Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Free Stuff

Since I've re-injured my knee AGAIN (this time with swelling and everything), I spent last week on the couch with my leg elevated.  Fun, fun, fun.  Not.  Working with a laptop actually on your lap is not the best way to work, and I got so sick of watching tv that I wanted to pull my hair out.

The knee is much improved this week--I can actually get around pretty well with a knee brace on it.  And, even better, I can sit up at the table for long periods of time, especially if I alternate elevating the leg on a chair and putting it down.  This means I can actually work and play on the 'net with relative ease.  Yay!

I've spent the last couple of days downloading free stuff off the web, from the Kindle Store over at Amazon, and from Microsoft.  The Microsoft stuff was pretty basic--I just discovered the joys of Microsoft OneNote, and I was busy downloading tons of notebook templates for it.  (And a bunch of Powerpoint and Word templates, too!)

The Kindle Store, however, was fabulous!  A friend of mine pointed out over Facebook that you could get Kindle for PC for FREE!  (Thanks, Sue!)  I also found out you can get a Kindle app for your iPhone or your Blackberry or just about anything else you can think of, all free.  The best thing, however, was all the free books you can download.  Most of them are older (like cookbooks or classic literature), or the first in a series, or some such, but still--plenty of reading material, and some really useful volumes besides!  (For you preppers out there, I found some great TEOTWAWKI materials.)

A word of warning to Canadians and anyone else not residing in the U.S.--You can only get the books at the U.S. Amazon site, and the prices are in U.S. dollars.  Also, not all volumes are available outside the U.S., and some of the ones that are available are at different, usually higher, prices.  Most particularly, some of the books that are free in the U.S. are NOT free if you live elsewhere.  All in all it wasn't too bad, though.

Especially worth it if you're somewhat bedridden, and not sick!

2 comments:

Lilac SilverFox said...

Hope your knee heals up quickly! I find it a bit funny since I use my laptop on my lap daily LOL I don't have the room for a computer desk at the moment hehe
I could never understand the popularity with things like Kindle. I hate staring at a PC screen reading that long, and would much rather curl up in bed or the tub to read lol but to each their own. Hope you found some good reads, and of course USA has to claim it and so the rest of us pay more...jerks LOL
Blessed Be

CousinLinda said...

MM, Ronda! Thanks for following!

Thanks for the good wishes, also. And I might find using the computer on my lap easier if I did it every day. I prefer real books, too, btw, but I can't argue with being able to carry literally thousands upon thousands of pages in my pocket or my computer bag! (Especially if you're talking about research materials.)