I got a Kindle for my birthday! A Kindle is a digital book reader. It connects you to Amazon, where you can buy books, and it automatically downloads them in seconds. So, with my Kindle in hand, I went to the lake, and spent a good part of the day reading in a hammock. I stopped reading only to play with Cindy and the kids in the pool and grill steaks. I had a ribeye. What a wonderful birthday.
The Kindle is cool. The first two books I bought (get ready to roll your eyes): A Time to Sow and A Time to Harvest, they were the next books in the Star Trek, Next Generation series that I have been reading off and on. As I read these books on my kindle, I realized that it actually connected me to these 24th century characters. The characters in Star Trek always carry around padds (Personal Access Display Devices). These padds are portable devices that they use to wirelessly connect to the central computer in order to distribute and receive information and reports. Here’s a quote from the book where Admiral Ross is addressing Admiral Nechayev about the report sent in from the Enterprise:
Holding up the padd that he had brought with him [Admiral Ross] added, “The morning briefs make for interesting reading, don’t they?”
Yes, the Kindle is something straight from Star Trek. I can get morning briefs by subscribing to nationally known newspapers and have them delivered to me each morning in a way that I can easily read at my leisure (although I think I will stick to books for now). I can carry an entire library with me, where ever I want to go. It has a few more cool features, but the truth is that I did not want an over-featured device. I wanted something to read books. The Kindle does the trick. I love my Star Trek padd, err, I mean I love my Kindle.
