Even though it’s already been covered rather extensively elsewhere — I have a Kindle.

It was a gift, in the sense that it was purchased with an amazon.com gift card sent to me that mentioned that I should use it to get a Kindle, and maybe some books.

It arrived the same day my new computer parts arrived, and I was denied my usual joy of tormenting people with unboxing photos. I was also denied the joy of actually learning how to use it for myself. Gremlin took off with it to do something while I was trying to get the tower running again. Then, of course, he expected me to stop doing that and go fix whatever was wrong with his, because the Kindle wouldn’t connect properly.

This is why I should be allowed to play with my toys first. It took me a few days — after I finally got some time with it — to figure out that something wasn’t quite right. Seriously, there’s no good reason for a port to be that loose and downright fiddly on something so new. I can accept that sort of touchiness on my iPod, because it’s getting a bit old, and I’ve plugged in all sorts of non-apple-made things. But, really? C’mon. Newness, here. Shiny newness. And, is that a scratch? Goddamnit, it is.

So, I email Amazon.com. Also, I email screenguardz.com, because I want to know what they mean by ‘adhesive’. Neither of them got back to me.

I give up on screenguardsz.com, because…what the hell, who cares? Amazon’s the more important one right now. I email them again, selecting the ‘broken kindle WTFOMG’ option instead of the ‘questions about the kindle’ option. And I get a fairly rapid response telling me to go back to the site and get them to call me.

So, there I was, it’s just barely 5am on a Friday. There’s no way this can have a good outcome, right?

Except, amazingly, it did. Possibly because I got very lucky, and ended up on the phone with Tara D. [at least, I assume that’s who she was; that’s what the email I got after said].

Tara, it turns out, is proof that people who are capable of functioning in the earlier parts of the day [without needing to go to bed before noon] have a place in the world. That place? Customer service. She put up with my rambling, half-coherent explanation [filled with words I probably made up at the time, because, honestly, I was tired, and it’s so hard to explain exactly what the hell was going on]. There were no requests for rebooting or cache clearing. There was just, “I’m sorry. It sounds like it’s broken. What we’re going to do is overnight another one to you, and you can send that one back. I’m going to email you a shipping label with instructions, okay?”

There’s the part where it needs to be back in thirty days, and that they need a valid card on file, but, you know what? I totally understand that. There’s been no charge. And the Kindle showed up before noon on Saturday. I packed the other one away according to their instructions, and it’s sitting here waiting to be taken off to a UPS drop-off location.

This may be the single most painless online exchange I’ve ever done.

And the new one? Doesn’t have that pesky connect-drop-connect-drop problem. So, yeah, definitely something not right there.

Did I mention anything about protecting it? I can’t remember. I had to shut down my computer and get my 600gb drive back [okay, I think it’s supposed to be 640, but it’s kinda only 600, let’s be honest].

Whatever. I really, really need to find a way to protect this thing. And the options available to me really, really suck. I could probably make my own — and I’ve had a few ideas regarding that — but…god, really? I’m limited to a bunch of crap I don’t really want that’ll increase the size for over thirty bucks, or a bunch of perpetually out of stock sleeves? Oh, and the incredibly posh [read: useless] $100+ crap that I wouldn’t buy if I happened to make more money than Amazon.com has ever made, because….

Ih. New Resident Evil movie trailer flashback. Where was I?

Oh, who cares. I can totally go read stuff!

Which reminds me: Tara was above and beyond helpful — see, we were also having an unrelated problem with one of the books Gremlin released — the revision didn’t show even after we both deleted and repurchased it. I mentioned it to her, and she said she could put the people who could solve the problem in touch with us and see if they couldn’t fix it. Gremlin mentioned that, though, so it’s probably pointless mentioning it again. Y’all know where he writes stuff.

I’m going to post this before this gets even more disjointed and rambly.