Laura went to Wal-Mart to pick up a fan for us today. A lot of the time at night, it’s not hot enough to warrant air conditioning but it’s still a bit warmer than is comfortable for sleeping. We figured a fan will help.

As I understand it, Laura’s standing in front of the big shelf full of fans while beside her, a young boy and his mother are also looking at fans. Only, the boy knows which fan he wants. He wants the super-deluxe fan with 3 speeds, 3 breeze settings, sleep timer that you can set up to 7.5 hours (in 30 min increments) and a remote control. He’s trying his hardest to convince her of its virtues but his mother wasn’t buying it – insisting that he really didn’t need such a thing.

Watching how much this kid wants this fan, Laura thinks to herself, “Wow, if that kid is excited about this fan, I bet Jerome would be, too.” So that is the one she bought.

And it is awesome.

Two interesting things to note. First, the breeze settings. Normal is about what you would expect: The fan blows at whatever speed (high, medium, low) you set it to. The other two modes are… weird. When enabled, the fan automatically (and randomly) changes fan speed. So instead of a constant breeze it’s more random, I guess like a natural breeze. It’s weird to see and hear it changing speeds constantly. There are two of these special breeze modes, but I can’t really tell the difference between them. So in essence, there are two breeze settings: normal and fucked-up.

Second point of interest is that the button to change modes on the remote control also apparently turns on my iHome and starts my iPod playing. Rather unexpected. I’ve heard of remote control conflicts before but having so many devices that I have a conflict in my bedroom? Clearly, I am awesome.