RSS FeedBest Buy-100: Me-0
Well, once again Best Buy has defeated me. Last night after I left there I thought it was me who won this round… But alas, I was mistaken. Here’s what happened.
A few weeks ago one of my video cards decided it was time to die. On the way home from work I decided I had lived long enough with only 2 monitors and headed on over to Best Buy to pick up a new video card. In my mind I was 100% certain that the card that died was an AGP card. When I arrived at the video card isle I found that they had only 1 AGP card. I don’t mean 1 “type” of card, I mean they had one lonesome AGP card TOTAL. It was more than I wanted to spend ($139.99), but I caved to the pressure of not wanting to drive around town to find a cheaper one. I bit the bullet, picked up the box and headed out.
When I went through the check-out line I was very pleasantly surprised when the card rang up at $45.99. No, I didn’t bother to tell the girl with multi-colored nail polish that it was supposed to be nearly 3 times that amount. Instead I gleefully sprinted from the store before they could realize their mistake. Bwhahahaha! I won!
Or so I thought.
When I got home I took apart the machine and before I could do remove the old card I needed to use an air blower to remove the half inch of dust that was caked on every flat service in the case. I then removed the dead card and set it aside. I unwrapped the new card and that’s when it hit me. The slot is not AGP. It’s PCI Express. I’m fairly certain I heard Best Buy laughing at my right then. I checked my back to see if they had stuck a “Gotcha” sign to me on my way out the door.
This afternoon I went to return the wrong card and purchase the right one. When I entered the store nobody pointed or stared, but I know they wanted to! I went to the return counter and the nice girl behind the counter asked if anything was wrong. I thought about explaining how Best Buy always wins and this was just another case of me being the victim, but instead I just told her I was a bonehead and got the wrong card. I went back to the video card isle and found that the least expensive PCI Express card they carry is $79.99. My only hope is that it rings up incorrectly, too. I returned to the counter and sure enough I was hit with the news that I owed an additional $36 bucks. I paid the balance and slunk away in defeat.
As I exited the store, the guy who removed the security chip from the box said, “Nice try sir, maybe next time.”
At least that’s what I heard.
So Much Chuck Palahniuk
It’s a good time to be a Chuck Palahniuk fan! This week his new book Snuff, a story about a girl on a quest to complete a 600 person gang bang, is set to come out. Here’s a fantastic trailer (mildly NSFW) for the book. Hilarious!
This summer we’ll be treated to Sam Rockwell staring in Choke, which just happens to be one of my favorite Palahniuk books. Looks like the current release date is August 28th. We’ll see.
While looking around on IMDB.com today I saw that Chuck also has another movie in the works. His book Invisible Monsters, a story about A disfigured fashion model and a pre-op transsexual go on a road trip of revenge and recovery, is listed as being in development. It says it’s going to be released in 2008, but there aren’t even any actors attached to the project on IMDB, so I’m not buying that.
Now, if we can just get Chuck back to Vegas for another speaking engagement, I would love to ask him if he has used the Easter morning story I told him the last time he was here at any dinner parties. If you don’t know the story I’m speaking of, it’s probably better you don’t ask.
Love/Hate: American Gladiator Style
As a kid I totally loved watching the American Gladiators. I was excited to see that it was coming back on after 14 years off the air. Excited for a couple reasons. I knew it was going to be fun to watch with my son. He’s fairly close to the age I was when the show was on originally and I knew the show would be right up his alley. I wasn’t wrong. We watched every episode of the first season together. We cheered, rooted and booed the contestants and gladiators every Tuesday afternoon (Tivo’d from the night before).
Last night was the first episode of the second season. For some reason, instead of waiting until this evening to watch the show with my son, my wife and I watched it. They have a few new events, a revamped “Eliminator” course that’s tougher than last season and a few new gladiators, including last year’s American Gladiator winners.
As we started watching the show, a few things started annoying me. First off, as they introduce the new contestants, at least one of the female competitors cries during their intro interview. Do all women immediately start to cry when they say the words, “I was a single mother?” Then, before each event Hulk Hogan and/or Laila Ali ask the contestants how they are going to take on the next challenge. Their answers are always an uncomfortable mix of forced-excitement and bad clichés. To be fair, the voice-over guy does have a few amusing lines from time to time, but they are the exception.
My wife put it best when she said, “I’d enjoy watching this so much more if we put it on mute.” So, we tried it. She was right. It was far more enjoyable to watch the show with no sound.
I’m going to go back to waiting for Tuesday’s to watch the show with my son. Hopefully his enjoyment of the show will spill over and cover for the parts of the show that irk me.
The Painful Side of Social Webbing
There are so many social network sites these days that it’s almost impossible to keep active on all of them. I have, or have had accounts on just about all of them. But, the list of sites I stay active with is very very short.
