Quick Nook Tip

  I understand a product and service being in its infancy... trust me. Something is bound to not work or not work the way it was designed and rebooting it will not ALWAYS fix it (though I highly recommend you add this to your repertoire, trust me, you'll look like a genius!!)...

  So my Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader suddenly became a constipated baby last week: it stopped downloading books. Something about "Unable to Connect" Please. Try. Again. UGH! I finally waited an hour on hold for the tech support after doing everything my engineering mind could think of and merely wanted affirmation that their servers were whack, please be patient.

 

  My call connected to a nice guy whose name escapes me in the "New York Area" (as he said was all he was permitted to disclose) (is there an angry mob of nook readers ready to swarm them??) and he was actually on about his first day of the job. He had me unregister it and re-register and was baffled yet humorous. He said he liked his new nook, that it was a cross between an "Etch-a-Sketch and an iPhone" (kind of accurate really) and I finally got him to give me the golden ticket:

The Nook puts an AUTHORIZATION on your default credit card every time you download something. Bing to the O.


  My default credit card is really my credit union debit/Visa card and since I've had problems with them not conforming in the past (no Walmart.com checkouts, for example) I finally put two and two together to get four err to fix my problem and put in a different, conventional CC and now it works like M-A-G-I-C. All of my books suddenly reappeared and my newest, The Secret Life of Bees has already been slightly devoured.  I think my credit union either blocked them after so many authorization requests or just can't support their card being used in that fashion.  I am working on getting some more information on that end.

  Now if I could just get the Book Fairy to start paying up.