The Chronic Consumer

Jerry had to go to the auto parts store to pick up a few things last night, and since I didn’t have anything to do, I decided to tag along with him. That turned out to be a big mistake, however, as he spent a good hour and a half just browsing through all the different car mods and aftermarket parts available.

He may have been in heaven looking at the various supercharger, spoiler, muffler, and chrome wheel options on display, but I was bored out of my skull! Fortunately, there was a Barnes & Noble across the street, so I was able to wander over there and read magazines until he was done.

At least Jerry just bought the stuff he originally needed in order to fix our car and left the high-end mods alone… for now, anyway!

Of course this happened. This always happens to me, so I shouldn’t be surprised. A mere three months after I purchased a 3rd generation iPod Nano, Apple has gone ahead and retooled the whole thing for the recently released 4th gen Nano. So now instead of having the latest iPod Nano, I’ve already got one that looks outdated. Gee, thanks, Apple.

The new 4th generation iPod Nano comes with several new features. First of all, it looks completely different than the 3rd gen, with Apple opting to go back to the long, slim look of the 1st gen Nano. This 4th gen is longer and slimmer than earlier incarnations, though, and is also curved, which I guess is supposed to make watching videos an easier task. The 4th gen is 3.6 inches long, weighs 1.3 ounces, and is just 1.5 inches wide. Moreover, it comes in nine different “nano-chromatic” colors, including purple, orange, and red — colors that have never been used for iPods before.

There are a bunch of other technical specs that I don’t feel like getting into right now, as listing them will simply make me more depressed about the fact that my new iPod is already old. Oh, and to make matters worse, the new Nano comes in 8GB and 16GB models, with the 8GB starting at just $149. That’s a steal compared to earlier versions!

Oh, well. I’m sure there will be even better models in the future. I guess I can wait.

I’m interested in being able to connect my laptop to my TV so I can watch streaming videos on a bigger screen, but I have no idea how to do this. Of course Google was my first stop in the research process, and while I’m usually pretty good at deciphering How-To tutorials, the ones I found were incomprehensible to me. After spending several hours reading through different sites, I’m still completely lost.

I know that I need a couple of cables to connect the laptop to the TV. I think one of the cables needs to be an HDMI cable and one needs to be an audio cable, but again I’m not completely sure. It depends on the kind of laptop and the kind of TV, as well as various other factors that I don’t feel like listing right now.

Who knew that this particular task could be so hard?

No, I’m not talking about the TV show here! I’m excited that our Homeowners Association has finally approved our request to put up a fence in our backyard. We submitted the application back in June, but just received the approval today. I wonder what those people were doing all this time? We kind of wanted to have the fence in over the summer so my son and dogs could play out there without me having to worry about any of them wandering off the property.

At any rate, now that we have the approval, we can go ahead and look into actual fences and fence installation services. While I would love to have the “white picket fence” that used to typify suburban life, I don’t think Jerry is going to go for that. He want cedar or some type of wood where the slats meet to provide more privacy.

Basically, I’m willing to settle for anything at this point. I’m just excited that we’re finally getting a fence!

I’ve got several friends with children a few years older than my son, so I often get hand-me-downs of toys, games, and books that the other kids have outgrown. One of the items I recently received was a CD-ROM called Snap! Phonics, which is designed to help children ages 4-8 learn about word formation, pronunciation, and letter sounds. Since I’m currently attempting to get my son more interested in reading on his own, I decided to give this CD a try.

Snap! Phonics stars Curious George (which was a surprise considering that the famous monkey’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on the packaging) and is built around the basic premise of Curious George going to the circus. Once inside the circus tent, there are a range of different activities that your child can choose from, such as story time, vowel sounds, and word building/spelling.

My son is five and a half, so we’ve been working on phonics quite a bit recently. As a result, I expected him to do fairly well with this program, but was disappointed to see that many of the activities were just too difficult for him.

For example, in the story time section activity, a simple sentence is shown on the screen, with an animated sequence right next to it to illustrate the action. One such sentence was, “Bip takes a bath” or something like that, and the graphic showed a baby elephant sitting in a pool. The child’s task was to click on the two words in the sentence that “have the same sound as the word ‘boot’.”

