Our current carrier is Unicel, who has been purchased by Verizon, and we can switch anytime now with no ETF, and be considered new customers at Verizon, AND I get a discount because my school uses them, so I'm pretty sure that's where I'm headed.

I'm looking at the Env2, and Dave is looking at the Chocolate 3. (Granted, he only wants "a skinny phone with a camera," and that was the skinniest one he held at the kiosk in the mall.)

Before we pull the trigger on this, any thoughts? If we switch now, we can get the phones for $80 each (after rebates, which I do right away) and a $50 new customer discount/debit card/ blah blah thingie. WIll there be better deals after Christmas? Should we go for it now?

If money were no object, I'd totally wait and jump ship to AT&T for an iPhone, but I just can't stomach paying for data, no matter how cool the phone, at this point in my life. And while Unicel has been okay for GSM, generally, the CDMA of Verizon/US Cell seems to be stronger up here. (Um, I actually created an online test for my FYS students to take, just so they could take a sample test, and for questions, I asked about cell carriers and phones. I am nothing if not a Researcher.)

Any of you have a Kindle? You know, the ebook thingie from Amazon? It seems cool.

One of my colleagues got one a few months ago to "test it out," and I found out by happenstance, and when I did, I begged him to let me touch it. I played for less than five minutes, and yes, it was pretty neat, but not, you know, three to four hundred DOLLARS neat.  Especially since it doesn't do library books, and I am more of a borrower than a buyer. (If it were like a Roku for library books — a $100 device with unlimited access, etc, I'd be STOKED. I do love the roku, seriously.)

Fast forward to Monday, when said colleague sees me in the hall and says "hey, you want that kindle? I hate it." He would rather read on his blackberry, just doesn't like it, learned what he needed to and was wanting to pass it on, so I was like OH, HELL YES. Only much more professional and calm, like "yeah, I'd love to have it, I can show it to faculty." (Um, yeah. Ahem.)

So anyway, now that I have had a Kindle dangled in front of me, I'm looking at the Kindle store and making plans on books to uh, test out on it. Obama's two memoirs are under 5 bucks, as is the Red Tent, which everyone tells me I should read, but I've resisted for so long that if my mom saw me holding the book, I'd just get some "I told you so!"

And I don't HAVE it yet. I have the box, and I've added it to my shelf o' tech boxes, that are, amazingly enough, great conversation starters to people coming near my cube (it joins a MacBookPro box, and two Flip Video boxes) but DAMN, I want to get some hands on with the thing. Here's hoping my colleague unearths it at home this weekend…..

I got a roku for our anniversary, and OH MY GOD, I love it. For one, I can watch Airline (as I mentioned), but it's also nice to have some kids stuff on there for those times when we just need a movie to watch. The day I got the Roku, we checked out Ratatouille (eh) but Milo & Otis is just a cat and a dog playing with every other animal you can imagine, and she loves animals, and to help reset her clock I played the first 13 minutes of Annie, and she loved the Kids N MUSIC! And the Roku takes out of the tv guilt equation two things — advertising (either within the viewing of the movie, or when we leave the house –there is no cobranded Annie bratz doll, or Milo & Otis shoes), and schedules. We don't schedule tv, and we don't have cable, or a DVR, or even a VCR hooked up, but the bigger she gets, the more trouble she can get into on her own, and there are times when a few minutes of uh, zen, are appreciated.

So far, Ing's tv watching is 20 minutes of Arthur in the morning (on PBS) as there's a gap between when I leave the house and when Dave is done getting ready, so she gets a cereal bar and cup of milk and some aardvark, and on Saturdays and Sundays, Sesame Street is on from 8-9, and that is mama & daddy's coffee waking up time. We can't sleep in anymore, but we do take our time 'waking up,' with the help of Jim Henson. Since the discovery of AFV two weeks ago, AKA "Guys all fall down show," she's liked that, and Dave has instituted a family cuddle and viewing of AFV for about 20 minutes before bathtime, because Ingrid LOVES it, and it's kind of a nice way to end the weekend.

I still tend to feel guilty about tv, and maybe the Roku will now make me lose all my "I have no cable" street cred, but it is a damn cool device.

Happy New Year! I started the year with a sweet bargain.

So, I ordered Dave a GPS from REI, and it was really more than I wanted to spend, but I really wanted to get it for him. We get it,and it turns out that Magellan just does NOT play nice with Macs, it was kind of a pain in the ass to figure out, too, blah blah blah, so I’m like "Dave, I’m sending it back, and we’ll keep looking." I mean, it is the thought that counts, right? I do some research, and settle on a range of Garmins, and poke around ebay, Amazon, etc looking for it.

