These last few days have been… interesting, to say the least. I attempted to do some errands and made some questionable purchases that somehow justified themselves. One of the major things I’ve done was purchase an ebook reader. At first I was hesitant because the pricing of these devices are way too high for what they are, a very basic, somewhat mid-high resolution black and white LCD display unit with no discernible cpu power. It often felt like just an overworked calculator whenever I demoed the units at bookstores or electronic shops. I looked into thier capability of displaying certain formats and was disappointed that almost none of the different systems could decide on the same features. So I ended up taking the plunge and purchasing one with the intent of using it for a few days and possibly returning it if it didn’t suit my needs.

Once I had it in my posession and plugged into my computer, I decided to look for ways to convert formats and see how to properly display them on this device. I had a few books in PDF format and a few comic book and mangas in differing formats. After a lot of searching and playing around with different programs, I came across one called Calibre that allowed me to set up how I wanted the pages to come out. Once that was done, I transfered them to the ebook and tried it out. For american comics and graphic novels, I was not impressed. The sheer amount of color caused the device to grayscale to oblivion and made things very difficult to read. -1 point.

So, I tried mangas next and worked a few series I had in the wayside that I neglected because I didn’t want to sit there reading off my PC screen (I get bored easily). Once converted and after a few tests, the mangas displayed perfectly on the unit and actually made reading them fun again. I love to have them on paper, but you don’t always get the chance, especially when its only been published in Japan… Needless to say, I was so enthralled, I read the entire series in one sitting. +2 points.

Then I tried books. I had a few PDFs that were in different format themselves: scanned pages, and OCR’d to Text PDFs. The text PDF was easy to convert to the ePub format. The scanned pages only shrunk on the screen making reading very very difficult. -1 point. But the OCR’d and text PDFs reformatted to fit my screen came out crisp and clean. I picked up a few ebooks that I acquired and attempted to read them. It was interesting, but my lack of attention span made me read a paragraph and lay the reader down often. Not the devices fault, but I was happy that it was at least readable. No points for that.

So by now, you can see the score is still 0. It had to be +1 or better for me to decide to keep it. It wasn’t looking well…

The following day, I decided to go get the alarm system for my vehicle installed. I had purchased the factory module back about 7-8 months ago and just forgot to get it installed. Now I decided was the best time. I also needed to get the computer scanned to figure out why the “check engine” light came on for no apparent reason. After the diagnostics of the car (which turned out to be because the gasket of the gas cap was eroded, causing a pressure leak in the system…), I had them attempt to install the alarm module. I brought along my reader because I was told it would have taken approximately 2 hours to install the unit and verify its operation. So I handed the keys and I sat down and started reading. I must have went through 4 chapters by the time I realized I had been sitting there for near four and a half hours. I asked what was going on with my car and they were still working on it. I sat back down and continued reading. Coming up on hour six, I finally hear the horn of my car sounding. I got up to look and my car was going nuts. The lights were blinking like mad, then the horn suddenly was stuck in the on position. I saw the tech scramble to the front of the car, open the hood, grab a tool and pull out a cable that shut off the car.

Worried that something happend, I asked the service managers and they went to look at the car. They told me something had come up and they would need the car overnight. Lucky for me, they offered to pay for a rental. Unlucky for me, it was a Chevy Impala… bleh… I went home and put the ebook down and decided that its worth was proven at the dealership. In any other circumstance, I would have been bored to tears after hour 2. but the advantage of not carrying paper, and the ability to switch between books whenever I wanted a change made it all the more valuable. for this I gave it a +10 point value. I’m keeping the damn thing.

So about my car… Not to drag out the story any further, it seems that when they installed the module, it burned out a major part of the car. A power module that controlled where power went to and managed the electrical system was toasty after the installation of the alarm module. They researched the module to verify I didn’t purchase an erroneous part, and they saw what I saw: the part was listed for my and the previous model year of my vehicle. Well, they called the manufacturer directly and requested a technician to give clarity on the part. Turns out the part was not for my vehicle, and that they had stopped manufacturing it and the ability to add such a module for my model year forward. That means, in laymans terms, that the part was not for my car at all. Due to the discrepancy, I was given a refund of the part, and they repaired my car free of charge (and cleared the error of the gas cap from the computer).

What a mess… Now I need to look elsewhere, and make sure they don’t destroy my car in the process… How convoluted can things get?

For those of you who skipped down here, the rundown is this: I got an ebook, I proved itself at my most dearest of needs, and the dealer I took my car to fix, broke and refixed the car, thereby losing money, time, wages, etc… I’m happy this dealer did help me out though. I need this car for the upcoming week. I would have hated to use that crappy Impala… *shudder*

Bleh…