My brother loves to collect gadgets.  He is always spending his disposable income on the latest and greatest gadget he can find.  He came over today to show off his new flashlight that he just bought over the Internet.  This new flashlight that he bought is a LED flashlight that is rechargeable, requires no batteries, and runs for an hour on just one charge.
What a showoff he is!

My kids have been telling me that they found a website that converts audio and video files from one format to another.  They said it is a new program that is quick and easy to use, and that the company is offering a free trial download of the program.  They lost me when they started talking about video encoding. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t even know what video encoding is!  I feel so old!

Modern Bedroom Furniture is what my niece says she wants for her new apartment.  She is moving out of her parents’ house for the first time in a few months, and she is looking for modern furniture for her new place.  She came over yesterday to rummage around my basement and see if I had any “hand me down” furniture items she could have.  She says her biggest hope for her Modern Bedroom Furniture is to have a really great Modern Platform Bed.

She says she has been looking at furniture from the eroomservice.com website and has found several different platform beds that she likes a lot.  She hasn’t yet made up her mind which one she wants, but has narrowed it down to four favorites.  She said that the website sells some really nice bedroom sets and that she is trying to decide whether to buy the complete set, or just the bed and then try to do some mix and match with the rest of the bedroom furniture. 

She found a couple of modern lamps in my basement that she liked that I wasn’t using – my house isn’t decorated in the modern style, and these lamps were given to me by a friend.  I told her she was welcome to take them, and she was thrilled.

I was reading an article on Businessweek’s website that was talking about how a lot of the big “snob” companies like Sak’s Fifth avenue is opening more outlet stores, in the hopes that they will attract more customers to the outlet store’s lower prices.  The article confused me a little bit because I had read many years ago that “outlet stores” were not necessarily a “discount store” and that when people shop at outlet stores looking for a “bargain” they usually are not really getting a “bargain.”  What they are often getting are closeouts, over-runs, or factory seconds.

After I had learned that “outlet stores” were really not “discount” stores I pretty much avoided them.  So now I’m wondering if “outlet” stores are changing their strategy and really ARE offering bargains now!

When we bought my Lumina I told my hubby that one of the first things I wanted to buy for it was a quality sun shield for the windshield.  I bought a “universal” sun shield at my local big box discount department store but it does not fit well and keeps falling down.  But this week I finally smartened up and realized that I can not just put my visors down to help keep it in place, but I can take them out of their little holder brackets and put them down at an angle, and that works perfectly!