I did want the cats to be good mousers, so I waited until the local “free” column contained an offer of kittens from a barn cat mother, and took the kids over to pick out their kittens. I explained to the kids that how the kittens were raised would strongly affect what kind of cats they became, so the kids needed to spend lots of time playing with and petting the cats, so they would learn to enjoy and value interaction with humans. They smiled and agreed – please, Mama, don’t throw me in that brier patch!

And they did take care of the cats. They fed them, cleaned the litter box, loved on them.

And then the kids grew up.

My daughter went off to college first. She couldn’t have her cat with her in the dorm, of course, so Squeaky lived at home that year. Second and third years, she was living in a house and kept her cat, but for her senior year, she wanted to share an apartment with a cat-allergic friend. Squeaky is a VERY affectionate beast, so I didn’t really mind letting her move back in with us. But now she is planning on staying in the college town, with the same cat-allergic friend, after graduation. Excuse me? Have you forgotten your commitment to your feline friend?

My son, meanwhile, joined the National Guard and was gone for about 6 months doing basic and advanced training. Naturally, Blackie couldn’t go with him. He tried college for one semester but didn’t pay enough attention to do well and moved home (with cat) to job-hunt. He’ll start with the state prison system in a couple of weeks. And he announced that he has found an apartment … that doesn’t allow cats.

Figure out what’s wrong with this picture yet?

Fortunately for my budget, I bought the WiFi Kindle 3 instead of the 3G version. I had wanted the 3G version, but it was more expensive. The 3G version has wider-ranging Internet access, but with WiFi at my home and in more and more hotels and restaurants, I don’t anticipate I’ll be going anywhere that I would be without WiFi access, and receiving Kindle-formatted documents via WiFi is free. The 3G version charges for most deliveries.

I googled RSS feed and was drowned in hits, but while I finally figured out that RSS is just a standard so different readers can use the same material, I didn’t find anything about using Calibre as an RSS reader. So I posted my question on the Amazon Kindle discussion board. As often happens, some helpful people with more experience with Calibre jumped in and told me just what to do. It turned out to be fairly straightforward, once I was told that the important part was to copy the RSS link into the URL box under “Add custom news source” and I could “name” it whatever I wanted.

The next entry contains detailed instructions for those who need straightforward “click here and type this” instructions like I did!

First, download and install Calibre for your operating system. The following instructions assume Calibre for Windows; if you use a different OS, I hope you’ll be able to find the corresponding buttons.

Click on “Preferences.” Under “Behavior,” CHECK the box by “Automatically send downloaded news to ebook reader.” For the time being, do NOT click on the next “delete news” box. Once your system is functioning correctly, you can come back and check this box if you don’t want to keep a copy of your downloads on your computer. Set the “preferred output format” to whatever your ebook reader needs. For the Kindle, it’s .mobi format. The “preferred input format” doesn’t really matter, Calibre will figure it out any time you run a conversion. Click the green “Apply” button in the top left corner.

Click on “Common Options” and then “Output Profile” and select “Kindle.” Click “Apply.”

Click on “Sharing books by email” and then “Add email.” Enter the @free.kindle.com email of your Kindle and select .MOBI as the format. Check the “Auto Send” box. If you have a gmail or hotmail account, you can easily use that to send files to your Kindle. Click on “Use Gmail” or “Use Hotmail” at the right and enter your email address and password. Leave the Mail Server settings alone. If you want to use another email account, you will need to either figure out the server settings and enter them, or set up a gmail or hotmail account and use it. There is a “Test email” button but I can’t figure out how it is supposed to work. Click “Apply” and then “Close.”

Go to your “Manage Your Kindle” at amazon.com and page down to the “Your Kindle Approved E-mail List” section. Under “Enter an approved e-mail address,” type the email you told Calibre to use to send files to the Kindle and then click “Add Address.” Unless you want to spend money having Amazon convert documents for you, also go to the next section, “Your Personal Document Charge Limit,” and enter 0.00 as the most you authorize spending on sending documents to the Kindle.

Now you are ready to send something to your Kindle! Click on “Fetch News” and then click on the triangle to the left of the language in which you want to see available periodicals. Select something that doesn’t require a User ID and password but is fairly static, such as Anchorage Daily News or Business Week. Do NOT click the “Schedule for download” button, just click on the “Download now” bar near the bottom right corner, then “Save.” You should see “Jobs: 1″ and a whirling black circle in the bottom right corner of the main Calibre page. When the black circle stops whirling and you see “Jobs: 0″ then you should also see the name of the publication at the top of the list of “books.”

