Alright, time for an update. The majority of my weekend was spent doing something that would have made the Arbor Day Foundation blush. Yesterday we cut down part of a tree in our backyard, in the hopes of diminishing our yearly allotment of leaves. Our rationale was simple: less trees = less leaves.

At first I had no idea we were even going to cut it down; I was in bed listening to Car Talk when my mom called me outside to help. When I got out the back door, all I could see was the top of the felled tree facing me. The tree's persistent rustling suggested that my dad was somewhere in the whole mess cutting the tree into more totable sections.

Apparently my dad went out and bought a chainsaw; I never bother to follow his sporadic purchases of power tools so I wasn't at all surprised. I got to use it a little bit (if you can picture that: a scrawny nerd wielding an apparatus which might well have inadvertently cut his arm off), but then I gave up after the chain fell off for the third time. I retreated to the recesses of the leaves to tame the thinner branches that could be cut with tools that didn't require chains or electricity. Then my mom and I tied up the branches into gargantuan bundles and piled them near the neighbor's fence, perhaps hoping some leaves would casually flutter over into their yard.

So the ratio of trees to fallen leaf area has been diminished, if only slightly, hopefully affording me a few more minutes of less raking this Fall.

I see my number of readers has gone up a tad in the last couple of days. So for the newbies, be warned: my opinions are backward and ill-informed, so read on if you dare!

Well, in an attempt to flex its technological muscles, Apple has come up with the new iPod Touch. What is this new product? I'll tell you. It's an iPhone, minus the phone part. It's essentially Steve Jobs' version of a PDA, touting such features as Wi-Fi, multi-touch capabilities, and a "gorgeous 3.5-inch widescreen display," not to mention direct music downloads from iTunes, all packed into a stylish device only Apple could design.

Here's why I'm not too thrilled with the iPod Touch. I think Apple just rushed out this product to compensate for what we now know was too great an aspiration for the iPhone. The iPod Touch is just a waste of a product, because it really doesn't present anything that isn't available on a more cost-efficient product, and anyone who can afford it can no doubt afford the extra cash to go ahead and get an iPhone anyways. I've always known Apple to be an innovator, and the iPod Touch simply falls short of that reputation.