Swagbucks

Over the past few months, I have gone on a spending spree on Amazon. First, I finally bought the ipod I'd been saving for, then, when my mouse broke, I broke down and bought a magic mouse. When I went on this spree, I didn't spend any of my own money. I had accumulated amazon gift cards by participating in surveys and by using swagbucks.com for my daily searching.

Every time my account reaches 450 swag bucks, I get a $5 Amazon gift card. Searching the internet is something I do anyway, every day, and their search engine gets better and better as the site develops and grows stronger. Searching is a simple way to see swag bucks add up, but the real money is in referrals. After I had a few friends join, my points went through the roof and I ended up slowly being able to afford a $150 mp3 player, $5 at a time. There are some other prizes on there, and I can't speak to their value, but I know some people will "save up" for things like an XBox (I can't imagine how many swag bucks you need for an XBox).

If you're interested, you should check it out. It's pretty exhilarating when you get your first prize, just for using the search engine, and if you're into online games, they have a pretty active twitter and facebook account where they post opportunities and contests to grab swag bucks every day. And because this post is clearly about shameless promotion:

http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/dearsweetbriar

Magic Mouse To The Rescue...I Hope

In continuing with my whorish consumerism, I made another Apple purchase today. The scroll button on my mouse constantly sticks, and it has become a daily battle with the thing. I use lotion pretty frequently, and I know this has contributed vastly to the problem, which isn't helped by the fact that I eat at my desk sometimes. Yesterday the scroll button stuck, and after my usual struggle with it (which I will sadly admit includes banging it on the desk to dislodge the dirt) it did something awful—the whole mouse got stuck in the clicked position. I figured it was just dirty, so I tried to clean it to no avail. Now there's a piece of my mouse on J's desk, and the rest of it's over here, still in the "clicked" position, rendering it unusable.

So after absolutely no deliberation or thought whatsoever, I bought a magic mouse. I immediately regretted the spontaneous purchase, and I don't know how I'm going to feel about this new toy once it arrives. It is all unicorns and glitter and rainbows, I'm sure, but it's also relatively new and probably buggy, and now I'm the proud owner of something that will most likely become outdated this summer and obsolete by next summer.

A lot of the people whose twitter feeds I follow bought this toy when it came out—and they were all duly impressed. The reviews on CNet, however, seem to indicate that no matter how impressed people were with the magic mouse when it first came out, they are not thrilled with it after using the thing for a bit. So, we'll see what happens when the package arrives for me. If I return it, I'll have to see what else Amazon has to offer before my Amazon Prime trial is over. I've always had good luck with logictech mice, and I will be damned if I spend money on another stupid mighty mouse that I will have to throw out the window once the track ball starts sticking.

iPod Madness

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I got a brand new 5th genereation ipod nano on Wednesday. After applying swagbucks gift certificates and signing up for an Amazon credit card, I spent a whopping $32 (I had $180 saved up in a bank account for just this reason).

I've been so out of touch with new technology that I was overwhelmingly impressed with my new tech toy. I got an 8GB nano because I figured that my old ones only carried one or two albums and a dozen songs that I listened to at once. I was able to store everything I listened to on a tiny little 4GB ipod, before. But this nano? This nano plays video! This nano has a pedometer! This nano has games! In color! This nano makes me feel old.

But it is so pretty, and now I can watch episodes of the Office when I travel. I'm kind of starting to regret not going for the 16GB, or holding out for a touch!

Massholes, Revisited

Some interesting theories put forth by the Boston Biker on his blog:

A normal well adjusted person would be able to take a 30 second delay in stride, a normal person wouldn’t roll down their window and threaten to kill another person, a normal person after they had just nearly killed someone would have apologized (and mean it). It would seem that driving a vehicle in Boston on a regular basis can actually turn you from a normal well adjusted human being into a murderous asshole.

This is stuff I witness on a daily basis, and my commute, from point A to point B has never taken me more than 15 minutes. In 15 minutes, I am threatened multiple times, even if sometimes it's just by accident. Usually it's not. Parts of me just want to move, the parts that value my sanity over the sadness that people can't be better towards one another in my little city.