Olivia is very considerate.

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YUCK. I was reading with the TV turned off tonight, and thus heard the slight rustling noise a mouse was making trying to climb my shower curtain out of the bathtub. Managed to trap it with a cardboard box and remove it from the premises. And bathtub is now as clean as scrubbing with bleach can make it.

Olivia is very considerate.

Awww. Dad of Hearts.

Oh, you better bring it, Teppy! I may not have mad editing skillz, but I can pharmaceutical-off with you! Hah!

Eww Matt, unfun.

And yipes Cass! Significantly more unfun! Now the wine has to serve a medicinal function on top of its spiritual one.

Aw, cute widdle mousey!

So--who's getting a Windows phone? How much do you feel advertising spots on TV affect your purchases of phones? And then for people who spend less time on the internet?

I'm curious about what stands out in those ads to differentiate them from iPhones (I sincerely cannot remember Android ads). I mean, how does one look like it will fix stuff better than the other? Gwen Stefani vs. Zooey Deschanel? Is that what it comes down to?

A friend of mine has a windows phone and swears by it--and he is in a house full of iPhones and iPads.

But swears by it for what? What is the differentiator in such a saturated market? I'd imagine most people would be happy with a Windows phone. But who'd be unhappy without one?

Man, I have come bang up against some doozies of security questions recently. Things I'm all "I committed to a favourite?" about. Yoinks.

I think mice can be cute and part of the local ecology until they are in my space. Sorry you had to bleach, Matt. But it was a tub and not something less porous. So bleaching was an effective technique.

And yipes Cass! Significantly more unfun! Now the wine has to serve a medicinal function on top of its spiritual one.

Medicinal pinot.

Worse, I have to find a new corkscrew. And this one was really nondescript. It looks like most others but I somehow really loved it best. The only things written or stamped on it are italy boomerang and pro-turn. Makes replacing it awkward because Google isn't magically giving me a product to buy and replace it. Unless stores want to let me open a bunch of bottles of wine while deciding.

Which is slightly less probable than my dream of stores having floor models of tea kettles so you can judge your preferred whistle. My current model has glass marbles in it because I debarked it years ago. Serviceable kettle, terrible whistle. Now it just rattles at me.

How much do you feel advertising spots on TV affect your purchases of phones?

I like to think it doesn't affect me or that it only gives me "data" when I am considering consumerism but I know that's not true. I'm guessing they can sway people into getting a level of phone they didn't think they needed or to prefer a model that might not be the most suited to their needs. Advertising is way more effective than people want to admit.

I can say that TV advertising hasn't affected my phone purchases because I've been buying European unlocked phones for...shit, could it really be a decade? Anyway, the Samsung S3 is the first phone I've seen on TV that I would definitely buy if I had to get a new phone. Good GOD that thing is gorgeous.

But, as I keep reminding myself, I made a sensible purchase last time. Not only is it still working just fine, it's getting updates (I just got Jellybean ten minutes ago), it's a perfectly fine size, etc. The two things I'd tweak, none of the ads are telling me I can get with them.

However, my Galaxy tablet was started off by an ad. One of those before movies. I was totally "What is that magic thing???" And now I have three tablets, and again am trying to talk myself down.

It's a good thing my mother lives in third world because my paltry inheritance would be blown on "As Seen On TV"--she confesses to being awful at exercising discretion in the face of an "Ooh!" My sister doesn't care enough to talk her down, so I'm the bad guy. But I'd love to know which of the phone ads would get through to her. I just can't work out what they look like from where she's standing.