Protip: don’t forget who your friends on Facebook are.

On my way into work this morning, I heard a story on the radio about how back-to-school spending is supposed to be down this year.  One statement in particular, I felt, was worthy of blogging about.  This quote comes from one Patricia Edwards, an analyst at Storehouse Partners (whatever that is):

The trends, especially for the teens which is where a lot of the spending happens for back-to-school, they’re the same!  The only thing they’ve really added is plaid.  And, ya know, you go out and buy one or two plaid pieces of clothing, and you’re set.

Allow me to translate that to how it sounded to me:

KIDS THESE DAYS!  What is wrong with this generation?!  They care nothing about fixing the economy.  All they care about is saving their parents’ money.  We are in a financial crisis, people!  This is no time to watch your budget!  And to top it all off, they are too lazy to change their fashion styles all the time.  When I was a kid, if you wore the same outfit to school twice, you would have been ashamed of yourself.  And we made it a point to change what we wore every year, so that we could make fun of the poor kids that couldn’t keep up.  Now, all of a sudden, it’s like everyone thinks it’s cool to be poor, just because their parents all lost their jobs.  Sheesh, I don’t know where this country is heading, but we’ve got a long road to travel if these penny-pinching hooligans don’t go into debt soon.

Last week I saw this post on Raymond Chen’s blog, which linked to two interviews with a former burglar.  The first covered the best places to hide money, the latter covered the worst places to hide money.  Which leads me to ask: are there actually people who have money in their house?  If you broke into my house, best case you’d find a hundred dollars, and it would all be in my wallet and Stephanie’s purse.  Usually we have even less cash than that on hand.  I don’t know why you would need cash these days.  I guess drug dealers only take cash, if you’re into that sort of thing.  But even then, couldn’t you stop by the ATM on the way to the drug deal?  Is there any other reason to keep large quantities of cash in your home?

P.S. I know that what is discussed here could apply to other small valuables (like jewelery), but in both interviews they are specifically talking about money.

For the last four summers, Stephanie and I have subscribed to Netflix.  It’s something I mentioned on this blog way back in 2005.  We find that we can get our money’s worth in just three or four months, and watch everything worth watching from the last year.  But this summer when I went to sign up for Netflix I found that they are charging extra for Blu-Ray, which they didn’t do last summer.  So I decided to use Blockbuster, since they do not charge extra for Blu-Ray.  Here are a few things that are different, for anyone wondering how the services compare:

• Blockbuster doesn’t charge extra for Blu-Ray (see above).

• Blockbuster lets you return a movie to a physical store, which means that you get your next movie a day faster than you do with Netflix.
  

  • Now, you might think you’d be able to exchange a movie in-store with another movie.  You can, but you have to pay extra for that.  I didn’t bother (although I got five free in-store exchanges my first month, of which I used two).

  • For some stupid reason, if you do exchange in-store, you can only exchange a mailed movie for a store movie.  In other words, say you got Air Bud1 in the mail.  You watch it, and exchange it in the store for Air Bud: Golden Receiver.  Now, since you didn’t get Golden Receiver in the mail, you can’t exchange it in store for Air Bud: World Pup2.

  • Of course, for this to be helpful, there needs to be a Blockbuster nearby.  The store a quarter-mile from my house went out of business a month after I signed up, and the next closest one is five miles away and not on the way to anywhere. :(

• Blockbuster’s selection seemed to be a little spottier on random things.  (For example, Steph wanted to rent My Little Pony: The Movie and it was listed as “Very Long Wait” all summer.)  Other than that, we were able to get everything we wanted.

• I’m not sure if Blockbuster has a movie-streaming option.  I’m pretty sure they don’t.  I never used it on Netflix, and I wouldn’t use it on Blockbuster, so that’s not a detraction for me.

• Blockbuster lets you rate movies in half-star intervals.  Which is nice.  Sometimes you want to give a movie 3.5 stars, not 3 or 4.

• Netflix’s movie suggestion algorithm seemed a little bit less terrible than Blockbuster’s.

• Netflix’s website was faster and more responsive.

• When you cancel your membership with Blockbuster, you get a month to return the movies you have out.  With Netflix you only get seven days.

At this point, I’ll still subscribe to Blockbuster next summer, as long as they don’t add a charge (or charge more than Netflix) for Blu-Ray rentals.

Update: See my follow-up post for more.

You may recall seeing this photo of a 2.5 L Coca-Cola bottle that I took in Mexico about six months ago:

You may even recall my caption: Why don’t they make the two-liter bottles look like this in America?

Well, now they do.  So I can say I CALLED IT!  Cue the balloons and ticker tape!

You may recall that nearly three years ago I won a SumoLounge Omni bean bag chair.  At the time, I said “I’ll be sure to let you, o faithful reader of my blog, know what I think of it.”  Well I never did, mainly because I forgot about it.  But a few months ago someone asked me what I thought of the chair, and I wrote a quick review in an e-mail.  And I decided, since I had already written it, I would repost it here and fulfill that three-year-old promise.  I know you’ve all been awaiting this anxiously.

The most surprising thing to me was that it was very light.  Bean bag chairs that I’ve used before were always really heavy, but this thing uses something about as dense as styrofoam.  It’s also pretty much indestructible—I’ve let my dog play on it and her claws never came close to penetrating the material, which feels sort of like the material heavy-duty waterproof backpacks or wintersports/skiing jackets are made from.

On the downside, it’s not very good as a seat for an extended period.  The SumoSacs look a lot bigger, so maybe that wouldn’t be a problem there.  But the Omni doesn’t hold its shape quite well enough when one person is sitting on it.  After a few minutes, you’re basically sitting on the floor.  I’ve never really tried the upright/straddling positions the blonde girl on the website is doing though.  I’ve tried putting it up against a wall so that it is shaped kind of like a couch, but I didn’t find that very comfortable.  I’ve also tried folding it in half and sitting on it, but it felt like it wanted to unfold again.  The thing I’ve found it best for, actually, is if I want to lay on the floor and watch TV.  You can make one side of it into a pretty good pillow so your neck isn’t strained, and the rest stays comfy for a quite while (since your weight isn’t all focused on one spot when you’re laying down).

So, to make a conclusion: in my opinion, I don’t think the Omni is worth the price as a seat for an adult, but I can’t speak to any of the other bigger things they sell.

Last weekend, Kip, Emma, and I went to Laurinburg because it was time for the first planning committee meeting for my 10 year high school reunion.  I decided that since I didn’t live that far away, I might see if I could help any in the planning of this shindig.  Anyway, I went to the meeting not really knowing what all was required in the planning of a class reunion.  I found out that it is just like planning for a wedding reception, and I’ve already done that once, so maybe I can be a bit of help.  We discussed possible locations for having the party, when we would have it, what all we would do that weekend for activities, and all the not so fun logistics.  I think our next meeting might be a little more fun since we will actually be doing stuff instead of just talking about stuff.  I know that this post isn’t that exciting or entertaining, but not much is really going on with me and Emma lately to be post worthy, and I hadn’t posted in a very long time and thought I would just share on this little milestone in my life.

Some facts about my high school:

• My graduating class had 342 students

• There is only one high school in all of Scotland County

• I think I only know about 50 of those students

• There were only 3 people at the meeting and one other person on a cell phone speakerphone

That is about it, maybe something else exciting will happen soon, and make a better post than this unexciting update...