue. Why?"

"Most people your age struggle with their near vision. I'm surprised you did that well."

The assistant was young, in her early twenties, and attractive. I blinked a couple of times before saying, "'My Age'! How old do you think I am?"

She pointed to the computer screen. "I don't 'think' how old you are at all. It's right here on the screen. And most people your age are lucky to read the 20/20 line, much less the bottom line! That's all I'm saying. I'm not calling you old. It's pretty remarkable how good your near vision is...considering your age."

"'Considering your age'! There you go again!" I said. She just laughed and directed me into the examination room where the doctor would come in just a few minutes to examine me.

While I waited, I did the same things I always did in the chair--I read the pamphlets about eye disease and cataracts. Then, after what seemed like way too long a wait, the doctor came into the room. After a moment of chit chat, he looked over my chart, and he said to me, "You're over 40. Here. Look at this and read the smallest line you can read."

He handed me the identical chart I'd been handed by the assistant. Without hesitation I said, "E-G-D-O-U!"

"Wow!" he said in earnest. "That's pretty good."

The doctor is quite a bit older than I am, and maybe it was the age difference being reversed, but his comment had the exact opposite effect on me that the young assistant's had. Instead of making me feel old, I felt pretty good about myself. I beamed, in fact, and I said, maybe a little too proudly, "I know. Your assistant told me so, too!"

The doctor scowled at me out of the corner of his eye. He had the look of someone who was holding back what he really wanted to say. After several seconds he curtly replied, "Don't get cocky! You're not Superman." He rolled away from the examination chair using his special, doctors-only rolling chair, and said as he glided away, "Your time is coming."

And I'm writing today to say that apparently he was right. Over the last few months I've noticed that my  near vision HAS gotten worse. The first time I noticed it was accidental. I'd gone to the grocery with my younger daughter and bought--for my older daughter--some hair care product (I actually forget what it was now). As I walked up the stairs to hand it to my older daughter, I examined the bottle. It was a product marketed towards teenagers, and it was a deep purple bottle with tiny, bright pink wording on the back of it. The contrast between the purple and pink was so distracting that, when combined with the tiny letters, I felt the entire back label was completely unreadable. I walked into my daughter's room, handed her the bottle and said, "Look at the print on this bottle! Why would anyone print something that you can't read? What's the point?"

She looked at the bottle, sighed, and said, "Dad! The writing is plain as day!" She then began reciting what was written on the back of the bottle.

I quickly grabbed the bottle and looked at the back again. "You can read that?"

"Yes," she said. "Hey, Natalie!" My younger daughter came in and--to complete my humiliation--began reading it was well. I stormed out of the room.

Last week I was at work fixing a loose toilet paper holder in the bathroom at the board of education (the work of a Chief Information Officer is never done and not always related to technology!) and crouched down to tighten a screw in the wall. And I couldn't tell, from the distance I was at, whether or not it was a Phillips screw or a standard screw. And it was at that moment that I knew it: My time has come! I guess I need to start looking at the reading glasses at the drug store...

Still Another Dumb Sign

I walked by past an office just a couple of minutes ago and saw this sign:

This sign puts several thoughts in my head:

• Isn't the "when door is shut" part kind of unnecessary? When else WOULD I open the door? When else COULD I open the door?
• Is the sign intended for everyone? Because if it is, and the writer of the sign leaves the room and closes the door, how will she ever get back in again? 
• As I've mentioned before, signs telling me NOT do something just make me want to do them more. I had no desire to open this door until I saw the sign. After seeing the sign, it took every bit of effort on my part to pull out my cell phone and snap a photo of it rather than try to open the door. 

Complaint of the Day

I don't own an iPhone, but I was so happy to hear all of the stories about the new SIRI voice control feature of the iPhone. I've heard that the program is intuitive and "smart" enough to understand what a human is saying without the human having to say something exactly the right way. And that makes me happy because I'm hoping that it will mean an improvement is coming soon to the automatic answering system.

I hate automatic answering systems when you call for help that--in the name of being more user friendly--have replaced the menu of options ("Press '1' for sales, press '2' for support...") with a system that wants you to just talk to it. Invariably, they get my message wrong no matter how carefully I try to speak. And heaven help you if you get frustrated.

I don't understand why the need to make this change. Pressing "1" for sales was pretty easy, to be frank. But no! These new systems try too hard to be fancy. My conversations typically go like this.

RECORDED VOICE: Thank you for calling (FILL IN THE BLANK). I'm here to help you. Please let me know what I can do for you. For instance, you might say "Pick up a package." Or maybe, "Schedule a delivery." Or perhaps--


ME: I need to talk to an operator about a billing issue.


(Long Pause)


RECORDED VOICE: Okay. I can help you schedule a pickup. Is the pickup address associated with the phone number from which you are dialing?


ME: I don't need to schedule a pickup. I just need to talk to an operator.


RECORDED VOICE: I'm sorry. I didn't understand. Is the pickup address associated with the phone number from which you are dialing?

ME: Billing!

RECORDED VOICE: I'm sorry. Is the pickup location in Billings, Montana?

ME: Operator!

RECORDED VOICE: I didn't catch that. Could you say it again?

ME: Operator!

RECORDED VOICE: Okay. You'd like to schedule a pickup. I can help with that. Is the pickup address associated with the phone number from which you are dialing?



(At this point I just start pounding the zero button on my phone. After about ten presses I pause, praying to the gods that an operator is going to pick up. There's a long pause, as if the phone system is punishing me for pressing the button too many times, before the recorded voice is back again.)
 
RECORDED VOICE: You entered area code 0-0-0, 0-0-0-0-0-0-0. Is this the phone number associated with the pickup address for this item?
 
ME: Oh, screw YOU!
 
RECORDED VOICE: I'm sorry. I didn't undestand. Is the phone number area code 0-0-0, 0-0-0-0-0-0-0 associated with the pickup address for this item? Say "yes" for yes, or "no" for no.
 
ME: Make me!
 
RECORDED VOICE: Okay. Let me check that phone number (VERY short pause, as if the machine KNEW there was no address associated with that number and is just TRYING to tick me off). I'm sorry, but I couldn't find a phone number associated with area code 0-0-0, 0-0-0-0-0-0-0. Is there another phone number associated with this address. Say "yes" for yes, or--
 
ME: I hope you die in whatever sort of painful way that a computer might die!
 
RECORDED VOICE: Say "yes" for yes, or "n--
 
ME: Bite ME!
 
RECORDED VOICE: I'm sorry. I didn't understand that. Could you say it again?
 
ME: (louder) BITE ME!!!!
 
RECORDED VOICE: Okay. I can help you schedule a pickup. Is the pickup address associated with the phone number from which you are dialing?


Tell me how that is easier than just pressing buttons?