Today I logged in to Facebook to find that I had a new friend request. By photo alone, I had no idea who the person was. I followed the link to their profile and it was clear that they only requested to by my friend for the sole purpose of padding their friend count and to eventually send me ads at some point down the line. I spend more time on social network sites doing this than I do actually staying in touch with long distance friends & family members. It’s for this exact reason that I deleted my account on MySpace just last week.
With Facebook, the thing that has the biggest ability to waste your time is the massive amounts of third party applications that are available. Rate movies, rate your friends, movie quotes and surveys, before you know it you’ve spent two hours telling people how much you loved the movie Weekend at Bernie’s. A while back I made a choice to remove any of the apps that are time-sucks and I will ignore all requests from friends to add new ones. If you’re a contact of mine on Facebook and I ignore your request, please don’t be upset. I’m just trying to save my sanity.
I’ve found that I no longer have much interest in keeping up with any of my social network accounts. I’ll keep my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, but it’s VERY unlikely that I’ll join any new ones. I’m much happier using my blog here, my photo blog at slackerphotos.com, my twitter account to let everybody know what I’m up to. I then use netvibes.com to read close to 70 RSS feeds. I also use Twirl to follow a few dozen other people’s tweets (a post on twitter is referred to as a ‘tweet’).
If you haven’t already checked out twitter, I strongly suggest it. I realized something about twitter the other day that has really increased it’s usefulness for me. As you may know, I’ve taken up photography as a hobby recently. While checking out some photos on flickr.com, I found a link to a photographer’s blog. When I checked it out, I saw that he also was active on twitter. I started following his tweets. Then, I checked out the list of people he followed. I went through his list and found 5 or 6 other photographers to start following. Also, when checking out their twitter profiles I found links to their photo blogs. Some of them are absolutely amazing. So I add those to my RSS feed list on Netvibes. Now when these people post a tweet or a blog post with a juicy tip, I’m being spoon-fed information on how to improve as a photographer. I have to say that’s better than any class I could possibly think to enroll in. Not to mention being 100% totally free.
Be careful that your social webbing isn’t eating up all your time and not providing you with any benefits. Don’t forget that your time is valuable.
Cross Canadian Ragweed in Utah & Mustache May
This past Friday I left work a little early with the intention of heading to St. George Utah to see Cross Canadian Ragweed in concert. The plan was to leave the house around 3PM. But, thanks to another lengthy visit from the air conditioning company from hell, we didn’t get on the road until nearly 5PM.
We arrived at the venue at about 8:15 local time. Yes, I forgot to calculate in the time change. We were able to find a spot to park about 50 feet away from the front door. I found this odd, but it would wind up to be just one of the many oddities of concerts in Utah.
We headed to the front door to pick up our tickets at Will Call. We gave the guy our name and he looked us up on a printed sheet and hands us our tickets. We walk past the security guards (a guy in his 50s and his two teen-aged kids) and head inside. This is so different than going to a show in Vegas where they basically give you a body cavity search before entering the arena.
Now that we are inside it’s time to grab a drink. We walk up to the bar and see that there are a couple teenagers working this section, too. Oh, looky there… no alcohol on the menu. Bottled waters were only $1.00 which is unheard of at any concert I have ever been to. We could have ordered a Frazzle, which is like an Icee, but we decided against it.
Now we head toward the stage. That’s a short trip. This entire place can hold no more than about 350 people. But, the opening band is already on stage and there are no more than 100 people in the place. We find a spot up front and settle in. Then, we start to notice it. Almost everybody has snuck in their own alcohol. Some had flasks, but most had something mixed in a water bottle that looked faintly like piss. With no access to alcohol, I was a bit jealous of the piss drinkers.
During the show the lead singer mentions that the management has made it VERY clear that he is not supposed to curse on stage. Uh, OK… He kept to that rule basically all night. Though, he did let slip an F-bomb at one point. Another thing that he spoke about was the fact that it’s “Mustache May.” If you don’t have any facial hair, for the month of May you are supposed to let your mustache grow. If you have a goatee you are supposed to shave the bottom and keep the top. So, in the spirit of being a team player, I’ve shaved half my facial hair and now look like a cross between a 70’s porn star and a used car salesmen. Enjoy!
An expensive week
Why is it when something expensive happens, something else expensive usually likes to follow right behind? Or, in the case of this past week, expensive comes in threes.
I don’t know how many of my loyal readers know that my son had eye surgery when he was really young and wore for a few years. He had a lazy eye that seemed to get better over time. After some time wearing the glasses, his eyes got better and he no longer had to wear glasses.
Fast forward to last week. Paxton’s eyes have been going back to their old ways. He had an eye appointment and it was determined that he once again needs glasses. New frames and lenses to the tune of $450. Ouch.
