I once upon a time owned an iPad, but it proved to be too much of a distraction, so I sold it. That was before I bought this time-locked Kitchensafe box in which to lock up my smartphone while I work. In fact, it was before I even had a smartphone. Now that I better know how to insulate myself from distraction, I decided it might be safe to own another tablet, but I didn’t really want to spend six hundred bucks again.

So when I saw that the new Kindle Fire 8s were on sale for like $70, I bought one. I’d previously tried out the even cheaper version (I got the seven inch Kindle Fire for $35), but something about it put me off, so I returned it. Not sure what it was. The tablet just didn’t feel very responsive. I felt like the device was resisting me. I wasn’t expecting an iPad, but it was so far from one that I couldn’t take it.

However this device isn’t bad. I’ve been using it to watch television shows while I travel. I also got a $15 SD card to expand its memory from 16 gigs to 80 gigs, and I’m, like, very pleased with the purchase. I’m also really embedded in Amazon’s content ecosystem now. I’ve bought like five hundred Kindle books, and I’m also a member of Audible, and I watch a fair bit of Amazon Video. (I know, I know, I’m killing the bookstore). It’s nice to have a device that’s so well-integrated with the services I use to consume most of my media. It still hasn’t replaced my Kindle as my primary reading device though. The battery life on the Fire just isn’t good enough, and I also find it distracting when the internet is just a click away. Also, the backlit screen really is harder on the eyes than a frontlit one.

Anyway, this isn’t the sort of blog post I normally write, but I dunno: I still have inside me the teenage boy who derived great joy from getting a new computer or a new video game system. And this really is the season for that kind of consumption, isn’t it?