Everybody Loves Your Money

Okay, I need to come clean.  I want a star next to my blog link on http://www.pfblogs.org.

But, now that I’ve disclosed that there is something in this for me, I do need to tell you a little story about reading PF blogs.  You see, I’ve been a little irrational about how I look for blogs to read.  I tend to wander aimlessly around the PF world.  (At least I used to).  You could find me lurking on the PhatInvestor site, watching for updated blogs and I’ve even tried my hand at using a feedreader.  For some reason, that’s never really warmed me up.

Then, along comes pfblogs.org.  (We all know that isn’t quite accurate.  Actually, along came pfblogs.xxx and then came pfblogs.org.)  Anyway, it turns out that http://www.pfblogs.org is the ONLY way to keep up on PF blog sites.  They aggregate a TON and the interface is very nice.  So nice, in fact, that they even put a little star next to some of the blogs………

Well, I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. My daughter has started spending money. Why is this such a significant event at our house? She’s only 2 and a half years old. Let me explain.

We have been letting her use the computer a little bit. We’ve got one of those “notebook mice” (which basically means it’s a miniature version of a standard mouse), which she is getting very good at using. It’s a goal of mine to have her learn to use the computer proficiently. Both applications and the operating system. I don’t want her to grow up not understanding how computers work because I know it’s going to be such an integral part of her life. It doesn’t hurt that I’m a geek too.

I created her a website that has pictures of each of the different sites that she likes to play at (Disney, Charlie and Lola, Little Einsteins, Dora etc). She knows how to move the mouse around and click on the picture to go to that site. Now, normally we don’t let her do this by herself. Yesterday, my wife was doing some laundry and ran in to the laundry room to switch the clothes from the washer to the dryer. By the time she got back to the kitchen/living room, she noticed that an Amazon page had just popped up with her order confirmation on it. What????? Somehow our daughter had managed to bring up Amazon.com (I’m guessing she must have opened up the history or something) and clicked on a button. My wife had turned on “one click ordering” some time ago and Bam. We were the new owners of “The Best of the Electric Company”. You may recall that show from many years ago. I believe it was on public television. I can remember watching it a few times and can remember enough to know that I don’t want the “Best of” series.

My wife called Amazon right after it happened and was told that the order was already in the process of going through shipping. What??? Already? We were told that we need to write “refused” on the box and it would be returned for full credit, including shipping. I guess we’ll see how that goes. My wife had the Amazon customer service rep turn off one click ordering so that this won’t happen again. Incidentally, did you know that “The Best of the Electric Company” costs about $40 shipped?  (Can you believe she didn’t choose “free shipping”?)