Next it’s time for Chris to go for an MRI on her shoulder. She has been in considerable pain recently and one of the doctors she’s seen recently thinks that she may need surgery. Another doctor thinks that she has a tear that may just need some time to heal. Hopefully the MRI will show that she doesn’t need surgery.
When it came time to pay for the MRI, the gal behind the counter said, with a straight face, $450. Ouch again! I have no idea why our insurance didn’t cover more of this. I’m going to have to resubmit the claim and see if they’ll reimburse us for some of that. Brutal.
As if that wasn’t enough, let’s talk about the enjoyment of home ownership. A couple years back we replaced our air conditioning units. Talk about sticker shock. Well, when you purchase brand new units, you would assume that you will go at least a few years without requiring repairs, right? Right? Wrong! Shortly after having them installed we ended up having to have one of them replaced. That was on their dime, so I didn’t care too much. However, when we had the company out last week to figure out why our upstairs unit was blowing nothing but warm air, he gave us two options: replace the compressor (no charge} or, replace the unit ($700). The $700 being the cost of renting the crane and what-not, but damn, that’s a lot of coin. So after some debate, we went ahead and opted for the free route. I’m fairly certain this will come back to bite me in about 4 years, but really, who knows where any of us will be in 4 years.
And finally, the garage door. Our garage door opener has been acting up lately. On Friday we made an appointment to have the opener replaced on Monday. The new opener plus installation was going to cost us $250. Thanks to being home sick, I was able to see when the installer pointed out that not only was the opener itself dead, but one of the springs had also snapped. Go ahead and add an additional $260.
So there ya go. The joys of home ownership and medical bills. There is NEVER a good time for unexpected expenses. But why does it always seem to happen at what feels like the worst possible time?
Golfing leads to sunburn
I got invited to play a round of golf with a buddy from work over this past weekend. So Sunday morning I headed out to the driving range around 11, bit a bucket of balls and then our tee time was at noon. Even though I hadn’t played a full round of golf in about 5 years, I was quite pleased with how I was playing after the first 9 holes. I hadn’t lost a single ball and hadn’t embarrassed myself once. This was shaping up to be a great day.
Around 3 PM we were through about 14 holes and that’s when it dawned on me; holy crap, I didn’t put on any sun block. I already felt the beginning of the burning on my forearms, legs and neck. At this point, there was no turning back. I had to stick it out and finish the round. By 4:15 we were done golfing and I was in the car heading home. I was in pain and I knew it was going to get worse.
After taking a cool shower, I slathered myself with aloe trying to get some relief from the heat. It works, but only for a few minutes at a time. By about 8 PM, I started feeling sick to my stomach. Yeah, I over did it this time…
I crawled in to bed and did the best I could to sleep. I woke up basically every time I moved. Around 2 AM I woke up and wasn’t able to get comfortable enough to fall back asleep until after 3. Not only was I burnt to a crisp, I was now physically sick, too.
For a guy that has already had skin cancer removed from both my cheek and my back, letting myself get burnt this badly is just flat out stupid. The fact that I didn’t even think to bring sun block just baffles me.
Last month I went to my dermatologist and she gave me my first “clean bill of health” in over 3 years. Then I go and pull this little stunt. I guess I better go ahead and make a 6 month check-up appointment rather than waiting the full year like she had scheduled me for.
Photography as a hobby
I may have spoke about it before, but when I get in to something, my addictive personality tends to take over and I REALLY get in to it. One hobby that I have been interested in for a LONG time, but haven’t really dove in to. Until recently, that is.
We are planning a trip to Alaska and since I figure it’s basically a once in a lifetime trip, I want to make sure I capture it properly. With that in mind I went out and bought a Canon Digital Rebel. Once it arrived, I realized I don’t know the first thing about photography. This lead to the first purchases for my new hobby; 2 photography books. Reading the books lead to the next three purchases; Polarizer filter, remote control for the shutter and a GPS location recorder. It surprises me to say this, but so far, that’s where the purchases have stopped. And, until I learn a bit more and really figure out what type of photography I’m interested in, that’s where the purchases will stay.
I’m quite interested in becoming a decent photography. Selling my photography or having it published has nothing to do with it. But, I’ve had decent cameras in the past and I’ve taken a dozen or so photographs that I consider great. That’s a dozen great ones out of a couple thousand not so great ones. I would just like to increase the number of great shots I have in my collection.
The only way I’m going to get better is to keep shooting. But, I think it’s important to also expand on the types of shots I’m taking. To help out with the diversity, I set up a photo-a-week group on Flickr. Each week a new topic is chosen and all the members of the group have to go out and take a photo on the specific topic. I’ve also been taking part in a weekly photo assignment from digital-photography-school.com just for the extra practice. If you enjoy taking photos and want to take part in our weekly group shots, definitely sign up for our group.