Now this might be a decent exercise for a child that already knows how to read, but it was too big a leap for my son to connect “boot” to “b” to “Bip” and “bath”. So basically, I had to sit there and moderate the entire time, rephrasing the questions to make them understandable: “Which words in the sentence start with a buh sound?”

Most of the other activities on this CD-ROM are similarly difficult for children at the lower end of the stated age range (4-8), but would likely be fine for older children.

The one activity that my son enjoys the most on this CD is called Peanut Pickup. Essentially, the child uses the arrow keys on the keyboard to move an elephant through a maze, picking up dropped peanuts while giving chase to vendors carrying pictures of words that begin with certain letters. As this activity relies on sounds and pictures rather than actual reading, it’s one that a five year old can actually do.

Since we’ve only been using the Snap! Phonics CD for about a week, my son is still interested in it and still asks to play every day. But I have a feeling that once the novelty wears off (which should happen soon), he’ll forget that we even have this disc!

Overall, I think Snap! Phonics has decent activities for 7-8 year-olds, but is not the type of CD that younger children would be able to use unsupervised — unless they’re already fairly well-versed in phonics. Keep that in mind before spending money on this program!

I’m trying to plan for a family vacation to be taken in either February or April of next year. Yes, I know it’s pretty early to start making arrangements, but sometimes there are good deals to be had when booking so far in advance.

But one question I wanted to pose to you out there is: What are your favorite discount travel websites? Where do you go for the lowest prices on airfare, the cheapest hotel deals, and the best rental car rates? I’ve pretty much tried all the big sites that are advertised on TV, but actually haven’t had much luck with them, as their rates for the places I want to go to are not much cheaper at all.

Are there any good sites out there that consistently get you the lowest rates and biggest discounts available? If so, please let me in on the secret!

Even though I’ve been making a conscious effort to eat healthier foods this year, I know I’m still not getting all the essential vitamins and nutrients that my body needs. I’m a very picky eater, and many fruits and vegetables are simply off limits to me because I can’t stomach them. That’s why it’s very important for me to take a good vitamin supplement every day to make up for whatever my diet lacks.

I used to just buy whatever was on sale at the grocery store, but I’m not sure how beneficial those products actually are. I’ve been looking at alternatives to the usual brands, and came across the extensive Orovo product line. I’ve read lots of good things about the different health supplements and drinks that Orovo offers — including their multivitamin, which is supposed to be the best on the market. It actually sounds like it’s very effective, so I’m going to look into trying out a bottle soon!

I’ve been paying more attention to my skincare regimen recently, which is why I’ve been using toner for the past six months or so. I’d never used this type of product before, but I liked the results I had from my Paula’s Choice toner and decided to continue my regimen even after the bottle ran out.

Unfortunately, I was under the impression that all toners are more or less the same, so instead of going back to Paula’s Choice, I bought Aloe Calming Toner from The Body Shop. They were having a Buy-One-Get-One-Free sale, and I simply couldn’t pass up two 6.75 oz bottles of toner for a total of $12.50!

Anyway, The Aloe Calming Toner is marketed for sensitive skin, and says that it’s a “comforting, conditioning, toning liquid proven to purify without irritating.” Purify? Eh, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but I was keen to try this stuff and see if it kept my skin silky smooth like the Paula’s Choice toner.

I’ve only been using The Body Shop toner for a couple of weeks, but I think I can safely say that it is inferior to Paula’s Choice in terms of the effect it has on my skin. The Aloe Calming toner doesn’t seem to help with dryness or irritation, nor does it “comfort” my skin in any way. It does clean up a lot of residue left behind from my bar soap (a LOT more than the Paula’s Choice seemed to pick up), but other than that, I haven’t noticed any improvements.

Overall, I prefer Paula’s Choice to this particular toner from The Body Shop. I’m going to continue using this product until I finish the two bottles that I have, but then it’s back to PC for me!