Sorry library folks, I wanna Kindle

I want you library fans out there to know I love you, I love the library, I support you. I will vote for your levy later this year (Vote people! Yes for libraries!) if they will let me (actually I don't think dogs are allowed to vote, but I will make sure my people do). I love books and I love libraries, and library people are my favorite kind of people, so please forgive me for what I'm about to say...

I found the most wonderful thing that I want, and it may be the end of books (and free content) for us. It's called the Amazon Kindle (don't ask me why) and it's an ebook reader that looks like the answer to my prayers. It's like an iPug for books. I can't believe that I missed hearing about it till now - it's been out about a month. It's one of those love it or hate it items, and it has a long way to go before it's as good (or pretty) as the iPug, but even at a ridiculous $400 I WANT IT!

It reads much easier than a computer screen, it bookmarks, it searches, it has a dictionary, it backs up your books online, and you can even get some blogs (not mine, sorry), magazines and newspapers on it, as well as lots of books. And it's wireless! I hate wires. Wires catch my tennis balls and toys and won't give them back, and then I have to cry for someone with hands to retrieve them for me.

Now you know my family is cheap, right? My cushion won't even shell out 99 cents for music for my iPug. But she's as gung-ho for the kindle as I am. She doesn't like to have lots of stuff around that she's not using any more. Even books (she gives her books to the library - what a good idea!). So she can buy tons of books on the kindle, and only have that one little device (smaller than a paperback they say) instead of all those shelves of books. And it's cheaper than that macbook we've been lusting after. You can even do some basic kind of googling on it.

And the best thing is that once we have a kindle my cushion will still sit on the couch and keep me company. She won't have big stacks of books to reach for, she won't rest the heavy books on back when I'm sleeping, she won't have to get up to find a new book when she finishes one because she can download wirelessly from anywhere, and she won't be lying on the cold floor like when she reads the newspaper now. Even better, she won't go into the computer room so much. I hate that room because they don't let me in there. She hates it because it's a "man cave".

I think she can craft a good argument why we need one. She'll say it saves money in the long run. That she won't want a white laptop anymore if we get one. She'll say it's green, even though it's white. She's good at twisting things around to sound like they'll make her happy and make the world a better place. I know it won't really make her happy. But the kindle will make me happy, so now all we have to do now is convince papa...

Managing my people through RSS

OK, here it is. I finally worked out a way to minimize the time my cushion spends on the computer. They call it RSS and it organizes all the new stuff people have written on her favorite websites into one handy little page (I set her up with google reader) so she doesn't waste so much time going to the blogs by the little-poodle person and the corgi person and the book-work person. The reader shows her all the new stuff they've written all at once and then she can turn off that computer and get back on the couch. Brilliant! Of course it would be better if she just didn't worry about what those other people had to say. Am I not interesting enough for her?

My cushion also has one of the iPug thingies - a little silver one. She's terribly cheap so she won't pay for content. She borrows CDs from the library and puts them on her iPug, and she copies her own boring old CDs onto it too. But truth is, she mostly listen to pugcasts. They get delivered automatically whenever she plugs the thing in, and she gets hours of free talky stuff to listen to. She likes to walk and listen for some reason - she seems to think with her legs. But I'm trying to convince her to sit down on the couch and listen. She's going to sign me up for some pugcasts of my own soon. Maybe something about Eastern philosophy... the militant pug network... or maybe food...mmm...food...