Another way that I’m progressing my photography skills is by checking out other great photographers. There is no shortage of them on the internet. I’ve found several new photo blogs to check out on CoolPhotoBlogs.com. Very inspiring. You can check out my photo blog, which is still in it’s infancy, at SlackerPhotos.com. You can also check out my more of my photographs on my flicker.com account.
If things go well, by this time next year I’ll have a collection of photos worth showing off. We’ll see how that goes.
Busy week in review
This past week was pretty busy. I started the week by flying to San Francisco for a trade show. The thing about trade shows, they are basically all the same. Maybe not the content, but everything else about them is identical. I’ll show you what I mean. Here was my trade show:
Day 1: Fly in the night before the show, eat dinner too late, go out for drinks and get to sleep way to late.
Day 2: Get up early, have a crappy breakfast, spend most of your day on your feet, go out to dinner too late, go to an industry party with an open bar, get to sleep way to late.
Day 3: Get up a little later, have a crappy breakfast, have very few meetings at the show because everybody else went out too late last night, too, eat dinner way to late, skip the industry party, go to sleep way to late.
Day 4: Get up and rush to the airport to fly home.
The show was good. I had some great meetings and made some decent deals. But still I arrived home totally bushed. On Thursday I planned on going to sleep around 10 PM so I could get a good night’s sleep. Instead I fell asleep at 8:15 and slept all night.
While I was in San Francisco, I did take a few photos that I’m pretty happy with. One of them was a 30 second exposure I took from my hotel room of the street below. I love catching the streaking lights of the cars on the road. I’m thrilled with how it came out. You can check them out over here.
Friday night we went back to Sam’s Town to play the 11 PM tourney. We started with 4 tables and it didn’t take that long to get down to the final table. We lost a couple players and when we got down to the final 5, I was the overwhelming chip leader. I then got unlucky in a couple hands and I was quickly the short stack. A few minutes later, I was out of the tournament in 5th place. That, as they say, is poker.
On Saturday I slept in. It was lovely. I woke up and watched some hockey. We then went to lunch and headed over to the Pinball Hall of Fame. Have I mentioned lately that I’m addicted to this place? My current list of favorite games are “Creature from the Black Lagoon”, “Star Trek”, and “Austin Powers”. I have had a few good games on Creature, but I feel like I’m about ready to break through and have a HUGE game. I currently have my name on the high score boards for 2 games (Star Trek & Funhouse) and I feel Creature is next on my list. Soon.
Saturday evening we ordered the UFC fight on pay-per-view and had a few friends over to watch. I have to say that watching UFC is way more fun with a group of people. I watch a fair bit of it on my own, but it’s just not the same.
Sunday is going to be low key. I need to rest up and get another good night’s sleep. I have a LOT of work to do this week. I would like to get out and take some more photos, but we’ll have to see how that shapes up.
Procrastination builds excitement
This summer we are planning on taking a cruise to Alaska. For our trip, one of the things we need to do is get our passports. It seems odd to say we need passports to go to Alaska, but the ship sets sail out of Vancouver, Canada. And in the post 9-11 days, even our friends to the North require you to have a passport.
Back in December we headed on out to the post office, filled in all the paperwork, paid our money and sent off our applications. 3 short weeks later we received 3 passports and one rejection letter. Looks like Chris and the kids are going to Alaska without me. (over dramatic much?)
Why was I rejected you ask? No, I’m not a felon. No, I’m not being hunted by any government agency. The reason is because I changed my name when I turned 18 (long story behind it, don’t ask.) Apparently there are 2 ways to do that; the right way, and the way I did it, naturally.
Since I never changed my name through the courts, they required that I send a bunch of extra documents in order to prove I’ve been using my current last name for over 5 years. No problem, I can get that taken care of in no time. But, I didn’t. December gave way to January. Along came (and went) February and most of March. Then, one day my wife says, “Our trip is in 2 months. If you don’t have your passport, you can’t go.” Can you say wake-up call? Yeah, me too.
I took half a day off work last week and we gathered up a stack of documents proving I am who I say I am and we headed back to the post office. Since I had waited so long to return I had to re-apply from the beginning rather than riding in on the coattails of my previous application. That basically means I had to pay the 100 bucks again. I also paid extra to have the application expedited. Once we got it mailed off all we could do then was wait and hope it got approved quickly. 8 short days later, our answer came in the mail. Chris called me and says, “I can’t wipe the smile off my face. Your passport just arrived in the mail.” Woo hoo, I get to go to Alaska after all.
Such a huge amount of stress has been lifted from my shoulders. I would love to say that I have learned my lesson and next time I have a deadline to do something I will get it taken care of right away instead of waiting until the last minute. But, as you may have guessed, that’s just not in my nature and wouldn’t be nearly as exciting.