Photo-A-Day #1367

Eva is going to be a MAC girl, of this I am sure. Today she took my iTouch and brought it to her Laugh and Learn Musical Chair. She sat down and looked at it this way and that. She kept pressing the button on the front. Eventually she’s going to become pretty adapt at playing with that thing.

I took Eva with me to Stop & Shop today. I use the personal shopper scanner when I go. I really like it, it is very easy. We use the reusable bags when we go to the store too, it helps the environment and we get $0.05 off per bag so it helps a little. On the shopping cart there is a place to put your Dunkin Donuts coffee and a place to put the personal shopping scanner. Talk about cross marketing and synergy, supermarkets have that down to a science.

Did you know that you can get a more accurate account of the items in your shopping bag than your medications at a hospital. Hospitals are so slow to adapt to technology as simple as barcoding. It is happening but painfully slow. Barcoding has been in place at supermarkets for years that we take for granted the simplicity of it all. You can now go into a supermarket, scan all of your items yourself and check out in a flash, or you can go shop, get all your items and then run them through the self checkout, amazing when you think about it. But I digress.

The personal shopping scanner alerts the shopper to sales, it reminds you to put in your order at the deli and it also keeps a running total of the items in your cart. What would make this device better would be the ability to place your deli order from the device. Maybe you get the same thing every week you should be able to pick from previously ordered items, the scanner should know what you bought previously because it is linked to your shopping card. I keep going on tangents.

Well anyway, the device beeps when you scan it, it has a light up screen on it and often makes other alerts to the shopper. Eva kept leaning over to it and putting her ear up against it as if it was a telephone. A long way to go for the punchline, but I am easily distracted thinking of ways to improve the shopping experience.

Eva is a MAC girl, not only because she was playing with the iTouch but because she said “MAC” and pointed to the computer screen while I was looking at MAC mini and the Apple TV. I don’t know where she got the word either, we are PC people (except for the iPod stuff)

I’ve been contemplating using some MAC products like the Apple TV, Mac Mini, Airport Extreme and an Iomega product, the MiniMax external drive. I probably won’t get these items but I do like the idea of a small stack of devices that all work together in harmony and ones that look nice too. I’d probably end up stacking so many devices that it would negate the fact that they are supposed to be small. As with the above tangent my dreams for technology also go on tangents that my wallet cannot handle.

On the personal side we had friends over for breakfast this morning. They have a daughter around Eva’s age and a son who is three. It was wild seeing three children going nuts with toys and interacting. Eva hasn’t had much playtime with her toys and other children. She got a little frustrated but in the end started to roll with it pretty well.

Having friends over for breakfast was pretty cool too. Allison made sausage, french toast, eggs and hash browns. We were able to sit and chat and have a good time and when it was over we still had a whole day ahead of us. That is probably why I needed a nap after the supermarket.

I read Brisingr some more and when I felt that I could nap I laid the book on my chest, shut my eyes and took that nap. It was most likely 15 minutes but it was refreshing. I am so close to being finished with this book. I have really enjoyed it but wonder how it will end. Tomorrow Allison will pick up the book on CD from the library. I’ll burn it to iTunes so she can listen to it on her iPod. This is the way we listened to the first two books in this series, on CD not iTunes. I enjoyed actually reading the book but once it is done I no longer need the book so I will be giving it away or I’ll end up buying books 1 and 2 so we can save them for Eva to read. Who knows. Well, I have rambled way too much today. That is what happens when I post so early in the day.