The Wild, The Innocent, and the iPod Shuffle

I just bought an iPod Shuffle tonight - we had to go down to Staples this evening for a couple of things Jane needed for work. Well, I had in my pocket a $12 rewards check, plus I had a 12% off anything (but computers and phone cards) coupon that they'd e-mailed me. Combine that with spotting a sign on the counter advertising HP iPod Shuffles (1GB) for $99, and I figured I'd be silly not to snag it. My net price for what is essentially a 1 GB flash drive that just happens to play music as well - $76. Way better than the $129 it normally sells for. I don't need another iPod (my 40GB 4th gen. iPod is just fine, plus it still has a Firewire interface, which the new ones lack), but I can always use another flash drive - they come in handy. And $76 is a pretty good price for one. I feel clever, indeed.

Besides that, today was fairly relaxing for the most part. We took David in to Boston in a driving snow (in October?) to go to the New England Aquarium (we're members), and had a nice lunch at the nearby Legal first. Yum. There's nothing better than eating fish right before you go see them. Anyhow, his favorite part (besides the jellyfish), was seeing a penguin poop in the water as it swam away from one of the trainers.

Nothing like being three.

On a related note, he was able to go potty four times, with only one wet pull-up. That may be a record. He tried to imitate the penguin on the potty (this is a euphemism - he actually did this before we went out today), but was unsuccessful. However, he was able to fill the pull-up nicely about 1/2 hour later and told me so.

So the overall success/failure ratio for the day was 4/2. but the 2 was a 2. We're on the right track, though. The evening was fairly trying - napless boys tend to cause trouble.

At work I'm in the middle of yet another extremely busy period. I've picked up a few new clients, mostly smaller ones, and I have three confirmed Xserve deployments between now and Thanksgiving. With one more likely in both December and January, minimum. With that I've made the tentative decision to go ahead and outsource my bookkeeping, probably around mid-month when I start my next billing cycle. It's just become too complex for me to handle solo, and since I'll be in a tax-positive situation along with preparing to (hopefully) expand, I need to make sure it's done right - and I don't trust myself to handle that.

Back around the beginning of this year, I was offered the opportunity to buy a competitor's business, and I walked away when it became obvious to me that my picture of the business's value would be far from what the other person thought it should be. With the passing of time, I'm even happier I made that decision, because I would not have been able to handle that volume at the time. Now that I'm growing there on my own, I feel a lot more comfortable.

There you go - a fourfer to finish the week. Tech toys, family fun, potty talk, and business development. I may not have to post for another week!