More Kindle Fire fun... (not!)

I never had any battery trouble with my old second-generation Kindle reader. My experience with the Kindle Fire has been... spotty.

When we were in New York, I was surprised by how quickly the Fire's wifi connection could deplete the battery (this, despite the fact the Fire sat only about a dozen feet from my router). I was also surprised at how finicky (that's the only word that comes to mind) the Fire was about returning from a "deep discharge" of its battery.

One time, my Fire apparently got very deeply discharged, as pressing the power button elicited no response at all. When the Fire failed to acquire a charge despite being plugged into a USB port for over 24 hours, I was ready to call Amazon support. But then, recalling how my iPad will often inform me that it's not actually charging (despite being connected to a USB source of power that—theoretically—provides just enough power to run the unit without either charging or discharging the battery), I plugged the Fire into the USB charger that came with my iPad (5.1 V, 2.1 A), and after a few moments, the power button illuminated yellow and everything proceeded smoothly.

Yesterday, I plugged the Fire into a 5-V, 0.85-A charger and by the end of the day, all the Fire could do was to have the power button illuminate green for a few seconds and then go out. I have since learned that this is indicative of a low battery, which makes no intuitive sense. (I mean, what hoops need to be jumped through to commence a recharge? The fact the battery is low should be, at the very least, immaterial.)

In any event, it turns out the solution to this behavior (other than buying a Nook, which ain't gonna happen, 'cause I've got too much invested in Kindle content) is to depress the Fire's power button for a full 20 seconds to reset the unit, after which it will behave as expected when connected to a charger.

New day, same stuff. It'd be nice to get a little ahead of where I need to be by the end of the day, but I'll take what comes.

Cheers...

The large and the small of it...

So there I was, at the shelter yesterday, trying to endow Lucky with traits that might make him more "adoptable," when my attention was drawn to a familiar whup-whup sound in the sky.


There was a firefighting helicopter in the air, hauling what appeared to be a teeny, tiny tank of water. And although the rotors were chopping air for all they were worth, I could not help but recall the story of The Little Engine That Could, because the aircraft seemed to be battling a headwind (the Little Sand fire is to the left of the frame), and the angle at which it was dragging that tank seemed awfully... ambitious.

Then today, around mid-morning, Galina called me to the garage to show me what our cat Zorra had brought back from its meanderings around the property.


This specimen was about 2 inches long, carrying one rather ungainly egg case (with what would appear to be a tiny ladybug corpse hanging from the side, not unlike the way Reavers festoon their space ships with the corpses of their victims, but I digress... ).

The arachnid seemed rather calm, all things considered. (Then again, after dealing with Zorra, having to keep an eye—or a dozen—on my ugly mug probably represented a lower DEFCON level, in spider terms.)

After the photo shoot, I planted her (I'm pretty much guessing a male wouldn't be caught, um, dead carrying an egg case) in a protected area under the veranda on the back side of the house. (As you can probably guess, spider eradication is not one of my priorities in life.)

Cheers...