I brought my Kindle to the birthday party on Friday, to show
tpau how splufty it is. Whereupon I handed it to her, she turned it on, and the screen crapped out quite remarkably. The upper-right corner still looked right, but the rest was sort of smeared with vertical and horizontal lines. A hard reset did nothing for it (as expected, but it was worth a try), so on Saturday I called Amazon customer service.The CS lady was friendly and efficient. I mentioned that no, I haven't actually *used* the basic leather cover -- I bought one, but hadn't tried it out before
keshwyn's report that the covers were killing Kindles everywhere. The lady on the phone was downright surprised (most broken Kindles, I gather, are because of the stupid cover), but immediately fired off an order for a replacement Kindle, and credited my credit card for the cost of the unused cover. (Without my asking, I should note.)The replacement arrived today, and transferring my content took only a couple of minutes, so I have to say that the only real hassle of the entire process is that I have to print out the label and ship the dead one back to them. Almost perfect, except...
... they reproduced the original order *exactly*. And the original order was Jane's Christmas present. I've started to think of the Kindle as mine, in large part because she never did use it, but the original intent was that it would give her a way to read despite the tumor impinging on her optic nerve and making everything blurry. I had figured that the Kindle would provide a way to large-print anything she might want to read. (In practice, despite her best intent, she never again had enough attention span to read anything.)
The original was ordered with gift wrap. And a custom card written from me to her, in the distinctive cute syntax that I've been using for her presents for 20 years. The replacement is exactly identical.
I'm generally coping, and this will pass. (And getting to hang out with
serakit for a few hours was a now-unusual delight, and gave me an excuse to cook dinner for someone.) But between this morning's rose and this evening's present, the day has been quite remarkably bittersweet... 