My family's habits are a bit unusual, but it seems to work pretty well. Because all of us contribute to the family account (although each of us do have some accounts of our own), usually when you're buying something from credit card, it's using a group account. So within our household, we don't really buy each other gifts for Christmas cuz all our accounts are for the most part merged anyways. Outside the family, we exchange gifts normally though.
My mom subscribes to the idea of "for christmas? why wait for christmas? just buy it now. You were going to buy it anyways, might as well have instant gratification!" According to her, when she was younger, she was known for throwing fits when she wanted something. :P
This practice seems to work out pretty well cuz sometimes we'll put off buying stuff if we don't need anything and buy bigger stuff later. Plus, it avoids having each of us ponder what the other three want and end up buying some crappy gift for lack of ideas.
On a Apple Mac, there's this feature where if you don't dismiss an alert message within say 30 seconds, it'll say something from a list (like "attention!" or "alert!" or whatever else) and then read out the contents of the message.
So I'm chatting on AIM with a friend and my laptop's batteries run out. Okay.
I rush up and get my power adapter and sign back in. Right after I tell her "doh, my laptop battery died", the circuit break trips and everything goes black on this side of the house leaving me with just my laptop for light.
I'm like "uh, wtf?" And all of a sudden my computer says "It's not my fault! Your computer is now running on reserve battery power and will sleep shortly."
It's not everyday that you plug in a computer running out of batteries, only to blackout half the house and then have it say "It's not my fault!" before going to sleep.
(Most likely it was my mom using both the microwave on high and the toaster oven on high that did it.)
Some 4 years-ish ago, Apple released the original iPod and I was like "what the... you seriously think I'll shell out $400 for this? Absurd!"
And now one of my friends Chris points me to Google's Zeitgeist 2005 and tells me to look at this:
Froogle - Top Searches in 2005
1. ipod
2. digital camera
3. mp3 player
4. ipod mini
5. psp
6. laptop
7. xbox
8. ipod shuffle
9. computer desk
10. ipod nano
Looks like Nintendo's losing out. And wtf's up with the computer desk? Anyway...
Apparently, 4 out of 10 of the top searchs on Froogle are iPods. That other search about mp3 players? I wouldn't be surprised if they were thinking "ipod, creative labs, iriver, my kid probably can't tell the difference anyways."
I'm starting to think it's getting a little out of hand. I mean, dude. How many of these things do you need? I have two (A 2nd gen 10gb at $100 off, you can't pass up a deal like that when it was 2 weeks old. And a 20gb U2, from my sister. Thanks, Grace!) and one of them is used to store some backups instead of music. But some people at work know people who have like 4 or 5 of these things!
Kinson mentioned to me that gold colored iPod minis are selling for $450 on ebay. Uh, people? You know they debuted for $249, right? Apparently it's not only gold ones, a lot of minis are expensive now. Yet, only half a year ago, they were being cleared out for $150.
Makes me want to learn how to anodize stuff by hand. "Who wants a limited edition hand crafted two tone navy blue and gold iPod mini? Oh? I'll just set it down here on ebay and......boom! It's raining cash!" Or something like that.
.....
.....
Say, anybody have a broken ipod mini they'd be willing to toss over? Oh, I'll also need battery acid. And blue and yellow fabric dye.
Here's a technote. For everybody who doesn't care about the PostgreSQL database engine, nor have a copy of Apple Remote Desktop 2 installed, ignore this cuz you'll be bored.
ARD 2 includes a copy of the PostgreSQL engine as part of it's install. It's used to collect stats and data from all the machines you're commanding.
However, if you're not really using it for Remote Desktop, you could just go ahead and power it up to use as just a database engine. (I think you actually do need to stop Remote Desktop and all the client/server daemons to allow this sequence to work.)
The following steps will walk you through prepping the database store in a folder called pgdata in your home directory, and then creating a database in there. Finally, running psql to let you enter SQL commands to show you it's working, and then quitting and shutting down the database.
# Creating Database Store
cd /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/rmdb.bundle/bin
./initdb -D ~/pgdata -L /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/rmdb.bundle/share/postgresql
# Starting DB Engine
./postmaster -D ~/pgdata
# Create a database (default is username)
./createdb
# Run the console
./psql
create table moocow ( cowID char(15), cowName char(20), spots integer );
select * from moocow;
\quit
# Shutdown
./pg_ctl stop -D ~/pgdata
----------
I wrote this up a while back and then added the table creation commands today (20060418).
However, as of right now, ARD 3 has been released which changes the location of the lock file from tmp to somewhere else. I think this might make it hard for people to run PostgreSQL out of ARD3.
It seems I buy stuff in spurts. Like, I don't buy anything for 11 months, and all of a sudden bam, $2700 hits my credit card. Well, it's not exactly impulse spending, but not exactly planned for either. Nor is it all toys, which makes me feel better cuz some of it's utilitarian.
Last week, I bought a Xilinx Spartan3/CoolRunner development kit, a Nintendo DS Mario Kart Limited Edition bundle, and a 1gb compact flash memory card. Total $300.
Today, I went shopping with my mom to buy a dishwasher, range unit, and a refridgerator. $2400.
You know, I have no idea about what to look for when buying appliances. For the most part, I wouldn't be surprised if I bought into all the selling points the salesperson used. All I know from Consumer Reports 2005 is that Whirlpool (most reliable) makes Kenmore stuff but apparently keeps better quality components for themselves, and that Maytag seems to be the least reliable. Since all our stuff has outlasted the average, I guess we'll just get whatever's the most similar to what we had before.
Whatever the case, I'll be really happy about the fridge when it comes in cuz right now it's colder outside the fridge than on the inside. And the top of the freezer is warmer than the fridge but the bottom is cold enough to freeze liquids. In the meantime, I guess I'll be drinking slightly warm orange juice.