Or maybe just giving my gift-ees false hope. 

Here’s the scenario.  I dislike shopping, usually.  I dislike shopping in busy stores even more usually.  When Christmas shopping time rolls around, I tend to get a sick feeling in my stomach thinking about roaming around malls, standing in lines, and schlepping shopping bags around in nasty weather.  Seriously, who even came up with the whole going shopping in bad weather thing anyway.

As much as I dislike Christmas time shopping, I love my laptop.  In other words, online shopping is THE. WAY. TO. GO. Except for this dirty little trick that I started to notice Pandora (along with many other sites) was playing.  The dirty trick goes like this: you search for a specific item, and end up going to an online store, lets say Pottery Barn, Zappos, or Amazon, just hypothetically.  Pandora somehow freakin “remembers” where you went and what you looked at and so the next time you open up Pandora, guess what’s in the ad window next to the player?  An ad for the totally random electronic, necklace, album, or shirt you just looked at.

Usually I am the only user of my laptop so this wouldn’t be an issue, but it just so happens that during the holidays I tend to spend more time hanging out with friends, family, whatnot.  Guess what friends, family, and whatnot like to do when they are together.  Listen to music on Pandora, and see pictures of the items Alissa Jean has been shopping for.  Who knew.

Now, I’m pretty sure that there’s a way to disable this, but I decided to spend my lunch break writing about it rather than figuring that little detail out.  I’ll keep you posted.  But in the mean time, be aware, the internet is watching you!!!!!!  This could “ruin” more than a Christmas surprise, depending on what sort of things your putting in your shopping cart….