Thanks to the ice storms of last winter, we have plenty of wood to burn. The ice did quite a bit of damage to our redbud trees. I've been tempted to use some of the tree trimmings to smoke meat, but the boss says no. I argue: but redbuds bloom in the spring, like the fruit and nut trees favored by the smoking experts. And the female redbud trees produce seed pods which are a kind of fruit. Still no.
I have a new toy, a Nokia 770 tablet. I'd been looking at the various hand-helds, wanting a more portable ebook reader than my laptop, but the tablets seemed a bit small and/or pricey at $300 and up. When Nokia released their new model, the 800, the 770s went on sale and I snagged one from Tiger Direct for $150. The 770 runs a Debian-derived version of Linux, is a bit crude and slow, but once I added some memory, a better PDF reader (evince), and internet radio (streamtuner), I had a nice pocket ebook and internet reader. The rechargable battery lasts about as long as the one in my cell phone. The wifi range is as good as my laptop.