Wait a few minutes and then turn on your Kindle and turn on WiFi, or go somewhere that has WiFi. Within a few minutes, you should have the periodical on your Kindle! If you don’t, go back and check the above settings, especially the Kindle email address and the “sender” email address you typed into Calibre – make sure they are correct and match the ones in your Manage My Kindle page.

Now you can set up the publications you really want to get delivered regularly. Click on “Fetch News” and then click on the triangle to the left of the language in which you want to see available periodicals. Select the first periodical. If it requires a UserID and password, you’ll have to go to the site and subscribe before you can set Calibre to get it automatically. If not, click on the “Schedule for download” box and select how often you want to get it, either every certain number of days or a certain day of the week. Weekly or monthly magazines you will probably check for less often than a daily paper. Once you have set frequencies for the desired periodicals, click “Save” and you are done. But you will need to leave Calibre open and connected to the Internet for it to get the periodicals on the schedule you want.

There may also be periodicals and/or blogs that you want to collect regularly but that are not on Calibre’s list. You can add them as a custom source. Click on the little down-pointing triangle to the right of the “Fetch News” button, then click on “Add a custom news source.” This is where the built-in Calibre instructions left me totally baffled. Ignore everything on the left side for the moment. On the right, look for the “recipe title” field and enter the name you want the generated book to show up as. The Oldest Article and Max. number of articles can stay the way they are for the moment.

Go to the site of the blog or periodical you want to add. If there is an RSS button, click on it and copy the http address given. If there is no RSS button, copy the COMPLETE http line at the top of the browser. In Firefox the RSS feed shows up in the URL bar automatically if it can find a feed for the website. At the bottom, where it says, “Add Feed to Recipe” type in the title of your feed (the blog or periodical name) and then paste the URL you copied into the second box. Then click “Add Feed.” You can add multiple blogs to the same one (although I prefer to have a recipe for each blog), so you have a book of blogs. When all your blogs are in the feed list, go to the left side and click “Add/Update Recipe.” The new recipe should show up in the list on the left. Now, go back to the main window, click on Fetch News, and look under “Custom.” You should see your new recipe there. Click on “Download Now” at the bottom of the right side, and see what comes up in Calibre. When you have it working, you can set it for automatic download just like the preregistered periodicals above.

Please feel free to leave comments on whether this worked for you, or if you think something should be added or changed!

Now, however, I’ve discovered periodical subscriptions, and the Kindle may have to join the PDA in my purse whenever leaving the house. I like reading magazines and newspapers, but I don’t need more paper piling up in my house, and newspapers are messy and awkward to get folded as I read through them.

I started with four subs through Amazon.com: Home Business, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, and the Denver Post. I actually live 100 miles north of Denver, but our local paper is a bad joke. Amazon starts all Kindle subscriptions with a 14-day free trial, which I thought was a great idea, and I was curious to see what was included and how easy or difficult it was to read through a periodical on a small eReader.

I also started a thread on Amazon’s Kindle discussion board, asking what other users had thought about the subscription option. One responder mentioned getting subscriptions free through Calibre, a program I was already using to convert eBooks in other formats to Kindle format. But Calibre is a much fancier program than I am used to using, and frankly it intimidates me. So I hesitantly poked around it and I was able to find its capability to grab publications and send them to my Kindle. I actually knew my Kindle’s free.kindle.com email address, so I entered that, and used my gmail.com address for Calibre to send the files from. I cancelled my Amazon.com trials for Denver Post, Reader’s Digest, and Newsweek, and set them up to come via Calibre instead.

This morning, I got some lovely email messages from Amazon that there were files ready to download onto my Kindle, and the names are the ones I set up on Calibre. I’m going to skim the Amazon.com subscription files before downloading the Calibre files, since they may overwrite the Amazon files and I want to compare apples to apples. Stay tuned for further developments!

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At my suggestion, she accepted a credit card from Capital One. It had a pretty high interest rate and a fairly low line of credit (less than $500 IIRC), but I’d had a CO card for years, it’s manageable online and I knew they follow through with their commitments AND report to the credit bureaus. I told her she should use the card occasionally, but only when she had the money in the bank ready to pay for what she charged as soon as the bill came in. She listened to me, used the card occasionally, paid it off, and continued to throw credit card offers in the trash.