Today we went to the LLBean outlet, to return some stuff, and they have a small case of electronics and knives and stuff, and it’s kind of jumbly, and I saw one in the back that was kind of like one I wanted, but I wasn’t sure, so we came home. When I got home, I realized that that would be a GREAT GPS, so I tell Dave "Hey, I’m going to go check it out again, I’ll be right back."

I go, they open the case, and I finally see the price: 249 marked down to 199, as it was a return. I had seen a "mention this ad for 10% off at the outlet" ad, and I asked the clerk if tha applied "oh yes!" and I had a $10 giftcard from an earlier promotion, and because I’m a cardholder, I figured I had some Bean Bucks. So, I do the math, and am thinking "well, it’s more than the other one, but it does more so… okay, I’ll get it." Kind of doubting myself on the way up to the register, I remind myself that I can always return it, so I figure I’ll get it and check eBay again, or whatever.

At the register, I tell the clerk (different one) "I saw the ad on the BDN site for 10% off?" She hadn’t heard of it, but I pointed to the lady I’d talked to at the case and said "she knew about it" so the woman was like "okay, cool" and entered it in. I gave her the GC, and said "I also think I have some coupons" (and I did, $30!) and she says "okay, that’s $72.46." Wha? What the what-what? Apparently, it’s part of the outdoor and hunting equipment sale, too, and it started at 119, not 199. Um, okay. I’ll take it!

In the end — a better GPS (this one has a MicroSD slot to add maps for driving directions and auto routing and stuff!) for HALF the price. Insane.

I love my LLBean Outlet.

Alright, so, anyone out there geocaching with a mac? I have windows on my work laptop (a macbook pro) but would really rather work in mac because I am a snob.

I got Dave the Magellan Triton 300 for christmas, and it just seems really not intuitive. Blurgh.

Also, I have some kind of headcold or something, and Dave let me sleep in (knowing I went to bed feverish and crappy) and I woke up and was like "god, it must be almost nine, I HAVE to get up…" and it was……
.
.
.
10:49. I haven’t slept that late in YEARS. Whoa. Head still feels all full, too. yuck.

  blast from the past 
  Originally uploaded by Amity Beane

So, this picture was taken by my friend Amity from Amity’s photostream, whom I’ve known for a long time. (as you can see.) Power of the internet and all, we lost touch until she clicked through a link on whylime’s blogroll and realized that gretchen says was Gretchen S., from just up the road a piece.

It’s a fitting end to the week, really, where I’ve been Feeling My Age. I got contacts to try out — I used to wear them, but haven’t been fitted in ages — and the left one is great and the right one needs tweaking. I traded some pirated Jim Henson goodness for Mary Kay anti-aging stuff. I got a haircut. I refreshed my makeup stash. (Refined, really — concealer, tinted moisturizer, mascara) All this, with a cold. Feh.

So to have, at the end of the week, this grainy image of Me, Fifteen Years Ago (HOLY EFFING SHIT, THAT MATH IS RIGHT!) show up, is really fitting. Because, while my skin feels old and gray, life is so much better now. Um, let’s see, #50 was my first boyfriend. #11 was a Really Good Friend, that in retrospect, I think maybe he actually liked me? We talked on the phone for HOURS at night and had the same clock radio. The one with the ball had, just a month or two before this picture, gotten so drunk at lunch that he puked and shit himself all over the library (big deal, it was the only room with carpet in the building) and since it was sports physical day, one of the doctors treated him on site. But he was the star, so he didn’t get too punished. I mean, he’s holding the ball in the picture! #25 was Amy’s boyfriend. Oh, and the girls in front — the one on the far left has two kids now, I wrote about her on dland, I think, life hasn’t been good to her, then me, Amity, Tonya has a few kids last I heard, again, life not too good, and the last one is actually married to #50 now, but it was during this time that she was confiding in me on the bus trips about her unplanned (and unkept) pregnancy. (Not by #50.)

God. We all look so YOUNG.

ETA: #4 and #34 are both in jail, or were, for drug-related offenses. #34, named, no lie, not a nickname, Butch, was the biggest homophobe in all the land of wood. His brother was almost certainly gay, he married some girl, last I knew, because I think in his family, it was Not Okay to Be Gay. (Man, I KNOW that.) #15 is a lawyer. #40’s sister married #21 (incontinent ball-holder). #10’s girlfriend (as an adult) was killed in a car accident while he was on the phone with her. Actually, I’ve seen him most recently of any of them (save Amity herself) at the airport, when I dropped my sister off for her flight home in December, he was on his way back to Miami, where he was working hard to try to get some sort of desk job with the Heat. Oh, and to be all full-circle, this is the post where Amity commented and the connection was made. (She posted on the current post, must’ve been July, but the tourney post let me know that it was legit. :))

In a discussion about financial organization, someone pointed out www.wesabe.com , which is freaking. Awesome. I’ve looked at some other ones, and tried Quicken before, but it was almost impossible to synch with my credit union, and it was still a pita to set up.

