Greetings all;
My real name is Rick (and I go by my real name on every other site). Since my normally used "alias" is already taken here, I'm going by "N0NJY" - which is my Amateur Radio call sign.
I'm retired from the USAF and work... in the IT/Security industry here in Colorado. I'm a sailor, reader, writer, and an ardent fan of Issac Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke. I collect coffee cups (ok that's just silly) am a "survivalist" in many ways. I write political "commentary" occasionally and help to run several web sites (and thus forums similar to this one). The web sites are concerned with either political data, intelligence or (or all strange things) "Anomalies". The Anomalies site used to be famous, but it's kind of dead these days (it concerns UFOs, Big Foot, the Face on Mars and numerous other oddities). I have perhaps a dozen other hobbies besides those listed but won't detail them here.
I'm an "outspoken conservative" when it comes to politics, and perhaps not for the reasons many of my opposites would like to believe. Rather than get involved in political discussions though - I am telling you this in the objective interest of "full disclosure". When I write it is with a certain conservative bent from my point of view having worked in and around the US Government for over 30 years; my politics and writings are certainly NOT with the intent of converting anyone, changing their position on a subject or even trying to convince anyone I might be right or they are wrong. So, in that vein I present those facts to those here with whom I might converse.
I live in Colorado and have been here twenty years now. I've lived in Michigan, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Virgina and Washington, DC. I have personally visited 45 countries. My plan is to leave Colorado in a couple of years and embark on a "world tour" of sorts on a cruising sail boat. My wife and I have become strongly committed to this new journey in our lives. We will be purchasing a much larger boat than the one we currently own (here in Colorado it's a 25 foot sail boat) to live aboard for the next few years.
That brings me to why I'm here. Kindle, Iliad, Sony, and so forth all have e-readers. We both have Kindles. She a Kindle 2, myself a DX. We've not had them for long. We bought them because we're both avid readers.
Unfortunately, our personal library simply can not travel with us when we ship out. We have somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000 books in our home library (and no, I live not in a mansion nor am I wealthy, merely a small home with one room converted to a "library" and we've collected books from before the time we were married, which is over 32 years now).
So, the e-readers are our attempt to stop buying paper books, and to continue reading and learning. I'd dearly love to convert all of those books to something we could take with us, but I figure I've read them all so why bother? Perhaps a few I really enjoyed, but certainly not all of them.
The few that will continue to be a part of our family are those reference books we use often, cooking, technical manuals and information on sailing, electronics, diesel mechanics, first aid and medicine, identification books (plants, animals, whats good to eat and what will kill you) and of course, survival. Things to read, re-read and review often to keep us thinking about how-to-survive crossing oceans and visiting new places.
We're both "World Travelers" already having visited somewhere around 50-60 countries between ourselves (me more than her due to my work) but we've rarely had the chance to travel together and at our ages (50+) we're examining priorities and "Little House on the Prairie minus children" as a retirement option interests neither of us.
But, we want our books, want to be able to read books. We know that right now Kindle isn't going to be good in Europe or outside the US (yet, but soon apparently) and the Kindle is perhaps only the first of devices we will try or use.
Anyway, that's a bit about me and why I am here.
Lastly, I did a vast amount of research on the various e-readers (including lurking here for months, among other sites). My FAVORITE was the Iliad Digital reader. Too pricey and I wanted something soon.
My personal list of requirements included a device that could connect to a wifi connection easily (not necessarily 3G). It had to have an external memory card slot (like SD or something) and it needed to be able to be "hacked" to some degree.
I ended up choosing the Kindle 2 for my wife because it is perfect for what she does. Reads a book a day (I have not looked at the credit card bill yet for fear of having a heart attack... but at least the books are somewhat cheaper there, than the hard books).
I chose the Kindle DX for myself because the BeBook they have been saying is "coming out in 3rd quarter of 2009" didn't. It was promising a larger screen, 3G, Wifi, SD card slots and more. Vaporware. Sorry to say it, but it's not there.
The Iliad as I stated was too much - and I hesitated at one point with my finger on the ORDER button from Irex's site. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) they were OUT OF STOCK (for several weeks).
Sony was next in line. Screen is too small, but I wanted a reader (wife had her Kindle for several weeks and I couldn't even pry it out of her hands to examine it!) but it DID have external slots for memory cards. Still had to connect it to a computer. They were... guess what? OUT OF STOCK. Unless I wanted a silver one (I wanted a black one).
Sony is coming out with another one at Christmas... oh, I didn't want to wait THAT long - I'd already waited nearly a year.
So, I chose the Kindle DX finally. I love it. I've only used the 3G connect 3-4 times, and that was playing with the browser and to purchase ONE book.
I have about 200 items on the kindle now, I downloaded from my personal stock of ebooks I have been collecting. And I've read about 8 or 9 of them already.
Frankly, I love this device - what I do NOT like:
Non-Open source
Hacking? Gotta be careful not to break "Amazon's Rules"
Tied too tightly to Amazon. I can't download from Sony or someone else.
Had a lot of trouble trying to get some DRM stuff that will work on Kindle. (nope)
Kindle and Amazon pass information to Amazon (I don't like that, not their business what I read!)
I OWN the device, and yet they can:
1) Delete items they don't want me to have
2) Check to see what I have on my device
3) Turn OFF my account if I do something they don't like bricking my kindle
But, so far, I haven't broken any Kindle Laws or Amazon Rules and I guess I'm ok. I haven't bothered with any 'hacking' yet, since I'm truly more interested in using it to read (But, I still would love to have an Iliad to play with!!)
I've used it more connecting it to the computer than I thought I would.
I've read some old classics I'd read as a child and had forgotten.
Read some old classics I never heard of... (imagine that!)
Well.. I'm here. If you want to know anything about Ham Radio, PM me. If you're interested in Anomalies, Politics, and tracking what Russia, China and other countries are up to, PM me. If you want to know how to make bows and arrows, something about Astronomy or sailing... PM me.
Otherwise, I'll be around, lurking and reading.
Rick Donaldson
Colorado Springs, CO