Results tagged “consumerism” from jsstudios.com

Tuesday my wife sends me an IM at work, "I think the coffee machine is dead, I think." I remembered that it had been leaking over the weekend, so I IM her back that it probably is and we should start looking for a new one. We both like to have espresso drinks every now and then, so I consider looking at combination machines that will do both coffee and espresso. I find one on Amazon and IM her with the link. However, I remember seeing that JcPenney was having a sale on kitchen stuff. Over Christmas we had purchased a cookware set for roughly half off the regular price of almost $400. It's a nice set and so far it has been great stuff. So I head over to JcPenney's website.

Fortunately I emerged unscathed after telling my wife about the new laptop.

She found it quite humorous - my momentary weakness at controlling my impulsive desires. I showed her a camera that I was looking at on Friday night. She figured I was going to come home with a new camera on Saturday. The camera, however, would have ended up costing me more in the long run with all the new lenses, flash accessories, etc . . . so maybe I did control my impulsive desires.

Who knows?

In other news . . . I went to an interview for a new job today. I feel good about how it went - a little choppy in a couple areas - but overall, I think I did pretty well. I should hear something by the end of the week. Funny thing is that I applied for this job way back at the beginning of January. More news on that as it happens.

The only thing really on the agenda today was my son's soccer game at 2:30. After taking my wife to work this morning the kids and I went back to bed and I slept until roughly 9:30. I woke up with a dreadful headache that I still haven't really shaken . . . even after multiple doses of Advil and Excedrin. It's a little more bearable, and I think it might be fading.

It's always this way for me at the beginning of spring. Sometimes I wish I lived some place where the weather was a little more consistent. Call me crazy, but I really do like the rainy days that we have had the last few days. Often I think I'd probably like it somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. But then San Diego has an incredible climate that I would probably appreciate just as well.

Perhaps some day . . . Getting back to the point . . . My wife called and asked me stop and get her some new pens. She bought a bunch of them ( she loses them faster than the weather changes here ) the other day and upon trying to use them at work she found she did not like them. We had to make a little stop after the game to get some cat food and with Office Depot right next door to Petco I figured I could knock it out no problem. Strolling past the laptops on my way to the pens, one of them reached out to me, grabbed me right square by the eyeballs and pulled me in. I ended up walking out with a Sony Vaio. It's a nice laptop.

I'm wondering what my wife is going to say as I sit here typing out this post. I'm trying to come up with a perfectly reasonable explanation for my lapse in frugality. Very rarely do I make these kinds of purchases. Part of my plan is to say the blinding pain in my head had an adverse effect on my ability to fight off impulsive behavior. Think it will work? If I don't post by tomorrow night I've been bound and gagged and thrown in the storage closet in the garage.

Someone please come help me get out.

At risk of coming across as a bit of a hypocrite I made a few changes this year.

In the most recent past I've been writing about TV shows and making predictions about different series. So, I have to accept the fact that there are those who may view what I did as hypocrisy. Well, I've decided to throw caution to the wind and write a post about it. Since I decided to do it, I've come across a couple of articles that tout the benefits of ditching cable tv. For example, a blogger at zdnet decided he could save about $300 a year by ditching cable tv and using iTunes and netflix. I also read an article the other day about subscription television. I bring up that link primarily because it's relevant to my post a little later on and because the author states that he hasn't been a cable tv subscriber for some time.

The point at which it has become difficult to balance the cost of cable television and land line phone services offered has been reached. To be honest I reached it a long time ago and finally decided to just do something about it earlier this month. I believe, over the span of about a year I may be able to save $1380 by ditching my cable tv and land line telephone services. This isn't really a scientific explanation or anything like that. Essentially I am comparing what I pay and what I get versus the options I have as I see it. I'm confident that there may be something I overlooked, but really, I doubt it is anything that I can't overcome once I get to that point. Go ahead and give it a look and let me know what you think . . .

Usa Today has a story about some problems occurring outside of Walmart. All I can really say is . . . what a bunch of idiots.

I saw this post at Techdirt today. I just recently went to the movies to see the last episode of Star Wars. While I will admit that the movie was good, I must agree with some of the points made in the Techdirt article. For example: