Its been a while since I've shared my latest rantings. I know some would call it complaining, however in this case, as with my other articles, ranting is not complaining if there are valid reasons to do so. When I rant, there are always valid reasons because of the multiple, daily, outside and inside sources that are designed to irritate me. It's a mean old world.

Today's subject is the group of people who change the language of certain terms that have been around for years and are ingrained in the minds of a high percentage of the population, a.k.a, old people. I've tried to come up with an acronym for all of that statement but couldn't. Let use the term "young whippersnappers". This term, as you probably know is not new and even older than most of us.  When I refer to these people, we'll use the acronym of, Y.W.

My latest encounter with the Y.W. concerns my introduction to the Amazon Kindle. For those who are not familiar with the Kindle, it is basically a hand-held reader that can store thousands of books, documents, etc. Books can be download to your Kindle and your PC from Amazon and other sites, and prices are considerable less expensive than buying them from a bookstore, even if they have them on sale.

My wife is an avid reader so I thought the Kindle would be a perfect Christmas gift for she is now nursing a broken ankle and getting around is difficult. Of course setting up this Kindle device is up to me since I am the resident "geek", but this task hasn't been easy for in the past several years I have discovered reading today's instruction manuals is like reading a book in a foreign language. Yes, I do know there are foreign language sections on a lot of manuals.

Back to the Kindle. It was my plan to download books to my PC and then transfer them to the Kindle. The Kindle has the capability to connect to the internet on it's own and eliminate one step of the process, however I won't get into that; another issue altogether. Maybe on the next rant.

To connect the Kindle to your PC requires a cable, which is included, and since both ends are different, connection is fairly easy. Since it's Christmas and I just heard 12 Days of Christmas by Allen Sherman, I'm reminded about his Japanese Transistor Radio coming with a wire. One end goes in your ear, and the other end doesn't go anywhere because it's bent. I digress. Now to read the instruction booklet. Uh-oh, there's a word I know well but its use here is out of context, at least to me it is. The booklet is talking about "ejecting the Kindle from my PC! Now, I know what ejecting from an airplane is, and in reference to other objects, requires a button of release of some type, but this action concerning my Kindle is absurd. Assuming I agree with this function and find out how to execute it, how far will my Kindle go? I have visions of it bouncing off the wall. This can't be right. Well, after studying the situation I finally realized they wanted me to "un-plug" it from the Kindle. How clever. Y.W. just struck again. So, after several days trying to interpret the manual and 40 minutes on the phone with tech support from Kindle, I can now get a book from Amazon to my PC, then to my Kindle. I must say the Kindle is a marvelous little device and will do a lot of things I have yet to explore. That frightens me and the stress is stating to build already.

Why they have to substitute some words of the language I'll never understand. We were getting along with the present ones very well, weren't we? Perhaps we could only change them every 100 years. That way most of the old people would be dead, and the ones that weren't probably wouldn't care. I know technology is moving more rapidly today and new terms are needed to relate to new devices. The simple answer is instruction manuals that are more "perspicuous" (clearly expressed or presented; lucid). You see how simple that was? Did I just suggest a new way to create more jobs? Oh Mr. President?