I took the plunge and bought a Touch yesterday. I ordered it through Circuit City, and picked it up with my family at about 5:30 yesterday. I got to play with it for about ten minutes before gaming. I did get music and videos loaded, and I handed it to Sandra to play with for a few minutes before I left. I am VERY happy with it. I connected to our network with no problem, grabbed a You Tube video, and then looked at the Vecenza gaming blog page. It cached the page so I was able to look at it today as I blog this. I’m watching an episode of Neurotically Yours right now. I also watched a couple of Enya music videos and a video of Megan laughing! Awesome. More updates as I find new cool things.
http://laptopgiving.org/en/give-one-get-one.php
I’m not sure if we will take advantage of this offer to get a “laptop” for Megan and a 3rd world child, but I like the idea of what they are trying to do. It seems like a great educational tool.
My canned chili of choice is Wolf. I used to eat their delicious (but fatty) regular with no beans. About 7 years ago, my wife got me switched to thinking a little healthier, and I started buying Wolf Turkey (no beans). Wolf wasn’t available in Tennessee, so on trips to visit my parents, I would buy a couple of dozen cans to take home. Many times my parents have delivered chili to my door. Mmmm. They have done the same for my brother Greg in Maryland. Last year my parents move to Nashville to be close to their young grandchildren (Megan was just over one at the time, and Michael was on the way). There goes my chili connection. We still have dear friends in Dallas, but with two small children, that trip is no easy feat. Imagine my delight yesterday to find my local Harris Teeter stocked with Wolf. They didn’t have Turkey no beans, but they had Turkey with beans. Good enough for me! Woo hoo! I’ll talk to the manager about special orders eventually. I’ve bought everything they had twice now.
On another product note, McCutcheons in Frederick, MD has become our supplier of choice for jams, jellies and apple/pumpkin butter. A Whole Foods Market opened in Nashville in Hill Center last week, and I was surprised to find Apple and Pumpkin Butter on the shelf (on sale no less). Delightful! Whole Foods’ sale price was actually lower than McCutcheons price. Whole Foods offers complimentary valet parking (tip your valet) for shoppers just outside the front door. We haven’t used it yet b/c of the kids, but we might soon enough.
On the same note, the new Hill Center is also home to a Zoe’s Kitchen, a Pei Wei, a Merrell store (shoes; comfy, comfy shoes) and Swoozies. Swoozies is a “girly” store in my estimation selling among other things personalized note cards, stationary, etc. Sandra was very happy when I said “Order what you want.” I wasn’t so happy when I accidently saw the receipt in the van. Ugh! That will teach me to look. Hill Center will also be home to a Five Guys burger place that we first went to in Frederick with my brother. Yum!
In the Cooper Cooler post I told you all about my great love for this device. Well, after just under a year, it has gone bad. It turns off quickly when I load it and start it. Luckily, my birthday is approaching.
I need this!
Funny how wants become needs…
I’ll be dropping this list in the “Gift Ideas” page as well; a list of things NOT to get me, but my love of strategy games, well, games of any sort, has been long lived. In no particular order:
- Puerto Rico
- San Juan
- Betrayal at House on the Hill
- Alhambra
- Gardens of Alhambra
- Carcasonne
- Carcasonne the City
- Settlers of Catan (and Cities and Knights of Catan, both with 6 player explansions)
- Jiggity
- Cranium
- Bang (and a few expansions)
- Munchkin
- Lost Cities
I know there are more, and I’ll edit this post later as I think of them as well as dropping it on my Gift Ideas page.
If you know me, you know I love my Roomba Scheduler. I was an early adopter of Roomba in 2002, and I’ve loved it ever since. Sure, we still have an upright to get the messes produced by two active children, but Roomba does a great job of heading under beds and furniture to get dust bunnies before they multiply.
iRobot is coming out with a new product in 2008 with a limited beta in 2007. I signed up for the beta list right away. With any luck, I’ll get into the beta group. The ConnectR is a Roomba shaped bot with a small web cam mounted on it. It connects to your in home wireless network, and it can be controlled remotely through a custom application. It was two way audio (but sadly, the video is only one way). The idea is to let parents, relatives and friends have a window into your world. I see it mainly working as a way to show grandparents, aunts and uncles what the kids are doing, and occasionaly Sandra will let me hook up to see what is going on with the kids during the day.
The next step of course is to allow the control through a standard web browser so you don’t have to deploy an application. I’d love to control the thing using my iPod Touch and Safari.
http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=347
As I was on my way to gaming Tuesday night, I had a few extra minutes. I intended to run into Kmart for a quick trip. As I opened the door, a commanding elderly black woman pushing a cart told me to “keep the door open for her” in a no nonsense town. Gentleman that I am, I held the door for her as she pushed a shopping cart out of the store with a heavy-looking suitcase in it and some sort of plastic bag in the child area. She then matter of factly started telling me how rude the store manager was, and how rude some other customer had been, and asked me to help her get the suitcase out so she could retrieve a camera. She wanted to snap a shot of a table she had told another customer to buy. She even encouraged the customer to make an offer instead of pay the posted price. She seemed miffed the manager or customer (not sure which) had not compensated her for her suggestions by giving her something. We got the camera out, and she took a polaroid of the table in question that was sitting outside. She kept up a running dialog of “trained as an architect”, “live in Brentwood”, “I don’t expect to be disrespected”, “I sold cars for a day and was the most successful salesperson. They gave me a car.” She either has led the most interesting life imaginable, or she is a bit off her rocker. I couldn’t tell if she was waiting for someone to pick her up, or if she might even be homeless. She was dressed very nicely, thanked me warmly for helping her with the bag, and we parted ways. It was a very surreal experience. I went with the flow and helped her, was polite, and nodded my head appropriately. I hope I went a little way to brightening her day (”that nice young man that helped me at Kmart” sort of karma).
Sandra and I discussed the idea of me giving up costly vices to achieve justification of purchasing an iPod Touch. The two vices I came up with that have monetary costs attached were:
- Consumption of carbonated beverages; typically caffenated - sadly, I rated this at about $5/wk (sadly, b/c that is too much in any case)
- Consumption of gourmet espresso beverages (Goodbye Starbucks!) - I rated this at $10/mo (one every two weeks)
I identified a third as I wrote this post:
- Lunch “out” at the company cafeteria; it means I have to stay a little better prepared, but saves $5/wk
All three of those means I save about $50/month. The 16 GB iPod Touch will run me $437 less 20% on $425 of it ($85 savings - I can get Circuit City cards at 20% through a gift card program - e-mail me for details). That means $352 for the iPod Touch. At $50/mo, the iPod Touch is paid for by the end of April. Here I go!