After a year or so of building her credit with the Capital One card, the offers changed a little. She still got too many invitations-to-apply and offers for cards with annual fees, but she started to also get preapproved offers with higher limits from fussier credit companies. Again at my suggestion, she accepted a card from Chase. She wanted to know why she needed another card, since she had one in good standing. I pointed out the higher credit limit and slightly lower interest rate and said that Chase would look better on a credit report than Capital One, who will give a card to just about anyone.

So now this college senior has two credit cards in good standing, that she uses occasionally and promptly pays off, and several years’ worth of green “as agreed” reports to credit bureaus. Her credit score is apparently better than mine, because she is now receiving “preapproved” offers from Discover and American Express. I suggested she take the Discover card, because of its low rate and cash back program, but I don’t think she has. I told her AmEx has lots of benefits, and that my father used one for years because working for ABC-Television, he could be sent across the globe at an hour’s notice or suddenly need to take 50 people out for dinner, and AmEx with its no-credit-limit is unsurpassed for that kind of travel. But I also told her if she is ever in a job where she needs AmEx, she won’t need me to tell her that she does.

Naturally, at this point she doesn’t realize how valuable her good credit report will be later. She won’t realize it until she has graduated and wants to rent an apartment or buy a car or house or has to set up accounts with utility companies. Even then, she may not realize how smart she was to listen to me, until she hears co-workers or friends moan about being turned down for an apartment lease or having to pay a higher interest rate for an auto loan. But at some point, I’m pretty confident she’ll come give me a hug and say “thanks for telling me how to build a good credit rating!” And I’ll just smile and thank God for blessing me with a daughter who was smart enough to listen.

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I became pregnant with my first child in 1988 at age 34. I was a registered nurse working in chemotherapy research and very familiar with reading research studies in medical journals. My first OB was selected on the recommendation of a friend who was an OB nurse and was a terrible mismatch. She was a fine OB for high-risk births, but although I was classified as “advanced maternal age” there was nothing else to make me high risk. Yet she was stuck in the rut of wanting all the tests that would be indicated for a high-risk pregnancy and that I didn’t want, many because they were just too new to know if there would be long-term effects for the baby. At 7 months I went looking for another OB.

I’d done quite a bit of research by then and took it and my list to interview the prospective new OB. I explained why I wanted to change OBs that late in my pregnancy and gave him my list of interventions I wanted avoided, including no episiotomy and no internal fetal monitoring. I briefly reviewed the research I had found, published in reputable medical journals, showing those interventions did NOT lead to better outcomes for mother or baby, only to increased complication and/or C-section rate. The OB agreed with me on the research but explained he couldn’t promise to not use those interventions because they were “standard of care” and IF something went wrong and IF he hadn’t used those interventions and IF there was a lawsuit, he would be crucified. And, he pointed out, I couldn’t even promise there wouldn’t be a lawsuit, if the absolute worst happened and I wasn’t around any more and my husband was guided/pressured into filing suit. And I knew the OB was right about that. But I liked his honesty and switched to him for the duration of that pregnancy.

Labor was … interesting. Peter and I had attended Bradley method classes and I’d delivered four babies myself when I worked on an ambulance, so I thought I knew what to expect. And I knew the statistics about laboring more than a few hours in the hospital leading to panicky OBs laying on the pitocin to “speed up” the normal process, so I determined to labor at home until I thought I was in transition. So labor started … and went on … and went on. After about 24 hours, I thought the pains were bad enough that I must be getting close to transition, so we went to the hospital. Turned out I was only 2 cm dilated! And I had a nurse who was totally supportive of my stated desire (BEFORE I actually experienced labor pains) to have a natural childbirth. When I actually decided I needed something for pain, the nurse tried to talk me out of it, telling me it was just natural doubt! I couldn’t convince her it was natural PAIN and that I was a wimp. She finally called the anesthesiologist to give me an epidural, but by the time he arrived, he said it sounded like I was in transition, which the nurse confirmed, AND THEN HE LEFT! Without doing anything for me! I was livid and in agony. Dadgum nurse told me pushing would feel good. She lied. It took another two hours before I could convince them that I didn’t have any energy reserves left, and I couldn’t fight the pain AND push. Anesthesiologist came back and FINALLY set up a great epidural – I could feel the contractions so I could push at the right times but it wasn’t hurting. Irene came out about 20 minutes later, with me yelling “No episiotomy!” and the stupid doctor-on-call letting me tear. Then the fun started.

