Tag: target

  • Caught between two religions

    If you are a fan of storytelling, and chances are good that you are, you need to subscribe to the Moth podcast. The Moth is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of live storytelling. They put on live storytelling events where members of the audience get a few minutes to tell a story, live and without notes, on a theme. The best stories make it onto the podcast. It’s 13 minutes I look forward to downloading each week.

    The story I’m linking below is poignant for a couple of reasons. First, it’s great storytelling. Jen pulls you in. Second, because the content of her story is just a little too close to home for a lot of my friends. Jen is caught between two worlds, Evangelical Christianity and selling Mary Kay. In the end she isn’t sure which one she is selling anymore.

    1. The Moth Podcast- Jen Lee – Targeted     

    (Note to RSS readers – you can come to the site and listen to the audio)

    As a communicator, storytelling is one of the things I wish I were a lot better at than I am. I’d kill to have a group of friends who regularly got together and practiced telling stories. Some ground rules, some themes, and some live audience feedback to refine the craft. Because ultimately, we need to tell stories that matter!

  • Powered by the Letter “I”

    Two things dominated our Saturday. Ikea and iPhones.

    Actually, on the way to this epic fun we had lunch at In & Out Burger. I’m not a cult-fan of the burger joint but it was quick, easy, and not McDonald’s.

    ikeaIkea: There’s a pretty strong irony in our trip yesterday. When we moved across country in August we sold nearly all of our furniture. We had a rule of thumb that if it had been to California and back in 2002 & 2003 it wasn’t going in 2008. Then when we set up the house in August we made a massive trip to Ikea. We packed 4 of those big flatbeds to the gills and crawled our way to the checkout. They even had to break our receipt in half so that their strict delivery rules when get it all delivered.

    When we moved into the bigger place a few weeks ago we immediately recognized that the bedrooms all needed more stuff. Both kids bedrooms are huge and all they had was a dresser and a loft bed. So back to Ikea we went! We didn’t manage to get everything they needed yesterday. But we did add to each kids room a lamp, desk, and chair. Mom and dad also picked up some end tables, a TV stand for our bedroom, and a patio table for the backyard. It doesn’t look like Ikea has everything we need… so we’ll have to look at our second favorite furniture store, Target.

    apple-logoiPhones: Kristen and I have bounced back and forth on this forever. We didn’t upgrade when 3G released because one of our phones was still under contract. Then I really wrestled with the whole Blackberry vs. iPhone thing, then I decided in December I wanted an iPhone but I didn’t want to make a decision before I saw if Apple was going to release a new version. When Apple released a new Mac Mini, iMac, and Shuffle last week that was my signal that they weren’t rushing anything to production.

    With that, we headed to Fashion Valley Mall‘s Apple store to make our purchase. Though the store was slammed we were able to find a person who was perfectly happy to help us out. While the in-store activation thing is a bit annoying I can imagine this is the way to go on the macro level for Apple/AT&T. I wrapped things up in the Apple store while Kristen shopped at Crate & Barrel for a new blender. (Thank you community group for the gift card!) I’ll do a full review later for the iPhone 3G, but I will say my initial expectations were exceeded. Before I got to the car I had already synched my phone with my gmail account and installed a Facebook and Twitter app. The hardest part about the set-up was getting my contacts synched between gmail and Address Book on my Macbook. But now I have all of that taken care of and all of my contacts sorted into tidy groups. Next up is getting Kristen’s contacts and my contacts to synch… wouldn’t that be cool? If only it talked to our Highrise account…

    We spent most of the evening putting things together from Ikea. Twist, twist, twist, screw gun, screw gun, screw gun. All fairly simply and everyone is happier. We still have a long way to go until everything is put away from this last move but it is progressing nicely and we’ll be hosting a housewarming BBQ some time after Easter.

  • Monoprice.com: Get Accessories for Less

    As I posted a few days ago our family got a new HDTV for Christmas. Since this was our first forray into HDTV, I didn’t have many of the cables I’d need to fully enjoy the full quality. Specifically, it left me with 3 problems I wanted to fix. First, I want to play Nintendo Wii in widescreen so I needed a non-standard cable. Second, I wanted the audio from the cable box to our audio system to have the optical audio cable. In truth, I’ve wanted this cable for more than 6 years but didn’t want to pay $50 for it. Third, I wanted an HDMI cable to connect the TV to the cable box to get the best possible signal.

    So Paul and I headed to Target. Those cables were going to cost me more than $100 total! So, then we went to Radio Shack. They had a 6 foot HDMI cable for over $100 by itself. Out of frustration I posted a couple comments about it on Twitter.

    That’s when Peggy suggested Monoprice.com. Let me tell you… I am glad she did. Instead of paying $100-150 retail for those three cables I paid $22, including tax and shipping.

    Long story short. Don’t get ripped off at Target or Radio Shack with their cable or HDTV accessories. Go straight to a supplier and pay wholesale.

    UPDATE: I got the cables a couple of days later. They were AMAZING quality. That’s right, I got better and longer cables for about 10% of the price of retail. What’s not to love?