Kindle Komedy

[montalex]

I bought a Kindle Keyboard when they first came out. I now have several, having inherited broken screen throwaways or otherwise non-functional examples that I had fun repairing. I always travel with at least two, which is better than traveling with several paper books as I’d done in the past – not because I read that much, but because I’m afraid of being stuck on a plane with a book I’m not enjoying. I did buy a Kindle 4 for my wife, but it goes unused, as she prefers paper. As someone who was forced to leave 2,000 books on the street some years back (I had to clear out storage and had no way to move the books from the U.S. to Canada, my new home), I prefer digital. And carrying an OED around with you is kind of nice.
So, I’m happy with my repaired Kindles and their open browsers, which allow me to get newspapers and email when I am in the country without internet. Recently I was given one with a broken screen, and I could not find the correct screen for it. I understand that some early Kindles had a different screen from most. Unfortunately, I discarded the original, and could not use it when I had to reboot to get its waveform. So, finally, I bought another motherboard on eBay, installed it, installed the jailbreak and font and screensavers hacks, and all seemed to be well until I tried to put my own screensavers in the appropriate folder. After several restarts, they still would not appear, and I realized that there was a new screensaver, one that mentioned Special Offers. I noted on my home page also a banner for Special Offers. Then I noticed the same things had appeared on my main Kindle.
I called Amazon, who denied that any of my devices were Special Offer Kindles, and, eventually, were able to remove the screen saver and banner from my latest repaired Kindle. However, I could not get rid of them on my main Kindle. A long conversation with Amazon ensued, during which I was told that they could do nothing about it, that I would have to a system restore. So I did so losing years of bookmarks and comments. And their screensaver was gone. Today I received an email from Amazon stating that they had removed special offers from my Kindle.
I guess I’ll never know what happened – why notices appeared to begin with, and if Amazon was able to remove them from my main Kindle.