During the pre-delivery tour, the nurse giving the tour had said that the baby would be monitored for 6 hours after delivery, either in the recovery room or in the nursery. I didn’t say anything but I was determined I would NOT be separated from my baby. So we had about 20 minutes together, and then the nurse cheerily announced I would be going to my room and Irene would be going to the nursery. I said “no, she’s not. We are staying together.” The nurse was floored. (That’s what happens when you know what they can and cannot do – and I knew they could not do anything to Irene without my permission.) She said they didn’t have the staff to monitor me in the recovery room; I said that was fine, I was an RN and would monitor her closely. She said “do I have to call a supervisor?” (The velvet glove didn’t work, now here comes the iron fist.) I said to call whoever she wanted, but Irene was not leaving me.  So they left me on a less-than-totally-comfortable recovery room bed for the six hours, but I didn’t care; I had my little daughter and we talked and I watched her sleep. It was wonderful.

The day-and-a-half we stayed was interesting, too. Peter was there most of the time and both days, at midnight, someone came and took Irene to the nursery “to check on her.” I gave them 10 minutes and then went down to the nursery to get her back. Peter asked why they had to take her and the nurse hemmed and hawed. I explained that they had to justify the nursery charge that would be on my hospital bill, and Peter (poor innocent) asked “why didn’t they just say so?”

Things went differently with Daniel. I was 37 and NOT classified as advanced maternal age – the definition had changed. I had realized that I am not a good candidate for natural childbirth and discussed with my OB when I should go to the hospital to be able to have an epidural when I was ready for it. I still refused routine ultrasounds, although I made it clear to the OB that I would certainly agree if there was a clinical reason for the ultrasound and that just having a feeling that one was needed would be an adequate reason – she was very experienced and good clinicians can’t always point to specifics that make them suspect something is going on. So when I was a week post-due, I had an ultrasound showing there was very little amniotic fluid. OB scheduled me for induction, and I’d researched inductions and found there really was evidence that going over 42 weeks produced bad outcomes for the baby. I finally went into labor 36 hours before my scheduled induction, but he was stuck at station +5 and I could NOT get him out. Every time the OB urged me to have a C-section, I begged for more time to push. Finally, I heard the nurse tell the OB that the baby’s heart was showing early decelerations. Late decelerations are normal; early decelerations are not. OB didn’t even have to say anything, she just looked at me. I sighed and said “I know, we do the C-section.” Five minutes later, I had a big gaping hole in my belly and Daniel was on the way to an oxygen tent with a spontaneous pneumothorax (which no one except me seemed particularly concerned about, the pediatrician said it would probably heal without further intervention in a day or two, and that is what happened). I didn’t get to have him room in with me, obviously, so I went to the nursery as much as I could. They were worried because his breathing rate was too fast, but when I held him, it slowed to normal. Maybe that’s because a newborn baby is SUPPOSED to be in Mama’s arms? Anyway, we both went home at the end of the usual three days.

While I have to admit I like the idea of home births, my children and I could have died from either of my deliveries. I couldn’t get Irene out because of the pain and I couldn’t get Daniel out because the amniotic fluid cushion was gone. If I hadn’t been in the hospital, I wouldn’t even have known that Daniel was in danger, and I don’t know if I would have had time to get to the hospital and get an epidural with Irene.

I was in an unusual position because I was already an experienced registered nurse before I started having kids. I’d worked in hospitals (although not OB) so I knew what the hospital could legally do. I also knew enough to recognize was was really for the baby’s safety and what was just for the hospital’s convenience, and I was prepared to fight intimidation if necessary while actively advocating for my baby’s best interest. But any woman can shop around; babies are revenue-producers for the hospital and hospitals woo pregnant women. Never mind which hospital has the best steak dinner, look for which has a bath to labor in or works to keep mama and baby together or whatever is most important to you. If you have a feisty nurse friend who is willing to advise you, take him/her along when you go into labor. Don’t fight with the hospital ahead of time, it just wastes your energy and alerts them that you may be an uncooperative (i.e., not willing to do whatever they say) patient. Remember, they cannot do anything to you or your baby without your permission, but they WILL assume your permission is implied if you don’t specifically refuse something.

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Since Vade Mecum does recognize the Gutenberg files, it’s not like I will lack reading material for this program. But I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to create my own.

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Last year at this time, we had 4 drivers and 1 car. My daughter was off at college and my son was at basic Army National Guard training. My husband telecommutes, so we were able to manage just fine with one car, and had for a number of years.

Yuppies? Not us.

