Gadget Drool Day

Yesterday I was in drooling all over my desk at some tech rumors and product announcements. First up was Garmin's announcement of the Forerunner 405. While I don't plan on running another marathon, I do plan on running to keep in shape. It's hard to justify purchasing it, but since it can work as a normal watch, maybe I need a new watch!

Second up on my list is the rumor that Apple will have a dockable laptop based on a patent application that was recently granted. Unfortunately the patent was filed a year and a half ago, so it coming to light now could be a mere coincidence. Apple patents everything, so who knows if this will become a product. I'm crossing my fingers that it will be, and I'll jump at purchasing it if it comes to be. Right now my MacBook Pro has 7 cables coming out of it that I have to unplug every time I want to move it which is a pain.

While not really a gadget or technology, LEGO released new sets for 2008 including Indiana Jones based sets (which don't really fit into my collection, but they're cool). They also have new City sets which will fit in perfectly in my collection. The problem is, plastic LEGOs aren't cheap!

I'll start saving my pennies now to buy all my gadgets.

Navigating with printed directions

Last night I had to pick up something for my wife. Unfortunately it wasn't going to fit in her car which has built-in navigation, so I had to take my car. As I gave my Garmin iQue 3600 to my father and haven't replaced it, I had to print out directions and follow printed directions. It seemed so archaic to have to do this, but I didn't have a choice. I guess I'll have to wait for a new car to have navigation again as I still can't justify getting a portable GPS unit for the little driving I do in my car to places I've never been.

Watched my first movie rental on TiVo!

Awhile back, Amazon Unbox came to TiVo. I thought this was great as my wife and I are a bit too lazy to goto the store and rent a movie (even more so now that we have an 8 month old son). Well, nothing ever came of it as we never rented a movie. The other night, when there was nothing on TV because of the writer's strike, I mentioned it again to my wife and she checked out Amazon, saw that Ocean's Thirteen was available for rent for $0.99, so we set it up and started the download. It was quick and easy! Last night we got around to watching the movie and must say that the experience renting the movie was excellent. I think our threshold is probably $3.99 for movie rentals. The problem with Unbox is that the selection isn't all that great for rentals. Maybe I'm just picky, but not a whole lot jumped out at me.

The rumors are circulating that Apple will have a rental setup for the iTunes Music Store soon which would be cool as we could watch stuff from our AppleTV. However, it will require an upgrade to the AppleTV's software which will knock out my Squeezebox hack on it. We'll just have to wait and see.

Flexible spending reimbursement is as easy as pie

Every year we have to fill out the paperwork to get our money back from my wife's flexible spending plan. I don't ask much of her in terms of accounting, so this has always been her task. She had to copy all the receipts and assemble them from a big mess of receipts. Well, this year, thanks to ReceiptWallet, that was different. I simply selected my "Medical" collection, selected all, hit print, and then filled out the paperwork. It took maybe 15 minutes to fill out and fax in the paperwork. A week later, we received a check for the full amount we requested with no problems. This paid for my copy of ReceiptWallet, just in the time it saved me to do this :-)