ANYWAY. Wesabe kicks ass. Really easy to understand interface, and their firefox uploader is what makes it so perfect — I admit, I was expecting it to maybe only half work, what with the combination of a mac, and a local credit union, but nope… it worked awesome. And once you tag and edit your transactions, it remembers that, so it automatically converts whatever the CU transaction has "Hannaford #123 Union" or whatever, into "Hannaford" and files it into "groceries." or Irving is gas. Whatever. So I only have assign categories once for my most popular expenses (groceries, gas, childcare, etc), and I click a button, and it will all update and download and blah blah blah. AND! I’m one of the weird geeks who doesn’t have a printer, so I always just save-as the html file of an online receipt or itinerary or whatever, but another feature of the firefox widget for wesabe is that you can take that screenshot, and it will automatically attach to the transaction. Wicked cool.  I’ve only added our cash accounts, not our long term savings or the credit card or anything, but it is wicked, wicked cool.

Really good tale brewing, hopefully can tell it soon.

The digital move continues apace — instead of doing a typelist, my blogroll is available at my About page. i actually dig it way more than before, because it’s my bloglines subscriptions, and as I change my bloglines account, the blogroll changes. Very cool.  So, now you know that I read BOTH The Superficial AND For Better or For Worse, and a little of everything in between. Yay! And, I continue to love flickr/youtube/vox/livejournal for everything else, especially since the only other paid service is flickr. All told, I’m probably only saving $25/year, but, I think it’s the best way to manage all of my digital stuff at this point. I could buy another domain name and host it at dreamhost, but I’m not quite ready to make that leap.

I’m still considering the digital camera, but letting my birthday money earn interest for a bit. How .. boring. Actually, I’m trying to offload some stuff in an internet yard sale, essentially, in exchange for Amazon gift certificates, and would like to recycle a pair of too-big aerosoles, a used breastpump (sounds squickier than it IS, really), some cloth diapers, etc, into cash. The SD1000 is currently running around 200 bucks at Amazon (crazy!!) and I’m $55 in so far.  Whoohoo!

vacation is motoring along… Ingrid went to daycare today so that Dave and I could have a date, which meant watching Shrek3 in the cheap seats theater, eating a late lunch, and coming home for a romantic* afternoon followed by a really great nap.  Tomorrow, MDI, I think. Yay!

*I was well into adulthood before realizing that "romance," as mentioned on talk shows and in magazines (like "keep the romance alive!") means "sex," not "cheesy wine-n-rosepetals shenanigans." Ahem.

Here they are. I ended up just downgrading and moving to another URL, so my goal of saving money and headaches are both taken care of. Pretty cool, actually, in that typepad changed all of my links internally, as well, to reflect the new location. Good deal.

I probably won’t link video here, but most video is from my YouTube account anyway, which is snappity. And most video is of Ingrid, so loaded into Vox for all to see. All pictures will be at flickr, and all Ingrid pics have been (and will be) archived in monthly sets, in the Ingrid collection. I’ll be updating my bloglist (which was out of date, in a huge way) and not even bothering with books… dudes, I read the Hypocrite book when I was TEACHING. Which isn’t to say I’m not reading! I do read, all the time, and am really enjoying recreational reading now that Ingrid’s older and I’m out of school… but looking up the URLs from Amazon? Eh, whatever. I did see someone posting what they were reading as a separate page, and maybe I should do that… I have always wanted to keep track. Other than that, the only change is the URL, and even that is as simple as an S.

Yeah, no Tivo here. Whereas I see Tivo as an appliance,Dave sees it as a subscription, and we don’t pay for tv. And the ability to skip over commercials wouldn’t be good, since commercials pay our mortgage. So, instead, I think I’m going to take bellydancing lessons. (For real!)

Anyway.

I sort of shot myself in the foot by having everything at Typepad, because now I want to simplify to the one blog option, but everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, has the URL for typepad (but not this specific one) so if I nix the other two, this falls into the default slot, and I don’t want this to be visited by everyone. Which  kind of sucks, because I really LIKED having scored MY OWN NAME for typepad, you know? Which is kind of a coup.  So, I’m going to keep typepad, but create a new account, port over the contents of this blog, to keep the backstory, and need help coming up with a new screen name (and NOT the one most everyone knows me by — but something a little less googleable. I don’t like things like "Ingridsmama" and I was considering "geekymama" but one sounding board says that that’s too "ingridsmama2006." Which is exactly what I DON’T want to convey — Ingrid has her own blog, and I am a mama, but I am a lot of other things too. (Geek included…) So, while I puzzle out a new screenname, feel free to make suggestions. . . .

Also, new video of Ingrid’s patented foot clapping at her blog — ingrids.vox.com.