Today, we have 4 drivers and 4 cars. My son came home with a bonus burning a hole in his pocket and immediately bought a car. He was also determined to volunteer to go someplace interesting like Iraq or Afghanistan, and got orders to deploy August 7, so he left his car to his college-student sister. She was enjoying the freedom of being able to drive to her job or anywhere else she wanted when the Army doctors decided my son’s shoulder had not healed enough for deployment. He’d have to stay home.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t jump for joy that he wasn’t going to head for someplace dangerous. But I felt bad for his disappointment. Naturally, he wanted his car back, so I also felt bad that my daughter had tasted freedom (there is no feeling like your first car!) and had it yanked away. So I discussed it with my husband and decided to watch for something reliable that we could afford.

So I saw a local classified for a 1986 Saab for $700. I could afford that, but did it run? We took it for a test drive and while it’s definitely an old car, it seemed to run fine. It had a standard shift, which made my husband drool but which my daughter doesn’t know how to drive, so my husband volunteered to teach her. He has wanted a standard-shift car for the entire 22 years we have been married. It wasn’t my ideal car for her; I know from experience that driving a standard on winter roads is not fun, and I would rather have seen my daughter driving a tank. But I sure liked the price.

Parked right behind the Saab was another vehicle with a “For Sale” sign, a 1984 Ford Bronco. Now that was a tank! It had a lot of rust and the owner was asking $1500, which I thought was a little high, but it was an automatic and DH agreed we should at least call the owner, who said it had been his grandmother’s. (A variation on the “little old lady who only drove it on Sundays” sales pitch?) So we did another test drive. It had trouble starting but ran fine once it started. It also had 4-wheel drive, a definite plus on Laramie roads that can stay snow- and ice-covered for weeks at a time in winter. But the seller and I couldn’t agree on a price, so we bought the Saab and DH planned to teach my daughter how to drive a standard.

I waited a couple of days and called the Bronco owner again. I figured the car had been sitting there for months, so it’s not like people were beating down his door to buy it, and he might be willing to come down a little. And it worked; we agreed on a price and met at the bank yesterday. My daughter even made time in her busy schedule to come with me to get the Bronco, so I was able to get it in her name and she won’t have to worry about anyone yanking it away from her (again!)

So here we are, 4 drivers with a car each. My husband is looking forward to being able to participate in more activities without leaving me car-less. I still have our original vehicle, a 2005 Toyota Matrix which is just the right height for me to get in and out with severe arthritis. My son has his 2002 Oldsmobile Alero back and is hopefully job-hunting. And my daughter is crowing on her Facebook page about having her own wheels.

Oh well. Yuppieville isn’t so bad.

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But my husband and family have all relentlessly made fun of it, ignoring all the times it worked just fine and harping on the occasional exception. My 18-year-old son, in particular, laughed hysterically when he was going to Denver and I suggested he ask to take the GPS along – he’d rather call us whenever he gets lost and have us puzzle out from Google Maps where he should go. So when my husband and I planned a trip to Denver to take my son to a parkour event, I knew they would have fun razzing me about the GPS once again. Meanwhile, the little TomTom got me from my favorite dim sum place to the park and then across town to pick up some composting worms and back to the park … where my son announced I was going to lead a caravan to a parkour gym that no one knew where it was. Apparently after quite a bit of discussion about how to find it, my son said “My mom has a GPS” and volunteered me to get them there. Yes, this is the same son who has been making fun of it for almost a year … I pointed out that I at least need an address to plug into the GPS, but he did have an address, and I led two other cars through Denver roads to the gym. (There was a third car, but when I had to pull out of an exit ramp rather quickly, the third car didn’t keep up with me.) The GPS saves the day!

I also used the GPS to get to a restaurant for dinner, and then back onto I-25 heading home. And for some reason, no one made fun of it.

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iSilo says it reads its own format as well as .txt and some .pdb files. I downloaded a .cab file for Pocket PC that said it required an ARM processor, which apparently my e800 has because it installed fine. It started and told me I was on day 1 of a 30-day trial period. However, even when I had it look in my ebooks directory, it did not see any of the text files, only the .plucker file which it couldn’t actually read. So I didn’t need 30 days to decide it wasn’t going to work for me and removed it.

