Nothing says “let's get this trip started!” quite like waiting eagerly for the mail, grabbing a new piece of technology, charging it and working to get new software on it hours before your plane to another continent leaves.
Before Morocco it was a new laptop that needed Linux. This time, it was a Nook that needed to be rooted. Because what's the point of having an e-reader that can read books from Barnes and Noble when I can have an e-reader that can read books from Barnes and Noble, Kindle, Kobo, and Google? And I'm not going to let minor issues like a limited time frame before I leave the country for a while stop me.
I'd planned ahead by preparing a micro-SD card with the software it needed to root my device. When the Nook arrived, I discovered that my micro-SD card did not fit into the proper slot. It needed to be a slightly different shape. So my father found me a micro-SD card that fit, then moved the files that were on it.
With the taxi scheduled to arrive in an hour, the estimated length of time for the operation to complete was a little over one hour. The computer we were transferring the files to wasn't coming with us. \this was going to be interesting.
Fortunately, this was one of the many times that the length of time Windows thought a process would take to complete didn't match the length of time it actually took. Even better, the former was an overestiamte. It was done with time to spare.
With that out of the way, I could again write the necessary files to the micro-SD card and try and boot the Nook using that. After a couple attempts, it worked, and I could proceed to make a backup. The backup would take 15-45 minutes to complete, and the taxi was due in 45 minutes. I didn't really need a backup, did I? (Yes, I did.)
Fortunately, the backup also finished on the early side of the estimate. So I had time to root the device before the taxi came. I also had time to glance through the instructions for adding the Android marketplace.
“Once your Nook has booted, you need to follow the next steps without delay. You don't need to rush, but you do need to move through them without interruption.” It was starting to feel almost like a video game. “You have unlocked Nook. You are trying to unlock Super Nook.” The only shame is that there wasn't a timer into the corner counting down to when I lost a credit.
Without enough time to confidently try and install Google Market, I had to wait until we were within a wireless connection at the airport. On the taxi ride over I discovered that I did not have any books on the Nook apart from a quick start guide and a user manual. Add that to the list of things I should do once I had a wireless network.
Executing all of the steps without interruption wasn't as hard as the warning had made it seem, nor were the consequences that dire. (You'd just need to try re-entering it without interruption.) It was also followed immediately by a long period of waiting for the server and my Nook to get used to each other. Once that was done, I could download apps for Kindle and Kobo.
With 10 minutes left before boarding for the plane began, I had three different methods of reading e-books on my phone, but still no e-books. So I quickly tried to download as many different (and interesting) books as I could. I couldn't find any free ones from Barnes and Noble, but I could find some from Amazon and Kobo that seemed to download to my Nook. Along the way, Pride and Prejudice also appeared.
When I got onto the phone, I realized that I didn't actually have any of the Kindle books I'd thought I had. And the Kobo books I downloaded wouldn't open. So I only had one fiction and two Nook guides I could read.
Nothing in the Nook guides covered rooting the device to make it into a full Android tablet, so they were useless to my mind.
