Review: Mr. Magorium's Magic Emporium

Movie title: Mr. Magorium's magic Emporium
Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Review: I liked this movie. I found it sweet, funny, and gentle. It does deal with death though. There were so many funny touches, like a mobile made out of fish and a cheaper one made out of fish sticks. And the accountant they call the mutant. My kids (2, 4, 6) all sat through it, didn't complain of being bored (sometimes a problem with non animated films) and they didn't get scared either. The only thing that kept it from 5 stars is I'm not sure I'd want to own it, although I will probably rent it again. I can definitely recommend it as a completely clean, wonderful film.

arg, silly people

So Gmail has this problem, apparently it does not make it clear when people choose a username if that user name has already been taken.

This is the second time this has happened to me. The first time this happened, the guy happened to send a test email to the gmail and to his personal account, so I just emailed him and told him. It's happened again with someone else who also sent the address out to a bunch of people, so now I'm getting their emails (which I don't want to reply to in case they are spammers), and I get to deal with about 10 password reset requests a day for the past few days. Hopefully who ever thinks they have my email address figures out soon that they don't and leaves me alone.

Updated 3/10/09: hurray, whoever it is has stopped trying to change my password.

Review: Levana CT1000 Digital Wireless Child Tracker Wrist Watch and Kid Finder/Locator

Product: Levana CT1000 Digital Wireless Child Tracker Wrist Watch and Kid Finder/Locator

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Review:
I'll be up front, I did not have a good experience with this product. I think most of my problems came from what I thought it was versus what it actually was.

What I wanted: a product to put on my 22 month old daughter to let me know if she suddenly decides to take off while my back is turned at Wal-mart. I also wanted to put it on her at the park so that if I couldn't see her because she was behind a play structure, I would now she was still in range. I also wanted to keep it in my purse and be able to put it on her when we got somewhere.

What it is: a product for short range tracking of your child (up to ~100 feet). It also has a locate feature that is supposed to help you figure out which way your child went. The battery on the kids band is rechargeable.

Pros:

• rechargeable battery on child's band
• adjustable range (close, medium, and far)
• points which way your child went and whether you are far or close

Cons:

• there is no off switch on the child's band. This means from the second you take the wrist band off the charge, the child's band is on (unless you remove the battery). I could see this being good since there is no way for the child to turn it off, but mostly I find it annoying because I can't store this item in my purse, ready to be used if I need it.
  
• battery life - the charge on the child's band only lasts and hour or two.
• The band barely fits around my child's ankle. I know the band is supposed to go around her wrist, but I know that on her ankle, she won't notice it as much or have fun pushing the page button.
• The beeping on the parent unit is too quiet if you keep it in your pocket and are outside. There is no volume control. This means I had to be actively monitoring the monitor, especially since it ran out of battery part of the way through the outing.
• The child's monitor and adult monitor are rather bulky.
  

I guess my main complaint with it is that I was expecting a painless monitoring solution. Having to take out the battery on the child's unit and store the battery until I need to use it is not painless. The battery is a little smaller than a quarter, the perfect size to loose.

I think I could work around the problems it has, but I'm not sure I want to. I'm going to give it one more chance, then I'm returning it to Amazon.

Updated (3/9/09): I returned this to Amazon. The parent unit stopped communicating with the child unit. I think though that most of my complaints would stand even with a perfectly working unit.