Mobipocket Reader looked very customizable and I know Gutenberg offers many of its titles in their format. I downloaded the “Old Windows Mobile” .cab file for ARM processors and installed it without problems. But it doesn’t customize the items I would like to set. I don’t really care about the colors, which I can set, but I’d like to be able to permanently set which directory to look in and to list all the files in that directory, and I can’t. I have to manually change those choices every time I click on “Library.” It also takes a LONG time to load. The standard version is free, the Pro version is for purchase (I couldn’t find for how much) and includes the capability to scroll or switch to landscape mode. It automatically found the .plucker.pdb files (the “type of file” defaults to .prc) but couldn’t open them (error message was that they were corrupted, all three of them – right). Interestingly, Mobipocket couldn’t open any of the three .mobi files I downloaded from Gutenberg. Mobipocket was able to open the big Bleak House .txt file, but it took several minutes to load and there was another delay when I tried to do anything but simple page-down. But I like being able to read using the scroll button or the down-arrow button (which it treats as a page-down button) so this one stays, at least for the time being.

Tiny eBook Reader ($34.23 but with a free trial version) says it can read books of any size in txt (and zipped), html, and lit formats. I clicked on the .exe file and the information said I could add ebooks to the library by moving them into the My Documents folder or onto the CF card. It installed on my PC but the “finish” screen gave me the option of installing it to my “connected Windows Mobile with touchscreen” which I selected. It showed up on the PDA under “Programs” and started just fine, giving me a choice of folders to look in for ebooks. I clicked on my ebooks folder and it found the .txt files but none of the others. It opened Bleak House with no delay and I was able to move around in it with no problems. It did leave several .tbr files in the ebook folder, though. This one stays to be tested further.

I couldn’t resist a program named Tome Raider although it costs 15 British pounds (I got the free trial version) and appeared from the documentation to only read its own proprietary file format. It installed painlessly from a zip file and opened on the PDA, but I was right about it only reading its own format; it saw no ebooks until I downloaded a “trial” book from the TR website, then it opened the one I had just downloaded but every other page was “please register” so I uninstalled it. Too bad, I still love the name!

uBook ($15 with a free demo) claims to read .txt, .html, .rtf, .pdb, and .prc files as well as zipped files of any of these. Knowing now that I have an ARM processor, I downloaded the .cab file for Pocket PC ARM with Toshiba listed in parentheses. It installed, but gave me an error message that it might not have installed correctly because it was for an earlier version of Windows Mobile. But it opened okay and went directly to a 43-page User Guide. There is a nice clear (if tiny) page number at the top of the screen with forward and back arrows to either side. But there are also arrows pointing in different directions in the corners that are not obvious what they do, the type size is miniscule, and the program defaults to covering up the Start menu button – not a good thing as there is no quick way to exit the program. I finally found an Options section by clicking on the unlabelled buttons at the bottom left, but most of them were disabled, including the type size adjustment, presumably because this was the demo version. I paged down and the program locked up, I had to do a soft reset to get out of it – NOTHING worked. I still wanted to see what files it could read, so after the soft reset I clicked on the program again and found myself directly in the options section again and unable to get out AGAIN – had to do another soft reset and removed the program. It may be a great program, but if I can’t navigate around in it I’ll never know.

Vade Mecum is an open-source free program, although I couldn’t originally tell whether it supports Windows Mobile 2003 – since it hasn’t been updated since 2006, I thought it was worth trying. This is the Windows Mobile program to read Plucker files. The .cab installed but gave me the same “designed for a previous version of Windows Mobile” error message I encountered with uBook. But it not only opened, it found the Plucker files without further prompting and had a nice clear “settings” button at the bottom of the screen to let me adjust items like the directory where the ebooks are stored and what size typeface to use. It also defaulted to full-screen mode but it was easy to find the pull-down screen to turn full-screen off. It opened Bleak House in sections but remained pretty fast when I navigated both within the section and to the next section. It also let me use the scroll button on my Toshiba. I like this program! Even though it apparently *only* reads plucker files and I’ll have to go see which of the books I’ve already downloaded in .txt format are available in plucker format. It did create some small files of its own but they are safely tucked in a VadeMecum folder, not cluttering up my ebooks folder. Definitely on the short list.

Free Zulu Reader can read .epub and .rtf files. The .cab installed fine but didn’t actually run, which wasn’t a big surprise as the wiki listing claimed it would run under Windows Mobile 2003 but the download page didn’t list it. Removed from PDA but this was another one that I couldn’d get the icon out of the Programs folder.

There is still a brisk market on ebay in these older devices, and plenty of people like me who want the convenience of a PDA but can’t justify (or afford) spending hundreds of dollars on the newest one. That is why I’m going into such detail here, because everything I found on Google was several years old – I’m supplying info on what is available *now*.

Note: comments have to be approved because this site gets way too much spam each day. I’m eager for comments pro or con, but please Email me at mamasylvia at mamasylvia dot com to tell me you left a real comment, otherwise it will probably get deleted with the unread spam.